Three lecturers from art academies in the USA, Germany and the UK reflect upon the strengths and failings of art education today:
http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/schools_of_thought/
Planetary Collegium:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Collegium
Roy Ascott:
http://www.frieze.com/comment/article/roy_ascott/
See also 'Degree Zero', Art schools then and now, Frieze, september 2006
Tuesday, 23 February 2010
Wednesday, 27 May 2009
The post-scientific society
A seminar at KTH with Professor Christopher T. Hill, George Mason University
May 28 at 13:15-14:30 in Hall E2, Lindstedtsvägen 3, KTH Campus
In a frequently cited paper (http://www.issues.org/24.2/forum.html) Christopher T. Hill stated that innovation-based wealth in the United States gradually is arising from something other than organized research in science and engineering. This post-scientific society will have several key characteristics, the most important of which is that innovation leading to wealth generation and productivity growth will be based principally not on world leadership in fundamental research in the natural sciences and engineering, but on world-leading mastery of the creative powers of, and the basic sciences of, individual human beings, their societies, and their cultures. The leading edge of innovation in the post-scientific society, whether for business, industrial, consumer, or public purposes, will move from the workshop, the laboratory, and the office to the studio, the think tank, the atelier, and cyberspace.
Professor Hill’s primary interests are in the history, design, evaluation, and politics of federal policies and programs intended to stimulate technological innovation in the commercial marketplace. From 1997 to 2005, he served as Vice Provost for Research at George Mason. He has held senior positions at the RAND Corporation, the National Academies, the Congressional Research Service, MIT and the Office of Technology Assessment. His extensive consulting includes work over the last decade with Japanese government agencies regarding reform of Japan’s national R&D, higher education, and human resource development systems.
Detta seminarium är ett av Fakultetens kvalitetsseminarier. Bakom dem står både Fakultetsnämnden, som har det övergripande akademiska ansvaret för KTHs utbildning och forskning, och Fakultetskollegiet, som är ett oberoende organ för KTH-gemensamma frågor med valda representanter för KTHs ca 900 lärare.
May 28 at 13:15-14:30 in Hall E2, Lindstedtsvägen 3, KTH Campus
In a frequently cited paper (http://www.issues.org/24.2/forum.html) Christopher T. Hill stated that innovation-based wealth in the United States gradually is arising from something other than organized research in science and engineering. This post-scientific society will have several key characteristics, the most important of which is that innovation leading to wealth generation and productivity growth will be based principally not on world leadership in fundamental research in the natural sciences and engineering, but on world-leading mastery of the creative powers of, and the basic sciences of, individual human beings, their societies, and their cultures. The leading edge of innovation in the post-scientific society, whether for business, industrial, consumer, or public purposes, will move from the workshop, the laboratory, and the office to the studio, the think tank, the atelier, and cyberspace.
Professor Hill’s primary interests are in the history, design, evaluation, and politics of federal policies and programs intended to stimulate technological innovation in the commercial marketplace. From 1997 to 2005, he served as Vice Provost for Research at George Mason. He has held senior positions at the RAND Corporation, the National Academies, the Congressional Research Service, MIT and the Office of Technology Assessment. His extensive consulting includes work over the last decade with Japanese government agencies regarding reform of Japan’s national R&D, higher education, and human resource development systems.
Detta seminarium är ett av Fakultetens kvalitetsseminarier. Bakom dem står både Fakultetsnämnden, som har det övergripande akademiska ansvaret för KTHs utbildning och forskning, och Fakultetskollegiet, som är ett oberoende organ för KTH-gemensamma frågor med valda representanter för KTHs ca 900 lärare.
Sunday, 24 May 2009
Intentional Attunement. The Mirror Neuron system and its role in interpersonal relations
by Vittorio Gallese
Introduction
The dominant view in cognitive science puts most efforts in clarifying what are the formal rules structuring a solipsistic, representational mind. Much less investigated is what triggers the sense of social identity that we experience with the multiplicity of “other selves” populating our social world. Is the solipsistic type of analysis inspired by folk-psychology, the exclusive explanatory approach to social cognition? In particular, does it do full justice to the phenomenal aspects of our social intentional relations? My answer is no to both questions.
More.
Introduction
The dominant view in cognitive science puts most efforts in clarifying what are the formal rules structuring a solipsistic, representational mind. Much less investigated is what triggers the sense of social identity that we experience with the multiplicity of “other selves” populating our social world. Is the solipsistic type of analysis inspired by folk-psychology, the exclusive explanatory approach to social cognition? In particular, does it do full justice to the phenomenal aspects of our social intentional relations? My answer is no to both questions.
More.
Friday, 22 May 2009
“Literature and Science: A Reciprocal Exchange?”
NeMLA convention (April 7-11 2010) in Montreal, Quebec
This panel seeks to take account of the humanities’ recent engagement with the sciences, an engagement that puts aside the hermeneutics of suspicion in favor of the appropriation and transformation of scientific knowledge. Beyond science studies and its demystification of objectivity, fields such as affect theory and ecocriticism, temporality studies and new media philosophy, biopolitics and animal studies bring the methodologies of literary studies to scientific objects and scientific methodologies to literary objects. This panel will consider the terms of these engagements. What are the points of convergence between literary and scientific theories? What does literary theory have to offer to the sciences in return? What conditions have brought us to the sciences? What does this engagement signal about our shared intellectual and political moment? How does the transfer across disciplinary boundaries transform these heuristics? What are the politics of this appropriation? In the shift from culture to nature, from the subject to the population, from memory to futurity, what has happened to the literary? Does literature matter and, if so, how? This panel welcomes papers on any topic of relevance to the question of science and literature.
Please submit a 250-word abstract to rebekah.c.sheldon@gmail.com.
Deadline: September 30, 2009
This panel seeks to take account of the humanities’ recent engagement with the sciences, an engagement that puts aside the hermeneutics of suspicion in favor of the appropriation and transformation of scientific knowledge. Beyond science studies and its demystification of objectivity, fields such as affect theory and ecocriticism, temporality studies and new media philosophy, biopolitics and animal studies bring the methodologies of literary studies to scientific objects and scientific methodologies to literary objects. This panel will consider the terms of these engagements. What are the points of convergence between literary and scientific theories? What does literary theory have to offer to the sciences in return? What conditions have brought us to the sciences? What does this engagement signal about our shared intellectual and political moment? How does the transfer across disciplinary boundaries transform these heuristics? What are the politics of this appropriation? In the shift from culture to nature, from the subject to the population, from memory to futurity, what has happened to the literary? Does literature matter and, if so, how? This panel welcomes papers on any topic of relevance to the question of science and literature.
Please submit a 250-word abstract to rebekah.c.sheldon@gmail.com.
Deadline: September 30, 2009
Friday, 8 May 2009
Transdisciplinarity as an Interactive Method
by Predrag Cicovacki (Department of Philosophy, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA, USA)
We are witnessing, I am convinced, the first stages of a new and extremely promising revolution. This movement promotes a new approach to human knowledge - ranging from and including natural sciences, social sciences and humanities - and, indeed, a new approach to humanity in general. The temporary name of this revolution is "transdisciplinarity," and one of its most important pioneers and champions is the quantum physicist Basarab Nicolescu. As the author of La transdisciplinarité, the initial manifesto of the transdisciplinary movement, he continues to develop this new vision of human knowledge and a new approach to the world in which we live together. The goal of my paper is to contribute to the development of this new paradigm by offering a sympathetic yet critical reflection on the fundamental philosophical and methodological aspects of transdisciplinarity. I will begin (section I) by discussing the word 'transdisciplinary' and will argue that transdisciplinarity should be understood as an interactive method. After that, I will consider (in sections II-IV) the so-called "three pillars of transdisciplinarity: the levels of Reality, the logic of the included middle, and complexity," which Nicolescu claims "determine the methodology of transdisciplinary research."(1) What is at least initially unclear are two questions: First, why are there exactly three pillars, rather than two, or four, or any other number? Second, why these particular pillars, rather than any others? After suggesting why Nicolescu's three pillars should be renamed as transdisciplinary ontology, transdisciplinary logic, and transdisciplinary epistemology, I will in the end (in section V) insist that there is a need for the fourth pillar as well. Nicolescu himself often emphasizes the value aspect of transdisciplinarity, namely that "it is a way of self-transformation, oriented towards the knowledge of the self, the unity of knowledge, and the creation of a new art of living."(2) For this reason transdisciplinarity requires the fourth pillar as well, a new transdisciplinary theory of values.
More.
We are witnessing, I am convinced, the first stages of a new and extremely promising revolution. This movement promotes a new approach to human knowledge - ranging from and including natural sciences, social sciences and humanities - and, indeed, a new approach to humanity in general. The temporary name of this revolution is "transdisciplinarity," and one of its most important pioneers and champions is the quantum physicist Basarab Nicolescu. As the author of La transdisciplinarité, the initial manifesto of the transdisciplinary movement, he continues to develop this new vision of human knowledge and a new approach to the world in which we live together. The goal of my paper is to contribute to the development of this new paradigm by offering a sympathetic yet critical reflection on the fundamental philosophical and methodological aspects of transdisciplinarity. I will begin (section I) by discussing the word 'transdisciplinary' and will argue that transdisciplinarity should be understood as an interactive method. After that, I will consider (in sections II-IV) the so-called "three pillars of transdisciplinarity: the levels of Reality, the logic of the included middle, and complexity," which Nicolescu claims "determine the methodology of transdisciplinary research."(1) What is at least initially unclear are two questions: First, why are there exactly three pillars, rather than two, or four, or any other number? Second, why these particular pillars, rather than any others? After suggesting why Nicolescu's three pillars should be renamed as transdisciplinary ontology, transdisciplinary logic, and transdisciplinary epistemology, I will in the end (in section V) insist that there is a need for the fourth pillar as well. Nicolescu himself often emphasizes the value aspect of transdisciplinarity, namely that "it is a way of self-transformation, oriented towards the knowledge of the self, the unity of knowledge, and the creation of a new art of living."(2) For this reason transdisciplinarity requires the fourth pillar as well, a new transdisciplinary theory of values.
More.
Monday, 4 May 2009
Transdisciplinary Studies
Transdisciplinary Studies are an area of research and education that addresses contemporary issues that cannot be solved by one or even a few points-of-view. It brings together academic experts, field practitioners, community members, research scientists, political leaders, and business owners among others to solve some of the pressing problems facing the world, from the local to the global.
Transdisciplinary studies are related to a set of ideas such as interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and integrative studies. What sets transdisciplinary studies apart from the others is a particular emphasis on engagement, investigation, and participation in addressing present-day issues and problems in a manner that explicitly destabilizes disciplinary boundaries while respecting disciplinary expertise. They are built around three key concepts: transformative praxis, constructive problem-solving and real-world engagement. The advocates of transdisciplinary studies argue that they come from the nature of the 21st century world, with its loss of a unifying narrative of knowledge, the continuing destabilization of disciplinary boundaries, and the transgressive character of the times. Our world, they claim, requires a contextualizing of knowledge in order to address complex worldwide issues (such as global warming and ethnic cleansing) and a collaboration across academic disciplines that includes non-academics in solving problems and addressing global issues.[1]
Transdisciplinary studies as a field of academic activity is rooted in the Charter of Transdisciplinarity,[2] adopted at the First World Congress of Transdisciplinarity at the Convento da Arrábida, Portugal in 1994.[3] It is clear from the beginning of the document that transdisciplinarity is not another method or another field of research. At its core, the charter lays out an ethos, a call to a way of life, a “personal moral commitment.” It begins with what can only be called a pessimistic overview of the world in the late 20th century, a complex world riddled with conflict and verging on self-destruction, a world where the secular and the spiritual, the scientific and the humanistic, are divorced and unable to speak to each other.
In the preamble, phrases such as “the triumph of techno-science,” “productivity for productivity’s sake” and “a new brand of obscurantism” raise ominous visions of a world on the edge. The fifteen articles of the charter that follow reject a variety of forces that threaten humanity: the reduction of human beings to “formal structures” and of reality to a “single level governed by a single form of logic.” It rejects those that “strive for mastery,” the “claim to total objectivity,” and the refusal of “dialogue and discussion,” as well as claims to primacy by particular cultures, market economics, and specific disciplines.
Hope lies in “the transdisciplinary vision,” an “open-minded rationality” that encompasses not only science, both natural and social, and the humanities, but also “spiritual experience,” a “transhistorical horizon,” “transcultural” meaning, and “transnational” citizenship. It is a rigorous rationality that must also be open to “the unknown, the unexpected and the unforeseeable,” including “myth and religions,” while rejecting dogmatism, ideology, and intolerance.
The values embedded in the transdisciplinary vision are basic: sharing, respect, and resolve. As with any ethos, it calls for a commitment not to a method or practice, but to a way of being; not to a new religion or metaphysics, but to a new way of life. The binary distinctions between the public and the private, the mental and the physical, the object and the subject, are transcended in this new vision. It is a distinctly postmodern point-of-view, calling on women and men, on “transdisciplinary-minded persons of all countries” to join in bringing this vision into reality, into “everyday life.” It is a bold vision; some might even say an impossible one, filled with a zeal for justice, equality, inclusion, and true democratic decision-making.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transdisciplinary_Studies
Transdisciplinary studies are related to a set of ideas such as interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and integrative studies. What sets transdisciplinary studies apart from the others is a particular emphasis on engagement, investigation, and participation in addressing present-day issues and problems in a manner that explicitly destabilizes disciplinary boundaries while respecting disciplinary expertise. They are built around three key concepts: transformative praxis, constructive problem-solving and real-world engagement. The advocates of transdisciplinary studies argue that they come from the nature of the 21st century world, with its loss of a unifying narrative of knowledge, the continuing destabilization of disciplinary boundaries, and the transgressive character of the times. Our world, they claim, requires a contextualizing of knowledge in order to address complex worldwide issues (such as global warming and ethnic cleansing) and a collaboration across academic disciplines that includes non-academics in solving problems and addressing global issues.[1]
Transdisciplinary studies as a field of academic activity is rooted in the Charter of Transdisciplinarity,[2] adopted at the First World Congress of Transdisciplinarity at the Convento da Arrábida, Portugal in 1994.[3] It is clear from the beginning of the document that transdisciplinarity is not another method or another field of research. At its core, the charter lays out an ethos, a call to a way of life, a “personal moral commitment.” It begins with what can only be called a pessimistic overview of the world in the late 20th century, a complex world riddled with conflict and verging on self-destruction, a world where the secular and the spiritual, the scientific and the humanistic, are divorced and unable to speak to each other.
In the preamble, phrases such as “the triumph of techno-science,” “productivity for productivity’s sake” and “a new brand of obscurantism” raise ominous visions of a world on the edge. The fifteen articles of the charter that follow reject a variety of forces that threaten humanity: the reduction of human beings to “formal structures” and of reality to a “single level governed by a single form of logic.” It rejects those that “strive for mastery,” the “claim to total objectivity,” and the refusal of “dialogue and discussion,” as well as claims to primacy by particular cultures, market economics, and specific disciplines.
Hope lies in “the transdisciplinary vision,” an “open-minded rationality” that encompasses not only science, both natural and social, and the humanities, but also “spiritual experience,” a “transhistorical horizon,” “transcultural” meaning, and “transnational” citizenship. It is a rigorous rationality that must also be open to “the unknown, the unexpected and the unforeseeable,” including “myth and religions,” while rejecting dogmatism, ideology, and intolerance.
The values embedded in the transdisciplinary vision are basic: sharing, respect, and resolve. As with any ethos, it calls for a commitment not to a method or practice, but to a way of being; not to a new religion or metaphysics, but to a new way of life. The binary distinctions between the public and the private, the mental and the physical, the object and the subject, are transcended in this new vision. It is a distinctly postmodern point-of-view, calling on women and men, on “transdisciplinary-minded persons of all countries” to join in bringing this vision into reality, into “everyday life.” It is a bold vision; some might even say an impossible one, filled with a zeal for justice, equality, inclusion, and true democratic decision-making.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transdisciplinary_Studies
God Talk
by Staney Fish
Published in New York Times 3rd May 2009
In the opening sentence of the last chapter of his new book, “Reason, Faith and Revolution,” the British critic Terry Eagleton asks, “Why are the most unlikely people, including myself, suddenly talking about God?” His answer, elaborated in prose that is alternately witty, scabrous and angry, is that the other candidates for guidance — science, reason, liberalism, capitalism — just don’t deliver what is ultimately needed. “What other symbolic form,” he queries, “has managed to forge such direct links between the most universal and absolute of truths and the everyday practices of countless millions of men and women?”
Eagleton acknowledges that the links forged are not always benign — many terrible things have been done in religion’s name — but at least religion is trying for something more than local satisfactions, for its “subject is nothing less than the nature and destiny of humanity itself, in relation to what it takes to be its transcendent source of life.” And it is only that great subject, and the aspirations it generates, that can lead, Eagleton insists, to “a radical transformation of what we say and do.”
The other projects, he concedes, provide various comforts and pleasures, but they are finally superficial and tend to the perpetuation of the status quo rather than to meaningful change: “A society of packaged fulfillment, administered desire, managerialized politics and consumerist economics is unlikely to cut to the depth where theological questions can ever be properly raised.”
More.
Published in New York Times 3rd May 2009
In the opening sentence of the last chapter of his new book, “Reason, Faith and Revolution,” the British critic Terry Eagleton asks, “Why are the most unlikely people, including myself, suddenly talking about God?” His answer, elaborated in prose that is alternately witty, scabrous and angry, is that the other candidates for guidance — science, reason, liberalism, capitalism — just don’t deliver what is ultimately needed. “What other symbolic form,” he queries, “has managed to forge such direct links between the most universal and absolute of truths and the everyday practices of countless millions of men and women?”
Eagleton acknowledges that the links forged are not always benign — many terrible things have been done in religion’s name — but at least religion is trying for something more than local satisfactions, for its “subject is nothing less than the nature and destiny of humanity itself, in relation to what it takes to be its transcendent source of life.” And it is only that great subject, and the aspirations it generates, that can lead, Eagleton insists, to “a radical transformation of what we say and do.”
The other projects, he concedes, provide various comforts and pleasures, but they are finally superficial and tend to the perpetuation of the status quo rather than to meaningful change: “A society of packaged fulfillment, administered desire, managerialized politics and consumerist economics is unlikely to cut to the depth where theological questions can ever be properly raised.”
More.
Tuesday, 13 January 2009
France's most fêted thinker
Mme Duflo is a "development economist" one of the world's greatest experts – perhaps the greatest – on why development programmes in poor countries often fail and why they sometimes succeed. Her precise field of expertise has existed less than a decade. She is among its inventors.
More.
More.
Thursday, 11 December 2008
MAKING SENSE
An international, multi-disciplinary colloquium 25/09/2009: MAKING SENSE
At this colloquium we will bring the artist, curator and philosopher together, through the medium of academia, with the intent of finding new ways to frame and develop discourse. We want to create a common language that expresses how we can make sense of the world today, through the creation and reception of contemporary art. We intend this conference to bring together key players from the world of art, aesthetic philosophy and contemporary theory, in a way that can provide 'live' source material for debate and research, and so create an interface for new thought. Our main speakers secured for this event are the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy and the French installation artist Sophie Calle. Our slogan MAKING SENSE begins from an explicitly Nancean thesis, and intends to mobilise the contemporary aesthetic theory and 'sense' of Jean-Luc Nancy, in relation to current works of art, and how they are shown to us by curatorial practice. The intent is to apply a theoretical debate about sense to a contemporary praxis that can 'make sense', as developed through what we can see from contemporary art, and how we actually see it. -- The Colloquium itself will take place at The Faculty of Modern & Medieval Languages, The University of Cambridge, 25th September, 2009. Contact details: MAKING SENSE - call for participation: Rather than formal papers being presented in closed 20-minute slots, this colloquium is an experimental forum that encourages reaction and debate. The format of the event will be choreographed around presentations from and responses to the plenary speakers, shorter bursts of ideas that respond to the questions raised below, and artistic installation and performance. We will produce a new form of creative academic scholarship. Closing date for proposals: February 15, 2009.
*
At this colloquium we will bring the artist, curator and philosopher together, through the medium of academia, with the intent of finding new ways to frame and develop discourse. We want to create a common language that expresses how we can make sense of the world today, through the creation and reception of contemporary art. We intend this conference to bring together key players from the world of art, aesthetic philosophy and contemporary theory, in a way that can provide 'live' source material for debate and research, and so create an interface for new thought. Our main speakers secured for this event are the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy and the French installation artist Sophie Calle. Our slogan MAKING SENSE begins from an explicitly Nancean thesis, and intends to mobilise the contemporary aesthetic theory and 'sense' of Jean-Luc Nancy, in relation to current works of art, and how they are shown to us by curatorial practice. The intent is to apply a theoretical debate about sense to a contemporary praxis that can 'make sense', as developed through what we can see from contemporary art, and how we actually see it. -- The Colloquium itself will take place at The Faculty of Modern & Medieval Languages, The University of Cambridge, 25th September, 2009. Contact details:
*
Wednesday, 10 December 2008
CFP: Foreignness and Translation in New Media
Call for Papers media-N spring edition, 2009
Theme:Foreignness and Translation in New Media.
Guest Editor for this special issue is Pat Badani, Assistant Professor, Integrated Media, at Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois, U.S.A.
This issue will deal with the relationship between foreignness and translation in new media. We look forward to a discussion on the idea of foreignness seen as an investigation surrounding notions of travel, displacement and migration beyond those tied to the geographical movement of populations.
We are interested in the broad practice of translation in new media, in the use of an electronic system that mediates and enables the movement from one state to another. We also welcome submissions exploring the specific notion of cultural translation and migration in new media. That is to say, we are interested in a discussion on cultural markers that are displaced into foreign and extraneous locations, languages, supports and genres.
This issue expands the debate initiated during the Colloquium Foreigners in Art and Technology held at Espacio Fundación Telefónica in Buenos Aires, Argentina (August 12 & 13, 2008).
The scope of this issue is double: theoretical and practical. We welcome submissions on critical thinking and studio practices. Artists and theorists are invited to discuss their artwork and/or critical thinking in this area.
Please submit via email to: Pat Badani at pbadaniilstuedu
Deadline: February 14, 2009
Event reviews:The editorial board also invites proposals for reviews of exhibitions, events, festivals, conferences, etc. See examples of reviews in the current issue.
[·] Media-N author's agreement is available from the Copyright Statement.
[·] Send manuscripts via email to: Rachel Clarke, Editor in Chief (rclarkecsusedu)
Theme:Foreignness and Translation in New Media.
Guest Editor for this special issue is Pat Badani, Assistant Professor, Integrated Media, at Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois, U.S.A.
This issue will deal with the relationship between foreignness and translation in new media. We look forward to a discussion on the idea of foreignness seen as an investigation surrounding notions of travel, displacement and migration beyond those tied to the geographical movement of populations.
We are interested in the broad practice of translation in new media, in the use of an electronic system that mediates and enables the movement from one state to another. We also welcome submissions exploring the specific notion of cultural translation and migration in new media. That is to say, we are interested in a discussion on cultural markers that are displaced into foreign and extraneous locations, languages, supports and genres.
This issue expands the debate initiated during the Colloquium Foreigners in Art and Technology held at Espacio Fundación Telefónica in Buenos Aires, Argentina (August 12 & 13, 2008).
The scope of this issue is double: theoretical and practical. We welcome submissions on critical thinking and studio practices. Artists and theorists are invited to discuss their artwork and/or critical thinking in this area.
Please submit via email to: Pat Badani at pbadaniilstuedu
Deadline: February 14, 2009
Event reviews:The editorial board also invites proposals for reviews of exhibitions, events, festivals, conferences, etc. See examples of reviews in the current issue.
[·] Media-N author's agreement is available from the Copyright Statement.
[·] Send manuscripts via email to: Rachel Clarke, Editor in Chief (rclarkecsusedu)
Thursday, 4 December 2008
Mapping Architectural Controversies (MAC)
Mapping Architectural Controversies (MAC) is an interactive website dedicated to students and researchers working on controversies surrounding design projects, buildings, master plans, and urban and development issues. Documenting and visualising recent controversies in architecture, it also aims to address a broader audience interested in the design of cities, spatial networks and built environments as well as planners, representatives of city government, NGOs and citizens. As it is a part of the EU-funded project MACOSPOL, Mapping Architectural Controversies draws on a variety of documental sources and visual methods to explore the multifarious connections of architecture and society.
MAC comprises a research method, a teaching philosophy and a way to approach public debates. The platform serves as a database on controversies related to a variety of topics from Science, Technology, Innovation, Design and Urban Planning, provides tutorial guidance to the Mapping Controversies teaching and learning methods and their relevance to architectural studies, and showcases some initiatives in enhancing the public understanding of controversies.
More.
MAC comprises a research method, a teaching philosophy and a way to approach public debates. The platform serves as a database on controversies related to a variety of topics from Science, Technology, Innovation, Design and Urban Planning, provides tutorial guidance to the Mapping Controversies teaching and learning methods and their relevance to architectural studies, and showcases some initiatives in enhancing the public understanding of controversies.
More.
Sunday, 30 November 2008
Two lectures
Designing indistinct systems: theory and practice of transdisciplinary research
Rolf Hughes and Ronald Jones
Experience Design Group, Deprtment of Interdisciplinary Studies, Konstfack
The aim of the workshop is to compare the claims made for, through and in artistic research to those promised by transdisciplinary research methodologies. Rolf Hughes will introduce the core concepts of practice-based research and discuss whether these are rapidly becoming institutional “orthodoxies”. Ronald Jones will then present an introduction to transdisciplinary premises and potentialities. Rolf Hughes will then provide a theoretical framing of disciplinary logics such as “borders”, “edges”, “material” and substance”, relating such theoretical concepts to a methodology we are developing at the Experience Design group (EDG) around trandsisciplinary research in practice. Ronald Jones will conclude the presentation with a discussion of existing transdisciplinary case studies in research and in artistic practice, including a new EDG research project funded by the Swedish Knoweldge Foundation (KK-Stiftelsen) on the theme Experience Design: The Future of Play.
13.00 8th December, Svarta Havet
DESIGN ME A TOASTER
Ronald Jones
Experience Design Group, Konstfack
The creative disciplines are undergoing the most significant paradigm shift in living memory prompting substantial adjustments to the core-values at some university art, design and architecture programs. As a result, a few of the most advanced programs in the world are educating designers, artists and architects with one goal: to make optimal impact in bringing rapid change to increasingly complex problems to give their graduates greater reach, responsibility, influence and relevance.
15.00 9th December, Svarta Havet
Rolf Hughes and Ronald Jones
Experience Design Group, Deprtment of Interdisciplinary Studies, Konstfack
The aim of the workshop is to compare the claims made for, through and in artistic research to those promised by transdisciplinary research methodologies. Rolf Hughes will introduce the core concepts of practice-based research and discuss whether these are rapidly becoming institutional “orthodoxies”. Ronald Jones will then present an introduction to transdisciplinary premises and potentialities. Rolf Hughes will then provide a theoretical framing of disciplinary logics such as “borders”, “edges”, “material” and substance”, relating such theoretical concepts to a methodology we are developing at the Experience Design group (EDG) around trandsisciplinary research in practice. Ronald Jones will conclude the presentation with a discussion of existing transdisciplinary case studies in research and in artistic practice, including a new EDG research project funded by the Swedish Knoweldge Foundation (KK-Stiftelsen) on the theme Experience Design: The Future of Play.
13.00 8th December, Svarta Havet
DESIGN ME A TOASTER
Ronald Jones
Experience Design Group, Konstfack
The creative disciplines are undergoing the most significant paradigm shift in living memory prompting substantial adjustments to the core-values at some university art, design and architecture programs. As a result, a few of the most advanced programs in the world are educating designers, artists and architects with one goal: to make optimal impact in bringing rapid change to increasingly complex problems to give their graduates greater reach, responsibility, influence and relevance.
15.00 9th December, Svarta Havet
Friday, 28 November 2008
Iaspis Forum on Design and Critical Practice
Seminar
Saturday 6 December
1 pm – late (exhibition open from 11am)
Venue: Konstnärsnämnden, Maria Skolgata 83, Stockholm
Free entrance, pre-registration only (limited availability): osa@iaspis.se
Language: English
Bar with food and drinks
Welcome to Iaspis seminar on design and critical practice!
Participants: Julia Born; Mia Frostner, Robert Sollis, Paul Tisdell, Europa; James Goggin, Practice; Emily King; Zak Kyes; Armand Mevis, Mevis en van Deursen; Nille Svensson, Sweden Graphics
+ Ramia Mazé; Sara Kristoffersson; Jonas Williamsson, Reala; Martin Frostner; Magnus Ericson, Iaspis
Iaspis Forum on Design and Critical Practice comprises an exhibition, a seminar and a forthcoming publication on investigative, speculative and critical design practice.
What constitutes a critical approach in graphic design? What kind of strategies and methods are used by the practitioners in this field? What external conditions influence this kind of practice? What is the relation between critical practices in design, architecture and art?
Iaspis brings together several critical voices in contemporary graphic design, including Forms of Inquiry contributors, as well as curators, critics, and educators to discuss these issues, based on topics investigated within Forms of Inquiry and a set of conversations initiated for the seminar and the publication. Through an open format and a series of lectures, conversations and debates, the seminar aims to further discuss the importance and position of investigative, speculative and critical design practice.
As a manifestation, Iaspis Forum on Design and Critical Practice intends to facilitate international exchange of ideas and knowledge within an expanded field of design. It aims to be a space for reflection and debate and to inspire to further studies, exchange and actions within the field of design, architecture and art. The reader will be co-published in 2009 by Iaspis and Sternberg Press.
Program Saturday 6 December
The seminar starts at 1 pm and continues until approximately 10pm. In the Project Room and Studio at Iaspis. The program includes breaks. You are free to decide what parts of the program you would like to attend (doors will be open). Coffee, tea, food and drinks will be served from the bar (Please note, cash only). Limited availability, pre-registration only.
1pm Introduction
by Magnus Ericson, Project Manager Iaspis, Jonas Williamson, Martin Frostner and Moderator Emily King
1.30pm Zak Kyes
Lecture on the exhibition Forms of Inquiry: the Architecture of Critical Graphic design
2.30pm Julia Born
Lecture on Secret Instructions and This Side Up, and her collaboration with the Swiss performance artist Alexandra Bachzetsis
Break
4pm James Goggin, Practice
Lecture on historical precedents of self-initiation and publishing in graphic design
5pm James Goggin, Practice och Mia Frostner, Robert Sollis, Paul Tisdell; Europa
Conversation where Europa and Practise compare contemporary interpretations of ‘relational design’.-- both as strategy and as something already inherent -- with their own graphic design practices
6pm Armand Mevis, Mevis en van Deursen
Lecture: Simple ideas, easy work! On Mevis en van Deursen practice and projects such as the identity for Museum Boijmans van Beuningen etc.
Break (food and drinks are available from the bar)
8pm Nille Svensson, Sweden Graphics
A conversation with Emily King about design and ideology
9pm Reflections + Open discussion
Sara Kristofferson, Ramia Mazé and others
Bar
Iaspis
The Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s international program for visual artists
Konstnärsnämnden
Maria Skolgata 83
118 53 Stockholm
Sweden
Tel: +46 (0) 8-50 65 50 00
http://www.iaspis.com
Saturday 6 December
1 pm – late (exhibition open from 11am)
Venue: Konstnärsnämnden, Maria Skolgata 83, Stockholm
Free entrance, pre-registration only (limited availability): osa@iaspis.se
Language: English
Bar with food and drinks
Welcome to Iaspis seminar on design and critical practice!
Participants: Julia Born; Mia Frostner, Robert Sollis, Paul Tisdell, Europa; James Goggin, Practice; Emily King; Zak Kyes; Armand Mevis, Mevis en van Deursen; Nille Svensson, Sweden Graphics
+ Ramia Mazé; Sara Kristoffersson; Jonas Williamsson, Reala; Martin Frostner; Magnus Ericson, Iaspis
Iaspis Forum on Design and Critical Practice comprises an exhibition, a seminar and a forthcoming publication on investigative, speculative and critical design practice.
What constitutes a critical approach in graphic design? What kind of strategies and methods are used by the practitioners in this field? What external conditions influence this kind of practice? What is the relation between critical practices in design, architecture and art?
Iaspis brings together several critical voices in contemporary graphic design, including Forms of Inquiry contributors, as well as curators, critics, and educators to discuss these issues, based on topics investigated within Forms of Inquiry and a set of conversations initiated for the seminar and the publication. Through an open format and a series of lectures, conversations and debates, the seminar aims to further discuss the importance and position of investigative, speculative and critical design practice.
As a manifestation, Iaspis Forum on Design and Critical Practice intends to facilitate international exchange of ideas and knowledge within an expanded field of design. It aims to be a space for reflection and debate and to inspire to further studies, exchange and actions within the field of design, architecture and art. The reader will be co-published in 2009 by Iaspis and Sternberg Press.
Program Saturday 6 December
The seminar starts at 1 pm and continues until approximately 10pm. In the Project Room and Studio at Iaspis. The program includes breaks. You are free to decide what parts of the program you would like to attend (doors will be open). Coffee, tea, food and drinks will be served from the bar (Please note, cash only). Limited availability, pre-registration only.
1pm Introduction
by Magnus Ericson, Project Manager Iaspis, Jonas Williamson, Martin Frostner and Moderator Emily King
1.30pm Zak Kyes
Lecture on the exhibition Forms of Inquiry: the Architecture of Critical Graphic design
2.30pm Julia Born
Lecture on Secret Instructions and This Side Up, and her collaboration with the Swiss performance artist Alexandra Bachzetsis
Break
4pm James Goggin, Practice
Lecture on historical precedents of self-initiation and publishing in graphic design
5pm James Goggin, Practice och Mia Frostner, Robert Sollis, Paul Tisdell; Europa
Conversation where Europa and Practise compare contemporary interpretations of ‘relational design’.-- both as strategy and as something already inherent -- with their own graphic design practices
6pm Armand Mevis, Mevis en van Deursen
Lecture: Simple ideas, easy work! On Mevis en van Deursen practice and projects such as the identity for Museum Boijmans van Beuningen etc.
Break (food and drinks are available from the bar)
8pm Nille Svensson, Sweden Graphics
A conversation with Emily King about design and ideology
9pm Reflections + Open discussion
Sara Kristofferson, Ramia Mazé and others
Bar
Iaspis
The Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s international program for visual artists
Konstnärsnämnden
Maria Skolgata 83
118 53 Stockholm
Sweden
Tel: +46 (0) 8-50 65 50 00
http://www.iaspis.com
THIS FORM FOLLOWS YOUR PERFORMANCE
Alex Schweder
THIS FORM FOLLOWS YOUR PERFORMANCE
The relationship between occupied spaces and occupying bodies is a shifting one; we subjectively make our built world; thereafter it constructs us as occupying subjects. Working at the intersection of art and architecture, I understand our built environment as a site for playing out fantasies about our bodies. Drawing from a history of buildings designed around perfect bodies, my work seeks to expand this discourse to the experience of lived fleshy bodies. Architecture does not often pose difficult questions to its occupying bodies; art does not often publicly explore uncomfortable topics outside of museums and private spaces. However, at their intersection art and architecture might more productively explore the complicated facets of being human.
Speaker: Alex Schweder is the 2005–2006 Rome Prize Fellow in Architecture. Since this time, Schweder has been experimenting with time and performance based architecture including Flatland at New York's Sculpture Center 2007, This Apple Tastes Like Our Living Room Used to Smell presented at Western Bridge in Seattle 2007, Melting Instructions presented at the Tacoma Art Museum 2007, Homing MacGuffin during New York's Homebase III project 2008, The End of Endless to be presented at the Santa Fe Center For Contemporary Art 2009, and A Sac of Rooms All Day Long to be shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art 2009. His work has also been exhibited nationally and internationally including Henry Urbach Architecture in New York, the St. Louis Art Museum, the Netherlands Architecture Institute, and the Museo d'Arte Contemporanea di Roma. Schweder is the author of 'Stalls Between Walls', in Ladies and Gents, the Gendering of Public Toilets. He is a three time artist in residence at the Kohler company and will be in residence at the Chinati Foundation in Fall of 09. Schweder has been a guest professor at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in the Fall 07 for the seminar How to Perform Your Own Building. He holds a Masters in Architecture from Princeton University (1998) and a Bachelor in Architecture from Pratt Institute (1993).
More.
THIS FORM FOLLOWS YOUR PERFORMANCE
The relationship between occupied spaces and occupying bodies is a shifting one; we subjectively make our built world; thereafter it constructs us as occupying subjects. Working at the intersection of art and architecture, I understand our built environment as a site for playing out fantasies about our bodies. Drawing from a history of buildings designed around perfect bodies, my work seeks to expand this discourse to the experience of lived fleshy bodies. Architecture does not often pose difficult questions to its occupying bodies; art does not often publicly explore uncomfortable topics outside of museums and private spaces. However, at their intersection art and architecture might more productively explore the complicated facets of being human.
Speaker: Alex Schweder is the 2005–2006 Rome Prize Fellow in Architecture. Since this time, Schweder has been experimenting with time and performance based architecture including Flatland at New York's Sculpture Center 2007, This Apple Tastes Like Our Living Room Used to Smell presented at Western Bridge in Seattle 2007, Melting Instructions presented at the Tacoma Art Museum 2007, Homing MacGuffin during New York's Homebase III project 2008, The End of Endless to be presented at the Santa Fe Center For Contemporary Art 2009, and A Sac of Rooms All Day Long to be shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art 2009. His work has also been exhibited nationally and internationally including Henry Urbach Architecture in New York, the St. Louis Art Museum, the Netherlands Architecture Institute, and the Museo d'Arte Contemporanea di Roma. Schweder is the author of 'Stalls Between Walls', in Ladies and Gents, the Gendering of Public Toilets. He is a three time artist in residence at the Kohler company and will be in residence at the Chinati Foundation in Fall of 09. Schweder has been a guest professor at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in the Fall 07 for the seminar How to Perform Your Own Building. He holds a Masters in Architecture from Princeton University (1998) and a Bachelor in Architecture from Pratt Institute (1993).
More.
Monday, 24 November 2008
TEXTURES
6th European Meeting of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA ),
1st conference of the SLSA-EU, the European sister organization of the SLSA
Place and dates Riga/Liepaja (Latvia), 15-20 June, 2010
Main organizer Electronic Text + Textiles (e-t+t
Venues Main site for the academic programme, reception, lunches:
The Stockholm School of Economics in Riga (SSE)
Other conference sites:
e-t+t; Latvian Centre for Contemporary Arts; Riga City Art Space (t.b.c.), Art Lab, University of Liepaja
Theme The SLSA-EU 2010 conference is dedicated to exploring fabrics, structures, surfaces, and interfaces in a world that has been transformed to a large extent through technoscience and networked media. This transformed world is highly textured, partly through verbal and non-verbal 'texts' but also by mixtures of human-made and given environments whose complexity offers resistance to symbolic readings.
Through the term, 'textures,' we aim to bring together transitional figures of thought in many fields:
in literary criticism: the movement from the material signifier to meaning, affect, and communication;
in the arts: the well-known 'resistance in the materials’;
in cognitive science: the transition from the neuronal to the mental;
in a textile: the construction of cloth and the surfacing of a pattern from the interwoven material threaded lengthwise (warp) and widthwise (weft);
in painting: the emergence of a whole through the patterning of smaller elements; the presentation of an 'all over' composition in a series of canvases;
in sound art: the blending of running water or traffic noise into a continuous sonic structure;
with regard to the body: the perpetual becoming-other of an allegedly fixed and bordered identity;
the ‘fold’ in Deleuze; the ‘tissue of quotations’ in Barthes, the ‘weave’ in Derrida, the feminist spider's embodied writing of gendered subjectivity, and other materialist readings of familiar poststructuralist conceits;
etc. (please send us your ideas)
The list is meant to be suggestive, not restrictive, of the range of interests we hope to accommodate. As the conscious embrace of constraints – in science, literature and the arts – , can be productive not narrowing, so is our theme designed to be generative and to stitch together the diverse theoretical and transdisciplinary approaches that have long defined SLSA research.
Call for Abstracts
The main conference site, The Stockholm School of Economics, is equipped with state of the art technology, but the newness and limited resources of the main organizer, e-t+t, means that we must restrict the conference to 120 papers.
Deadlines and Submission Address
Submission of abstract (300 words): end of June 2009
Notification by e-t+t: end of August 2009
Registrations: from September 2009; early bird rate:
170€ up to end of January 2010, then 200€
Paper submission: end of March 2010
All proposals should be sent to a single email address: 2010slsa@gmail.com
Please see the e-t+t website for updates: http://www.e-text-textiles.lv/
We look forward to your participation.
Yours,
Zane Berzina, Manuela Rossini, Joseph Tabbi (Co-Creative Directors of e-t+t),
Anda Klavina, Haralds Matulis (Site hosts),
and local and international partners
1st conference of the SLSA-EU, the European sister organization of the SLSA
Place and dates Riga/Liepaja (Latvia), 15-20 June, 2010
Main organizer Electronic Text + Textiles (e-t+t
Venues Main site for the academic programme, reception, lunches:
The Stockholm School of Economics in Riga (SSE)
Other conference sites:
e-t+t; Latvian Centre for Contemporary Arts; Riga City Art Space (t.b.c.), Art Lab, University of Liepaja
Theme The SLSA-EU 2010 conference is dedicated to exploring fabrics, structures, surfaces, and interfaces in a world that has been transformed to a large extent through technoscience and networked media. This transformed world is highly textured, partly through verbal and non-verbal 'texts' but also by mixtures of human-made and given environments whose complexity offers resistance to symbolic readings.
Through the term, 'textures,' we aim to bring together transitional figures of thought in many fields:
in literary criticism: the movement from the material signifier to meaning, affect, and communication;
in the arts: the well-known 'resistance in the materials’;
in cognitive science: the transition from the neuronal to the mental;
in a textile: the construction of cloth and the surfacing of a pattern from the interwoven material threaded lengthwise (warp) and widthwise (weft);
in painting: the emergence of a whole through the patterning of smaller elements; the presentation of an 'all over' composition in a series of canvases;
in sound art: the blending of running water or traffic noise into a continuous sonic structure;
with regard to the body: the perpetual becoming-other of an allegedly fixed and bordered identity;
the ‘fold’ in Deleuze; the ‘tissue of quotations’ in Barthes, the ‘weave’ in Derrida, the feminist spider's embodied writing of gendered subjectivity, and other materialist readings of familiar poststructuralist conceits;
etc. (please send us your ideas)
The list is meant to be suggestive, not restrictive, of the range of interests we hope to accommodate. As the conscious embrace of constraints – in science, literature and the arts – , can be productive not narrowing, so is our theme designed to be generative and to stitch together the diverse theoretical and transdisciplinary approaches that have long defined SLSA research.
Call for Abstracts
The main conference site, The Stockholm School of Economics, is equipped with state of the art technology, but the newness and limited resources of the main organizer, e-t+t, means that we must restrict the conference to 120 papers.
Deadlines and Submission Address
Submission of abstract (300 words): end of June 2009
Notification by e-t+t: end of August 2009
Registrations: from September 2009; early bird rate:
170€ up to end of January 2010, then 200€
Paper submission: end of March 2010
All proposals should be sent to a single email address: 2010slsa@gmail.com
Please see the e-t+t website for updates: http://www.e-text-textiles.lv/
We look forward to your participation.
Yours,
Zane Berzina, Manuela Rossini, Joseph Tabbi (Co-Creative Directors of e-t+t),
Anda Klavina, Haralds Matulis (Site hosts),
and local and international partners
The Association for Integrative Studies
Raymond C. Miller Receives the AIS Kenneth Boulding Award
The Association for Integrative Studies recently recognized Professor Raymond Miller as the recipient of the Kenneth Boulding Award during its 30th anniversary conference in Springfield, Illinois. The Boulding Award is the organization’s highest honor bestowed on scholars and teachers whose work has made major, long-term contributions to the concept or enactment of interdisciplinarity. Recipients of the Boulding Award have given extraordinary service to the interdisciplinary community by clarifying and expanding the concept of interdisciplinarity and by deepening the scholarly or public understanding of interdisciplinary inquiry through a combination of teaching, scholarship, and integrative community involvement.
Miller is a past president, journal editor, and long-time member of AIS. He is also the past president of the Society for International Development and Professor Emeritus of International Relations and Social Science at San Francisco State University. He received his Ph.D. from Syracuse University and his M.A. from the University of Chicago. His culminating work, International Political Economy, Contrasting World Views, was published by Routledge Press this past summer. Miller’s “courage in service of the public good” was cited as a key feature of his commitment to creating social change. Miller’s contributions to interdisciplinary discourse and its applications have extended beyond the academy into city and regional government, where he served for three terms as mayor of Brisbane, California, and as member of Mateo County commissions on planning, governance, and transportation.
Past winners of this award include: Kenneth Boulding (1990), Ernest Boyer (1993), Jerry Gaff (1993), Julie Thompson Klein (2003) and William H. Newell (2003).
CONTACT: Pauline D. Gagnon, President, Association for Integrative Studies
pgagnon@westga.edu
The Association for Integrative Studies recently recognized Professor Raymond Miller as the recipient of the Kenneth Boulding Award during its 30th anniversary conference in Springfield, Illinois. The Boulding Award is the organization’s highest honor bestowed on scholars and teachers whose work has made major, long-term contributions to the concept or enactment of interdisciplinarity. Recipients of the Boulding Award have given extraordinary service to the interdisciplinary community by clarifying and expanding the concept of interdisciplinarity and by deepening the scholarly or public understanding of interdisciplinary inquiry through a combination of teaching, scholarship, and integrative community involvement.
Miller is a past president, journal editor, and long-time member of AIS. He is also the past president of the Society for International Development and Professor Emeritus of International Relations and Social Science at San Francisco State University. He received his Ph.D. from Syracuse University and his M.A. from the University of Chicago. His culminating work, International Political Economy, Contrasting World Views, was published by Routledge Press this past summer. Miller’s “courage in service of the public good” was cited as a key feature of his commitment to creating social change. Miller’s contributions to interdisciplinary discourse and its applications have extended beyond the academy into city and regional government, where he served for three terms as mayor of Brisbane, California, and as member of Mateo County commissions on planning, governance, and transportation.
Past winners of this award include: Kenneth Boulding (1990), Ernest Boyer (1993), Jerry Gaff (1993), Julie Thompson Klein (2003) and William H. Newell (2003).
CONTACT: Pauline D. Gagnon, President, Association for Integrative Studies
pgagnon@westga.edu
Wednesday, 19 November 2008
Transdisciplinary Studio Schedule
Tuesday 25 November
10-13: Supervision - check on work-in-progress RJ+RH
Friday 12 December
10-12 Transdisciplinary Studio Final Crit RJ + RH + guest critic(s)
10-13: Supervision - check on work-in-progress RJ+RH
Friday 12 December
10-12 Transdisciplinary Studio Final Crit RJ + RH + guest critic(s)
Monday, 17 November 2008
HOW TO ENCOURAGE NEW HERESIES
by MARCIA BARTUSIAK
Review of:
DISCOVERING
By Robert Scott Root-Bernstein.
Illustrated. 501 pp. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press. $35.
Seeing that science, with its exponential growth, has blossomed a millionfold since the 1600's, why are we not witnessing a millionfold increase in the number of fundamental discoveries, Robert Scott Root-Bernstein wonders in ''Discovering.'' Scientific revolutions, the kinds of upheavals that dramatically alter our view of nature, spring up at a rather constant pace, he claims. Where are the thousands of Newtons, Darwins and Einsteins that should now be walking the earth? The modern publication explosion in science has arrived without a commensurate explosion in astounding revelations. Has science, in all its manifestations, now become so bureaucratic that it ends up sabotaging those who would discover?
More.
Review of:
DISCOVERING
By Robert Scott Root-Bernstein.
Illustrated. 501 pp. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press. $35.
Seeing that science, with its exponential growth, has blossomed a millionfold since the 1600's, why are we not witnessing a millionfold increase in the number of fundamental discoveries, Robert Scott Root-Bernstein wonders in ''Discovering.'' Scientific revolutions, the kinds of upheavals that dramatically alter our view of nature, spring up at a rather constant pace, he claims. Where are the thousands of Newtons, Darwins and Einsteins that should now be walking the earth? The modern publication explosion in science has arrived without a commensurate explosion in astounding revelations. Has science, in all its manifestations, now become so bureaucratic that it ends up sabotaging those who would discover?
More.
Transvergence in Art History
by Ami Davis
Transdisciplinary art doesn't always fit into Western society's comfortable and complacent definitions of art. It is problematic because transvergence doesn't have a pre-established canon or other point of reference for us to distinguish "good" transvergence from "bad" transvergence. Academicians scramble to cram transvergence, or transdisciplinary arts, into the canon, to legitimize them and thrust them into academic discourse. Leonardo da Vinci was a transdisciplinary artist--is he is the icon of new media arts? Canonization, however, has been exposed as male-dominated, Eurocentric, and power-motivated. Transdisciplinary art history may be the perfect opportunity to explore a new academic discourse, one conscientious of such unbalanced and imperialistic motivations. However, the traditional tools offered by art history, a discipline with cultural baggage of its own, need to be re-examined if transdisciplinary projects are to fall within its scope. By exploring the aims of transvergence, and the historical limitations of art history, perhaps a dialogue can begin regarding how these projects can, or should be, labeled as "art."
The term "transvergence" is an invitation to take an opportunity to rethink art history, science, and the inevitably permeable lines that arbitrarily divide these disciplines. Transvergence demonstrates an attitude that the boundaries separating academic disciplines are restrictive. It exposes the artificial construction that art and science are opposites. However, societies continue to struggle with the idea that art and science can have compatible goals. Is the linear nature of art history therefore an appropriate means of documenting and discussing transdisciplinary arts? What does transvergence mean in the context of art?
Transvergence creates a distinction between art that is interdisciplinary and art that is transdisciplinary. In interdisciplinary pursuits, disciplines collaborate. Scientists and artists, commonly regarded as ideologically opposed practitioners, can intersect and contemplate their common relationships. However, these interacting disciplines ultimately retain their identities as isolated from each other. Transdisciplinary projects also have an agenda to explore common practices among disciplines, but with a more holistic approach. By transcending conventional notions of what appropriate activities within a discipline are, participants attempt to bridge disciplines in innovative ways. The result is that new commonalities are discovered among disciplines, which have implications for future innovative transvergent events. Interdisciplinary projects may not necessarily have this result. Gunter Von Hagens' plastination technique for preserving cadavers is one such project that attempts to touch on art and science as opposing disciplines, but results in little innovation for how these disciplines are culturally constructed.
More.
Transdisciplinary art doesn't always fit into Western society's comfortable and complacent definitions of art. It is problematic because transvergence doesn't have a pre-established canon or other point of reference for us to distinguish "good" transvergence from "bad" transvergence. Academicians scramble to cram transvergence, or transdisciplinary arts, into the canon, to legitimize them and thrust them into academic discourse. Leonardo da Vinci was a transdisciplinary artist--is he is the icon of new media arts? Canonization, however, has been exposed as male-dominated, Eurocentric, and power-motivated. Transdisciplinary art history may be the perfect opportunity to explore a new academic discourse, one conscientious of such unbalanced and imperialistic motivations. However, the traditional tools offered by art history, a discipline with cultural baggage of its own, need to be re-examined if transdisciplinary projects are to fall within its scope. By exploring the aims of transvergence, and the historical limitations of art history, perhaps a dialogue can begin regarding how these projects can, or should be, labeled as "art."
The term "transvergence" is an invitation to take an opportunity to rethink art history, science, and the inevitably permeable lines that arbitrarily divide these disciplines. Transvergence demonstrates an attitude that the boundaries separating academic disciplines are restrictive. It exposes the artificial construction that art and science are opposites. However, societies continue to struggle with the idea that art and science can have compatible goals. Is the linear nature of art history therefore an appropriate means of documenting and discussing transdisciplinary arts? What does transvergence mean in the context of art?
Transvergence creates a distinction between art that is interdisciplinary and art that is transdisciplinary. In interdisciplinary pursuits, disciplines collaborate. Scientists and artists, commonly regarded as ideologically opposed practitioners, can intersect and contemplate their common relationships. However, these interacting disciplines ultimately retain their identities as isolated from each other. Transdisciplinary projects also have an agenda to explore common practices among disciplines, but with a more holistic approach. By transcending conventional notions of what appropriate activities within a discipline are, participants attempt to bridge disciplines in innovative ways. The result is that new commonalities are discovered among disciplines, which have implications for future innovative transvergent events. Interdisciplinary projects may not necessarily have this result. Gunter Von Hagens' plastination technique for preserving cadavers is one such project that attempts to touch on art and science as opposing disciplines, but results in little innovation for how these disciplines are culturally constructed.
More.
What Is Art For?
By DANIEL B. SMITH
Published: November 14, 2008 in New York Times
...There’s a line of Emerson’s from ‘Self-Reliance,’ ” Hyde told me one day in his office, “where he says of Benjamin Franklin: ‘Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin? Every great man is a unique.’ Well, it’s crazy! There’s a long list of masters who taught Franklin! And yet the Emersonian song is the one that sticks in everyone’s head.”
Suffice it to say that Hyde goes to heroic lengths to unstick it — and with a striking directness. A full 60 pages of his new manuscript are devoted to debunking the Emersonian view of Franklin as “America’s first self-made man” and replacing it with a portrait of Franklin as a “commoner,” a man whose defining talent was for absorbing, repurposing and synthesizing the culture around him, like some colonial M.C. The law of conservation of charge, the eponymous stove, the precise path of the Gulf Stream: Hyde shoves aside each of Franklin’s “discoveries” to uncover thick foundations of pre-existing knowledge and scientific collaboration. The point of all this is not to prove that Franklin wasn’t a genius but to show that his genius didn’t burst out of thin air. “It takes a capacious mind to play host to … others and to find new ways to combine what they have to offer,” Hyde writes, “but not a mind for whom there are no masters, not a ‘unique.’ Quite the opposite — this is a mind willing to be taught, willing to be inhabited, willing to labor in the cultural commons.”
More.
Published: November 14, 2008 in New York Times
...There’s a line of Emerson’s from ‘Self-Reliance,’ ” Hyde told me one day in his office, “where he says of Benjamin Franklin: ‘Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin? Every great man is a unique.’ Well, it’s crazy! There’s a long list of masters who taught Franklin! And yet the Emersonian song is the one that sticks in everyone’s head.”
Suffice it to say that Hyde goes to heroic lengths to unstick it — and with a striking directness. A full 60 pages of his new manuscript are devoted to debunking the Emersonian view of Franklin as “America’s first self-made man” and replacing it with a portrait of Franklin as a “commoner,” a man whose defining talent was for absorbing, repurposing and synthesizing the culture around him, like some colonial M.C. The law of conservation of charge, the eponymous stove, the precise path of the Gulf Stream: Hyde shoves aside each of Franklin’s “discoveries” to uncover thick foundations of pre-existing knowledge and scientific collaboration. The point of all this is not to prove that Franklin wasn’t a genius but to show that his genius didn’t burst out of thin air. “It takes a capacious mind to play host to … others and to find new ways to combine what they have to offer,” Hyde writes, “but not a mind for whom there are no masters, not a ‘unique.’ Quite the opposite — this is a mind willing to be taught, willing to be inhabited, willing to labor in the cultural commons.”
More.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
