The imaginary in digital art: Background

Lourdes Cirlot

ABSTRACT

Digital art is constituted by enormous quantities of images. Same as with the art of other eras, there are good works and bad works. What's certain is that, in any case, the majority are interesting for some reason.

My idea is to relate digital art with the past, since in its imaginary we can detect constant alusions to the artistic manifestations of past times. To track the connections with the art of the past is a hard task, but at the same time mostly attractive, since it lets us understand how tradition has managed to open way during the centuries. After all, it is most interesting to be able to establish the existent differences between contemporary art and its sources of inspiration, as it's evident that a contemporary artist's perspective is radically different to the one artists used to have in the past.

Demonstrating analogies, differences, contradictions and new interpretations is for me a real challenge that I will try to face in this lecture.

From Cinema to cell phone: contemporary transformations of image-movement

Anna Casanovas

Cinema -which, as Godard said, was an invention of the 19th century that flourished in the 20th- has introduced new ways of perceiving the world. The introduction of time in space has changed the concept of representation as something unique and always identical to itself, as society used to see it. This great event that constituted the representation of movement, kept on evolvind during the 20th century in parallel to the emergence of the new technologies of communication. Thus, in the beginning of the 21st century we can affirm the existence of four generations of screens whose principles and proceedings modify our cultural panorama deeply and at the same time challenge the study and the analysis of  audiovisual creation.

Art and Politics in the Web. Towards a Critical Culture

Gabriela Berti

CV
She has a degree in Philosophy (MAsc Contemporary  Art and DEA Philosophy). Tutor and coordinator of the Master of Aesthetics of Contemporary Art (UAB- Joan Miró Foundation); she has also imparted classes at the UB, at the Polytechnic University of Valencia and the School of Art and Design (EINA). For 8 years she had been a professor of the University of Buenos Aires and currently she is in charge of the Department of Education of the Association of Practical Philosophy of Catalunya (AFPC); also she has worked as a professor in Filoempresa and NORIA project. She works as an independent curator for Caixa Forum and other institutions; she is a director of the Hipzoma project. She has written various articles specialized in contemporary art and urban cultures; she has translated texts in books of art aesthetics.

Conference:
The first Internet artistic projects appear in 1994; they were not only linked to a technological innovation that had an impact in the art world, but they also opened up new practices that raised political and social aspects from a critical and creative point of view. Although it seems difficult to establish closed typologies, Artivism, Art Hactivism, Hacktivism and Electronic Civil Disobedience are terms that were coined to characterize the different forms of artistic-politic interventions. In this work I will try to present an operative notion of the concept of the aesthetic, that allows us to analyze the articulation between the ways of making art and politics, in the sphere of critical culture. For this I will take certain notions by J. Rancière, presenting some examples from the Internet art world.

• Interview Gabriela Berti (Spanish Version)

Reclaim the Backbone: Activism and public space in Internet

David Casacuberta

CV
He is assistant professor of Philosophy of Science in the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. His current line of investigation focuses on the social and cognitive impact of the new media and he has published various books, chapters of books and articles on the subject, not only in electronic format but also printed.

Similarly, he works for Transit Projectes (www.transit.es) in various projects related to the e-inclusion and how the ICT can be used to fight against social exclusion. Some of these projects as E-Learning for E-Inclusion  (www.el4ei.net) or Face Value (www.facevalue.ws) have an international reach and are co-financed by the European Union. For Transit also, along with the Municipality of Granollers and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, he co-directs the Master of Desenvolupament Cultural Comunitari.

He has also been an evaluator for the European program for the promotion of digital content E-Content of the European Union, and external consultant on digital culture for Caixa Forum (Fundació la Caixa), the Center of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona, the Center of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona and the Factory of the 21st century (Granollers).

Similarly, he has been the coordinator of the e-learning program for the Faculty of Letters of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

Regarding his teaching experience, David Casacuberta is a professor of the Universitat Autònoma since 1991, in charge of classes of the philosophy program (science philosophy, logic, mind philosophy, language philosophy, theory of knowledge, epistemology etc.) and also in the department of Humanities, with various classes directed towards the cultural and social implications of the new technologies, like Digital Culture, Technology and contemporary thinking or design and visualization of information.

He has also been a professor of the BAU School También ha sido profesor of Graphic Design with the class culture and Multimedia Information.

He has participated as a lecturer in the Following Master, Postgraduate and Doctorate programs: Máster de Cultura Historia (UB), Máster de Gestión Cultural (UB), Máster de Cultura visual (UB), Pensar l'art avui: Postgrado de estética y teoría del arte (Fundació Miró/UAB), Doctorado de Filosofia (UAB), Doctorado Ciencia Cognitiva i Lenguaje (UAB/UB/UPC)

As an artist he is -along with Marco Bellonzi –the 50% of Santofile group and has made the following works:


1998 Mantra Mandala www.santofile.org/mm/mandala.html net.op.
Net.op.art and psychoacoustics (net.art). Exposed in: Art Futura 01, Mediaterra 01,  File 02 and Sonar 02

1999 G.U.N. www.santofile.org/gun/
Semantic web of memes related to the concept of work and its revision in the virtual world (net.art). Exposed in the Werkleitz Biennial in 2000 (first prize in the category of net.art), in Art Futura 01, File 02 and in Net Art Guide of the Frauhofer Institute.

2000 DJ El ñino www.santofile.org/djninho/
An artificial personality that expresses its emotions through music (software.art). Presented in the festival z2000 (Berlin) and financed by the Akademie der Kunste de Berlín and in File 02.

2002 Noise_Inside www.santofile.org/noise_inside/
Revision of Duchamp's ready-made “A Secret Noise” by using the new media and the mimetic genre personalities, within the  Primavera Sound Festival 02.

2005 X_reloaded.
Appropriation Re-lecture of a fragment from Quixote by various contemporary creators. Winner of the first prize Ingenio400 in the Net.Art category.

Conference:
In this talk we will present and comment on a series of activist initiatives that begin with the fact that Internet has the status of a public space and raise this basic intuition, either by creating spaces of discourse and collective creation, or by establishing initiatives to claim this space. From this point we will analyze the different models of public virtual space that can be deduced from these initiatives, examining pros and cons.

• Interview: David Casacuberta (Spanish Version)

The creativity of the connected multitude and the meaning of art in the context of web 2.0

Juan Martín Prada

CV
He's a professor in the Faculty of Social Science and Communication of the University of Cádiz. He's the writer of numerous articles and essays on theory of contemporary art and digital aesthetics, among them: Deleuze-Guattari y la corporeidad de la tecnología (1998), El Net.art o la definición social de los nuevos medios (2001), and the books La apropiación posmoderna. Arte, práctica apropiacionista y Teoría de la posmodernidad (ed. Fundamentos, 2001) and Las nuevas condiciones del arte contemporáneo (Briseño editores, 2003). He has been a collaborator of the supplement “Cultures” of the Barcelona Avant Garde and of the magazines Visual Studies, REIS, Red Digital, Papiers d'art, A minima, Temps d'art, Transversal, EXIT Books, among others. His last curatorial projects have been the net.art works “Vínculo-a. Políticas de la afectividad, estéticas del biopoder” (2006) for MediaLabMadrid and “Donde y durante” for the la Noche en Blanco de Madrid (2006). He is currently the director of the platform “Inclusiva-net.org” in Medialab Prado (Madrid) dedicated to the research, documentation and diffusion of net theory and cultures.

Conference:
What we could name as “art” in the context of “Web 2.0” is precisely what would mostly let us believe in the connected multitude, in its possibilities for the free production of critic thought and new life. As an artistic practice, the best form of resistance in the context of new webs would be an extreme anticipation of the power of multitude. The success of a determined artistic proposal in the context “Web 2.0” would subsequently depend on its capacity to evoke, within the singularity of this concrete production that is the work itself, not only the abstract of life in a global space, but also, above all, the tensions of renovation and transformation, of criticism, of pleasure, of more liberty and more singularity that are inherent to the new communities and social networks

• Interview: Juan Martín Prada (Spanish Version)

Nanoaesthetics: Transfiguring Cultural Matter

M. Jesús Buxó

Conference
If up to now thinking in cultural matter supposed focusing on visible and invisible productions, until the extreme of talking about immaterial culture, the nano-scientific advances bring a new challenge to the invisibility of cultural and artistic expressions. Is it possible to have an aesthetic of the unseen, although it would be assumed through its manifestations? Without doubt the unseen was a territory associated to the supernatural, the unspoken, to the things hidden that are present in informatics and that cannot stop producing the miracle of knowing, noting and sensing. There is no easy word to substantiate material culture under these conditions, in a way that making use of the idea of movement and metamorphosis, it is important to question upon the concept of transfiguring; by transfiguring we mean that artists-materials-participants produce the transfigurative act co-creatively.

Architecture in Virtual Communities

Alberto T. Estévez

Conference:
After a broad investigation of a numerous group of ESARQ(la Escola Tècnica Superior d’Arquitectura de la Universitat Internacional de Catalunya), under the supervision of Prof. Alberto T. Estévez, in this conference we offer some conclusions on architecture of the virtual communities that one can come across in the parallel universe of the Internet. A great ingenuity in the creation of architecture that still doesn't know how to approach the possibilities of the new media. An infinite mediocrity that pulls along the gray world of real architecture towards virtual architecture. It's a contrast to the optimism that should possess us when facing the fascinating panorama that opens up before our eyes, clean and unexplored. Supported by the necessity of the reverie that has always been a feature of the human being, that adopts a special departure in these virtual communities.

The Architecture of Posible Worlds

KarL S. Chu

CV
He comes from Mandalay (Burma), he has carried out his studies of architecture and master in the University of Houston, Texas (1978), and the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Michigan (1984), respectively, studying with Daniel Libeskind. He is currently a professor of the official Master of Biodigital Architecture (ESARQ - Universitat Internacional de Catalunya) and has previously directed the Master of the Metaphysics of Computation in Architecture at the same university. He is also a professor of Columbia University y and the Pratt Institute in Nueva York.

He has previously been an invited lecturer in numerous universities of America, Europe and Asia. Moreover, he is a permanent professor in the Los Angeles studio Metaxy (EE.UU.), that explores various computational proceedings in order to develop genetic systems in the field of architecture. His work has been exhibited in various places, including the Venice Biennial and the Beijing Biennial, publishing in international books and magazines. His teachings on architecture and computation have opened new trajectories and new territories for architecture, especially in the field of genetic architecture.

Conference:
Founded in the field of mathematics, of physics and metaphysics, in this conference we explore the conceptual space that sees computing as an intrinsic propriety of the physical universe, creating a re-conception of architecture according to principles of a computational monadology, a monadology of architecture as a modal conception of the architecture of possible worlds. Beyond the conception of digital machines as pure instruments of calculation, fabrication and communication. With the convergence of computing and genetics we come to the dawn of a new world, that opens up very different doors of possible worlds never seen before in the history of human civilization, which will be introduced here. Moreover, we'll show its work of genetic architecture based on the use of computing.

Artistic practices, Social control and resistance

Moderated by: Michela Rosso

Participants: Fabiane Pianowski, Paloma G. Díaz, Fundació Rodríguez, Carlos Seda

Mail Art as a predecessor of Net.Art: Clemente Padín

Michela Rosso

CONFERENCIA

Clemente Padín (Rocha, R. O., Uruguay, 1939) is one of the main developers of Mail Art; from the end of the 60s and in 1974 he organized in Gallery U of Montevideo the Creative Postcard Festival, in the first documented exhibition of Mail Art in South America. This current of artistic expression played a fundamental part as an instrument of denunciation of the repression in the Latin American countries during the lapse of the dictatorships, prolongating itself afterwards as an extra-institutional architecture of major projection during the length of time.
Nowadays Mail Art (also called Postcard Art) networks are maintained throughout the world. The new technological media (fax, e-mail etc.) contributed to the enrichment of the potential of communication of Mail Art; in turn, Mail Art reached towards interactivity and the massive amount of art created in the Internet (Net.Art).
Since its beginnings, Mail Art opted for maintaining itself to the margins of commercial circuits; perhaps its voluntary isolation form the fashions of the art market explains its persistence for more than 40 years. In the presentation we will analyze, through various texts and some fragments of a video-interview of Clemente Padín, the future of Mail Art in the margin of the progressive process of institutionalization that this artistic current is suffering from. 

Mail Art: Internet out of control

Fabiane Pianowski

CV
Graduate of Fine Arts (2003) with a Master in Education (2004) from the la Fundação Universidade Federal do Rio Grande (FURG) - Brasil, she is currently a PhD student in Historia, Teoría y Crítica de las Artes in the Universidad de Barcelona (UB). She has experience as a lecturer and cultural manager in her home country.

Conference:
Internet Art is a group of different aesthetics, that find in mail art its channel of expression, appropriating this subversive way in order to configure it as an alternative cultural channel of artistic message interchange. The function of mail art as a subversive net of communication, within the social context of the 60s and the 70s, gave it a turn towards a critical attitude that aimed to reveal the oppressive and absurd conditions imposed by  social circles. Especially in the context of the repressive dictatorships of Latin America, Mail Art developed greatly as a form of politic and cultural repression. Specifically in Brazil, the work and the archive of the artist Paulo Bruscky, the most enthusiastic promoter of Mail Art of the country, is a point of reference for research of this subject matter.

Social and technological control in digital art:from the experimentation to radical criticism

Paloma G. Díaz

CV
Professor specialized in Media Art, she administers multimedia projects and curates exhibitions. She got a Degree in Information Sciences, in the branch of Visual and Audio Picture Sciences, from the Complutense University of Madrid, she has a Diploma in Design and the DEA of the Doctorate Program of the History of Contemporary Art of UB.

Currently she works in her Doctorate Thesis on “Control and Video Surveillance in the art of the Mass Media”. She publishes her blog “UNCOVERING CONTROL” and makes her own artistic project "Destapa el control"(http://destapaelcontrol.blogspot.com/).

Conference:
In the 20th century, along with the development of technology, many diverse creative practices appear; these practices are intimately linked to this evolution and have been up to now characterized from their high level of experimentation and fusion of innovative interdisciplinary practices.
This climate of technified permanent register, that has been founded in the new century, has undoubtedly clashed with the individual and collective liberty which the society of the last century had fought for so hard. For that reason it is not strange that, when it comes to digital creation, it has turned into a subject of recurrent reflection. The technological panopticism has imposed such a strange a modus vivendi, that it cannot be ignored by any artist that is minimally committed to his/her surroundings.

• Interview: Paloma G. Díaz (Spanish Version)

Projects by Rodríguez Foundation

CV

Fundación Rodríguez works as a collective since 1994. Since then it has organized and coordinated projects, principally related to contemporary culture and new media, always perceiving its activities as an extension of its artistic work. We work on the adecuacy between project and medium, always reflecting theoretically on new forms of curating and new ways of production, diffusion and distribution contemporary art.
Our work becomes more and more consolidated in concepts as the dissolution of forms and the emission of free knowledge.

ABSTRACT:

Ideas like “decentralization” and “horizontalism” aim to unleash a critical analysis of our work surroundings, in order to explore our territories of social impact. We have always understood our project as an extension of our creative work and as a way to delve deeper into our intellectual training, beyond our work as solicitors, coordinators, curators or however you'd like to call it. It's more suggestive to meet people and learn than to go on showing what everybody already knows...
We understand that artistic practice has been stripped from ideology as a consequence of the process of banalization of culture (and everyday life). For that reason our intention has always been to distance ourselves from the notion that there's a difference between thought and action.
We believe that it is possible to work in liminar territories of production, in these borders where one model doesn't cancel the others, but it makes the relations among creators and mediators more reasonable, adding flexibility to the processes and the dealing with the institutions from the autonomy of negotiations.
Our experience has always been linked to the problematics of the cultural production in contemporary society. A cultural production that has mixed up traditional paradigms with the bursting in of the idea of Internet and the new technological possibilities.
The complexity that entails this new scenery where the differences among production / distribution / diffusion  are dissolved, and, as a consequence, between producer / consumer / receiver, brings us before this new reality, whose power of relocated production provides us with a renewed idea of emission.

Selection of projects by Fundación Rodríguez:

   1. TESTER. 2004-06.

www.e-tester.net

Produced by Arteleku, with the assistance of Gobierno Vasco, American Center Foundation and Casa Asia

   2. Intervenciones TV, 1999-2007

www.intervenciones.tv

Produced by the Centre Cultural Montehermoso.

   3. Panel de Control, 2007

 www.paneldecontrol.cc

Project by Zemos 98 + Fundació Rodríguez

   4. Estructuras "redes" colectivos, 2007

www.h-aac.net/html/quam

Produced by H. Associació per a les Arts Contemporànies

The artist as a generator of swarmings. Questioning Internet society

Carlos Seda

CV
He has studied Philosophy in the Universidad de las Islas Baleares; he's a technology consultant dedicated to the analysis, development and promotion of the new technologies and a member of the artistic collective Cortrex. Some of his fields of study are the transformation of power in the web society after post modernism, the video surveillance and the approximation of the philosophical thinking to marketing. His prime influences when he deals with these subjects have been David de Ugarte y Santiago López Petit, both prominent thinkers of our country in our time. Above all he is interested in the artistic processes capable of suspending the life of the individual and that allow people to free themselves from surveillance.

Conference: 
One of the main tasks of the artist in Internet society, nowadays called the Internet “Web 2.0”, it is to present its dark side in order to liberate it from itself. For that reason it is necessary to go through an analysis about the conditions under which the messages go through and mobilize chains of nodes in the Internet with the intention of crystallizing and visualizing in the means of traditional communication, revealing in this form not only the activist practices but also the underpinning of vigilance that these processes can suggest.

Virtual Universes, Metaverso and Gameworlds

Moderated by  Virginia Ruisánchez

Participants: Carlos López, David Zehnter (Apfel), Aitor Morrás

Introduction to the Gameworld experience in diverse institutions

Virginia Ruisánchez

Conference:
During the past years with the appearance of Internet, the phenomenon of videogame has managed to stress its presence and development in the on line medium, and it has been established as a device whose potentiality can be considered beyond its original condition as an instrument of leisure and entertainment. This new condition makes us talk about Multiplayer Online Videogames that permit a multiple access to the game and where the players are protagonists, because, in some occasions, these platforms give to the players-programmers the power to develop the videogame itself. The consideration of this phenomenon is such, that the debate over its nature (material, aesthetic, philosophic, etc.) and its value of use has been moved to the academic and museum worlds. We will seek to observe and analyze the experience that has been acquired in these fields, as for example the expositions and the academic activities.

Virtual worlds as a marketing tool 

Carlos López

CV:
He was born in Barcelona in 1975 and got a degree in Criminology and Criminal Politics from the University of Barcelona and a master in Marketing Direction and Sales from ESADE Business School. For nine years he has carried our different projects in the areas of marketing and business development in the second operator of Spanish Telecommunications. He is also a co-founder of various Internet projects. In 2007 he founded the company Metaverso, S.L., that was one of the first Spanish companies dedicated to virtual worlds and Social Media Marketing. In March 2007 he assisted in New York one of the first conventions about Marketing in Virtual Worlds. In 2008 he will publish a guide to Second Life as a co-author (Pearson Prentice Hall editions).

Conferencia:
In 2007 the media of communication have been flooded with titles over the virtual worlds, especially about Second Life. But virtual worlds have a somehow larger history, they are mounted in the 60s and 70s when the technologies and more importantly, the concepts over those that sustain them developed. The world of business has recently started to think about them as a platform to reach its potential clients. This relation belongs to Social Media Marketing, with which the companies try to approach social networking, the last Internet boom.
In these surroundings the companies are forced to “change pace”; the form to communicate is not from one (the company) to many (the consumers) but from many to many. This relation gets more complicated when it comes to virtual worlds, three-dimensional spaces with complex social rules. The first actions of marketing have been seen by a part of the users of the virtual worlds as a kind of brutality. From the companies' point of view they have realized that their products are present in these spaces whether they intervene or not; hence they face the dilemma whether they should try to limit this use or try to take advantage of it.

The Astronauts' club and the Spaceship Mare Nostrum

David Zehnter (Apfel)

CV:

He has worked as a freelance web designer and programer and as an actor and creator in art and multimedia production companies, as Marcel.lí Antúnez Roca's company (Co-Fundador Fura dels Baus), Florida 135 S.L. and Terra.es. In 2004 he founded the artistic collective El Club de los Astronautas. The collective presented its works in MauMau Underground, Galería Niu, L'Antic Teatre, La Sexta (TV), CCCB, CosmoCaixa, etc. He has collaborated with Amnesty International, Giulio Prisco (Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies) and Institut Fátima. The Club de los Astronautas is mainly dedicated in the exploration of (exterior and virtual) space in a poetic, musical and artistic way, exhibiting scientific and philosophical ideas.

ABSTRACT:

The barrier of time-space doesn't let us make an interstellar journey through our galaxy, the Milky Way. The objective of the Spaceship Mare Nostrum is to overcome this barrier through the metaverse. The metaverse can be understood as a new and young environment of intelligent life with proprieties that allow us to overcome the physical and biological limits that we know from the real world. We will analyze the present and the future of the virtual worlds in the context of the exploration of the exterior space (orbit, moon, Mars). That way the Spaceship Mare Nostrum, more than just an Utopian idea, will serve as a futuristic analysis, that shows us a variety of key sciences and technologies related to its subject matter. In a nutshell, what importance does metaverse have now and will have in the future when it comes to expanding human life in the universe?
www.elclubdelosastronautas.com/

Metaverses, collaborative environments and creativity

Aitor Morrás

CV:
He has a degree in Work Relations from the Universidad de Oviedo and he's also a technician in Informatics Management.

He's a founder of the portal www.mundosl.com, of the social network for residents in virtual worlds www.ixerpa.com and of the Interior Community of Second Life Malatu that has about 6000 members added to its groups.

Conferències:
Metaverses or virtual world have emerged as an efficient tool of remote collaboration through which the users can carry out projects in a coordinated and complete way in real time in a three-dimensional space.
The possibilities of plasmation and transmission, to the rest of the users, of the creativity in almost all the disciplines that the virtual worlds offer, allow this type of platforms to be established as one more repository channels of creative contents.
As immersive environments, the metaverses get the generation of communities of virtual interests around a concrete activity or inquietude .

Filosofía y Empresa, la Dimensión Humana de los Negocios
http://filoempresa.wordpress.com/