Thursday, October 28, 2004

Art and Technology

On Tuesday 2nd November at 9am I will be conducting a short course in Art and Technology in HUMlab. I will be using this Blog as a resource site so over the next few days the postings will concentrate on this subject, which is (for me anyway) really cool.
The course will begin with a very brief historical overview and then look at some contempory examples of the joining or mixing of what was famously described by C.P. Snow in 1959 as the two cultures of Art and Science. Of course this in itself is historical and I want to discuss the concepts of art and science in the light of what Hayles describes as the Posthuman.
I myself have always seen art as relying on the presence of representation but this is also not so much the case in a postmodernist world. An interesting definition of Art I found in the excellent text Information Arts by Stephen Wilson is:

"Art making may be described as the process of responding to observations, ideas, feelings, and other experiences by creating works of art through the skillful, thoughtful, and imaginative application of tools and techniques to various media. The artistic objects that result are the products of encounters between artists and their intentions, their concepts and attitude, their cultural and social circumstances, and the materials or media in which they choose to work."
Wilson 2002:17

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