DASH Archives - October 2004

Michael Hart, founder of the Gutenberg project, and a number of
other experts on copyright and the public domain will be speaking
in Cambridge on 9-10 October:

   http://www.fipr.org/workshopOct2004.html

Ross Anderson

Hello,

In response to Paul's request to say something about our current
projects, here is a show that we are working on at the Block Museum
(http://www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu). We are probably going to
change the title, but for the moment it makes a useful point of
reference.

-- Paul



Imaging by Numbers: A Historical View of the Computer Print
SEPTEMBER 24, 2004

Imaging by Numbers, a new exhibition organized by the Mary and Leigh
Block Museum of Art, will lay the foundation for understanding and
documenting the historical importance of computer-mediated art and
demonstrate the continued vitality of its concepts. As a relatively
new medium (mid-twentieth century), its impact on contemporary art
theory and practice is only now beginning to be understood. Focusing
on computer-mediated prints created between 1950 and 1980, this
exhibition and catalogue will investigate the artistic processes that
produced seminal digital artworks, the pioneers in digital
printmaking, and their ongoing legacy.

The goals of the project are:
o to organize a traveling exhibition of approximately 80 digital prints
o to produce an exhibition catalogue with interpretive essays and documentation
o to create a web-accessible digital archive as a source for future historians

Organized in conjunction with the scholarly journal Leonardo, an
international journal for the application of contemporary science and
technology to the arts, Imaging by Numbers will present a conceptual
framework that draws on both art and science. The exhibition, which
will open in the spring of 2006, will explore the mutual influences
of early computer art and the artistic avant-garde and trace these
through to current digital printmaking practices.

Chance operations, algorithmic composition, "alienated science," and
investigations into the nature of human creativity are just some of
the recurring themes in computer prints. Computers opened up a vast
new arena for chance operations and the emerging science of
complexity. Algorithmic composition manipulates or derives images
through mathematical processes, working in the same spirit as
compositional rules in conceptual art or physical processes in
color-field painting. Herbert Franke, whose 1971 publication Computer
Graphics, Computer Art  was a seminal study of computer generated
art, coined the term "alienated science" to describe scientific
imagery that has been displaced from its scientific context and
presented as art. Early aesthetic investigations have brought us both
meticulously synthesized fantasy worlds-a sort of "digital
sublime"-and programs that model human creativity to produce art
without direct human intervention.

Imaging by Numbers will emphasize qualities unique to digital prints
and the lasting influence of early endeavors. In particular, it will
explore the broad visual experimentation that took place, and
continues to take place, in digital printmaking: it goes beyond
novelty to constitute a meaningful and conceptually solid body of
work. Focusing on the medium of digital prints, Imaging by Numbers
will present a history of a period in art that is culturally
meaningful, intellectually engaging, and visually exciting, along
with the pivotal artworks that constitute a significant manifestation
of twentieth-century art history.

Curators:
Paul Hertz, Co-Director, Center for Art and Technology, Northwestern University
paul-hertz@northwestern.edu
Debora Wood, Associate Curator, Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University
debwood@northwestern.edu


--
Paul Hertz 
|(*,+,#,=)(#,=,*,+)(=,#,+,*)(+,*,=,#)|
              

Hi Paul,

Thanks for all your efforts in putting this together - it is so needed!

Here's a bit about what I'm doing/done which you could post.


Currently, I am teaching in the Media Arts Department at LIU (Long Island
University).  This department unique combines theory and production on the
undergraduate and graduate levels.  I teach classes in the theory area such
as Contemporary Digital Arts, Survey of Computer Arts, Introduction to Media
Arts, History of Photography and CGI, and Media Arts Theory.
My ongoing writing, initially articulated in my lectures, engages in -- what
I hope and feel to be -- a creative integration of the history and theory of
media and meta-media arts.

In 2002 I completed a Ph.D. in the Critical Studies area in the Department
of Art and Art Professions at New York University for my work on the
aesthetics of computer arts.  My dissertation entitled " Language, Memory
and Volition: Toward an Aesthetics of Computer Arts" constructs an aesthetic
framework for computer arts based on the three most fundamental and
operational components of the computer: language, memory and volition.  As
the primacy of process within the computer is a reflection of "how we think
we think" -- the computer as a meta-tool is an integration of cognitive
processes aligned with various skill sets.  (Web access is forthcoming.)

From 1996 to 1999 I served as a member of the Artists¹ Advisory Committee
for the Artists¹ Fellowship Program of the NYFA (New York Foundation for the
Arts). In 1996, as a member of this committee, I initiated the founding of
the first discipline category specifically devoted to computer arts within
arts funding in the United States.  The development of this fellowship
category -- in the only state supported funding program for individual
artists in New York -- was a model program which influenced other funding
organizations to follow suit and proved instrumental in the critical
acceptance of computer arts as funded exhibitions of computer arts became a
reality in major museums in New York.

As an artist, I've been working with computers since the mid-seventies in
both still and moving imagery.  Since then, the focus of my work has moved
serially --  between intense periods of art making and exhibition --
alternated with equally intense periods of activity in theory and history.
Currently, I strive for a parallel work process.

Best,
Maureen Nappi

-- 
Maureen Nappi, Ph.D.
Media Arts Dept.
Long Island University
Brooklyn Campus




on 9/21/04 9:16 PM, Paul Brown at paul@paul-brown.com wrote:

> The subscriptions to DASH have now passed the 200 mark and many of
> the key players in the history arena are on board.  It would be good
> if those subscribers with active history projects/publications etc..
> could post details, urls etc... to the list.  DASH is archived so
> this will build up into a good reference for work in the field.
> 
> Another point - a few people have tried to post announcements about
> current events, etc... which I have rejected.  There are many other
> venues for those posts and I'd like to keep DASH focused.  So if you
> are posting something that isn't obviously related to the history
> field can you please give it context with a leading explanatory
> sentence?
> 
> Note also - if you reply to a post - your reply is directed to the
> list not to the sender.
> 
> Looking forward to hearing from you all.

Call for Participation:
Open Timeline for the History of Webdesign

www.designtimeline.org

We would like to invite you to contribute to the online collective web
design history timeline. This project wants to map your first encounters
with the World Wide Web. It is part of a larger project entitled A
Decade of Webdesign that culminates into an international conference in
Amsterdam (NL), January 21-22, 2005 (www.decadeofwebdesign.org).

Open History Timeline
As a core part of the project, beginning before and continuing after the
conference we will initiate an 'open research' website/database into the
first decade of web design.  The online forum will take the form of a
visual and textual timeline generated out of a self-customizable
questionnaire.

Using a custom content management system the site will allow for:

. Users to add images, comments and links to make a collective history
of the web as it developed.  Such elements might include histories of
their own first homepage; the first use of a technology; original html
code; reminiscences of key designers, innovators, critics and
technologists.

. Using a question based interface users can write their own questions
and respond to those of others.  All questions entered will then be
available, ensuring that no one set of views or way of writing
predominates.

. Multi-lingual use.

The site is designed for use both by the general public and as a simple
structured tool which can be used for both research and teaching.  This
project is intended to be of interest to a broad range of disciplines
from design to computer science and from history to sociology. If you
are a teacher we would like to invite you to consider integrating this
site into your curriculum, as a piece of independent research for
students, as a set workshop, or as the basis of a sustained project.

Conference
Until recently web design discourses have been dominated by a frantic,
market driven search for the latest and coolest. The ongoing media buzz
around 'demo design' has prevented serious scholarship from happening.
Technical innovations such as frames, shockwave, flash, WAP and 3G have
dominated the field. Until 2001 a substantial part of the sector's
activities was geared towards instruction and consultancy. The dotcom
crash and IT slump have cleared the field-but not necessary in positive
ways.

Due to budget cuts organizations now believe they can do without design
altogether. Instead of asking ourselves what the Next Big Thing will be,
we firmly believe that future design can be found in its recent past
that offers a rich mix of utopian concepts and undigested controversies.
In short, these ten years of web design has seen design change as much
as it has seen the impact of a new form of global media. We want to
celebrate this and to use a consideration and testing of the recent past
to provide a platform for thinking about what is to come.

Sessions for the event will be:

-Histories of Web Design
What do social, technical and cultural historians propose as ways to
make an account of the last decade?

-Meaning Structures
As automated site-design becomes increasingly important the history of
the interweaving of technology and culture up to the point of semantic
engineering is mapped out.

-Modeling the User
Creativity and usability have often been set up as the two key poles of
web design. This panel asks instead for a more sophisticated narrative
about the change in understanding of user needs and desires over the
last ten years.

- Digital Work
Following on from the Digital Work seminar this panel brings together
key observers and critics of the changing patterns of work in web design
along with designers.

- Distributed Design
The web amplified an explosion on non-professional design.  This panel
will ask what happens to design once it becomes a non-specialist network
process.

Confirmed Speakers
Michael Indergaard, John Chris Jones, Peter Luining, Peter Lunenfeld,
Geke van der Wal, Franziska Nori, Danny O'Brien (NTK), Danny O'Brien,
Steven Pemberton, Helen Petrie, Ros Gill,  Adrian McKenzie,
Schoenerwissen/OfCD, Jimmy 'Jimbo' Wales, etc. Further speakers are yet
to be confirmed.

Organization:
Media Design Research, Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam,
http://pzwart.wdka.hro.nl/
Institute for Network Cultures, Hogeschool van Amsterdam
http://www.networkcultures.org
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

Register by sending an email to info@networkcultures.org

___________
Reposted from fibreculture:  http://www.fibreculture.org

Hi all,
   Enclosed is the URL for the L.A. Digilantes hosted by EZTV.
It covers the movement in Los Angeles from 1980 to 1996.
We are in the process of updating.

http://www.eztvmedia.com/digilantes.html

Thanks

Michael Wright

Computers in the History of Art - 20th Annual Conference
FUTURES PAST: TWENTY YEARS OF ARTS COMPUTING
Thursday 11 - Friday 12 November 2004
Clore Management Centre, Birkbeck, University of London,
25-27 Torrington Square, London WC1E 7HX, England

Please find below the final programme and booking details.

BOOKINGS MADE BEFORE 15 OCTOBER 2004 WILL BE ENTITLED TO A DISCOUNT.

I very much hope that you will be able to attend, and also that you
will draw the conference to the attention of others who might be
interested.

For further information about CHArt's activities and new publications,
including the forthcoming book DIGITAL ART HISTORY, as well as the
latest issue of the NEWSLETTER, visit http://www.chart.ac.uk

If you wish to receive future CHArt publicity by email please
email anna.bentkowska@courtauld.ac.uk


-------Program-------
CHArt Twentieth Annual Conference

FUTURES PAST: TWENTY YEARS OF ARTS COMPUTING
Thursday 11 - Friday 12 November 2004

Clore Management Centre, Birkbeck, University of London, 25-27
Torrington
Square, WC1E 7HX.

PROGRAMME

Since its foundation in 1985 CHArt has closely followed the
extraordinary
developments in arts computing that have taken place over nearly two
decades.  This year, for the twentieth CHArt conference we will look
back at the history of the application of digital technology to art
history, visual culture, the museum and gallery, and art practice.
Papers will reflect upon successes,
failures, and futures past.

9.00 - 9.30 REGISTRATION

9.30 - 9.40 INTRODUCTION -  Charlie Gere (Chair of CHArt), Birkbeck
College.

9.40 - 10.10 KEYNOTE ADDRESS - Futures Past and Present - William
Vaughan, Chair of CHArt 1985 - 2002.

THURSDAY 11 NOVEMBER

SESSION 1 - EXPERIMENTAL INTEGRATION

10.10 - 10.45
Catherine Mason, CACHe Project, Birkbeck, University of London, UK.
A Computer in the Art Room.

10.45- 11.20
Jennifer Gabrys, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Machines Fall Apart: Failure and Collapse in Art and Technology.

Tea/coffee

SESSION 2 -TRANSITIONS

11.50 - 12.25
Andrew Hershberger, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, USA.
The Medium Was the Method: Photography and Iconography at the Index of
Christian Art.

12.25 - 1.00
Colum Hourihane, Index of Christian Art, Princeton University, New
Jersey, USA.
Facing the Future through the Past at the Index of Christian Art.

Lunch

SESSION 3 - PAINTING BY PIXEL

2.15 -2.50
James Faure Walker, London, UK.
Painting Digital, and Letting Go.

2.50 - 3.25
Ann-Sophie Lehmann, Institute for Media and Re/presentation, Utrecht
University, Utrecht, Netherlands.
1300 brushes - The History of the Computer as Painting-Machine.

Tea/coffee

SESSION 4 - METHODS AND PRACTICE

3.50 - 4.25
Pierre R. Auboiron, Panthéon-Sorbonne University, Paris, France.
Indexed Lights.

4.25 - 5.00
Matthias Weiss, Leipzig, Germany.
Microanalysis as a Means to Mediate Digital Arts.

FRIDAY 12 NOVEMBER

SESSION 5 - HISTORIES, FAILURES AND RESURGENCE

10.10 - 10.45
Nick Lambert, CACHe, Birkbeck, University of London, UK.
Recursive History: Assembling a Digital Archive of Computer Art's Early
Years.

10.45 - 11.20
Wayne Clements, Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, UK.
Computer Poetry's Neglected Debut.

Tea/coffee

SESSION 6 - VIRTUAL DEPARTURES

11.50 - 12.25
Mike Pringle, AHDS Visual Arts, Surrey Institute of Art and Design, UK.
A Virtual Disaster: the Rise and Fall of Virtual Reality.

12.25- 1.00
Kirk Martinez, Department of Electronics and Computer Science,
University of
Southampton, UK.
Fifteen Years of Art Imaging.

Lunch

SESSION 7 - PROJECTS AND ARCHIVES

2.15 - 2.50
Christine L. Sundt, Visual Resources Collection, Architecture & Allied
Arts
Library, University of Oregon, USA.
Digital Projects Past and Present: Survivors or Fossils?

2.50 - 3.25
Sian Everitt, Keeper of Archives and Collections BIAD, University of
Central
England, Birmingham, UK.
The Good, the Bad and the Accessible: 30 Years of Using New
Technologies in BIAD Archives.

Tea/coffee

SESSION 8 - COLLECTIONS AND DISSEMINATION

3.50 - 4.25
Vickie O'Riordan, University of California, San Diego, USA.
This is the Modern World: Collaborating with ARTstor.

4.25 - 5.00
Melanie Rowntree, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK.
Successes and Failures of Content Creation in Web Beginnings
at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

DEMONSTRATIONS TO BE ANNOUNCED

BOOKING

CHArt Member:
TWO DAYS £90   (£70 before 15 Oct 2004)
ONE DAY £50 (£40 before 15 Oct 2004)

Non-member:
TWO DAYS £120 (£100 before 15 Oct 2004)
ONE DAY £70 (£60 before 15 Oct 2004)

CHArt Student Member:
TWO DAYS £60   (£40 before 15 Oct 2004)
ONE DAY £30 (£20 before 15 Oct 2004)

Student Non-member:
TWO DAYS £70   (£50 before 15 Oct 2004)
ONE DAY £35 (£25 before 15 Oct 2004)


The booking form is also online on http://www.chart.ac.uk  Bookings made
before 15 October 2004 will be entitled to a discount.  Conference Fees
(pounds sterling) - include coffee/tea breaks and lunch.  Send bookings
to: CHArt, HAFVM, Birkbeck, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD.
conference@chart.ac.uk, Fax +44 0207 631 6107.

I just picked this up off the Fibreculture list and thought
that DASH subscribers would like to know:

Sad news overnight, the death of Jacques Derrida.

Metacreation: Art and Artificial Life -  November on -empyre-

Described as  "provocative, literate, subtle, and knowledgeable" [1]
Mitchell Whitelaw's "Metacreation" (MIT Press) is the first detailed
critical account of the new field of creative practice of a-life art. This
appropriation and adaptation by media artist's of the techniques from
interdisciplinary artificial life science, has produced not only artworks,
but unique generative and creative processes.

- empyre- is proud to host what promises to be a stimulating discussion,
with Mitchell Whitelaw being joined throughout the month by eminent a-life
practitioners Paul Brown (UK), Mauro Annunziato (IT),  Ken Rinaldo (US), and
Maria Verstappen (NL).

Over the month Whitelaw and guests will extrude the book's concepts -  how
artificial evolution alters the artist's creative agency;  the  complex
interactivity of artificial ecosystems; the creation of  embodied autonomous
agencies; the use of cellular automata to investigate pattern, form and
morphogenesis; and well as examining the key tenet of a-life, emergence.

Please join us at the -empyre- (http://www.subtle.net/empyre) from November
4.
_________________________________________

Mauro Annunziato, (http://www.plancton.com) artist and scientist, founded
the art group "PLANCTON in '94 with Piero Pierucci focussing the research on
the creative and aesthetical potentialities of chaos and artificial life,
the relation between art and science, mind and society, communication and
interaction.

Paul Brown (http://www.paul-brown.com ) is an artist and writer who has been
specialising in art and technology, especially computational and generative
art for over 40 years.  He was recently described by Mitchell Whitelaw as
"one of the unheralded pioneers of a-life art".

Ken Rinaldo ( http://accad.osu.edu/~rinaldo/ ) is an artist, theorist and
author who creates interactive multimedia installations that blur the
boundaries between the organic and inorganic. Integration of the organic and
electro-mechanical elements asserts a confluence and co-evolution between
living and evolving technological cultures.

Maria Verstappen and Erwin Driessens ( http://www.xs4all.nl/~notnot )
have worked together since 1990. They both studied at the State Academy of
Fine Arts, Amsterdam and the Academy of Fine Arts, Maastricht. They have
held numerous exhibitions in galleries and museums. They received a 1st
prize at LIFE 2.0 and LIFE 5.0, an international competition for Art &
Artificial Life, with their Tickle robot projects.

Mitchell Whitelaw (http://creative.canberra.edu.au/mitchell) is an artist,
writer and researcher in new media and audio art and culture. He is
currently Head of Program, Media / Multimedia Production, School of Creative
Communication, University of Canberra. His book, Metacreation: Art and
Artificial Life, was published in 2004 by MIT Press
(http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?tid=10080&ttype=2 )


_______________

[1] --Margaret A. Boden, Research Professor of Cognitive Science, University
of Sussex, and author of The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms
___________________

Dr Melinda Rackham
artist | curator | producer
www.subtle.net/empyre
-empyre-  media forum