28 February 2003: 19.00 – 21.30 A R T  A N D  N E W  M E D I A Exploring the Interface We are facing a rapid cross fertilisation of art and new media. New forms of digital art are constantly emerging, but the esthetical exploration of these new forms is still largely to be established. Which theoretical frameworks are most apt to reflect upon the esthetical implications of digital art? The event is part of Art in Dispute, a series of debates organised by Antoon Van den Braembussche on behalf of the Dutch Association of Aesthetics (NGE). Moderator: Antoon Van den Braembussche Philosopher of Art, Erasmus University Rotterdam and the Free University of Brussels Panel members: Yves Bernard iMal group of Brussels, artist/theorist specialised in Interactive Art Projects Sue Golding Chair of Philosophy in the Visual Arts and Communication Technologies (London) and advising researcher, Department of Theory, Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht Giles Lane Research Fellow in Communication, Art & Design, School of Communications, Royal College of Art, London, Visiting Research Associate at the London School of Economics and director of Proboscis Renée van de Vall Philosopher of art, University of Maastricht. Member Dutch association of Aesthetics More information on the speakers Antoon Van den Braembussche Associate Professor for Philosophy of Art at Erasmus University Rotterdam, and Professor for Art Criticism at the Free University of Brussels. Main Publications: Theory of the History of Society (in Dutch) (Baarn, Ambo, 1985); Thinking About Art (in Dutch) (Bussum, Couthinho, 1994, 1996, 2000), a comprehensive handbook in aesthetics, which also appeared in German; It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it (Amsterdam, Zwaan Productions, 2002), a philosophical reflection on contemporary dance. He published numerous articles on philosophy of history and theory of art, both in the low countries and abroad (History and Theory, Cultural Dynamics, Yale French Studies and so on). Forthcoming is a book, titled The Silenced Past. On the nature of historical taboos and traumas, which embodies the first systematic inquiry available into the nature of historical taboos and historical traumas. Yves Bernard IT Cultural specialist in electronic arts & new media, cultural projects, new media art producer and adviser, software engineer. Lecturer in New Media at University of Liège and in Interactive Environments at Université Paris 8. After studies in architecture and computer science, Yves Bernard became researcher in CAAD at the University of Liège and then in Software Engineering at Philips Research Lab up to 1991. In 1994, he founded Magic Media an internationaly awarded new media studio specialised in art & culture projects (http://www.magic.be ) where he co-designed many cd-rom titles. In 1999, he co-founded the iMAL association (interactive Media Art Laboratory - http://www.imal.org) a media lab for the arts in Brussels. He acts as a new media art producer and curator (e.g. the CONTinENT exhibition http://www.continent-imaw.net) and collaborates with artists to help them design and develop new media art projects. His experience of nearly 10 years as a new media designer, as an engineer and an artist adviser, exposed him to the many practical and conceptual problems of new media arts production and to the evolution of the interface, from screen-based works to immersive environments. Some recent projects: 'Actions: la plante en nous' a cd-rom by Michel François (2000); 'AVATAR', an installation for artist Frank Theys, 2001, http://www.magic.be/avatar 'Martini Ground Zero', an web urban project about the destruction of Centre Rogier in Brussels, http://www.imal.org/martini 'Adji', a web game project for artist Meshac Gaba - Palais de Tokyo, 2002, http://www.imal.org/gaba, 'WhiteSquare', an interactive installation for Hanna Haaslahti, 2002, http://www.imal.org/WhiteSquare/ For more information see: http://www.imal.org http://www.imal.org/martini Sue Golding <jonny de philo> Sue Golding (johnny de philo), holds the Chair in Philosophy of the Visual Arts & Communication Technologies in London (the University of Greenwich, Maritime Campus). Her work surfs the nether regions of poetics in all its peculiar forms: political, aesthetic, sexual, acoustic and wave-form. Rolling documentaries include: en passant (or how pawn learned the art of capture) , 2002; I spy with my little eye (2000); Once upon a wormhole (1999). Books include, Dirty Theory (forthcoming, 2003); Blood Poetics (forthcoming, 2003); Honour (1999); The eight technologies of otherness [1997]. Editor/author for Issues in Contemporary Culture and Aesthetics (no. 12, Maastricht, 2001; and nos. 10/11, 1999). Most recent endeavour as programme director for a new master/ph.d. programme in 'critical studies and the practising arts' (www.gre.ac.uk/~gs04) -- a programme which allows the post-graduate student maximum flexibility in research, experimentation and art production. Works/plays under the name 'johnny' (danger, de philo, rotten). Into the drums and other stretched skins. For more information see: www.gre.ac.uk/~gs04 Openingstatement Sue Golding <jonny de philo> 'blood poetics: the assassination of experience by media' a small existence on restaging media as techne, and techne as a path or pathways circumscribing the acoustic and visual juxtaposition of our contemporary age, accent on urbanism. Giles Lane Giles founded and is a director of Proboscis, a creative studio and cultural organisation which researches, develops and facilitates creative innovation. He leads the SoMa think tank, as well as curating and producing other projects and activities. Giles founded and edited 'COIL journal of the moving image', co-edited 'Ghost Stories' by Pavel Büchler and conceived the DIFFUSION eBook format. He initiated and produced the science/art project 'Mapping Perception', and is leading the 'Urban Tapestries' project, a collaboration with Hewlett Packard Labs, VTT (Finnish Technical Research Centre) and MEDIA@LSE. 'Urban Tapestries' is funded by both the Arts Council of England and the UK Government's Department of Trade & Industry. Between 1998 and 2002 Giles worked at the Royal College of Art, first in the Computer Related Design Research Studio (1998-2001) where he published 5 books on the studio's research projects, and latterly as a Research Fellow in the School of Communications. Giles is currently Associate Research Fellow to MEDIA@LSE, a multi-disciplinary programme at the London School of Economics. Openingstatement Giles Lane: Aesthetics of the Ephemeral The term 'new media' has been in widespread use since the mid-Nineties and has followed a curious trajectory whereby everyone understands what it implies, but no one knows what it means. Artists' use of 'new media' as followed a similar route: we are familiar with the idea of artists adopting and using first electronic, and now digital technologies, so much so that somewhere along the line people began to refer to what they made as 'digital art'. It seems to me that to follow such trivial categorisations is to fall back into the kinds of fruitless debates that surrounded 'experimental film' and 'video art' from the 1970s to the 1990s. Another recent phenomenon in this tedious tale of seeking after legitimacy is the emergence of 'sciart', and sci-artists, whose speciality is working within a science-based context. Artists make art, whether they use one medium or another, or even many different media. I do not think that a technique or a technology heralds a paradigm shift, or even a shift in aesthetic categories. Instead I would say that technologies are adopted because they facilitate changes that people wish to effect. It seems to me that too often the debate around art is hijacked by an obsession with the tools rather than the content. In many ways, old and new media are the same: they are simply the means of transmission or communication for ideas and visions. What the digital technologies of networked communications do herald are new ways in which we can construct networks of exchange between individuals and groups. It is not so much that our aesthetics are changing as our concepts of community -- what used to be a stable identity of belonging has transformed into a fluid and customisable set of variables. Nowadays we think of belonging to many different communities: we are no longer shackled by the accident of birth and place. Communities of interest have emerged that reach across the divides of age, gender, class, religion, sexual orientation and geography. In many ways what is coming into question is not our aesthetic sensibilities, but the role and relevance of art in an age when both culture and technological development are putting access to knowledge and the tools of creative production in the hands of ever greater numbers of ordinary citizens. The safety of the traditional art world of museums and galleries, collectors and historians ; the emphasis on the uniqueness of the artists' vision that guarantees its value in the capitalist economy, all these things are coming in to question by a culture that is slowly reappraising traditional concepts of value. In this sense, it is not just the technologies of networks that challenge the security of the ontology of the art work, but the drift of society and culture itself. What is interesting is that it is artists who have been amongst the first experimenters to adopt both the new technologies and the challenge of abandoning ghettos of definition. Renée van de Vall Renée van de Vall is Associate Professor at the Department of Arts and Culture of the University of Maastricht. She has published 'Een subliem gevoel van plaats'. Een filosofische interpretatie van het werk van Barnett Newman (Groningen 1994), and several articles on the sublime, the aesthetics of Lyotard, Merleau-Ponty and Levinas, and the critical role of the visual arts in present day – digital and non-digital - visual culture. She was co-editor of 'The Question of Style in Philosophy and the Arts' published by Cambridge University Press in 1995. Since 2001 she participates in the research project 'The Mediated Body'. Openingstatement: Renée van de Vall She would like to address the question what in new media art would be the counterpart of the kind of critical reflection and aesthetic appeal we know from more traditional artistic media such as painting or cinema? Without excluding other possibilities, she would stress the specific materiality of interaction and what she would call the logic of the boundary zone or "third fold" in between the space of the representation or simulation and the physical space of the spectator/user/visitor/player as an experiential zone. She will show an example.