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> ----------
> From:         Aspects of academic research & teaching within Media on
> behalf of Ned Rossiter
> Reply To:     Ned Rossiter
> Sent:         Friday, October 8, 2004 12:38 PM
> To:   [log in to unmask]
> Subject:      Digital Media and Digital Culture Seminar Series
> 
> Digital Media and Digital Culture Seminar Series
> Centre for Media Research, University of Ulster
> Coleraine Campus, Northern Ireland
> 
> 
> Tuesday 12 October, 2004
> 4.30-5.30pm, Venue: C102
> 
> Dr. Daniel Jewesbury <[log in to unmask]>
> Centre for Media Research, University of Ulster
> 
> Abstract
> 
> "The Affects of Reality: Dialectical Aesthetics and Digital Media"
> 
> (i)
> Question: Can art make a fairer, more just society?
> The question, often voiced, betrays an angst on the part of the 
> questioner: why *doesn't* art appear to have the capacity to bring 
> about real social transformation? What should I, as an artist, be doing 
> to address this? *How can I make myself feel less guilty about my art?*
> 
> Talk about "the social role of art" is necessarily positioned somewhere 
> between two poles: one dictating that art must be capable of effecting 
> direct social change or have clear social use, the other arguing that 
> it must "transcend" the merely material. Neither position is viable. If 
> one cannot justify art *in its own terms*, one falls back on 
> instrumentalisms (couched in terms of dimly-defined "communities" or 
> "publics") in order to find a worth presumed not to be immanent in the 
> work itself. Instrumentalised approaches to art lead to patronising, 
> paternalistic assumptions about its "benevolence", and produce an "art" 
> devoid of any aesthetic merit whatsoever (however that is accounted 
> for).
> 
> (ii)
> This paper gives an account of the "dialectical aesthetic", through 
> which it argues a case for art as a *non-instrumental* "good". 
> Appropriating the late work of GysÝrgy Luk?cs (only available, in 
> English, through secondary sources), and combining it with other more 
> recent contributions, I theorise an *ethical aesthetic*, in which form, 
> content and context inflect and inform one another, a critical realism 
> beyond mere naturalism, with which to *re-envisage* (rather than merely 
> represent) the world, and through which to develop "consciousness" of 
> the contradictory conditions of that world.
> 
> The paper then asks whether the theorisation of a distinctive "digital 
> aesthetics" is desirable, or even tenable. By introducing certain 
> formal characteristics and social contexts of digital media (hypertext 
> and hyperlinks, globalisation, and so on) into the dialectical 
> aesthetic, it is demonstrated that the "new" media can never be 
> adequately theorised in "novel" technology-centered conceptualisations.
> 
> 
> Bio
> 
> Dr Daniel Jewesbury is an artist and writer based in Belfast, and a 
> Research Associate in Digital Cultures at the Centre for Media 
> Research, University of Ulster. He completed his PhD at the Media 
> Studies department of the University of Ulster in 2001, writing on 
> potential theoretical relations between hybridity and non-linear 
> narrative media. It was the first piece of part-practical research 
> undertaken in the department, with practical outcomes comprising a 
> website and digital video installation based around the dislocated site 
> of London Bridge, in Arizona.
> 
> Exhibitions include Manifesta3, Ljubljana (2000), Urban Control, Graz 
> (2001) and various others across Europe and North America. He won the 
> Victor Treacy Award at the Butler Gallery, Kilkenny, in 2001. Recent 
> public art projects include Exchange (2003), a radio station and short 
> film produced with a diverse group of immigrants in Carlow, Ireland 
> (including asylum-seekers, refugees and migrant workers). One to Ten 
> (2002) was produced in collaboration with the Transport & General 
> Workers' Union, Flax Art Studios and the Routes Public Art Project; it 
> used interviews with bus workers and videos of bus journeys around 
> Belfast to explore the rapidly changing character of the city as it 
> undergoes redevelopment and regeneration. The work was presented in 
> cinemas across the city. He is currently engaged on two major projects: 
> Lisburn Road Archive, a photographic documentation of the middle-class 
> in a Belfast suburb commissioned by Belfast Exposed Photography (in 
> collaboration with Ursula Burke); and Bhowani Junction, a major film 
> installation project (in collaboration with sound artist Paul Moore).  
> The first part of the Bhowani project, the artist's book Of Lives 
> Between Lines, is published by Book Works. Jewesbury is a co-director 
> of Cinilingus, an independent film-screening organisation in Belfast, 
> and co-editor of Variant magazine (http://www.variant.org.uk).
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Ned Rossiter
> Senior Lecturer in Media Studies (Digital Media)
> Centre for Media Research
> University of Ulster
> Cromore Road
> Coleraine
> Northern Ireland
> BT56 1SA
> 
> tel. +44 (0)28 7032 3275
> fax. +44 (0)28 7032 4964
> email: [log in to unmask]
> 
>