An interdisciplinary forum of over 70 researchers and artists from all over the world, re:place 2007 presents multiple historical relations between art, science and technology.
This conference is a sequel to ‘Refresh!’, the first in this series, chaired by Oliver Grau and produced by the Database of Virtual Art, Leonardo, and Banff New Media Institute, and held at the Banff Center in Canada in September 2005, which brought together several hundred artists, scientists, researchers, curators and theoreticians of different disciplines.
re:place 2007 will be an international forum for the presentation and the discussion of exemplary approaches to the rapport between art, media, science and technology. With the title, ‘re:place’, we propose a thematic focus on locatedness and the migration of knowledge and knowledge production in the interdisciplinary contexts of art, historiography, science and technology. The re:place 2007 conference will be devoted to examining the manifold connections between art, science and technology, connections which have come into view more sharply through the growing attention to media art and its histories over the past years. It will address historical contexts and artistic explorations of new technologies as well as the historical and contemporary research into the mutual influences between artistic work, scientific research and technological developments. This research concerns such diverse fields as cybernetics, artificial intelligence, robotics, nano-technology, and bio-technology, as well as investigations in the humanities including art history, visual culture, musicology, comparative literature, media archaeology, media theory, science studies, and sociology.
Special attention will be given to alternatives to the ‘Western’ historical paradigms through presentations about art-science relations in the former Soviet Union, Africa, and Latin America. The conference includes general forum discussions on interdisciplinary research strategies, as well as keynote lectures by Lorraine Daston and Siegfried Zielinski.
Conference chairs: Andreas Broeckmann (D), Gunalan Nadarajan (SG/USA)
Programme re:place 2007:
Thursday 15 November
Opening Session
15 November, Thursday, 14.00-15.00, Auditorium
Welcome by Andreas Broeckmann (DE), Gunalan Nadarajan (SG/US), Bernd Scherer/HKW (DE)
Introductory talk by Oliver Grau (DE/AT): MediaArtHistory – Image Science – Digital Humanities
– Panel 1: Place Studies: Art/Science/Engineering
15 November, Thursday, 15.00-17.30, Auditorium
Moderation: Edward Shanken (US)
Michael Century (CA/US), Encoding motion in the early computer: knowledge transfers between studio and laboratory
Stephen Jones (AU): The Confluence of Computing and Fine Arts at the University of Sydney, 1968-1975
Eva Moraga (ES): The Computation Center at Madrid University, 1966-1973: An example of true interaction between art, science and technology
Robin Oppenheimer (US/CA): Network Forums and Trading Zones: How Two Experimental, Collaborative Art and Engineering Subcultures Spawned the “9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering” and E.A.T.
– Panel 2: Intersections of Media and Biology
15 November, Thursday, 15.00-17.30, Theatersaal
Moderation: Ingeborg Reichle (DE)
Assimina Kaniari (GR/UK), Morphogenesis in Action: D’Arcy Thompson and the experimental in Leonardo from LL Whyte to now
Jussi Parikka (FI): Insect Media of the Nineteenth Century
Michele Barker (AU): From Life to Cognition: investigating the role of biology and neurology in new media arts practice
Boo Chapple (AU): Sound, Matter, Flesh: A history of crosstalk from medicine to contemporary art and biology
Keynote 1/Helmholtz Zentrum fuer Kulturtechnik
15 November, Thursday, 18.30 at Helmholtz-Zentrum, Humboldt University
Special Lecture Presentation
Timothy Druckrey (US): Cinemedia – Visions of Computation in Cinema
15 November, Thursday, 21.00 at TESLA Media>Art
Friday 16 November
– Panel 3: Histories of Abstraction
16 November, Friday, 10.00-12.30, Auditorium
Moderation: Sean Cubitt (UK/AU)
Laura Marks (CA): Artificial life from classical Islamic art to new media art, via 17th-century Holland
Arianna Borrelli (IT/DE): The media perspective in the study of scientific abstraction
Amir Alexander (US): Death in Paris: When Mathematics became Art
Paul Thomas (AU): Constructed infinite smallness
– Panel 4: Comparative Histories of Art Institutions
16 November, Friday, 10.00-12.30, Theatersaal
moderation: Stephen Kovats (DE/CA)
Lioudmila Voropai (RU/DE): Institutionalisation of Media Art in the Post-Soviet Space: The Role of Cultural Policy and Socio-economic Factors
Renata Sukaityte (LT): Electronic art in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania: the interplay of local, regional and global processes
Christoph Klütsch (DE): The roots and influences of information aesthetics in Germany, Canada, US, Brazil and Japan
Catherine Hamel (CA): Crossing Into The Border – an intersection of vertical and horizontal migration
– Panel 5: Place Studies: Media Art Histories
16 November, Friday, 14.30-17.00, Auditorium
Moderation: Andreas Broeckmann (DE)
Daniel Palmer (AU): Media Art and Its Critics in the Australian Context
Ryszard W. Kluszczynski (PL): From Media Art to Techno Culture. Reflections on the Transformation of the Avant-Gardes (the Polish
case)
Caroline Seck Langill (CA): Corridors of Practice I: Technology and Performance Art on the North American Pacific Coast in the 1970s and Early 80s
Machiko Kusahara (JP): A Turning Point in Japanese Avant-garde Art: 1964 – 1970
– Panel 6: Media Theory in Cultural Practice
16 November, Friday, 14.30-17.00, Theatersaal
Moderation: Tapio Makela (FI)
Kathryn Farley (US): Generative Systems: The Art and Technology of Classroom Collaboration
Nils Röller (DE/CH): Flusser’s Individual Academy: Thinking instruments in institutional and personal relations
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun (US): The Enduring Ephemeral, or the Future is a Memory
Antony Hudek (US/CH), Antonia Wunderlich (DE): Between Tomorrow and Yesterday: charting Les Immatériaux as technoscientific event
General Discussion
16 November, Friday, 17.30-18.30, Auditorium
Keynote: Siegfried Zielinski (DE): On Deep Time Relations Between Art, Sciences and Technologies
Moderation: Miklos Peternak (HU)
16 November, Friday, 20.00, Auditorium
Saturday 17 November
– Panel 7: Interdisciplinary Theory in Practice
17 November, Saturday, 10.00-12.30, Auditorium
moderation: Sara Diamond (CA)
Christopher Salter (US/CA): Unstable Events: Performative Science, Materiality and Machinic Practices
Simone Osthoff (BR/US): Philosophizing in Translation: Vilem Flusser’s Brazilian Writings
Karl Hansson (SE): Haptic Connections – On Hapticality and the History of Visual Media
Janine Marchessault (CA)/ Michael Darroch (CA): Anonymous History as Methodology: The Collaborations of Sigfried Giedion, Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, and the Explorations Group (1951-53)
– Panel 8: Place Studies: Russia / Soviet Union
17 November, Saturday, 10.00-12.30, Theatersaal
Introduction/Moderation: Inke Arns (DE): The Avant-Garde in the Rear View Mirror
Olga Goriunova (RU): Cultural critique of technology in philosophy of technology and religious philosophy of early XX century Russia
Margareta Tillberg (SE/DE): Cybernetics and Arts: The Soviet Group Dvizhenie (Movement) 1962-1972
Margarete Voehringer (DE): ‘Space, not Stones’ Nikolai Ladovski’s Psychotechnical Laboratory for Architecture, Moscow 1926 (t.b.c.)
Irina Aristarkhova (RU/US): Stepanova’s ‘Laboratory’
– Panel 9: Cross-Cultural Perspectives
17 November, Saturday, 14.30-17.00, Auditorium
moderation: Bernd Scherer (DE)
Sheila Petty (CA): African Digital Imaginaries
Cynthia Ward (US): Minding Realities: Geometries of Cultural Cognition
Erkki Huhtamo (FI/US): Intercultural Interfaces: Correcting the pro-Western Bias of Media History
Manosh Chowdhury (Bangladesh/JP): Can there be an ‘Art History’ in the South?: Myth of Intertextuality and Subversion in the Age of Media Art
– Panel 10: Cybernetic Histories of Artistic Practices
17 November, Saturday, 14.30-17.00, Theatersaal
moderation/introduction: Geoff Cox (UK): Software Art has No History
Christina Dunbar-Hester (US): Listening to Cybernetics: Music, Machines, and Nervous Systems, 1950-1980
David Link (DE): Memory for Love Letters. Computer Archaeology of a Very Early Program
Brian Reffin Smith (UK/DE): Hijack! How the computer was wasted for art
Kristoffer Gansing (SE): Humans Thinking Like Machines – Incidental Media Art in the Swedish Welfare State
General Discussion
17 November, Friday, 17.30-18.30, Auditorium
Keynote 2: Lorrain Daston (US/DE): Dreams of a Perfect Medium
Moderation: Gunalan Nadarajan (SG/US)
17 November, Saturday, 20.00, Auditorium
Sunday 18 November
Presentation of Results of the LBI Workshop on Documentation and Metadata
with Dieter Daniels a.o.
18 November, Sunday, 10.00, Conference Hall 1
Forum on Cyber-Feminism
with Faith Wilding, Irina Aristarkhova, a.o.
18 November, Sunday, 10.00
Forum Discussion: Connecting Music(ology) and Media Art Statements by Dr. Joseph Cohen (Collège de Philosophie, Paris) and Dr. Rolf Grossmann (Applied Cultural Studies/Aesthetics, Leuphana University Lüneburg). Discussants include Dr. Werner Jauk (University of Graz) and Dr. Paul Modler (Design University Karlsruhe). Moderation by Joyce Shintani (Design University Karlsruhe).
18 November, Sunday, 10.00, Conference Hall 3
Feedback Session and planning for re: conference follow-up in 2009
18 November, Sunday, 12.00, Auditorium