Future of Art and Technology

Changes in society are sensed much earlier by artists than by us normans (as in normal humans). They use their craft to amplify what they sense and by doing so make us aware of these changes. As I told at the Future Salon last Friday, Joseph Beuys for me was one of these artists. In 1979 he was one of the founding members of the German Green party. For the Documenta 7 in 1982 he did the 7000 Oaks project:

I believe that planting these oaks is necessary not only in biospheric terms, that is to say, in the context of matter and ecology, but in that it will raise ecological consciousness -- raise it increasingly in the course of the years to come, because we shall never stop planting. -- Joseph Beuys, 1982

For this month's Future Salon we are happy to have someone who has his finger on the pulse of art and technology for many years: Steve Dietz was the curator in new media at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. He may not have his own Wikipedia page yet, but his Internet Art definition is quoted there:

Internet art projects are art projects for which the Net is both a sufficient and necessary condition of viewing/expressing/participating. Internet art can also happen outside the purely technical structure of the internet, when artists use specific social or cultural traditions from the internet in a project outside of it. Internet art is often, but not always, interactive, participatory and based on multimedia in the broadest sense.

For the past couple of months he has been the new director of ZeroOne a public benefit organization based in Silicon Valley that provides the collaboration of art and technology. Its biggest project yet is the just-announced Inter-Society for Electronic Arts (ISEA) Symposium held in San Jose from the 5th - 13th of August in 2006.

ZeroOne, in conjunction with the City of San Jose, the San Jose Museum of Art, The Tech Museum of Innovation, San Jose State University's CADRE Institute, Cultural Initiatives Silicon Valley and the San Jose Convention and Visitors Bureau is hosting the 2006 ISEA Symposium.

This is going to be really big and Steve is the curator as well as the festival director. His take on the Future of Art and Technology will therefore be very interesting.

The day after Valentines Day: Tuesday the 15th of February 6-7pm networking with light refreshments proudly sponsored by SAP. From 7-9+pm presentations and panel discussion. SAP Labs North America, Building D, Room Southern Cross, 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304 [map] Improve your commute by sharing it with a fellow Futurist. Check the Ride Board for opportunities.

This time please RSVP right away so we can better calculate food and drinks by sending an email to mona dot bhardwaj at sap dot com or to me.

See you all there.

Comments

[Darlina]

i think albert einstein would be proud of, u i bet clapping his dust right now LOL

[Mel Alexenberg]

You may interested in my new book that will be out next month:

THE FUTURE OF ART IN A DIGITAL AGE: FROM HELLENISTIC TO HEBRAIC CONSCIOUSNESS

By Mel Alexenberg
Bristol, UK: Intellect Books, 2006.

This book develops the thesis that the transition from premodernism to postmodernism in art of the digital age represents a paradigm shift from the Hellenistic to the Hebraic roots of Western culture. Semiotic and morphological analysis of art and visual culture demonstrate the contemporary confluence between the deep structure of Jewish consciousness and new directions in art that arise along the interface between scientific inquiry, digital technologies, and multicultural expressions. Complementing these two analytic methodologies, alternative methodologies of kabbalah and halakhah provide postmodern methods for gaining fresh insights into the significance of digital age art forms. Exemplary artworks are described in the text and illustrated with photographs.

“This is a wonderful and important book. The author links the history of art to the important role played by various forms of thinking in the Jewish tradition and connects that to the emerging culture of digital expression. Brilliant insights and new ways of seeing make this a must-read for anyone interested in the intellectual history of images in the 21st Century.”
Ron Burnett, author of How Images Think (MIT Press, 2005), President of Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver, Canada, and Artist/Designer at the New Media Innovation Center.

“In his book, Mel Alexenberg navigates his artistic insight amid the labyrinthian complexities, explosions, and revolutions of the past forty years of art, tracing his way amid questions of science and religion, technology and environment, education, culture, and cosmos. Everyone will find his book full of new vantage points and vistas, fresh insights that give a uniquely personal history of artistic time that indeed points to new and open futures.”
Lowry Burgess, Dean, Professor of Art, and Distinguished Fellow of the Studio for Creative Inquiry, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh.

“The author succeeds in opening a unique channel to the universe of present and future art in a highly original and inspiring way. His connection between ancient concepts (Judaism) and the present digital age will force us to thoroughly rethink our ideas about art, society and technology. This book is evidence that Golem is alive!”
Michael Bielicky, Professor of Media Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Czech Republic, and at Hochschule fur Gestaltung, ZKM Center for Art and Media, in Karlsruhe, Germany.

“The Future of Art in a Digital Age: From Hellenistic to Hebraic Consciousness opens new vistas in the attempts to reconcile the newest developments in digital art and postmodern critical perspectives with the ancient concerns of the arts with the spiritual. It offers fresh perspectives in how we can learn from Greek and Jewish thought to understand the present era.”
Stephen Wilson, author of Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology (MIT Press,2002) and Professor of Conceptual and Information Arts at San Francisco State University.

“Mel Alexenberg, a very sophisticated artist and scholar of much experience in the complex playing field of art-science-technology, addresses the rarely asked question: How does the "media magic" communicate content – addressing even the most "intangible" (to media zealots) : Judeo/Christian belief, the Bible, the Torah! God bless him!”
Otto Piene, Professor Emeritus and Director, MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge.

“This book is simply a must read analysis for anyone interested in where we and the visual arts are going in our future. Alexenberg has provided us with powerful new lenses to allow us to "see" how postmodern art movements and classical Judaic traditions compliment and fructify one another as the visual arts are now enlarging and adding a spiritual dimension to our lives in the digital era.”
Moshe Dror, co-author of Futurizing the Jews: Alternative Futures for the 21st Century (Praeger,2003), President of World Network of Religious Futurists, and Israel Coordinator of World Future Society.

[Mel Alexenberg]

You’d enjoy reading my newest book fresh off the press.
Mel

EDUCATING ARTISTS FOR THE FUTURE:
Learning at the Intersections of Art, Science, Technology, and Culture
Mel Alexenberg, Editor
(Intellect Books/University of Chicago Press, 2008)
In UK: http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/ppbooks.php?isbn=9781841501918
In USA: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/278940.ctl

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION: EDUCATION FOR A CONCEPTUAL AGE

Learning at the Intersections of Art, Science, Technology, and Culture
- Mel Alexenberg, Professor of Art and Founding Dean, School of Art and Multimedia, Netanya Academic College, Netanya, Israel. (author of The Future of Art in a Digital Age: From Hellenistic to Hebraic Consciousness, Intellect Books, 2006)

BEYOND THE DIGITAL

Beyond the Digital: Preparing Artists to Work at the Frontiers of Technoculture
- Stephen Wilson, Professor and Director of Conceptual/Information Arts Program, San Francisco State University, California, USA, (author of Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology, MIT Press, 2002)

Pixels and Particles: The Path to Syncretism
- Roy Ascott, President, Planetary Collegium and Professor, University of Plymouth, UK. (author of Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology and Consciousness, University of California Press, 2003, and editor of Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research)

Sustaining Creativity and Losing the Wild
- Carol Gigliotti, Associate Professor of New Media, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Making Space for the Artist
- Mark Amerika, Associate Professor of Art and Art History, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA, (author of META/DATA: A Digital Poetics, MIT Press, 2007)

NETWORKED TIMES

Unthinkable Complexity: Art Education in Networked Times
- Robert Sweeny, Assistant Professor of Art and Art Education, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, PA, USA

Art/Science & Education
- Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss, Professor and Head of the International MA Program in ePedagogy, University of Art and Design, Helsinki, Finland. (author of (e)Pedagogy-Visual Knowledge Building: Rethinking Art and New Media in Education, Peter Lang, 2005)

Learning, Education and the Arts in a Digital World
- Ron Burnett, President of Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, (author of How Images Think, MIT Press, 2004)

Afference and Efference: Encouraging Social Impact through Art and Science Education
- Jill Scott, Research Professor: Institute for Cultural Studies in Art, Media and Design, Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst Zürich, Switzerland, and Vice Director, Z-Node, Planetary Collegium. (author of Artistsinlabs: Exploring the Interface Between Art and Science, Springer, 2006)

POLYCULTURAL PERSPECTIVES

Expressing with Grey Cells: Indian Perspectives on New Media Art
- Vinod Vidwans, Professor and Head of Departments of New Media and Software User Interface Design, National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India

New Media Art as Embodiment of Tao
- Wengao Huang, Associate Professor of Media Art, College of Information Science and Engineering, Shandong University at Weihai, China

Between Hyper-Images and Aniconism: New Perspectives on Islamic Art in the Education of Artists
- Ozgur Sogancy, Assistant Professor of Fine Art Education, Anadolu University, Eskisehir, Turkey

Touching Light: PostTraditional Immersion in Interactive Artistic Environments
- Diane Gromala, Professor and Associate Director of the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, Canada. Co-author of Windows and Mirrors: Interaction Design, Digital Art and the Myth of Transparency (MIT Press 2005), and
- Jinsil Seo, PhD Candidate, School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Simon Fraser University

REFLECTIVE INQUIRY

Media Golem: Between Prague and ZKM
- Michael Bielicky, Professor and Head of the Department of InfoArt/Digital Media, Hochschule fur Gestaltung, ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany, and Academy of Fine Arts, Prague, Czech Republic

Life Transformation – Art Mutation
- Eduardo Kac, Professor and Chairman, Art and Technology Department, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA (author of Telepresence & Bio Art, University of Michigan Press, 2005)

Learning Through the Re-embodiment of the Digital Self
- Yacov Sharir, Associate Professor of Dance and Multimedia Art, University of Texas at Austin, USA

My Journey: From Physics to Graphic Design to User-Interface/Information-Visualization Design
- Aaron Marcus, President Aaron Marcus and Associates (AM+A), and Visiting Professor of Media Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, USA (author of Graphic Design for Electronic Documents and User Interfaces, Addison-Wesley, 1991)

EMERGENT PRAXIS

Entwined Histories: Reflections on Teaching Art, Science, and Technological Media
- Edward A. Shanken, Professor of Art History, Savannah College of Art and Design, Georgia, USA (editor of Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology, and Consciousness, University of California Press, 2003)

A Generative Emergent Approach to Graduate Education
- Bill Seaman, Professor and Head of Department of Digital Media, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI, USA

Media Literacy: Reading and Writing Images in a Digital Age
- Shlomo Lee Abrahmov, Senior Lecturer in Design and Instructional Systems Technologies, Holon Institute of Technology, Holon, Israel

The Creative Spirit in the Age of Digital Technologies: Seven Tactical Exercises
- Lucia Leao, Professor of Art and Technology, Department of Computer Science, Sao Paulo Catholic University, and SENAC, Brazil (author of Derivas: Cartografias do Ciberespaço, Annablume, 2004)

EPILOGUE: REALMS OF LEARNING

From Awesome Immersion to Holistic Integration
- Mel Alexenberg, Former Associate Professor of Art and Education, Columbia University, Chairman of Fine Arts, Pratt Institute, Dean of Visual Arts, New World School of the Arts, Miami, and Research Fellow, MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies, USA