Panels & Roundtables (sorted by Exhibition Year)
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Title:
Erasing Boundaries: Intermedia Art in the Digital Age
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2001: n-space
Writing Type: Panel / Roundtable
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:
“Intermedia” is a term coined by the Fluxus artist and theorist Dick Higgins which refers to works of art that include structural elements not usually associated with the medium being performed. Although intermedia can be “multimedia” it certainly does not have to be. In this panel we would like to make the distinction between the two terms.
In intermedia, the compositional process works across the boundaries between media or even fuses media. Thus intermedia implies structures that are shared by or translated from one medium to another: in this respect it is a more specifically defined term than multimedia. While it is sometimes called “synesthetic art,” intermedia does not seek to imitate the physiological phenomenon of synesthesia, but approaches it metaphorically. It extends the creation of form across sensory modalities without necessarily promoting a tight coupling of multisensory events. Synesthetic coupling is just one potential contrapuntal technique for intermedia, a kind of parallel movement. Other possibilities abound, and intermedia is just getting started as an artform.
With the advent of digital multimedia and real time interaction and performance with computers, intermedia can now achieve a precision and synchronicity of events that were not possible until the last two decades. Moreover, digital media enable compositional structures to operate at all levels of granularity and with a degree of abstraction that places all media on the same plane. One could argue that digital intermedia is the high-level process that corresponds to the low-level truism: all media is data, a single substance. Intermedia suggests that we explore that substance with all available senses.
This panel will examine the historical concept of intermedia, compositional methods and processes for creating intermedia, issues of sense perception and sensory coupling in the reception of intermedia, and the implications of digital multimedia, real time performance and interaction for the future development of intermedia. We also expect to open the discussion to the metaphoric and even magical qualities associated with synesthesia, and to the relation of multisensory stimuli to memory, but by grounding the panel in compositional practices and structures we hope to avoid some of the pitfalls of interpretation that the mystique of synesthesia often inspires.
While we cannot predict the trajectory of intermedia across the imaginary of the 21″ century, it holds out the possibility of new forms and experiences. At a time when we have begun to suspect that formal invention had collapsed along with the historical avantgarde, this may even permit us a brief moment of euphoria. We would do well to remember how, at the beginning of the 20th century, the cult of synesthesia promised a mystical revelation that did not transpire. At the beginning of the 21st century, intermedia points to a perceptual revelation that may well transpire. The instruments are in our hands and it seems we have only to learn to play them. To what end and for whom? As much as with the formal and technical issues of digital intermedia, we must also grapple with this question.
View Full Paper: [View PDF]Title: The Pixel/The Line: Approaches to Interactive Text
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2001: n-space
Writing Type: Panel / Roundtable
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:
The Web is a major topic at SIGGRAPH 2001, as it has been for several years. But there has not yet been a substantial discussion at a SIGGRAPH conference of the Web’s primary and foundational media: text. This panel brings together five experts who span a range of approaches to responsive text through computer graphics and interactive techniques. The presentations are both theoretical and applied, demonstrating techniques ranging from direct manipulation through artificial intelligence, and drawing on the insights of various fields, from visual art through literature.
View Full Paper: [View PDF]Title: Ars Electronica: 25 Years of the Digital Avant-Garde
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2004: Synaesthesia
Writing Type: Panel / Roundtable
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:
Celebrating 25 years of Arg Electronica, the panel provides not just interesting historical information, but also comprehensive insight into new directions of digital art.
View Full Paper: [View PDF]Title: Researching the Future: (CAiiA-STAR and the Planetary Collegium)
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2004: Synaesthesia
Writing Type: Panel / Roundtable
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:
Taking the Planetary Collegium as their starting point, members of the round table address research issues as they relate to the development of practice and theory in the context of collaborative criticism and inquiry across a wide field of knowledge and experience. The Collegium network is worldwide, in terms of its meeting and conference locations. the cultural identity of its members, and its ambition to develop nodes based on and complementary to its unique procedures and methodologies.
The Collegium emerges from 10 years of experience with CAiiA-STAR in gathering doctoral and post-doctoral researches of high calibre whose work transcends orthodox subject boundaries, and whose practices are at the leading edge of their fields. We are living in a time in which old cultural and academic structures need to be replaced by research organisms fitted to our telematic, post biological society. The Collegium combines the physical, face-to-face transdisciplinary association of individuals with the nomadic, trans-cultural requirements of a networking community. The panelists, all members of the Collegium at various stages in its development, present their personal visions of the direction future research might take and the structures needed to support it.
Title: Synaesthesia
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2004: Synaesthesia
Writing Type: Panel / Roundtable
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:
This Panel discusses synesthesia, which typically involves sensory crossover among the basic senses (vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch) within the normal range of sensation.
View Full Paper: [View PDF]Title: Beyond Brush and Easel: The Computer Art of Charles A. Csuri from 1963 to present
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2006: Intersections
Writing Type: Panel / Roundtable
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:
This panel explores the computer art of Charles A. Csuri, an artist, recognized by Smithsonian Magazine as “the father of digital art and animation,” and includes discussion of his works from 1963 to the present. In this rare opportunity, we will also hear reflections from the pioneering artist himself, now Professor Emeritus and Artist in Residence at The Ohio State University. This art panel is presented in conjunction with the retrospective exhibition, Charles A. Csuri: Beyond Boundaries, 1963-present, which is shown for the first time at SIGGRAPH 2006.
Title: Generative and Genetic Art
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2006: Intersections
Writing Type: Panel / Roundtable
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:
This panel brings together leading experts of generative and genetic art from the past 25 years, all of whose work has been featured at the annual SIGGRAPH conferences during this period. The panelists examine a range of topics including: “chance and creativity,” “can art be an equation?” “the procedural and generative software toolbox,” “artist as god,” “the creative peaks and troughs of traveling through multidimensional parameter space,” and “genetic art into genetic engineering?” With the growth in multicore computer systems (including games consoles) that are well suited for procedural and generative processes, the panel explores avenues for these genres in 2006 and beyond.
Title: Locative Media: Urban Landscapes and Pervasive Technology Within Art
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2006: Intersections
Writing Type: Panel / Roundtable
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:
Locative media: the utilization of pervasive, portable, networked, location-aware computing devices that allow for user-defined mapping and artistic intervention within urban geographies, transmuting them into an experimental canvas. This panel examines the current or future state of locative media practice, establishing an artistic and theoretical discourse on pervasive computing. The advent of an always-on, always-accessible information sphere creates an enhanced reality space that enables connected artists to work within different spaces and geographies, creating work that is simultaneously global and local. Can we shift the balance of power, redistributing media control so as to create an open space where public art, social projects, and free expression can flourish?
Title: New Interactions: Communities and Information
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2006: Intersections
Writing Type: Panel / Roundtable
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:
In coining the phrase “relational aesthetics,” the contemporary French art theorist and curator Nicolas Bourriaud attempted to define a trend in creative works that configures interactive scenarios in which everyday experiences are the catalyst for audience-driven participation. This panel explores how the tacit activities of urban living are being used to form the foundations for new types of interaction that exploit community life and information-rich environments. Topics include how “relational interaction” can be facilitated by the potential of new-media technologies to simultaneously create multi-layered datascapes and intimate, culturally specific participatory situations.
Title: Curated Panel Discussion: The State of Aesthetic Computing or Info-Aesthetics
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2009: Information Aesthetics Showcase
Writing Type: Panel / Roundtable
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:
Aesthetic computing is one of several related new fields: info-aesthetics, database aesthetics, network aesthetics, and software aesthetics. What are their similarities and differences? What are the aesthetic issues driving them, and how are they linked to technological developments? And what exactly is the role of aesthetics is this context?
View Full Paper: [View PDF]Title: GreenLite Dartmouth: Unplug or the Polar Bear Gets It
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2009: Information Aesthetics Showcase
Writing Type: Panel / Roundtable
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:
GreenLite Dartmouth visualizes complex, real-time energy data using interactive animations to create an emotional relationship between energy use and its e ects. When electricity use is low, for example, a polar bear is happy and playful. As more energy is used, the bear becomes distressed, and his well-being is endangered.
Title: Synchronous Objects for One Flat Thing, reproduced
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2009: Information Aesthetics Showcase
Writing Type: Panel / Roundtable
Title: well-formed.eigenfactor: Consideration is Design and Data Analysis
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2009: Information Aesthetics Showcase
Writing Type: Panel / Roundtable
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:
This talk discusses the rationale, process, and mechanisms behind the interactive visualizations for the well-formed.eigenfactor project.
