Articles Archives • Digicult | Digital Art, Design and Culture

The punctum as glitch in contemporary art: the art of Rosa Menkman

In our ever increasing technological world, glitches and crashes that are a result of error have become a part of our culture. It is an event that can provide a sense of curiosity; similar to the Roland Barthes idea of the punctum. In this article Claire Burke will look at how this idea can be applied today within contemporary culture and in the work by artist Rosa Menkman... READ MORE...

Liminaria: transizioni sonore di narrazione nel meridione italiano

Liminaria, festival alla sua quinta edizione, sposa la ricerca artistica sul “suono”, o sound art, come strumento per l'indagine, la coesione e l'azione sociale, adottando il concetto di “limen” per indicare quella zona di confine labile, laddove avviene l'attraversamento, la “transizione” di uomini e donne, di storie, di leggi della natura incontaminate, poi capovolte.... READ MORE...

Nan Hoover Catalogue Raisonné, Volume 1

The artist Nan Hoover noted internationally for her pioneering work with video, light and time, died in Berlin in 2008. In her memory, the online Nan Hoover Catalogue Raisonné has been published by the Nan Hoover Foundation. Kathy Rae Huffman interest in this publication stems from her personal research on e-publishing and her memories of Nan Hoover as a friend.... READ MORE...

“Where are the women?”. Interview with Kathy Rae Huffman and Valie Djordjevic

FACES is a mailing list for women artists and professionals working in the field of media and technology. Founded in 1997 with an aim to give space and visibility to women-digital workers, it has become a fundamental network that for 20 years now has been allowing women to connect, network, share and discuss in a space designed for them. This is what two of the founders, Kathy Rae Huffman and Valie Djordjevic, told us.... READ MORE...

Cyfest 2018: la quiete dopo la tempesta

Dal 22 giugno al 1 luglio la Reggia di Caserta ha ospitato la tappa finale dell'undicesima edizione del CYFEST, il festival di New Media Art che si svolge ogni anno presso il museo statale dell'Ermitage a San Pietroburgo. Curata da Anna Frants, Isabella Indolfi e Elena Gubanova, la manifestazione ha promosso l'emergere di nuove forme d'arte e l'interazione tra arte e tecnologia, in uno scambio tra Russia e Italia.... READ MORE...

“J3RR1”: empathy with the machine. Interview with NONE collective

NONE collective – the Rome-based artistic group that moves on the border between art, design and technological research – in conversation with Marco Mancuso tell us about their new work J3RR1. Programmed Torture: a computer programmed to carry out a constant stress test using technology to reflect on the daily condition of human beings in a non-anthropocentric vision.... READ MORE...

Art, epoxy plastic and bacteria. Interview with Klari Reis

Klari Reis is best known for her Petri Dish series, a multicolour set of circular blobs created using a blend of media and ground-breaking techniques. The core of Kla-ris’s approach is the transformation and pigmentation of a UV-resistant plastic, the epoxy polymer, into unique and cutting edge artworks.... READ MORE...

Innovation is inclusive. A conversation with Corey Timpson

Corey Timpson, guest for Meet the Media Guru at Triennale Design Museum in Milan the 16th of May 2018, gave an intense lecture on keywords such as cultural innovation and inclusive design. We asked Timpson what is the meaning of cultural innovation, what does being inclusive means for an institution, even a very small one, and what is “the storytelling responsibility”.... READ MORE...

“Seen”: there’s really “nothing to see”?

Quoting Fred Richtin we could say that “we’ve entered the surveillance era, and surveillance era came into us”. The exhibition Seen, shown until the 1st of July at Wei- Ling Contemporary gallery of Kuala Lumpur focuses on this issue, identifying contemporary surveillance as an undetectable grey zone, trying to elaborate strategies of resistance.... READ MORE...

Following Ore Streams: an exploration of e-waste system. Interview with Formafantasma

Ore Streams is the latest project of Studio Formafantasma: a research of over two years focused on above ground mining, e-waste, and digital debris that took the shape of an installation composed of office furniture entirely made of recycled electronics.Here's what the duo told us about the findings of this work and its future developments.... READ MORE...

“Anura”: Ornamental and transdermal patches printed in 3D

DIY and digital manufacturing are playing a fundamental role in experimentation and technological advancement also in the fields of health and personal care and will be among the sectors with the highest potential in the coming years for improving living conditions. The Anura project is an example of a 3D printing application in the healthcare field, born from the vision of possible futures.... READ MORE...

Has The Exhibition Started Yet?

Art is one matryoshka-like frame maker: an image is framed on a piece of paper, which is then framed, put in a thematic room inside a museum or an art gallery complex, etc…But how is this process constructed in the digital world and how does it affect the viewers? Pierre Chaumont examines Deridda's concept of frame in relation to new media.... READ MORE...

Negapedia: the battle behind the research.

Internet lists among its highest purposes the collaborative utopia and the sharing, but it also shows in itself the exact opposite: battles, polemics, contrasts, that are nothing more than a reflection of today's society, interests and positions. This is the idea behind the project Negapedia Italia, a website that quantifies and measures the contrasts hidden behind each Wikipedia page.... READ MORE...

Artificial Languages, the lingua franca of the Post Digital

Technology has revolutionised modern life at a global level, especially the written language where technology has had the biggest influence. In this article, Claire Burke explores the effect technology has had on human language and how coding and programming languages have made an impact on the creation of contemporary art.... READ MORE...

Intimate surveillance and extreme users for security design

Around 48% of domestic abuse victims reported that perpetrators were using technology to further stalk, harass and intimidate them. This article argues that security design, which is soon to be made exponentially more complex by the internet-of-things, could benefit from looking at so called extreme users across a broad spectrum of circumstances.... READ MORE...

“A Beautiful Accident”: some guidelines for a contemporary interpretation of dreams

What does it mean to think at the future and about the future in the most technologically advanced age ever? A Beautiful Accident, presented in the 5th Trondheim Biennale Meta.Morf, is an attempt to find some answers to these questions through the artworks of eight international artists, privileged and fundamental observers of our crucial historical moment.... READ MORE...

Rave your algorithm. Interview with Renick Bell

Renick Bell is a computer musician, programmer, and teacher best-known for weaving electronic music using live code created by a generative music system he built himself to avoid frustration by the restrictive programmes available to process electronic music. He has performed in many countries and he is considered as a pioneer of the Algorave alternative music scene. Andrea Mi caught up with him ahead of the recent talk Datacracy, shared by Phase collective at Lottozero.... READ MORE...

On memory, precarity and visual methods to undermine distance. Interview with Yara Haskiel – part 2

Following some considerations on one of her two most recent long video works, Tsakalos Blues, video artist Hara Haskiel and our author Mario Margani continue their conversation dwelling on the artist's latest work: I don't write diaries I & II. In this second part they deal with technical question as the relationship between the image and the observer, audience involvement and precarity.... READ MORE...