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Dear Acorn-Members here is a call for papers with regard to an international conference on "Technological and Aesthetic (Trans)Formations of Society" Darmstadt Technical University, Germany October 12 to 14, 2005 (Deadline: 22.04.2005) related to the interplay of technological and aesthetic dimensions of formative processes in contemporary societies, (which also affect our interests). > By foregrounding process, the conference goes beyond the iconic turn in > science and technology studies. Rather than focus on images, it will > explore the work that goes into producing self and society in the image > of technology. This work involves constructions of time and space, it > negotiates forces of globalization and localization, it construes self > and nature as subject and object of technological shaping. This work > also produces tensions between and among aesthetic and technological > ideals. > > Abstracts from a wide variety of disciplines are welcome. These include > philosophy, sociology, history, engineering and the natural sciences, > art history, linguistics or media studies. Submit 500-word abstracts by > April 22, 2005, as a Word or RichText document to > > TU Darmstadt > Fachbereich 2 > Graduiertenkolleg "Technisierung und Gesellschaft" > Karolinenplatz 5 (Fach 1404) > 64289 Darmstadt > Germany > E-mail: [log in to unmask] > > There will be panels on: > - Aesthetic Anticipation > - Art, Technosciences, and Social Criticism > - Metaphors in Science and Technology > - The Aesthetic Dimensions of Warfare > - Urban Spaces and Private Quarters > > Other topics might include: > - Perception and Technologies of Visualization > - The Justification of the Self as Post-Human Artwork > - Designing Life-Cycles of People and Products > - Modeling between Artefacts and practical Usage > - Vestiges of Nature > - Visions and Visionaries from Science Fiction to Science Fact > - Figurative and the Literal Aspects of Technical Discourses > - Bordercrossings: Technology and the Arts > > > For a more detailed call for papers and a collection of topical theses > go to > www.ifs.tu-darmstadt.de/fileadmin/gradkoll/Konferenzen/abschluss/main.html > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Bruno Arich-Gerz > > TU Darmstadt > Fachbereich 2 > Graduiertenkolleg "Technisierung und Gesellschaft" > Karolinenplatz 5 (Fach 1404) > 64289 Darmstadt > Germany > > E-mail: [log in to unmask] Art, technosciences, and social criticism Modern forms of normative criticism of society and capitalism are often inspired by aesthetic phenomena. Instances of this range from the romantic idea of the "Gesamtkunstwerk" or the vanguard demand for an amalgamation of life and art to Joseph Beuys's understanding of society as a social sculpture. Art here exemplarily articulates a longing for a more creative life, for unblemished bodies and undeformed souls, and an undiminished realisation of individual potentials and wishes. Current studies of western societies analyse a structural change in public and private life today. In their view, the momentary form of capitalism has incorporated outlined points of criticism and made them into initial points of capitalistic self-conception. Given this analytic frame of social reality, the contemporary links between art, technique, science, and society must be redefined. 1. How should we understand the role of aesthetics in daily life? Leading a life, designing life-styles, and the whole conception of the "Lebenswelt" has throughout the last decades become more and more dominated by values of primarily technology-based aesthetic dimensions. While Walter Benjamin's distinction between an understanding of politic as an aesthetic mass-show and aesthetics as a political question has preserved its validity to the present day, his determination of the aesthetic of modern mass-media as a potential "slave-rebellion of technology" seems to undermine the eminent degree of social interaction and technological indeterminacy which we find articulated in parts of the social implemented technologies of communication today. To address it from the perspective of discourse analysis: Which strategies of communication are used by implementing new technologies in the "Lebenswelt" (e.g. the rhetoric of gaming or of holism, the reduction of inhibition)? What happens to those aspects of daily life which are socially determined as ugly or otherwise deficient (such as illness, disability, depression, or death)? How should social criticism respond to the fact that the glance of beauty in the promises of high-technology is more and more conceived of as reality itself (like in the promises of freedom, individuality and independence)? 2. In contemporary art the phenomenon of Transgenic Art very clearly demonstrates the blending of artistic production, scientific research and social sensitivity. While it was Joseph Beuys's tenet to explain modern art to a dead rabbit, now it is Eduardo Kac's genetically modified and fluorescent rabbit which casts a new light on the relation of art, technosciences, and society. Possible questions are: What are the differences in handling the genetic material for an artist and for a scientist? How does the public react towards the productions of genetic science experiments, how to the transgenic artists, and to what degree do these reactions differ from each other? Which is the social self-image of a transgenic artist? Transgenic art represents one way of the new amalgamation of arts and sciences. In this panel different forms of science-based art (e.g. net-art, art of communication, trans-humanistic art etc.) could also be discussed.