[-empyre-] Week 2: art, instincts and technology

[xtine burrough]

Thank you, Renate, for your introduction. Hello Empyre—long time reader, first time contributor :)

Judy and I are artist/academics collaborating on an anthology, Social Practice Art: Technologies for Change to be published by Routledge near the end of this year.

This book centers on the voice and works of artist-author contributors across six sections (listed below), which we are pairing with section introductions written by art historians and critical scholars. 

Social Practice Art: Technologies for Change demonstrates how artists use their creative practices to raise consciousness, form communities, create change, and bring forth social impact through technologies, from ATM machines to artificial intelligence. This book, a collection of case studies, is envisioned as a resource for artists, faculty, and students who engage with technology as a conduit for creative expression, and who want to explore social practices, such as cultural commentary and criticism, participatory art, and community engagement. 

The book begins with “Seeds and Tools,” a section that includes chapters grounded in digital investigations of ecosystems then traverses the digital wild. In “Windows and Mirrors,” we highlight the wisdom of powerful artists who consistently create socially-engaged art that employs technological practices then reflect their processes back to the readers. Moving on to Section III, “Magical Machines,” we focus on the supernatural, including magic, science fiction and time travel; themes that many are craving during these unprecedented times. In the “Expansions” section, we include artists who discuss art as social practice that forefront the affordance of digital forms, virtual spaces, and algorithmic experimentation as part of the creative process and expand consciousness across networks and in virtual spaces. Embedded in Section V, artist-authors draw on “Reimagination,” to confront, change, or rethink humanity using emerging platforms and on-demand processes. And finally, artist-authors create entirely new platforms for social exchange in “Radical Matrices,” which we felt was a fitting theme to end the journey. 

We imagine that intuition, perhaps through improvisation, is greatly at play in the works featured throughout this book. Digital media projects with collaborative lifeforms (mushrooms and artificial intelligence, for instance, in Cesar and Lois’ work) require agile and flexible approaches to artistic projects centered on participation. 

We would like to invite some of the contributing artist/authors to this conversation, including Kim Abeles, Dalida Maria Benfield, Christopher Blay, Margaretha Haughwout, Praba Pilar, Lucy HG Solomon, and Victoria Vesna (tag, you’re it!). 

Warmly,
xtine and Judy