[-empyre-] Welcome to our June topic on -empyre: Plant Art and New Media

Fri Jun 5 03:16:56 AEST 2015

I also just have a technical question for Jasmeen and Yi's project
"The Language of Plants." Are we listening to the sound of water
moving through the plant, which changes depending on environmental
conditions? I think that
s what the the diagram explains on your site
(http://studioforlandscapeculture.com/The-Language-of-Plants), but the
writing is a little fuzzy (or I need new glasses!).
Patrick Keilty
Assistant Professor
Faculty of Information
Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies
University of Toronto
http://www.patrickkeilty.com/

On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 10:09 AM, Patrick Keilty <p.keilty at utoronto.ca> wrote:
> Thanks Natasha! These are great questions. Hope to hear from our featured
> discussants soon. I absolutely *love* both of these projects.
>
> One question these two projects brings to mind is whether the plants are
> trying to communicate, and to whom? And what does it say about us that we
> primarily understand communication in auditory terms? While Jo SiMalaya
> Alcampo's "Singing Plants Reconstruct Memory" is a combination of the
> auditory, kinaesthetic, and visual, sound is what make the installation so
> compelling. Why do we feel the need to enhance our auditory perception and
> the auditory system the plants produce? Are there other ways in which plants
> communicate? Do plants care if we hear them? If plants are not communicating
> to us per se, then perhaps our attempt to hear plants is a symptom of our
> own humanity. If that's the case, then we haven't de-centered the human.
> Instead, plants help us better understand ourselves and our relation to the
> "the world out there."
>
> I realize now that I'm just asking a series of questions. Give me some time
> to think about it. Maybe I'll have some answers in a future post. ;)
>
>
> Patrick Keilty
> Assistant Professor
> Faculty of Information
> Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies
> University of Toronto
> http://www.patrickkeilty.com/
>
> On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 3:18 PM, Natasha Myers <natasha.myers at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>> Thanks Patrick for getting us started on this exciting topic!
>>
>> I am really thrilled that this week we have Jasmeen Bains, Yi Zhou and Jo
>> Simalaya Alcampo leading off the discussion. One of the great things about
>> this particular grouping is that Jasmeen and Yi's recent project "The
>> Language of Plants" resonates so well with Jo Simalaya's "Singing Plants
>> Reconstruct Memory."
>>
>> Both projects sonify plants through electro-acoustic assemblages. And yet,
>> these interactive installation/performance pieces approach plants in very
>> different ways, and their works produce very different meanings and effects.
>> One project begins from the premise that plants generate their own sounds,
>> just outside of human perception, while the other engages the
>> electro-conductivity of plants to draw human sounds out of plant bodies.
>>
>> Here are links to these different projects:
>>
>> http://studioforlandscapeculture.com/The-Language-of-Plants
>> http://www.josimalaya.com/singing-plants.html
>>
>> I wonder as a way of starting off the discussion, our artists might
>> reflect on the question of plant sonification. How do these works produce a
>> kind of plant vocality? Why bring sound and voice to plants? What does it
>> mean to bring plant soundings and responsivity into human perception? What
>> are some of the remarkable things you learned about plants both in making
>> these works and in sharing them with others?
>>
>> I'm sure these questions will generate many more! Looking forward to
>> following how this unfolds!
>>
>> best wishes,
>> Natasha
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Natasha Myers
>> Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology | Convenor, Politics of
>> Evidence Working Group | York University
>> 310 Bethune College, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario  M3J 1P3 Canada |
>> Tel. (416) 736-2100 x 70660 | Fax (416) 736-5768 | nmyers at yorku.ca
>> Website | Plant Studies Collaboratory | Sensorium | The Technoscience
>> Salon | Politics of Evidence | The Write2Know Project
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 2015-06-01, at 11:39 AM, Patrick Keilty wrote:
>>
>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I just have some minor revisions to our schedule for guest
>> discussants, and I mistakenly left out a bio in my introduction. My
>> apologies. Below please find the corrected schedule and additional
>> bio. I'll of course introduce the discussants again at the beginning
>> of their weeks.
>>
>> June 1 - 7: Week 1: Jasmeen Bains, Yi Zhou, and Jo Simalaya Alcampo
>>
>> June 8 - 14: Week 2: Alana Bartol and Pei-Ying Lin (with Dimitrios
>> Stamatis, and Jasmina Weiss)
>>
>> June 15 - 21: Week 3:  Amanda White and Špela Petrič (with Dimitrios
>> Stamatis, and Jasmina Weiss)
>>
>> June 22 - 28: Week 4: Laura Cinti, Grégory Lasserre, and Anaïs met den
>> Ancxt
>>
>> Scenocosme is a collaboration between Gregory Lasserre & Anais met den
>> Ancxt. Gregory Lasserre and Anais met den Ancxt are two artists
>> working together as a duo under the name Scenocosme. They work and
>> live in France. They develop the concept of interactivity in their
>> artworks by using multiple kinds of expression. They mix art and
>> digital technology in order to find substances of dreams, poetries,
>> sensitivities and delicacies. Their works come from possible
>> hybridizations between the living world and technology which meeting
>> points incite them to invent sensitive and poetic languages. They also
>> explore invisible relationships with our environment : they can feel
>> energetic variations of living beings. They design interactive
>> artworks, and choreographic collective performances, in which
>> spectators share extraordinary sensory experiences. Plants of their
>> artwork Akousmaflore react to the human touch by different sounds.
>> They use also water (Fluides), stones (Kymapetra) and wood (Ecorces;
>> Matières sensibles) as elements capable to generate tactile, visual
>> and sound sensory interactivity. Their artworks were presented in
>> several contemporary art and digital art spaces. Since 2004, they have
>> exhibited their interactive installation artworks at ZKM Karlsruhe
>> Centre for Art and Media (Germany), at Museum Art Gallery of Nova
>> Scotia (Canada), at Contemporary Art Museum Raleigh (USA), at Daejeon
>> Museum of Art (Korea), at Bòlit / Centre d’Art Contemporani (Girona)
>> and in many international biennals and festivals.
>> http://www.scenocosme.com/
>> Patrick Keilty
>> Assistant Professor
>> Faculty of Information
>> Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies
>> University of Toronto
>> http://www.patrickkeilty.com/
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 10:34 AM, Renate Terese Ferro <rferro at cornell.edu>
>> wrote:
>>
>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>>
>> Welcome Natasha Myers and thank you for joining our -empyre moderating
>>
>> team members Selmin Kara, and Patrick Keilty for the June discussion on
>>
>> -empyre soft-skinned space,"Plant Art and New Media².  This
>>
>> cross-disciplinary topic will bring together those interested in art,
>>
>> science, popular culture, philosophy and anthropology to examine the
>>
>> dynamics between culture and nature.  We look forward to a topic that
>>
>> tests the grounds for discussions between human and nonhuman, and organic
>>
>> and machinic life. Natasha, Selmin and Patrick will be introducing this
>>
>> topic shortly as well as this month¹s guests but I did want to thank them
>>
>> for organizing the monthly topic. We all look forward to it.
>>
>>
>> Happy June to all
>>
>> Renate
>>
>>
>> Natasha Myers is Associate Professor of Anthropology at York University,
>>
>> the Director of the Plant Studies Collaboratory, Convenor of the Politics
>>
>> of Evidence Working Group, and co-organizer of Toronto's Technoscience
>>
>> Salon. Her anthropological research examines forms of life in the arts and
>>
>> biosciences. She is the author of Rendering Life Molecular: Models,
>>
>> Modelers and Excitable Matter (Duke, 2015), and has published articles on
>>
>> modes of embodiment, the senses, and affects in the life sciences
>>
>> indifferences, Social Studies of Science, Science Studies, and edited
>>
>> volumes. Her recent research examines the arts and sciences of botanical
>>
>> experimentation, the contours of the vegetal sensorium, and the affective
>>
>> ecologies of plant/insect relations. Her new work tracks the formation and
>>
>> propagation of plant publics as artists and scientists stage interventions
>>
>> in sites like botanical gardens. Links to her research, research-creation
>>
>> projects, and publications can be
>>
>> found at http://natashamyers.org <http://natashamyers.org/>
>>
>>
>> Selmin Kara is Assistant Professor of Film and New Media at OCAD
>>
>> University. She has critical interests in digital aesthetics and tropes
>>
>> related to the anthropocene and extinction in cinema as well as the use of
>>
>> sound and new technologies in contemporary documentary. Selmin¹s work has
>>
>> appeared and is forthcoming in Studies in Documentary Film, Poiesis,
>>
>> the Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media, Music and Sound
>>
>> in Nonfiction Film, Post-Cinema, and The Philosophy of Documentary Film.
>>
>> She has recently co-edited a journal issue on documentary art activism and
>>
>> is currently co-editing an anthology on emergent forms and genres in
>>
>> contemporary documentary, to be published by Routledge in Fall 2015.
>>
>>
>> Patrick Keilty is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Information at the
>>
>> University of Toronto and Instructor in the Bonham Centre for Sexual
>>
>> Diversity Studies there. Professor Keilty works at the intersection of
>>
>> media studies, technology studies, and information studies. His primary
>>
>> teaching and research field is digital culture, with a particular focus on
>>
>> visual culture, new media art, metadata and database logic, database
>>
>> cinema, pornography, gender, sexuality, race, and critical theory. His
>>
>> monograph project, provisionally titled Database Desire, engages the
>>
>> question of how our embodied engagements with labyrinthine qualities of
>>
>> database design mediate aesthetic objects and structure sexual desire in
>>
>> ways that abound with expressive possibilities and new
>>
>> narrative and temporal structures. Recently, he has published and
>>
>> presented his SSHRC-funded research on a wide variety of topics, including
>>
>> embodiment and technology, algorithmic
>>
>> display, the history of information retrieval, technology and
>>
>> transformations of gendered labor, women in computing, design
>>
>> and experience, compulsion and control, metadata and the creation of
>>
>> fetishistic networks, and feminist and queer new media and technoscience
>>
>> issues generally. More at http://www.patrickkeilty.com/.
>>
>>
>> Renate Ferro
>>
>> Visiting Assistant Professor of Art,Cornell University
>>
>> Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Office:  306
>>
>> Ithaca, NY  14853
>>
>> Email:   <rferro at cornell.edu <mailto:rtf9 at cornell.edu>>
>>
>> URL:  http://www.renateferro.net <http://www.renateferro.net/>
>>
>>      http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net
>>
>> <http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net/>
>>
>> Lab:  http://www.tinkerfactory.net <http://www.tinkerfactory.net/>
>>
>>
>> Managing Co-moderator of -empyre- soft skinned space
>>
>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>