[-empyre-] empyre: Resistance is futile, ISEA, Sydney 2013 - week 3

Garth Paine garth at activatedspace.com
Tue Jul 16 20:18:01 EST 2013 

Hello list

As a newbie on this list, I am very pleased to be part of this discussion and conscious that I do not know the history of the list very well.

Nevertheless, I did attend ISEA, and was involved in several panels including co-chairing one with Margie Medlin, the director of Critical Path, the dance development agency in Sydney.

The Panel we ran was titled The Sustainability of Future Bodies (roundtable).  It was planned as a roundtable in that we were interested not so much in having the stella cast at the table present their work in detail, but to act as expert/experienced discussant's, provocateurs… in a discussion that would draw on the expertise of those in attendance (in the audience) as much as the expert panel.

We did however start with a number of prepared slides containing provocations for discussion - which in the end we didn't use - the collected body of practitioners was more than ready for a group discussion and the session passed by is a flash…

Never the less I will share with you the provocations we prepared:

	• In the future, how will the intelligence of the body inspire digital performance tools ?
	• What does it mean to innovate with the body? 
	• Does the demand to constantly innovate mean we are currently failing ?
	• Is it important  that the audience understand the nature of interaction?
	• How do we negotiate, convey and activate an artistic proposal without the need to consider a dumbing down of ideas?
	• If our ability to cooperate and to collaborate, to get on with each other is one of the most pressing issues of this milieu, how might we create situations of play, immersion and interaction that foster interconnectedness and enable a receptivity to difference, the other and the not yet foreseen bodies of the future?
	• How have notions of Agency changed in mediated performance? 
	• How have notions of embodiment changed, expanded or transformed, in mediated performance? 


We were interesting in drawing the maturity of practice in the room to consider questions of sustainability of that practice in an evolving landscape. Thinking about interaction in performance, questioning the way in which interactive performance systems, change, iterate, subjugate, extend the body. Contemplating where the body begins/ends and the mind, system, otherness fades in….  the seam… 

Cheers, Garth


On Jul 15, 2013, at 10:36 AM, BIGGS Simon <s.biggs at ed.ac.uk> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Welcome to week three of empyre's July 2013 discussion: Resistance is futile, ISEA Sydney, 2013
> 
> Thank you to Paul Sermon, Charlotte Gould and Gary Warner, who reflected and meditated upon ISEA and related subjects, offering us personal and critical views of our month's theme. Thanks to everyone for writing and reading.
> 
> Our guests during the second week (July 15-21) of our discussion about ISEA are:
> 
> Deborah Ely (AU) is Chief Executive Officer at Bundanon Trust and convenor of the interdisciplinary, site based, project SITEWORKS. Prior to taking up her position at Bundanon Trust, an arts, education and research organisation, she was the Visual Arts and Craft Manager at Arts NSW. Previous positions include Director of the Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney; founding Director of the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne; Coordinator of the first Experimenta festival of new media in Australia and Visual Arts Director of Watershed Media Centre in the UK. She was trained in Britain as a painter and art historian.
> 
> Garth Paine (US/AU) is a composer, musician and ­academic. He is the Interim Director of the School of Arts, Media and Engineering at Arizona State University where he is also a Professor of Digital Sound and Interactive Media. He previously established and directed the Virtual, Interactive, Performance Research environment (VIPRe) in Sydney, Australia. Garth was an early explorer of interactive responsive environments where the inhabitant generates the sonic landscape through their presence and behaviour. These explorations extended to scores for dance, generated through real-time video tracking and/or bio-sensing of dancers. His work has been shown throughout Australia, Europe, Japan, USA, Hong Kong and New Zealand.
> 
> Before proceeding to the third week's discussion we will again outline July's discussion, engaging the themes and activities underlying and emerging from this year's International Symposium of Electronic Arts, held in and around Sydney, Australia during June 2013. The primary theme for ISEA was "resistance is futile". How are we to interpret this? Resistance to what? The conference programme offered a positive take on this statement - proposing that the electronic arts have moved from the margins to occupy a central role in contemporary culture. But has this happened - and, if it has, is it generally the case or only so in certain contexts?
> 
> Other themes were also apparent at ISEA. Important questions were asked about:
> - sustainability - how this can be achieved in relation to the environment but also how artists, arts groups, academics and activists might ensure their activities are sustainable as the processes of technologisation and globalisation unfold?
> - notions of the human - what does it mean to be human now, in the context of developments in genetics and ICT?
> - globalisation, diasporas and cultural identity?
> - the boundaries of the real - where virtual and augmented realities have become pervasive media?
> - the post-digital and its implications for aesthetics and questions of agency?
> - the challenges and opportunities associated with big data?
> - urbanism, activism and the socially disruptive potential of technology?
> 
> Looking forward to another week's discussion...
> 
> 
> moderator:
> Simon Biggs
> simon at littlepig.org.uk<mailto:simon at littlepig.org.uk>
> http://www.littlepig.org.uk<http://www.littlepig.org.uk/> @SimonBiggsUK http://amazon.com/author/simonbiggs
> 
> s.biggs at ed.ac.uk<mailto:s.biggs at ed.ac.uk> Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh
> http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/edinburgh-college-art/school-of-art/staff/staff?person_id=182&cw_xml=profile.php
> http://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/simon-biggs%285dfcaf34-56b1-4452-9100-aaab96935e31%29.html
> 
> http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/  http://www.elmcip.net/  http://www.movingtargets.org.uk/  http://designinaction.com/
> MSc by Research in Interdisciplinary Creative Practices  http://www.ed.ac.uk/studying/postgraduate/degrees?id=656&cw_xml=details.php
> 
> 
> Simon Biggs
> simon at littlepig.org.uk<mailto:simon at littlepig.org.uk>
> http://www.littlepig.org.uk @SimonBiggsUK http://amazon.com/author/simonbiggs
> 
> s.biggs at ed.ac.uk<mailto:s.biggs at ed.ac.uk> Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh
> http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/edinburgh-college-art/school-of-art/staff/staff?person_id=182&cw_xml=profile.php
> http://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/simon-biggs%285dfcaf34-56b1-4452-9100-aaab96935e31%29.html
> 
> http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/  http://www.elmcip.net/  http://www.movingtargets.org.uk/  http://designinaction.com/
> MSc by Research in Interdisciplinary Creative Practices  http://www.ed.ac.uk/studying/postgraduate/degrees?id=656&cw_xml=details.php
> 
> 
> -- 
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