2-DAY "OPEN FIELDS" CONFERENCE, 6 KEYNOTE SPEAKERS, 80 PRESENTATIONS, 3 EXHIBITIONS, PERFORMANCES, AND JUST 140 AVAILABLE SEATS
Moderator: Raitis SMITS
Janina HOTH. Digital Archive as Display for Digital Art
Digital archives (or databases) are an important form of preservation and (re-)activation of (born-)digital cultural heritage such as Digital Art. As such a digital archive is an important form, display and interface for the (re-)mediation, dissemination and co-creative knowledge generation of and about this art form. How can a database for media art be used as source for the mediation of multiple histories and basis for multi-perspective storytelling with and about Digital Art?
By discussing examples like the Archive of Digital Art (ADA), Rhizome as well as the online digital art market, the paper will explore digital archives as interfaces, displays and exhibition platforms for Digital Art, that employ different approaches in displaying and documenting digital artworks. Using the approach of data-based storytelling (Koblin, 2012; Ryan, 2004), which employs the database as cultural form (Manovich ,2001) and as a platform for co-creative and personalized digital storytelling, as well as critical mediation of art (Mörsch, 2011) we will explore different approaches and interface grammars of networked exhibitions such as the ADA Lightbox with the exhibit “CODeDOC remediated”, Rhizomes NetArt Anthology project but also platforms such as MediaArtNet as specific digital publication and storytelling formats that allow a contextualization, the networked writing and dissemination of multiple MediaArtHistories, and the creation of meta-experiences (Wiencek, 2013). A counterexample to the archive exhibitions will be walled-garden applications of online distributors of media art such as Sedition that offer mediated experiences and access to digital artworks inspired by business models of music and film business.
Biography. Janina Hoth graduated in theatre, film and media studies as Magister (awarded with distinction) at the University of Vienna with minors in philosophy and art history. After finishing her thesis on narrativity and identity in historical films, she began her work for the research project AT.MAR, funded by the Austrian Science Fund, for the Department of Image Science at Danube University Krems. Since 2016, she works for the department as part of the Lab for Digital Humanities, where she initiated a data inquiry on digital art festivals as part of her research for the Archive of Digital Art.
Aleksander KOMAROV, Maxim TYMINKO. PXFLUX an online platform and toolset for the exhibition, promotion, distribution and collection of time based, computational, digital art.
We are artists working in different media, making art which has no fixed form: shapeless and formless, like water, smoke or music. Our work is time-based, web-based, streaming, and broadcast in real-time. It is art that can be difficult to handle and display, yet is new and fresh and cool. Our goal is to find the best tool to share our work. A way that allows us to promote, collect, and exhibit it in its original environment: one of a binary-coded stream of electrons, displayed in a flux of pixels. We believe art should be seen not only in traditional exhibition spaces – like museums and galleries – but everywhere else, too: at home, in studios, and on the road. We want to live with art, share it, discuss it, and communicate with others about it.
We live in a fully wired world, surrounded by millions of cables, tens of thousands of satellites and thousands of cellular networks. For many of us, a computer connected to the Internet is our main artistic tool, one that greatly influences and shapes our creative practices. But does digital art really have a place in the established framework of the traditional art world? And can we apply the long-established system of evaluation and distribution when dealing with new forms of artistic processes? Do the museums, galleries,and art-spaces provide the support structure for this new culture of visual communication?
The nature of computational and time-based art is – by definition – variable and unstable. As a result, it needs a far more flexible and adaptive pattern of rules and tools for its life cycle.
Biography. Maxim Tyminko, a visual artist, born in 1972 (Chernigov, Ukraine). He is a co-founder of PXFLUX, an online platform for the distribution of time based, digital art (2017) and a co-founder of YourFavorites (2005) and Bolek & Lolek (1997) art groups.
Graduated from the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne (KHM) in 2005.
He is an author of Bolek & Lolek Cosmos Constructor Manifesto (2006) and and opera-lecture Projector (2016). His opera project Beguiling Orpheus (2006, together with Gleb Choutov and Maja Ilic) received a Nam June Paik Promotional Award of the Art Foundation NRW. He is also curated number of exhibitions, among them are: -o-l-o-g-y (2012, Amstel 41 Gallery in Amsterdam) and Zbor. Belarusian Art Movement (2016, Foundation Izolyatsia, Kiev, Ukraine).
Dijana PROTIC. Exploring Curating Practice on Example of Media Scape
Today, curating practices of new media art still trying to find the best ways to present and preserve artworks. As Christiane Paul wrote “Collaborative exchange has become a fundamental part of artistic new media practice and has affected notions of the artwork and authorship, which in turn have fundamental consequences for curatorial practice and presentation of the art. This artistic process in new media creation to a large extent relies on collaborative models, which manifest themselves on various levels.” I will analyse early curating practices of new media, as well as relationship between artistic and scientific research practice on example of Media Scape. It was an international meeting of media artists which took place in Zagreb, once a year between 1993 and 1999. Curators, founders and organizers were Ingeborg Fülepp and Heiko Daxl. Media Scape in presentation will be analysed from several perspectives. First, through connections between presentation of art and technology, second as a significant event at that time with almost one hundred and forty artists and scientists. Third, from today’s perspective, in context of development of curating practices of new media and digital art. Media Scape is chosen because it is a very good example of curating practice. It has two parts; exhibition and symposium, it gathers and connects media artists, curators and scientists, and themes of each meeting were relevant in context of development of new media art. Today Media Scape still exists online as a small digital archive of curating practice of that time.
Biography. Dijana Protić, PhD Student, Doctoral study Publishing and Media, The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Rijeka, Croatia, dijana.protic@gmail.com
Dijana Protić has a Master of Fine Art degree in dramaturgy from The Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb. In March 2014 enrolled Postgraduate doctoral study Publishing and Media on The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Rijeka. Her research and artistic interests are related to media art, visual art and moving images, digital technology and art. Currently, she is working as director on documentary film ‘Painters’. She is doing research for PhD, which will be about history and practice of new media art in Croatia and Slovenia. She has led several film workshops and authored several documentaries and short films.
Elke REINHUBER. Tangible / Intangible – the Digital Preservation of Yunnan Garden
This research explores the possibilities to capture multi-sensory impressions and to transfer them into virtual environments, exemplified with the forking path structure of the Heritage Yunnan Gardens at NTU Singapore. Even if immersive Virtual Reality appears as an established technology, meaningful applications for 360°VR are still in their infancy. Current and breaking technologies can realise their potential only if they are filled with ideas and utilise the cutting-edge enticement with appropriate storytelling. Stereoscopy and spatial audio enhance the experience in a substantial manner.
Other than the classic movie, the 360° presentation challenges the audience with the quest for the right direction, where to look in the surrounding vistas and this abundance of choices has to be anticipated by the filmmakers. Possible decisions open up for the viewer only while the author of the picture encourages to follow different paths through the narrative – like the grid of walkways in the actual garden spreads in all cardinal directions.
Capturing the tangible and intangible presence of cultural heritage sites and engaging an audience to experience and rediscover them virtually forms the foundation to investigate into a novel way of virtual representations.
Biography. Elke Reinhuber is not your average artist, because she became a specialist on choice, decision making and counterfactual thoughts in media arts. Currently, Reinhuber teaches and researches as assistant professor at the School of Art, Design and Media at NTU in Singapore. In her artistic practice, she investigates on the correlation between decisions and emotions and explores different strategies of visualisation and presentation, working with immersive environments, mixed reality and imaging technologies. She holds a PhD from UNSW Art and Design, Sydney, has been invited to speak at international conferences and to exhibit her work in renown institutions worldwide.
Andrew Gryf PATERSON. Towards autoarchaeological archiving of artist-organiser practice – tbc.
This paper shares example of an archival practice developed by the author in mapping, charting and archiving his own practice in various locations and temporal periods over a 5 year period in Finland and Latvia. It is presented as a contribution to practice-based, artistic research methodologies described as autoarchaeologies. It faces an emerging research problem interpreting and making sense of the relationship between ones own practice-based activities and experiences in multiple contexts, over longer durations of time: How to present activities and experiences— that have happened as open-ended events and processes in multiple contexts over time— within the re-telling of practice-based research?
The approach builds upon earlier practice-led research in virtual, augmented and mobile media environments (2002-2006), and reflections on charting ‘artistic fieldwork’ (2011) connecting authorship in spatio-temporal data structures, and borrows from archaeological and geological practice of stratigraphy, which records inter-related strata (or loci in time-space) to chart inter-related contexts and durations. Autoarchaeologies supports the charting of geneologies in open-ended processes, relative development and coherence of activities over time.
In the context of increased meta-data-augmented documentation of practices and everyday life via ubiquitous mobile computing and online publishing platforms, there is arguably increasing amount of personal (small or big) data to interpret and analysis especially in the context of digital humanities. One archaeological theorist suggests, with access to multitude of data available about our own and others past activities, we are all (potentially) archaeologists now.
Biography. Andrew Gryf Paterson (Scotland/Finland/Latvia) “Artist-organiser”, cultural producer, educator, independent researcher, based since late 2002 in Helsinki, Finland. Specialises in developing and leading inter- and trans- disciplinary projects exploring connections between art, digital culture and science, cultural activism, ecological and sustainability movements, cultural heritage and collaborative networks. What is left behind as social, digital, material & ephemeral residue of ‘being t/here’ has been a consistent concern. He has been closely connected to Pixelache Helsinki for 13 years, and completing his Doctoral of Arts thesis at Media dept. of Aalto University ARTS. More or less archived here: http://agryfp.info