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

Fri Jun 5 08:31:04 AEST 2015

Thanks Natasha and Patrick:

I am interested in the sound connection too. I wonder if there is a
discourse of sensitivity in the attempts to make us more perceptive to the
vitality of plants through sound, vibration, and movement. In films
like *Upstream
Colour*, a parasite transmitted from orchids to pigs and then to humans
makes those who carry it sensitive/responsive to infrasound. That becomes a
connection between the human and nonhuman, and forces the human characters
to rethink their forms of sociality. Infrasound is also said to be the
frequency of the Anthropocene. The bandwidth of machinery and technology
that often eludes us have a significant impact on ecology, often to the
detriment of species that communicate through similar bandwiths. So what
does it mean to access that below-the-human-threshold world of plants (that
are themselves at times going extinct due to those altered ecologies, as in
Jasmeen and Yi's project) and machines via sound? Is there a call for an
ecological sensitivity/sensibility in that threshold breach (I am using the
word breach, with short films like *Merus Breach* in mind) or another form
anthropomorphizing that serves to give us an increased sense of mastery
over nature as Patrick asked?

Selmin Kara
Assistant Professor of Film and New Media
OCAD University

On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 10:09 AM, Patrick Keilty <p.keilty at utoronto.ca>
wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> 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 <http://www.yorku.ca/nmyers> | Plant Studies Collaboratory
>> <http://plantstudies.wordpress.com/> | Sensorium
>> <http://finearts.yorku.ca/sensorium> | The Technoscience Salon
>> <http://technosalon.wordpress.com/> | Politics of Evidence
>> <http://politicsofevidence.wordpress.com/> | The Write2Know Project
>> <http://write2know.ca/>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 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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>>
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>>
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