#089 Sept/Oct 2002

THE INTER-SOCIETY FOR THE ELECTRONIC ARTS
ISEA NEWSLETTER #89

ISSN 1488-3635 #89 September – October 2002
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* CONTENTS *

* EDITORIAL by the ISEA Board
* ISEA2002
* ISEA2002 WEB CAST
* ISEA EDUCATION PROJECT by Sue Gollifer
* ISEA MEMBER WEB PORTFOLIOS
* ISEA MEETING AT ARS ELECTRONICA 2002
* REPORT FROM SIGGRAPH 2002 by Patrick Lichty
* REPORT FROM THE BIENNIAL OF ELECTRONIC ARTS PERTH by Nina Czegledy
* REPORT FROM BEAP/CONSCIOUSNESS REFRAMED by Peter Anders

In a separate attachment: * Conferences/Symposia/Workshops/Festivals
* Exhibitions * Calls * Jobs * Lists/URLs/Newsletters *

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EDITORIAL
By the ISEA Board
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The Board of ISEA congratulates the ISEA2002 organization in Nagoya on the program of the upcoming Symposium. As the first ISEA in Asia, the October event promises to be an exciting mix of presentations, exhibitions, and performances.

ISEA is about discovery and the exchange of ideas. An important part of that discovery is that we move to different parts of the world for our Symposia. Each locally organized Symposium brings us new perspectives, and promotes collaborations with individuals and groups who are outside of our regular set of contacts. Additionally, local host organizations support each Symposium by extending their resources, funding and hospitality. This gives each event a regional flavor, reflecting differences in culture and theme from one Symposium to the next.

When ISEA was founded, it was one of the few venues for artists working in new media to discuss their work. Happily it evolved to become a good meeting place for artists working in a variety of media to mix with curators and theoreticians. As large, well-funded festivals now fulfill much of the role of highlighting certain trends in the electronic art world, ISEA remains unique as a forum where confronting new ideas is a priority.

ISEA is committed to promoting new media throughout the world. We recognize that the geographic choice of Japan as a host of ISEA2002 comes at the time of an unexpected economic downturn for many of the former attendees at our Symposia.

The independence of each Symposium is part of what makes ISEA so special, but as ISEA the organization enters a new phase of growth, we are eagerly looking for new ways to supplement the Symposium series with other activities, be they virtual or locally sponsored.

In this issue of our newsletter we are happy to announce two such initiatives: the educational archive project, which will make the legacies of past ISEAs readily available, a webcast event at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, which will bring the current ISEA to a large city in real time. Additionally, we will soon be adding a portfolio section to our web-site to facilate exchanges outside of the Symposium series.

We look forward to seeing you in Nagoya, but if you are unable to attend, we look forward to seeing you virtually in the near future!

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ISEA2002, Nagoya, Japan
October 27-31, 2002
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For information about ISEA2002 in Nagoya, Japan, please see the official web site at http://www.isea.jp

In addition, Patrick Lichty, an active member of ISEA’s Cultural Diversity Committee, has posted updated information for ISEA members going to Nagoya, Japan for ISEA2002. Practical information (travel, accommodations, maps, etc.) can be found at http://www.voyd.com/nagoya

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ISEA2002 Web Cast at the Guggenheim Museum
New York, NY, USA
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ISEA2002 Conference
Monday, October 28, 2002 @ 7 PM
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Avenue (@ 88th Street)
New York, NY
New Media Theater

Free admission

In cooperation with Media Technology (Amersfoort, the Netherlands), the Sackler Center for Arts Education is the Web host to the biennial International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA2002), to be held this year in Nagoya, Japan. Discussions are transmitted live at the Sackler Center’s News Corporation New Media Theater, with response by local new-media artists and scholars.

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ISEA Digital Archive Education Project
by Sue Gollifer
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Sue Gollifer of the University of Brighton has been awarded a grant from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB) to create a Digital Archive of ISEA as an educational project.

The aim of the project is to catalogue and preserve an educational electronic archive of the international Symposium of Electronic Art Conference and Exhibition 1988 – 2002. The conference proceedings, catalogues and CD-ROM’s and work from the accompanying exhibitions and performances will be included, with the preservation of the archives on a secure website as a key element in the project. This will be done through the Visual Arts Data Service, (VADS) and The JISC Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER) a UK managed environment for accessing high quality assured information resources on the Internet.

Sue Gollifer has been a professional artist / printmaker for over 30 years, exhibiting her work regularly throughout the world. She is a Senior Lecturer in Printmaking in the School of Art at the University of Brighton. For several years she has been engaged in research into the applications of computing in Fine Art. She is also the originator and curator of ArCade, ArCade II, and ArCade III the first open international exhibitions in Britain of electronic prints.

Further information about the progress of this project will be available in future newsletters. Sue will also be attending the ISEA2002 Symposium in Nagoya, and can be contacted by email at: <s.c.gollifer@bton.ac.uk>

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ISEA Member Web Portfolios
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Kelly Driscoll and Jeff Yan of Digication, in Providence, Rhode Island, USA are developing a portfolio section for the ISEA website. The portfolio section should be available this fall and will allow members to upload work and view the work of other ISEA members. This opportunity is open to all ISEA members, including visual artists, sonic artists, and theoreticians. If any ISEA members would be interested in beta testing please contact info@digication.com and include ISEA Portfolio Beta in your subject line. You will be contacted when a prototype is available.

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ISEA MEETING AT ARS ELECTRONICA 2002
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ISEA Meeting at Ars Electronica Festival, Linz, Austria

September 11, 2002
11:00 AM – Noon
Seminar Room
Ars Electronica Building

Come hear about plans for upcoming ISEA events, including ISEA2002, ISEA2004, news about ISEA projects (i.e. member portfolio project, web site re-design, new collaborations), and engage in a lively discussion about how ISEA is growing and how you can be part of it! Everyone is welcome to attend.

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Siggraph 2002 Review
By Patrick Lichty
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My experience with SIGGRAPH is seeing a strange juxtaposition of genres relating to computer graphics and digital arts, academic, artistic, and industrial, all jammed together in one place for a week of non-stop activities. The one thing I can say is that one simply cannot take it all in. Or at least, I can’t. It would take a literalist approach to a Turkelian multiplicity of self, and I don’t think biotech is quite there yet. This year’s event, held in San Antonio, Texas is the smallest in recent history, numbering around 15,000, down from the usual numbers of about three times this amount, largely due to economic downturns in entertainment markets and effects related to WTC events. In light of the contraction, SIGGRAPH has announced that it will be held in West Coast venues to better serve its industrial vendors and related constituencies. Despite the diminished numbers, the San Antonio event showed a great deal of energy as vendors who did turn out unveiled new products, the Art Gallery and
Emerging Technologies sections showcased excellent work, and the scholarly panels that I attended were of exceptional quality.

Of note were panels that sought to derive methods of interdisciplinary methodologies, including ones by Donna Cox and Annette Weintraub. These presentations discussed differing models of collaboration in artistic production and pedagogy. Cox’s forum on developing renaissance learning strategies was especially well grounded, considering current models of interdisciplinary learning in context with industry and also with case studies of various projects. Other ISEA members participating in panels and workshops included Greg Garvey, Cynthia Beth Rubin and Diane Gromala, whose events I was unfortunately unable to attend, but for whom I received excellent reviews.

ISEA ‘Birds of a Feather’
ISEA held its ‘birds of a feather’ meeting on Thursday (near the end of the event), and while the attendance was slightly less than prior years, it was more than proportional when accounting for the size of this year’s SIGGRAPH. Cynthia Beth Rubin and Jim Lammers presided over the event, and attendees of my acquaintance included James Faure Walker, Rejane Spitz, Sue Gollifer, Annette Weintraub, colleagues of Wim Van der Plas, and Beau Takahara of San Francisco’s 0-1 arts intitative.

The meeting was informal, starting out with a preview of the new ISEA website design with discussion for possible improvements and suggestions for member features. Recent changes at ISEA HQ were covered, such as the recent addition of Angela Plohman to the ISEA team. Sue Gollifer discussed her digital arts museum collaboration project and the recent ISEA/trace Live Chat was presented, at which time Rubin mentioned ISEA’s encouragement for future partnerships and collaborations to expand electronic arts practice throughout the globe. Patrick Lichty gave a short presentation on the current status of the Nagoya ISEA2002 conference, and a brief mention was made of future events like the Scandinavian event in 2004. To wrap up the meeting, members exchanged introductions and an invitation was made to voice concerns with the operations of ISEA and the suggestions for how it can better serve its constituents. There was some excellent discussion regarding critical issues within ISEA, and much constructive commentary regarding where ISEA’s operation and relevance in the 21st Century.

Art Gallery
This year’s gallery focused on the exposition of process, as each artist was invited to provide a description of their working methodology to foster a greater understanding of their process. In addition, there were five ‘Working Artists’ areas where practitioners would demonstrate their work before the gallery visitors, describing their process along the way. The most remarkable of these artists to me was Teri Rueb of University of Maryland Baltimore County who demonstrated The Choreography of Everyday Movement (which will also be seen at ISEA2002), a work in which GPS-equipped participants ‘drew’ time-based line drawings of their travels over the local landscape, in this case, the city of San Antonio. The combination of the uniqueness of this project, combined with the beauty of the sandwiched inkjet transparencies was striking in that it aptly revealed the temporal nature of the piece in an aesthetically pleasing manner.

Overall, the art exhibition was one of the stronger ones that I have seen in recent years, encompassing more traditionalist media as well as installation, virtual reality, and interactive cinema. ISEA participants in the exhibition not already mentioned include Cynthia Beth Rubin’s imaging work, James Faure Walker’s mixed-genre 2D work and Hans Dehlinger’s algorithmic Sumi-esque inscriptions.

As mentioned, the art gallery offered a wide variety of approaches to digital creativity. What was unique this year was the depth of engagement with the audience, with history, and with a sense of physicality that several artists imbued into their work. Walker’s Blue Bowls series employed both very traditional as well as digital imaging techniques in an attempt to dialogue beyond the implied schismatic impressions many have about traditionalism and the digital. Anna Ursyn’s New York- New York photomedia works used ‘outdated’ technologies such as VAX mainframes, FORTRAN – based algorithms, and film recorders to create interpretations of her city that also reminded me greatly of similar, but motion studies by Richter and Eggeling. Tulchin’s homage to Leger (some in 3D anaglyph) juxtapose the historical with the ahistoricity of contemporary critical practice, and Grossman’s digital bronzes utilized the specific qualities of rapid prototyping that translate into the physicality of metals.

Elsewhere in the exhibit, heterogenous approaches blended together to form an interesting tete-a-tete. Jen Grey’s (aka Jen Zen) two large-format print works were created with the interesting perspective of having used Steven Skolne’s VR-based painting techniques to paint 3D figurative gestures in volumetric space, then to have that space translated to the plane. Dehlinger’s treelike generative ‘trees’ presented his explorations of algorithmic beauty with the delicacy of simple black-and white etchings.

Another defining quality of this years exhibition was the nature in which installation work used technology as a tool of engagement, and not necessarily as an automatic fetishizing device. Borland/Finley/Jacobs FRONT installation employed sound actuated inflatable suits to evoke gallery visitors’ aggressive/defensive interactions. As the participants interacted with the suits, usually by screaming at one another, an ad hoc display was created through the suits, which as often quite amusing (or annoying once the screaming went on for a while). Lavord/Leclos Exit New York consisted of an alliterative real-time 3D space representing two square miles of Manhattan, spanning eighteen months of work, nearly 2000 images and spatialized sound elements. While not immersive in the traditional sense, the ability to navigate the space in an opportunity to experience it in a large-scale projection allowed to the piece to be presented with a presence that fit the scope of the work. And lastly, Gleimenboek/Blach/Kiristis work, Uzume, named for a Shinto goddess who lured the Japanese goddess of the sun out of her cave, is an immersive stereoscopic VR installation in which one interacts with a chaotic attractor that reacts as the user pushes and pulls at the curve’s structures. All of these installations were quite seductive by themselves, but the level of reliance upon user interaction to drive the content was particularly strong in this case.

The animation component of the art gallery contained works that employed techniques ranging from those similar to traditional animation to stylized abstractions of mathematical functions, but the showcase piece of the program was Escalle’s Tales of the Floating World, a 25-minute child’s dreamlike reflection upon Hiroshima before and after the blast. Escalle’s short incorporated 3D CGI, postproduction paint and compositing with the Butoh and Kabuki choreography to the point where technology became completely transparent, giving it my highest praise for the event.

E-Tech
The Emerging Technology pavilion typically focuses on new developments in interface technology, but often it’s unclear that some of the work should not actually be in the Art Gallery. This year’s exhibits focused largely on augmented reality, which from the inclusion of Rodney Berry’s presentation of his AR artworks in the Art papers, signals a possible trend in the development of new media works. The distinctive qualities of this series of developments are the utilization of alternate sensoria in the explication of AR/VR technologies, which signals a shift from the traditional focus on visual immersion for the development of compelling virtual experiences. Another notable installation was Tachi Laboratory’s Twister prototype 360-degree full stereoptical display, which was wonderful if you didn’t mind climbing into the cylinder and making sure you keep your hands out of the rotating optical screen. But what was the most compelling installation was a student project for large area touch displays that incorporated Doppler sound sensing of contact with a large glass pane that was the screen for an interactive real-time abstract CG ‘painting’ that reacts to the user’s interactions.

On the Trade Floor
Although this may not be revealed from my coverage of the art gallery and E-tech sections, I usually find it difficult to devote proper attention to papers and exhibits when I attend SIGGRAPH. The opportunity to observe first hand the technological trends and industrial forces at work within technoculture that will impact digital expression in the coming years is unlike other events that I attend. And, in doing so, the larger vendors such as Intel and AMD offer the fewest surprises, but the experimenter is well rewarded for visiting the outlying areas. 2002’s SIGGRAPH reflected the E-Tech emphasis in Augmented Reality, as well as virtual forensics technologies. But technologies such as extended view and 3D displays, including a bubble-shaped 360-degree display for models and animation seemed to be in abundance. Lastly, it seemed that a technology that vendors are trying to implement in the markets is that of real-time 3D scanning of objects and people (to which I subjected myself) for cinematics and avatars is continuing development.

One aspect of ‘floor culture’ that is usually considered of little importance but I find as full of hidden signification is that of ‘blag’ culture. Goodies, freebies, pilone, or lagniappe, trade shows are famous for their Mardi-gras-esque lavishing of promotional items upon floor patrons to entice people to consider the vendor’s wares. This year reflected the more austere environment of the show, with fewer vendors giving out good materioals, with nearly every vendor giving out good items (Intel, Sun Microsystems, and surprisingly AVToma, that gave out a high-quality nylon knapsack) requiring a dedicated participation in a survey or fairly lengthy presentation, which was somewhat unusual in contrast with my experience. My ‘blag’ research findings for this SIGGRAPH were that even though many vendors were still handing out worthy booty, the take reflected more conservative hopes for the industry and the economy of CGI as a whole, and was down considerably from my last event at 2000-New Orleans.

And lastly, one of the more famous attributes of SIGGRAPH is its nightlife. As usual, special interest groups, vendors and ad hoc parties abounded, but the most interesting ones I attended were one of the nights at the local Magic Lantern museum and the Wasabi Grand Prix Sake Barrel party, featuring a live performance of Yoichiro Kawaguchi’s real-time generative graphics. A number of groups went to Jack Judson’s Magic Lantern museum over the past week, but I went to an event organized by Machiko Kusahara and Erkki Huhtamo, also a collector of lanterns. Located in a former pizzaria, the castle-shaped structure is relatively inconspicuous from the road, except for the large lantern posted near the road. Once inside, we were treated to hundreds of antique projection devices, with a huge 3-aperture magic lantern, natural rubber hoses still intact, and a wall of childrens’ lanterns. Mr. Judson gave us a demonstration of illumination techniques including oil and even an operating limelight source. Following the illumination talk, a show of various historical slides as early as the 18th Century and ornate animated slides, all in near-perfect condition, mesmerized the crowd.

On Sunday night, the United States-Japan Sake Commission et al sponsored a Sake Barrel opening and performance of real time CG animation combined with traditional Japanese dance by Yoichiro Kawaguchi, whose ‘Cycloton’ animation also showed in the aforementioned art gallery showings. At the conclusion of the performance, a presentation and opening of the sake barrel was performed where the entire room was served measures of wine in traditional pine boxes. This was the 15th annual version of this event, the Sake Barrel party is a fixture at SIGGRAPH, and one that shouldn’t be missed.

Although the numbers were down across the board for attendance, both for the show and the ISEA meeting, there was a great deal of energy in the event, despite the apprehension about the future of SIGGRAPH. The art gallery and E-Tech events were ambitious in their representation of a wide variety of genres from VR to print, and I hope that this trend continues in San Diego However, the Studio, the area open to artists’ exploration of new technologies and genres, will cease being funded, and will return to its former status as the ‘guerilla’ Studio next year, made up entirely of volunteer staff and resources. It is likely that technologies such as alternate sensory interfaces and AR will become more prominent in future artworks, and with work like that seen in The Lord of the Rings, and Tales of the Floating World, technological transparency with artistic intent becomes a clearer reality. However, the decreased participation in the event (down nearly two-thirds) is a setback for ACM/SIGGRAPH, precipitating their relocation of future events to the US West Coast. Such moves should bolster support in their being closer to their industrial constituency, and retain the show’s intensity until current economic pressures begin to relent. Although ACM/SIGGRAPH is going through lean times, the show in general has much to offer those in the digital arts, and shows that although, smaller, the event still has an incredible energy for those who are keeping the faith.

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BIOART at BEAP
by Nina Czegledy
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In the middle of the night, on my arrival to Perth, Paul Thomas, BEAP’s (Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth) visionary festival director, and on this occasion special welcoming person was waiting for me. Paul’s thoughtful midnight gesture not withstanding all his other commitments, characterized the smooth yet thoughtful organization of the Biennale for me.

A few months ago, when Paul and Oron Catts outlined their rapidly developing plans, I did not really grasp the extent of all the BEAP events including several conferences, performances and exhibitions presented between July 31 and September 15, 2002. BEAP was developed in collaboration with the John Curtin Gallery, Curtin University of Technology. The University facilitated a large part of the conferences (CAiiA-STAR,Teaching in a Digital Domain) and Immersion a major exhibition. This text is focused on the BioArt events of BEAP, including the Biofeel exhibition, the Aesthetics of Care? symposium and Scientific Serendipity, ANAT’s (Australian Network for Art and Technology) publication on art and science collaborations.

Biofeel was presented in the spacious galleries of PICA (Perth Institute for Electronics Art), located in city-center providing an excellent year around exhibition program. The performance space doubled as a conference venue, for the Aesthetics of Care? symposium co-organized by SymbioticaA in partnership with the Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Western Australia.

First it might be useful to pause and reflect on the definition of bio(technological) Art and Symbiotica. Most Bioart projects evolve from art and science collaborations, such as the close partnership between the artists and scientists of SymbioticaA, a University of Western Australia research laboratory established in 2000 and primarily dedicated to biological investigations. The Tissue Culture&Art Project, initiated in 1996 by Oron Catts, Ionat Zurr and Guy Ben Ary was instrumental in establishing SymbioticaA. Bioart practitioners differ fundamentally from artists who take biology as their subject, by using biology as their medium, producing and presenting “living artworks.” Symbiotica artists have been mainly working with tissue culture and tissue engineering, manipulating “living systems” for artistic expression.

In the middle of the central gallery space, a black tent-like enclosure has been suspended, housing the Symbiotica tissue culture lab. Through the portal windows, one caught glimpses of culture flasks, specimens, and assorted laboratory equipment. One could also observe tissue culture feeding activities. Symbiotica’s Pig Wings -using tissue engineering and stem cell technologies growing pig bone tissue over polymer structures in the shape of wings- and the Worry Dolls, semi-living creatures evoking the Guatemalan magic dolls were also on show.

In another room, the visitor encountered MEART, a work in progress. Fish&Chips, the first stage of this project, was presented last year at Ars Electronica. MEART, a bio-cybernetic collaboration with the Laboratory for Neuroengineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA is based on receiving and recording electric signals from neuron cultures. The visitor saw robotic arms equipped with pens, drawing images. The movement of the arms and subsequent drawings in Perth, were directed by the neural activities of the Georgia cultures.

Biofeel also included the Dynamic Seeding Musical Bioreactor produced during the six month residency by Adam Zaretsky, Amy Youngs’ whimsical Rearming the Spineless Opunta, live cactus installation and the Proteic Portrait And Nucleart by Marta de Menezes on three dimensional visualization of chromosomes.

“The use of biological technologies is admittedly a contentious issue”- wrote Oron Catts and indeed Bioart is considered controversial and audience provocative. Response from scientists as well as the general public vary greatly from the enthusiastic to the skeptical. Consequently the public dialogue of the Aesthetics of Care? symposium was highly constructive. The conference presented a refreshing range of speakers including Lori Andrews, law professor and adviser on genetic and reproductive technologies from the US, Stuart Bunt, neuroscientist, Symbiotica co-founder, Heidi Nore, animal rights activist, the artists Amy Youngs and Adam Zaretsky and others. While these presentations -as is often the case- have provided no answers to the contentious issues involved, the topics, including bioethics, have generated an informed discourse pointing to future developments.

The Scientific Serendipity publication, launched the next day, further confirmed Australia’s strong art/science landscape. Since 1998, many of these collaborations were supported by ANAT’s Scientific Serendipity artist residencies. The informative interviews with residency participants were published to document this project and encourage further collaborations.

In conclusion – BEAP, thanks to Paul Thomas and all his collaborators, became in the first days of August, from a visionary initiative, an important forward looking reality.

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Honk if you love BEAP:
A review of Consciousness Reframed
and the Biennial Electronic Arts Perth conferences
by Peter Anders
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If concurrent exhibits and conferences are any measure, surely Perth Australia was this year’s most ambitious site for the edge of contemporary art. The first Biennial Electronic Arts Perth festival – BEAP for short – spanned several days’ worth of challenging, even inspirational presentations. It was planned to coincide with other events, notably the fourth annual Consciousness Reframed conference, imported from Wales. BEAP, organized by artist/educator Paul Thomas of Curtin University, included exhibitions on the University Campus and at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) as well as a series of lectures by local and visiting artists. Both exhibits presented – for the first time in some cases – artworks whose themes and technologies were inseparable.

The BioFeel exhibition at PICA included projects by Adam Zaretsky, Marta de Menezes, Amy Youngs, Lindsey Vickery, and Darren Moore. Curated by Oron Catts and SymbioticA, BioFeel showcased biotechnological artworks and living organisms. While the inclusion of live animals in artworks has precedents, the actual generation of these creatures in the artistic process is still new. Consequently many of the questions asked of art (composition, aesthetic, meaning) take a back seat to technique or – more pressingly – ethics. Artist Ionat Zurr’s lecture presentation rightly cited breeding, cultivation and harvesting as mundane precedents to her work. But, by ritually terminating her works after gallery shows, she demonstrated both the responsibility of the artist and the dignity of her living works. It is a curious fact that Australia is home not only to the first bio-art show, but also the philosopher Peter Singer, whose inquiry into animal-rights and bioethics has set the standards for current debate.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town, the BEAP show, Immersion, focused expressly on an older technology – digital electronics. Age has virtues, it appears. Many of the works demonstrated the maturity of their technology by not allowing computers to overwhelm the work. In many cases this let the artists revisit some of the traditional concerns of their craft: narrative, landscape, body, and – shockingly – beauty. But orthodoxy was still on the hook as a review of Stellarc’s prostheses, or interplay with works by Victoria Vesna or Kenneth Rinaldo would disclose. Indeed, some of the most impressive works challenged the walls of the gallery itself. After all, can gypsum board partitions properly confine the extended landscapes of Char Davies’ Ephemere? How could we expect such a venue to convey the disturbing, evolving contents of Robert Nideffer’s Creepy Comics? Questioning the museum may be a time-worn endeavor, but digital artists can now pose its alternatives.

Curtin University also hosted the fourth Consciousness Reframed conference, a felicitous coupling of BEAP with this annual gathering of artists, scientists and technologists. Several of those giving papers at this conference presented other work at the BEAP sessions, giving the audience a familiarity with the speakers and a chance for informal dialog. The Consciousness Reframed conference, started by artist/educator Roy Ascott in 1998 explores matters of consciousness within the cultural context of art, science, and technology. The conference conventionally occurs in Newport, Wales and is an organ of the University of Wales and the University of Plymouth’s CAiiA-STAR program. This year it was invited to Perth.

The conference, subtitled Non-local, Non-linear, Non-ordinary, included compelling papers on the workings of the mind. Particularly memorable was On Resolving Classical Experience with the Quantum World by Steven Jones – an Australian artist/theorist – whose materialist interpretation of mental operations shed light into the obscure corners of holism. Japanese theorist Michio Okuma similarly opened the mind for review in a well-argued paper on informational processes underlying design decisions. Presentations on art folded with surprising ease into this discourse, notably Margaret Dolinsky’s discussion on networked CAVES, Nina Czegledy’s anthropological approach to space and perception, and Tania Fraga’s explorations into shamanic travel and performance.

These and other papers will be published in the proceedings. But sometimes you just have to be there – the presentations themselves are worth the trip. Seeing Stellarc show his outrageous work while intoning Deleuze and wearing a suit was performance art at its finest. Later, in Curtin University’s Council chambers, Jim Laukes’ anarchic theater of consciousness brought down the house. Mike Punt of Newport University gave a characteristically incisive/ironic presentation entitled Human Consciousness and the Postdigital Analogue. The paper brought together a surprising range of issues that I cannot summarize here. Suffice it to say that the present article is not the first case of astronaut, potato and cinema being used in the same sentence.

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In the attachment to this Newsletter:

* Conferences/Symposia/Workshops/Festivals * Exhibitions * Jobs *
Calls * Lists/URLs/Newsletters *

*********************************************************************

Contributors:
The ISEA Board, Wim van der Plas, Sue Gollifer, Cynthia Beth Rubin, Patrick Lichty, Nina Czegledy, Peter Anders, Kelly Driscoll, Jeff Yan

Copy Editor:
Angela Plohman (ISEA HQ)

ISEA Board Members:
Nina Czegledy, Kathy Rae Huffman, Cynthia Beth Rubin, Peter Anders, Atau Tanaka, Wim van der Plas, Niranjan Rajah.

ISEA-HQ:
Angela Plohman

ISEA LISTSERV:
To subscribe, send a message to:
listproc@uqam.ca, no subject, with the following message in the body of the email: “subscribe ISEA-forum first name last name”

*PLEASE NOTE: NEW ADDRESS AND PHONE NUMBER!*

ISEA, Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts
Pieter de Hoochstraat 38-2
1071 EG Amsterdam, Netherlands
Phone ++31-20-6120297 Fax ++31-20-6182359
isea@isea.qc.ca * http://www.isea.qc.ca

============================================end of newsletter, part 1

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