REFRESH! call for
participation
CALL FOR PAPERS
REFRESH! FIRST
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON
THE HISTORIES OF MEDIA ART, SCIENCE AND
TECHNOLOGY
Banff New Media Institute, Canada,
September 28 - October 3, 2005
http://www.mediaarthistory.org
Deadline: Dec. 1st 2004
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"The technology of the modern media
has produced new possibilities of
interaction... What is needed is a wider
view encompassing the coming
rewards in the context of the treasures
left us by the past experiences,
possessions, and
insights."
(Rudolf Arnheim, Summer 2000)
Recognizing the increasing significance of
media art for our culture,
this Conference (Evening of Sept. 28th,
Sept. 29th, 30th, October 1st)
on the Histories of Media Art will discuss
for the first time the
history of media art within the
interdisciplinary and intercultural
contexts of the histories of art.
Leonardo/ISAST, Banff New Media
Institute the Database for Virtual Art and
UNESCO DigiArts are collaborating
to produce the first international art
history conference covering art and
new media, art and technology, art-science
interaction, and the history
of media as pertinent to contemporary
art.
Held at The Banff Centre, featuring
lectures by invited and selected
speakers, the latter being chosen by an
international jury from a call
for papers, the main event will be followed
by a two-day summit meeting
(October 2-3, 2005) for in-depth dialogues
and international project
initiation (proposals
welcome).
For more information on the conference,
please visit:
http://www.MediaArtHistory.org
Papers are invited from scholars and
postgraduates in any relevant
discipline, particularly art history and
new media, art and technology,
the interaction of art and science, and
media history, are encouraged to
submit for the following sessions:
(Please address your proposals to
the sessions with the Priority A to
C)
I. MediaArtHistories: Times and
Landscapes I and II
I. After photography, film, video,
and the little known media art history
of the 1960s-80s, today media artists are
active in a wide range of digital
areas (including interactive, genetic,
telematic and nano art). The Media
Art History Project offers a basis for
attempting an evolutionary history
of the audiovisual media, from the Laterna
Magica to the Panorama,
Phantasmagoria, Film, and the Virtual Art
of recent decades. This panel
tries to clarify, if and how varieties of
Media Art have been splitting up
during the last decades. It examines also
how far back Media Art reaches as
a historical category within the history of
Art, Science and Technology.
2. Although there has been important
scholarship on intersections between
art and technology, there is no
comprehensive technological history of art
(as there are feminist and Marxist
histories of art, for example.)
Canonical histories of art fail to
sufficiently address the inter-relatedness
of developments in science, technology, and
art. What similarities and
differences, continuities and
discontinuities, can be mapped onto artistic
uses of technology and the role of artists
in shaping technology throughout
the history of art? This panel seeks
to take account of extant literature
on this history in order to establish
foundations for further research and
to gain perspective on its place with
respect to larger
historiographical concerns.
II. Methodologies
This session tries to give a critical
overview of which methods art history
has been using during the past to approach
media art. Papers regarding
media archaeological, anthropological,
narrative and observer oriented
approaches are welcome. Equally encouraged
are proposals on iconological,
semiotic and cyberfeministic
methods.
III. Art as Research / Artists as
Inventors
Do "innovations" and
"inventions" in the field of art differ from
those
in the field of technology and science? Do
artists still contribute anything
"new" to those fields of research
- and did they ever in history? Which
inventions changed the arts as well as
technology and the media? These
questions will be discussed in a frame from
the 19th century until today,
special foci of interest are:
- modernism and the birth of media
technology 1840 - 1880
- the utopia of merging art and technology
in the 1920s and 1960s
- the crisis of the "new" vs.
digital media art innovations since the 1980s
IV. Image Science and 'Representation':
From a Cognitive Point of View
Although much recent scholarship in the
Humanities and Social Sciences has
been "body-minded," this research
has yet to grapple with a major problem
familiar to contemporary cognitive
scientists and neuroscientists. How do
we reconcile a top-down, functional view of
cognition with a view of human
beings as elements of a culturally shaped
biological world? Current scientific
investigations into autopoiesis, emotion,
symbolization, mind-body relations,
consciousness, "mental
representations", visual and perceptual systems
Šopen
up fresh ways of not only figuring the self
but of approaching historical as
well as elusive electronic media --again or
anew--from the deeper vantage of
an embodied and distributed brain. Papers
that struggle concretely to relate
and integrate aspects of the brain basis of
cognition with any number of
pattern-making media are solicited to
stimulate debate.
V. Collaborative Practice/ Networking
(history)
In a network people are working together,
they share resources and knowledge
with each other - and they compete with
each other. This process has sped up
enormously within a few decades and has
reached a new quality/dimension. It
is the computer who had and has a forming
influence on this change - from
the Mainframes of the 50s and 60s to the
PCs of the 70s and the growing
popularity of the Internet during the 90s
of the past century. The dataflow
created new economies and new forms of
human communication - and last but
not least the so-called
globalization.
VI. Pop/Mass/Society
The dividing lines between art products and
consumer products have been
disappearing more and more since the Pop
Art of the 1960s. The distinction
between artist and recipient has also
become blurred. Most recently, the
digitalization of our society has sped up
this process enormously. In principle,
more and more artworks are no longer bound
to a specific place and can be
further developed relatively freely. The
cut-and-paste principle has become
an essential characteristic of contemporary
culture production. The spread of
access to the computer and the internet
gives more people the possibility to
participate in this production. The panel
examines concrete forms, as for
example computer games, determining the
cultural context and what consequences
they could have for the understanding of
art in the 21st century.
VII a. Collecting, preserving and
archiving the media arts
Collections grow because of different
influences such as art dealers, the art
market, curators and currents in the
international contemporary art scene.
What are the conditions necessary for a
wider consideration of media art
works and of new media in these
collections?
VII b. Database/New Scientific
Tools
Accessing and browsing the immense amount
of data produced by individuals,
institutions, and archives has become a key
question to our information
society. In which way can new scientific
tools of structuring and visualizing
data provide new contexts and enhance our
understanding of semantics?
VIII. Cross-Culture - Global
Art
Issues of cultural difference will be
included throughout Refresh! However,
the panels in Cross-Culture--Global Art
provide an opportunity to examine
cross-cultural influences, the global and
the local. Through these sessions
we hope to construct the histories,
influences and parallels to new media
art and even the definitions of what
constitutes new media from varied
cultural perspectives. For example,
how what are the impacts of narrative
structures from Aboriginal and other oral
cultures on the analysis and
practice of new media? How do notions
of identity shift across cultures
historically, how are these embedded and
transformed by new media practice?
What philosophical perspectives can ground
our understandings of new media
aesthetics? How does globalization
and the construction of global contexts
such as festivals and biennials effect
local new media practices? We encourage
papers from diverse cultural perspectives
and methodologies.
IX. What can the History of New Media
Learn from History
of Science/Science
Studies?
As in the case of artists working in
traditional media who have engaged
science and technology, new media artists
must be situated contextually
in the "cultural field" (Kate
Hayles) in which they have worked or are
working. Science and technology have
been an important part of that cultural
field in the twentieth century, and the
history of science and science
studies-along with the field of literature
and science--offer important
lessons for art historians writing the
history of new media art. This
session invites papers from art historians
and scholars in science-related
disciplines which explore methodological
and theoretical issues as well as
those that put interdisciplinary approaches
into practice in studying
new media art.
X. Rejuvenate: Film, sound and music in
media arts history
During an earlier period of new media arts
discourse, time-based media were
often considered to be "old media."
While this conceit has been tempered,
we still need to consider the
sophistication and provocation of film, sound
and music from the perspective of
media arts history. This session invites
papers, which examine the return of old
media, thick in their natural habitat
of the discourses, practices and
institutions of the arts, entertainment,
science, everyday life, wherever they
existed.
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Please send a 200 word proposal and a very
brief curriculum vitae by
December 1st, 2004
Full papers (5000 to 7000 word long) must
be received via e-mail
by July 1st., 2005. Details about their
format will be sent separately
to the participants. All Papers will be
considered for publication.
Registration information soon:
www.banffcentre.ca/bnmi/
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www.MediaArtHistory.org
SUPPORTED BY: LEONARDO, BANFF NMI,
DATABASE OF VIRTUAL ART,
GERMAN RESEARCH FOUNDATION, UNESCO
DIGIARTS, VILLA VIGONI, INTEL
HONORARY BOARD
Rudolf ARNHEIM; Frank POPPER; Jasia
REICHARDT; Itsuo SAKANE, Walter ZANINI
ADVISORY BOARD
Andreas BROECKMANN, Berlin; Paul BROWN,
London; Karin BRUNS, Linz;
Annick BUREAUD, Paris; Dieter DANIELS,
Leipzig; Diana DOMINGUES,
Caxias do Sul; Felice FRANKEL, Boston; Jean
GAGNON, Montreal;
Thomas GUNNING, Chicago; Linda D.
HENDERSON, Austin; Manrai HSU,
Taipei; Erkki HUHTAMO, Los Angeles; Ángel
KALENBERG, Montevideo;
Ryszard KLUSZCZYNSKI, Lodz; Machiko
KUSAHARA, Tokyo;
W.J.T. MITCHELL, Chicago; Gunalan
NADARAJAN, Singapore;
Eduard SHANKEN, Durham; Barbara STAFFORD,
Chicago;
Christiane PAUL, New York; Louise POISSANT,
Montreal;
Jeffrey SHAW, Sydney; Tereza WAGNER, Paris;
Peter WEIBEL, Karlsruhe;
Steven WILSON, San Francisco.
BANFF
Sara DIAMOND, Director of Research and
Artistic Director of BNMI (Local Chair)
Susan KENNARD, Executive Producer of BNMI
(Organisation)
www.banffcentre.ca/bnmi/
LEONARDO
Annick BUREAUD, Director Leonardo Pioneers
and
Pathbreakers Art History Project,
Leonardo/OLATS
www.olats.org
PUBLICATIONS COMMITTEE
Chair: Roger F MALINA, Chair
Leonardo/ISAST
www.leonardo.info
CONFERENCE DIRECTOR &
ORGANISATION
Oliver GRAU, Director Immersive Art &
Database of Virtual Art
Humboldt University Berlin
http://virtualart.hu-berlin.de
