WORKING
TITLE: “From Networking to NanoSystems: A Series of Digitally
Mediated Dialogues Exploring the Cultures of Art and Science”
North: TBD, November 5-9
South: UCLA, November 11-14
This
Fall, 2001, the UC Digital Arts Research Network (UC DARNet), funded as a
Multi-Campus Research Group by the UCOP, will be convening an international
conference and series of exploratory workshops over a 10 day period. These
events will take place in several physical locations throughout the state of
California. The organizing committee is also planning to incorporate a variety
of strategies that will facilitate remote participation of UC faculty and
students, in collaboration with the Centre for Advanced Inquiry in Interactive
Arts, University of Wales, and the the centre for Science, Technology and Art
Research, in the School of Computing, University of Plymouth (CAiiA-STAR), the
Banff Centre for the Arts, and several other institutions during this time. The
goal is to structure a set of innovative methods for information sharing and
dialogue between communities of interest, extending the way conferences and
workshops have traditionally functioned across time and space.
We are interested in having the Networking to NanoSystems conference
activities directly interface with the recently funded California Institutes
for Science and Innovation, and possibly the newly proposed Silicon Valley Regional Center. Participation will focus
around thematic issues raised in connection to the establishment of these major
new centers. The research and development activities of these centers will
ideally serve to catalyze structured conversation in relation to participants
prior and current work, and serve as a framework for establishing collaborative
ties between the arts and sciences on both a local and on a more international
context.
We do not want to replicate common
conference and workshop models. We want to avoid the standard presentation mode
by having general information sharing occur prior to the actual events in order
to familiarize participants with each others work, and then have workshop
session leaders employ an interview schedule, getting participants to respond
to each other in a dialogic fashion oriented around specifically themed topics.
Session leaders will be responsible for writing “position statements” about
their panel topic prior to the event. Selected panel participants will also be
asked to write responses to these statements. These materials will then form
the basis of conversations during the actual conference. Ideally we will
facilitate conversations between individuals in the arts and sciences that
would not likely happen without such a context. We also plan to have all
pre-conference materials, as well as all materials generated during the event
be documented, archived, and made available through a variety of private and
public interfaces via the Internet.
California
Institutes for Science and Innovation
The California Institutes for
Science and Innovation will be funded by a four-year, $100-million state
allocation matched by more than $200 million expected from industry, federal,
private, and university resources annually. This initiative will combine
cutting-edge research with training for new scientists and technological leaders.
Two of the recently funded institutes will be the focus of the Networking and NanoSystems conference
dialogues: Cal-(IT)2, a joint effort between UCSD and UCI, and the NanoSystems
Center, a joint effort between UCLA and UCSB.
Cal-(IT)2 (UCSD, UCI)
Cal-(IT)2 partners some 220 UCSD
and UCI faculty with research professionals from more than 40 leading
California telecommunications, computer, and software companies. Cal-(IT)2 researchers will guide innovation in
Internet telecommunications and information technology, which is intended to
revolutionize how we live, work, and communicate.
California
NanoSystems Institute (UCLA, UCSB)
The California NanoSystems
Institute will explore the power and potential of manipulating structures
atom-by-atom to engineer new materials, devices and systems that will
revolutionize virtually every aspect of our quality of life, including medical
delivery and health care, information technologies, and innovations for the
environment.
Silicon Valley Regional Center
UC Santa Cruz is establishing the
Silicon Valley Center to enhance the impact of UC research, improve access to
UC education, and provide new educational opportunities for Silicon Valley
residents. The center will be a conduit for the state's research university system
to contribute further to the economic growth and intellectual vitality of the
Silicon Valley region. UC and NASA scientists will work together on advances in
science and technology that will drive new industries and provide new products
benefiting California's economy. Through the center, UC Santa Cruz will serve
as a portal to the UC system for Silicon Valley to connect UC's intellectual
resources with the specific interests and needs of Silicon Valley, NASA, the
state and the nation. The goal is to develop a world-class, shared-use R&D
campus by partnering with industry, academia, and nonprofits in the NASA
Research Park. The collaborative research with UC will include information
technology, biotechnology, planetary sciences, nanotechnology, astrobiology and
education.
UC DARNet (Sponsor)
The UC Digital Arts Research Network (UC DARNet) is an
interdisciplinary multi-campus group of UC faculty who utilize digital media in
their creative production. As an ad-hoc planning group, UC DARNet has been meeting
since 1997 to lay the foundation for an UC-wide program to facilitate
collaborative research and teaching within a distributed digital arts
community. Through a mix of theory and practice, UC DARNet will: 1) serve to
bridge counterproductive gaps between the arts, humanities, and sciences; 2)
enhance student's educational experience by providing access to faculty across
the entire UC system through workshop and conference events; and 3) help to
establish the University of California as a leading institution for developing
the new modalities of digital culture within an art and technology context.
CAiiA-STAR is a research platform that integrates two
centres of doctoral research: CAiiA, the Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the
Interactive Arts, at the University of Wales College, Newport, and STAR, the
centre for Science, Technology and Art Research, in the School of Computing,
University of Plymouth. CAiiA was established in 1994 as an outgrowth of the
success of the country's first Interactive Arts degree. STAR was formed in
1997, building on the School of Computing's research achievements in the domain
of Interactive Multimedia and the associated fields of Artificial Life,
Robotics and Cognitive Science. Together CAiiA+STAR provide a powerful base for
research in practice based theory and application emerging from the creative
convergence of art, science, technology and consciousness studies.
Banff Centre for
the Arts
The Banff Centre is a unique institution in the field of
media and visual arts. Artists from Canada and throughout the world have access
to first-rate facilities and a wide range of creative, professional development
and research opportunities. Media and Visual Arts encompasses creative
residencies, television co-production opportunities, new media and television
think tanks, and research, symposia and workshops as well as work study and
fellowship opportunities in computer arts, producing, curatorial practice and
arts administration.
Roughly ~100 people (having a rotating presence during the
events):
-DARNet (~10)
-Digital Cultures (~20)
-CAiiA-STAR (~20)
-local campus nodes (~20)
-grads (~20)
2-3 main events during the 10 day stay of the CAiiA group in
CA
2 physical locations (NoCAL, SoCAL)
7+ virtual locations (UCB, UCSC, UCD, UCLA, UCI, UCSD,
UCSB): remote participation
innovative approach: dialogic pairings; artists, scientists,
humanists
intensive workshop sessions w/ all campuses
primarily tightly controlled non-public events, with some
portion including a general public
Victoria Vesna (UCLA), Sharon
Daniel (UCSC), Robert Nideffer (UCI), Roy Ascott (CAiiA), Sara Diamond (Banff
Centre)
UC DARNet Core Member Participants
Shawn Brixey, Assistant Professor
(shawnx@socrates.berkeley.edu)
UC Berkeley Digital
Media/Department of Art Practice
http://digitalmedia.berkeley.edu/shawn/brixey.html
Shawn Brixey directs both the
Digital Media/New Genre Program and the new "Center for Digital Art and
New Media Research. " His research interests lie at the emerging interface
of art, science and technology. He is
currently developing art forms which present important evolutionary transformations
in digital media by synthesizing these technologies with space time and biology
as a hybrid strategies for future computational based expression. A graduate of MIT's CAVS/Media Lab, he has
exhibited art and technology works internationally. He has received all levels
of major grants and awards to support his research.
Lynn Hershman-Leeson, Professor
(lynn2@well.com)
UC Davis Department of Art
Lynn
Hershman-Leeson has worked for the past 30 years in photography, site- specific
public art, and video. She is credited as the first artist to create an
interactive art videodisk, entitled LORNA, (1979-83). Her 51 videotapes and 4
interactive installations have received many international awards. In 1994, she
was the first woman to receive a tribute and retrospective at the San Francisco
International Film Festival. Lynn's work is in numerous collections, including:
The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, The
University Art Museum, Berkeley, and The Hess Collection in Sonoma County, CA.
She is currently a Professor of Electronic Art at the University of California,
Davis.
Robert F. Nideffer
(nideffer@uci.edu)
UC Irvine Studio Art &
Information and Computer Science
http://proxy.arts.uci.edu/~nideffer
Robert F. Nideffer researches,
teaches, and publishes in the areas of virtual environments and behavior,
interface theory and design, technology and culture, and contemporary social
theory. He holds an MFA in Computer Arts, and a Ph. D. in Sociology. He is an
Assistant Professor in Studio Art and Information and Computer Science at UC
Irvine, where he also serves as an Associate Director of the Center for Virtual
Reality, and as an Affiliated Faculty in the Visual Studies Program. Currently
he is hard at play initiating an Interdisciplinary Gaming Studies Program
(IGaSP).
Victoria Vesna, Chair vv@ucla.edu
UCLA Department of Design
phone: 310.206.5185, fax:
310.206.5165
http://www.cda.ucla.edu/beta/people.html
Focused on exploring possibilities
of online networks for creative expression, she has exhibited her work
internationally at a number of important venues such as the Venice Biennale
(86); the P.S.1 Museum (89); the Long Beach Museum (93)and the Ernst Museum of
Art in Budapest (94). Vesna’s work has moved from performance and video
installations to experimental research that connects networked environments to
physical public spaces. She explores how physical and ephemeral spaces affect
collective behavior. Currently she is developing a project involving design of
an online environment utilizing agent technology, AI and information
visualization. Diploma, Academy of Fine Arts, University of Belgrade,
Yugoslavia; PhD fellow, Centre for Advanced Inquiry in Interactive Arts
(CaiiA), University of Wales, UK.
Fabian Wagmister (fabian@ucla.edu)
UCLA ssistant Professor of Film
and TV
Fabian is an audiovisual
communicator particularly interested in the expressive specificity of digital
media. He was the driving force behind the Laboratory For New Media at UCLA and
is the principal investigator for the HyperMedia Studio research project. He
recently developed a database driven installation call "... two, three,
many Guevaras. "Fabian is also concerned with the absorbtion, uses, and
impact that digital technology will have in the Third World. He works with
groups throughout Latin America and writes about culturally empowering
technological strategies.
Sharon Daniel, Assistant Professor
(sdaniel@cats.ucsc.edu)
UC Santa Cruz Department of Film
and Digital Media
Sharon Daniel works in interactive
electronic art, mixing computers with video and kinetic sculpture. Recent
projects include "Brain Opera, "an interactive sound-and-image
installation that has appeared in New York, Tokyo, Austria, and Denmark, and
"Narrative Contingencies, "a Web project presented by Boston's
Decordova Museum and boston.com. Daniel earned a B. A. in music at Baylor
University, masters' degrees in opera performance and production from the
University of Texas, Austin, and an M. F. A. in visual arts from the University
of Tennessee. Daniel's media work can be found on the following Web pages:
Brain Opera: http://brainop.media.mit.edu; and Narrative Contingencies:
http://www.decordova.org
Sheldon Brown, Director
(sgbrown@ucsd.edu)
Center for Research in Computing
and the Arts
UCSD Associate Professor, Visual
Arts Dept.
http://www-crca.ucsd.edu/~sheldon
Sheldon Brown is the Director of
the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA) at UCSD. In the Visual
Arts Department most of his teaching is in the Computing in the Arts area and
with the Interdisciplinary Computing in the Arts major. His courses focus on
the engagement of real-time computer graphics, media and electronic controls
for installation works. His artwork
examines relationships between information and space, which manifest as public
artworks, and installations that combine architectural settings with mediated
and computer controlled elements. Brown has received awards and fellowships
from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Rockefeller Foundation, the
Seattle Arts Commission, the Hellman Foundation, the Asian Cultural Council,
AT&T Foundation, Intel Corporation, Silicon Graphics Inc., Sony
Corporation, and others. He has previously been on the faculty of the School of
the Art Institute of Chicago and the Kansas City Art Institute.
Louis Hock, Professor
(lhock@ucsd.edu)
UCSD Department of Visual Arts
http://visarts.ucsd.edu/faculty/lhock.htm
Louis Hock began making films when
he was studying psychology and poetry at the University of Arizona, graduating
with a BA in Psychology in 1970. In 1973 he received an MFA from the School of
the Art Institute of Chicago. Before joining the Visual Arts Department in
1977, he established the film program at the University of Texas at
Arlington. Since 1976, Hock's films,
videotapes, and media installations have been exhibited in one-person shows at
numerous U. S. art institutions including the Museum of Modern Art in New York,
the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, the
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Cinematheque in San Francisco, the
Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, the
American Museum of the Moving Image in New York, and various international
institutions. Hock has been the recipient of numerous awards and grants
including the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Film Institute, and
the Rockefeller Foundation.
UC DARNet Management Support and Contact Information
Carol J. Hobson (chobson@ucsd.edu)
CRCA Administrative Director
Center for Research in Computing
&the Arts (CRCA)
9500 Gilman Drive, 0037
La Jolla, CA 92093-0037
Ph: 858.534.4383, fax:
858.534.7944
Carol Hobson has worked in
cultural planning and consultation, and arts management for nearly 20
years. She is the Administrative
Director for the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA) at the
University of California San Diego, and provides management support to the UC
Digital Arts Research Network (UC DARNet). During her time at CRCA she has been
deeply involved in the evolution and appropriation of new media technologies in
the arts. She was instrumental in
revitalizing an international artists residency and exchange program at CRCA,
and continues to build a global network for the digital arts through
participation in symposia and new media art festivals.
CaiiA/STAR Core Member Participants
Roy Ascott has been working with issues of art, technology
and consciousness since the 1960s. Recognised as a pioneer of cybernetics and
telematics in art, his seminal projects have been presented at the Venice
Biennale, Electra Paris, Ars Electronica Linz, V2, Milan Triennale, and most
recently at the Biennale de Mercosul, Brazil, and gr2000az at Graz. He is
Professor and Director of CAiiA-STAR, which combines the Centre for Advanced
Inquiry in the Interactive Arts, University of Wales College, Newport and the
Science & Technology and Art Research Centre, University of Plymouth. (www. caiia-star. net). He convenes the annual international
conference Consciousness Reframed: art
and consciousness in the post-biological era. He was formerly Dean of the
San Francisco Art Institute, California, Professor for Communications Theory at
the Hochschule fuer angewandte Kunst in Wien, and Principal of the Ontario
College of Art in Toronto. He is on the
editorial board of Leonardo, Convergence,
and Digital Creativity, and advises
new media centres, festivals and juries in Japan, Korea, Brazil, North America
and Europe. His papers and articles are widely published; his books include: Art & Telematics: Toward the Construction
of New Aesthetics. (Japanese trans. E. Fujihara). Tokyo: NTT, 1998; Reframing Consciousness, 1999, and Art Technology Consciousness, 2000, both
published by Intellect Books in the UK. His collected writings, edited by
Edward A. Shanken, will be published by the University of California Press
later this year.
http://www.ekac.org/kacbio600.html
Eduardo Kac is an artist and writer who
investigates the philosophical and political dimensions of communication
processes. Equally concerned with the aesthetic and the social
aspects of verbal and non-verbal interaction, in his work Kac examines
linguistic systems, dialogic exchanges, and interspecies communication. Kac's
pieces, which often link virtual and physical spaces, propose alternative ways
of understanding the role of communication phenomena in shaping consensual
realities. Internationally known in the '80s as a pioneer of Telepresence Art
(the merger of telecommunications and telerobotics), in the '90s Kac created
the new categories of Biotelematics (art in which a biological process is
intrinsically connected to digital networks) and Transgenic Art (new art form
based on the use of genetic engineering techniques to create unique living
beings). Kac merges multiple media and biological processes to create hybrids
from the conventional operations of existing communications systems. Kac first
employed telerobotics motivated by a desire to convert electronic space from a
medium of representation to a medium for remote agency. He creates pieces in
which actions carried out by Internet participants have direct physical
manifestation in a remote gallery space. Often relying on the indefinite
suspension of closure and the intervention of the participant, his work
encourages dialogical interaction and confronts complex issues concerning
identity, agency, responsibility, and the very possibility of communication. In
his work Kac deals with issues that range from the mythopoetics of online
experience (Uirapuru) to the cultural impact of biotechnology (Genesis); from
the changing condition of memory in the digital age (Time Capsule) to
distributed collective agency (Teleporting an Unknown State); from the
problematic notion of the "exotic" (Rara Avis) to the creation of
life and evolution (GFP Bunny).
Diane Gromala
Need info…
Georgia Tech
Diane Gromala explores how notions of our bodies
change over time, as do our relationships to and understandings of technology
change. Her work explores how technology may reconfigure attention, experience,
and sensory awareness in culturally situated artistic contexts. Through virtual
and biofeedback technologies, she explores how crucial changes in the nature of
how we make sense of sensory response and how we attend to it are the result of
the interplay of contemporary technological and cultural changes.
Need info…
Ander’s research focuses on the creation of
hybrids between physical and cyberspaces.
He looks at cyberspace as an electronic
extension of cognitive space. Ander’s research defines cybrids, hybrids of
material and cyberspaces, and their underlying philosophy. Cybrids extend
beyond built spaces to include their contents and occupants. This extends the
applicability of cybrids beyond architecture to applied industrial design and
the fine arts as well.
Tech BC, Vancouver, CANADA
Raja’s current research aims to
develop the theoretical basis for the remediation of Sacred Art in the new
modes of representation and communication enabled by digital media; if and how digital technologies of immersion
and interactivity might be applied within the parameters of particular
traditional world views
University of Plymouth
Need stuff…
Gretchen Schiller,
Université de Paul Valéry,
Montpellier
Sciller’s research is based on extending our "body's
bubble" or kinespheres's range of perception. It focuses on mapping
specific movement impulses and patterns with image and time-space/force technologies.
A current project involves spatial trajectory mapping in an inanimate and
animate movement-based environment.
Elisa Giaccardi
Need info…
Italy
Giaccardi’s
research aims to produce a new approach to design that focuses on dynamics of
empathy, intersubjectivity, and ‘relational embodiment’ (scientific term
addressing our being and acting – at the same time physical, biological, and
socio-cultural – into the world). This research intends to contribute to the
corpus of studies directed to the identification and definition of a ‘science
of relationships’ or ‘science of interbeing’ in the field of interaction
design. She is interested in metadesign and relational strategies for
collaborative architectures and connected communities.
Center
for Consciousness Studies, University of Arizona
Lauke’s work investigates contemporary schemes of collective
or distributed intelligence, in relation to prior approaches that have
addressed similar problems.
Donna J. Cox
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
Donna Cox
is a pioneering artist in scientific visualization and information design. She formulated "Renaissance Team"
collaborations to develop new technologies and techniques for virtual
interfaces and information management.
She was Associate Producer for Scientific Visualization and Art Director
for NCSA/PIXAR segment of "Cosmic Voyage" IMAX movie that received an
Academy Award nomination. Her collaborative visualizations and animations have
been featured on major broadcast television programs and in planetarium
exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History. Cox's CAIIA research
extends the concepts and processes of scientific visualization to include
conceptual and metaphorical relationships with "historical-to-present-day"
mythologies. She is developing a novel argument to demonstrate correspondence
among mythological concepts and computational models in science.
Kieran
Lyons, UK
University of Wales College
Lyon’s work is a critical investigation into Marcel
Duchamp’s visit to Étival in 1912, the year, the Pompidou Centre celebrated the
arrival into its collection of Duchamp’s Green
Box.
Michael Punt, UK
Deputy Director of CaiiA
University of Amsterdam, University of Wales
College
Punt is a member of the Amsterdam School for
Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam where he obtained his
doctorate. He teaches Film Studies and Information Design in the School of Art
Media and Design at the University of Wales College, Newport. He has made 15
films and published over fifty articles on cinema and digital media in the last
decade. His recent publications include a book-length study on early cinema, (Early Cinema and the Technological Imaginary
to be published later this year by Intelect) and articles on cinema history and
digital technology for Leonardo, Design Issues and Convergence,
which have been translated into five languages. He is Editor in Chief of
Leonardo Digital Reviews (MIT Press), a member of the Leonardo/ISATS board, and
the MIT/Leonardo book publishing committee. Since 1996 he has been a regular
contributor to Skrien, a Dutch
journal of film and television criticism, where he has written a monthly column
on cinema, art and the Internet. His most recent book, in collaboration with
Robert Pepperell, The Post- Digital
Membrane: imagination, technology and
desire, was published by Intellect Press in 2000, and its supporting web
environment is due to be launched in 2001.
Pamela Jennings' new media arts projects include the CD-ROMs
“Solitaire: dream journal, ” and “Narrative Structures for New Media, ”
and the ArTronic™ sculpture "the
book of ruins and desire." Her writings have appeared in Felix: a Journal of Media Arts and
Communication, and Leonardo: Journal
of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology. The
newly published book, “Struggles for
Representation: African American Film/Video/New Media Makers,” includes
descriptions of Pamela’s work in the historical canon of African American media
makers. Her recently completed report,
"New Media Arts | New Funding Models,
" for the Creativity and Culture division of the Rockefeller Foundation is
available on her web site. Pamela is the recipient of
several Media Arts grants from the New York State Council on the Arts; Artist
in Residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts; and a MacDowell Artists' Colony
Fellow. Her commercial clients have included IBM Almaden Research Center, NBC
Interactive and currently the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI
International.
Need info…
Sommerer’s work looks at the question of how
life has emerged on earth and how it could have developed from simpler units or
particles into increasingly complex structures or whole systems of structures
that seem to follow a certain inner rule of organization. The goal of her work
is to apply some features of Complex Systems to the creation of interactive
artworks that can constantly change, adapt and evolve as users interact with
these systems.
Laurent Mignonneau
Need info…
Mignonneau’s work explores the question of how
to create an artificial life artwork that can ultimately evolve by itself.
Artificial Life as a field of research attempts to synthesize life in silico by using computers to create
virtual life. By definition life and artificial life should display the
following characteristics: self-organization, metabolization,
self-reproduction, and adaptive evolution. The modeling of artificial evolution
is a major challenge in Artificial Life research. The objective of my thesis is
to create an artwork that could be called 'alive' as it evolves, self-produces,
self-organizes and metabolizes.
(need bios…)
http://dc-mrg.english.ucsb.edu/
Geof Bowker Communication, UC San Diego
Sue-Ellen Case Theater and Dance, UC Davis
Sharon Daniel Film and Digital Media, UC Santa
Cruz and UCDarnet
Robert Essick English, UC Riverside
Anne Friedberg Visual Studies, UC Irvine
Katherine Hayles English, UC Los Angeles
Earl Jackson Literature, UC Santa Cruz
George Legrady Department of Art Studio and MAT,
UC Santa Barbara
Alan Liu English, UC Santa Barbara
Mark Meadow Department of Art History, UC Santa
Barbara
Peter Lyman School of Information Management and
Systems, UC Berkeley
J. Hillis Miller English and Comparative
Literature, UC Irvine
Robert Nideffer Studio Art Studio, ICS, UC
Irvine and UCDarnet
Mark Poster History and Visual Studies, UC
Irvine
Rita Raley English, UC Santa Barbara
Bruce Robertson Department of Art History, UC
Santa Barbara
Mark Rose English, UC Santa Barbara
Warren Sack School of Information Management and
Systems, UC Berkeley
Leigh Star Communication, UC San Diego
William Warner English, UC Santa Barbara
UCLA: Bill Seaman, Marcos Novak, Charles
Taylor, Biology; David Wilson, Philosophy; Susanne Lohmann, Political Science;
Michael Dyer, Computer Science; Bill McKelvey, Management Science; Dario Nardi,
Math, PIC program; Eugene Yates, Medicine.
UCI: Lisa Naugle (Dance), Chris Dobrian (Music),
Antoinette LaFarge (Studio Art), David Trend (Studio Art), Alan Tereciano
(Dance) Doug Goheen (Drama), Paul Dourish (ICS)
UCB: Ken Goldberg