Data Event 38.0

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When:
Fri­day, 09 Octo­ber 2009, 7:00pm

Loc­a­tion:
The Cobble­stone Pub, Smithfield, Dub­lin 7

Abstract:
DATA @ Dark­light Fest­ival presents a panel dis­cus­sion of the use of tech­no­logy in art: New media art has been viewed with sus­pi­cion by some crit­ics. It is claimed that there’s often too much focus on the tech­no­logy – the crit­ic­ally insub­stan­tial black box of ‘tricks’. Its prac­ti­tion­ers are con­sidered to primar­ily inhabit ‘tech’ spe­cific spaces such as ‘sci­ence gal­ler­ies’ and research centres, their iden­tit­ies often blurred with that of the com­puter pro­gram­mer or scientist.

Tech­no­logy seems to gain accept­ance in the art­world only at the point when it becomes obsol­ete. New tech­no­lo­gies of the past – the slide pro­jector, the 16mm pro­jector, the Sony Portapak video cam­era and the crackle of the needle on the record are today accom­mod­ated within con­tem­por­ary art. Within recent art prac­tice there has been a dis­cern­ible fet­ish­isa­tion of ‘old school’, ana­logue and obsol­ete tech­no­logy. Is this the res­ult of a cul­tural sub­lim­a­tion and nor­m­al­isa­tion of these tech­no­lo­gies, now con­sidered ‘safe’, famil­iar and tinged with a cer­tain nos­tal­gia? Yet, the truly ‘new’, dif­fused, net­worked and ‘self-aware’ tech­no­lo­gies of our time are rejec­ted as being too obscure, fet­ish­istic and, one could sug­gest, ulti­mately threat­en­ing to some crit­ics; for example art­works that use the max/msp pro­gram­ming envir­on­ment hooked up to sensors are some­how thought of as less valid art­works. This panel dis­cus­sion seeks to address what is going on with these per­cep­tions of the use of new tech­no­logy in art.

As digital tech­no­logy moves to ubi­quity, the crit­ical recep­tion of new media art seems to be chan­ging. There is a grow­ing accept­ance within art dis­course that digital cul­ture is now simply cul­ture. Digital has become the air that we breath and can no longer be con­sidered unique. If this is so, do we need the term ‘new media art’ any more? Some ele­ments of digital tech­no­logy have now already moved into obsol­es­cence. There is again a notice­able nos­tal­gic drive at work within recent new media art prac­tice; Nin­tendo games, 8 bit graph­ics and the web design aes­thetic of the late nineties, as exem­pli­fied by artists such as Cory Arcan­gel and Paper Rad. These artists belong to the first gen­er­a­tion who have grown up digital, rais­ing ques­tions about the chan­ging nature of our rela­tion­ship with the digital and the increas­ingly ana­chron­istic term ‘new’ media. When ana­logue tech­no­logy is no longer in liv­ing memory – how will we come to fet­ish­ise the digital? If the digital has become the ‘air we breath’ and there­fore invis­ible, how do we con­struct a crit­ical read­ing of it? Finally, is there any way out of the seem­ingly mind­less cycle that drives each avant-guard, techno-utopian impulse to its even­tual cap­it­al­ist recu­per­a­tion within the art market?

Chaired by:
Dr Fran­cis Halsall, lec­turer in His­tory and The­ory of Mod­ern and Con­tem­por­ary Art at the National Col­lege of Art and Design, Dublin.

Cur­ated by:
Car­oline Camp­bell, John Buckley and Conor McGarrigle

Presenters:
Tim Stott
Tim Stott is Research Scholar at the Gradu­ate School of Cre­at­ive Arts and Media, Dub­lin, and vis­it­ing lec­turer in art the­ory at National Col­lege of Art and Design, Dub­lin, where he teaches on the MA Art in the Con­tem­por­ary World. He has a BA (Hons) in Draw­ing and Paint­ing (2003) and an MSc in Con­tem­por­ary Art The­ory, both from Edin­burgh Col­lege of Art (2004). He has pub­lished widely on vari­ous aspects of con­tem­por­ary art.

Sarah Glen­nie
Sarah Glen­nie is the Dir­ector of the Irish Film Insti­tute. Sarah has fif­teen years exper­i­ence in the cul­tural realm, most recently as Dir­ector of the Model Arts and Niland Gal­lery in Sligo, and with pre­vi­ous extens­ive cur­at­orial exper­i­ence includ­ing her appoint­ment as Com­mis­sioner of the Irish Pavil­lion at the Venice Bien­nale 2005, cur­ated pro­jects for P.S.1 MoMA, New York, and Cork 2005, and pos­i­tions at the Henry Moore Found­a­tion and IMMA.

Rachel O’Dwyer
Rachel O’Dwyer has a cer­ti­fic­ate in Sound Engin­eer­ing from City and Guilds, a BA in Fine art from the IADT, and an M.Phil in Music and Media Tech­no­lo­gies from Trin­ity Col­lege Dub­lin. She teaches on the MSC for Inter­act­ive Digital Media in the Com­puter Sci­ence Depart­ment of Trin­ity Col­lege. She is an asso­ci­ate researcher in the Gradu­ate school of Cre­at­ive Arts and Media (Grad­Cam) where she leads a post­gradu­ate sem­inar on audio cul­tures. She has pub­lished essays on audio tech­no­lo­gies (Cam­bridge Schol­ars, Karni­val) and cur­ated an exhib­i­tion and panel dis­cus­sion for ISEA09 on the role of sound in mobile environments.

Conor McGar­rigle
Conor Mc Gar­rigle is a Dub­lin based artist and researcher. He holds a Bsc from UCD and a MA in Vir­tual Real­it­ies from NCAD and is cur­rently a Reseach Scholar at the Gradu­ate School of Cre­at­ive Arts & Media (GRADCAM). He has been cre­at­ing art­works for the web since 1999 and is well known for works such as Spook… (2000 –2002) and The Bono Prob­ab­il­ity Pos­i­tion­ing Sys­tem (2006) which have crossed into main­stream inter­net cul­ture gar­ner­ing huge audi­ences in the pro­cess. Recent par­ti­cip­at­ory pro­jects such as Joyce Walks (2007–2008), the Tulca Free­dom Trail (2007) and the Manchester Free­dom Trail (2008) con­cen­trate on map­ping and urban inter­ven­tions, oper­at­ing in a hybrid space between the web and the street. His Blooms­day 2008 pro­ject involved col­lab­or­at­ors cre­at­ing urban inter­ven­tions in 39 cit­ies around the world on a single day. He estab­lished online arts space Stunned.org in 1999 and has since then pion­eered net.art in Ire­land. Between 2002 and 2006 he cur­ated a well regarded exper­i­mental series of Net Art Open exhib­i­tions which explored the pos­sib­il­it­ies and lim­it­a­tions of online cur­at­orial practice.


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DATA is sup­por­ted by The Arts Council.

October 7, 2009 | Filed Under Events 

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