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A series of meetings about the relations between art and informatics.
The Conversations, accessible to all, were held held in St Cecilia's Hall, Cowgate.
The Conversation seminars were usually, but not always, held at 7.00pm on a Tuesday.
Oscar Tuazon
Temporary, Mobile, Hidden, Invisible
By looking at architecture, and the built environment in general, not as a product of design but as the contested site of various competing modes of occupation, we can see a sort of architecture without architects, or an architecture without buildings. Conflicts over how space is used have given rise to strategies of building and living with minimal resources, in remote locations, or parasitical to other economies. As mainstream architecture has in recent years produced increasingly sophisticated mega-buildings, the technological and aesthetic innovations developed by alternative cultures offer practical models of using space that are quick, cheap, and flexible.
Julius Popp
Machines with body consciousness
The talk spans a broad range of Julius Popp's work. His work at the interface between art and science includes Bitfall, Bitflow, Micro.spheres, Macro.perpendiculars and Micro.race. With the focus on the nature of intelligent beings, and introducing six specific works, the artist will explain the ideas and motivations that underlie these autonomous intelligent systems. He will highlight the relevance of the works for both art and science.
Christos Papoulias
Mobility as our Inner Status: The Architecture of a
Dispersed Life
Respondent: Iain Boyd Whyte
Abstract:
If mobility, as the characteristic of our
contemporary human inner status, is the issue, then the architect is
to invent a space for knowledge, a space without `foundations' -
buildings and gardens uprooted from any pre-established order or
style, transformable and adaptable spaces in which the
interpenetration of different orders and disciplines can occur, in
which rooms are of indefinite measurement and corridors lead only to
the unknown, with ceilings of varying height and uncontrolled light,
buildings like our minds, unpredictable and endless. Is this not
similar to what we call today interdisciplinary knowledge? This
relatively new word we have coined - interdisciplinarity - does it not
point towards a new meaning of discipline and order? And isn't that
other word - interactivity - indicating something like the physiology
of the mind? Interactivity unlike interdisciplinarity is much closer
to the possibility of a `space concept' in architecture. If the vital
spaces of one's home, its kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom follow the
physiological functions of the body, as we live necessarily within
those distinctions neither cooking in the bathroom nor defecating in
the bedroom, then we must recognize the impossibility for spaces to be
entirely interactive, and we should ask whether we truly need a
`building' in order to study.
Kris Delacourt, Nico Dockx, Jan Mast
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1: Lecture by Kris Delacourt, Nico Dockx, Jan Mast: About CRYPTICCRYSTALCLOUD
CRYPTICCRYSTALCLOUD is a never-stopping audio-visual collaboration between Belgian artists Kris Delacourt (1978), Nico Dockx (1974), and Jan Mast (1980). This audio-visual installation work - of which the first version was shown in februari 2005 at CCA project gallery in Kitakyushu, Japan - looks at new ways of organizing data and parallel universes. It moves through an interactive, intuitive application of interior complexity towards an evolutive architecture of time in which information transforms into meaning. Dust becomes light. Different, shuffled relationships create a complementary white room where a growing archive of papers starts dancing with red, green and blue. You can sleep on a dense carpet of memories, and walk through a violent, graphic rain-curtain. Sea-sounds of steel-waves. Like a silent person you take with you on travels, talking to you when you feel alone. Ongoing life inside-outside us.
Dave Green
Challenges for Online Collaboration: Is "Mass Amateurisation" a Myth?
Linux and Open Source software have pioneered new ways of creating complex works online, but how easily can this approach be adapted to other areas, like journalism or TV? Dave Green assesses the pros and cons of his experiences in old and new media - from the irreverent technology newsletter NTK.net to the international food site Snackspot.org.uk - and asks: Will practical issues ultimately prevent amateur communities from replacing the established media? And, if not, what have they got to show for themselves so far? Dave Green is a technology writer who after writing for Wired and other specialist publications co-founded Need to Know (NTK) with Danny O'Brien. NTK is an irregular e-zine dealing with current issues in information technology and information security. It is composed of stories sent in by readers who are themselves often insiders. Due to this system and its format it provides reading that is not watered down, filtered and confused in the same way as technology and science journalism can be in the mainstream media. Dave Green was a postgraduate in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh http://www.ntk.net
Johannes Raether
An academy is anacademy is an academy
While studying fine art in Berlin, artist and activist Johannes Raether founded different "Academies". Small Academies, Imaginary Academies, Collective Academies and Functional Academies. All share the idea of organizing a space for people to meet, discuss, intervene, work together, dance or just be lazy. The Freie Klasse at the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts, which Johannes ran for several years, operates at the centre of this discreet institutional cloud of "self-universities".
Johannes Raether will present strategies for taking over an art academy and ways of resisting neo-liberal reforms in art education. We will meet the Academy without a Roof, and fellow travellers from the Manoa Free University; the garden ghost of the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts, and a CarUniversity in a provincial German town. But all of this begins with one question: When do we get to study at the "Faculty for Social Tools of Mass-Communication"?
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