This course questions the intersection between art and technology looking at work by artists who use digital technology either in the development, creation or presentation of their work. Steve Symons will seek to unravel the threads of this rapidly emerging field, whilst remembering its about art and not only technology.
The aim of this course is to introduce the participants to some of the themes within the area termed ‘New Media’. This will be done by examining specific artists and their work, rather than spending time agonising over details of what is and what is not ‘New Media’.
Emphasis will be given to participants forming their own theories and ideas, rather than receiving didactic theoretical models. Each session will have a theme and will be divided into two parts. In the first part Steve Symons will present a number of artworks that address the session’s theme. After a break, the second part of each session will focus on reflection and discussion, to elicit a number of points that summarise, describe and represent issues within each theme. Some sessions will be accompanied by links to further reading and references.
Steve Symons is a practicing artist. He set up muio org, an Art, Technology and Interface Research organisation that explores the artistic use of technology.
Beginners’ Level – no prior knowledge necessary
£60 full / £45 concs
Wallflower Press would like to offer all students on the NEW MEDIA COURSE discounts of 20% off their titles relating to digital cinema. Vouchers to claim this 20% off will be inside the course packs which are given out at the first lesson of the course. The vouchers are redeemable in Cornerhouse’s ground-floor bookshop.
Acting as an introduction to contemporary digital cinema, New Digital Cinema: Reinventing the Moving Image tracks its intersection with video art, music video, animation, print design and live club events to create an avant-garde for the new millennium. Moving Image Technology: From Zoetrope to Digital provides a clear explanation of scientific and technical concepts and integrates a discussion of traditional, film-based technologies with the impact of emerging ‘new media’ technologies such as digital video, e-cinema and the internet.
The Undercut Reader: Critical Writings on Artists’ Film and Video critically explores the aesthetics and politics of film and video practices within the context of visual arts and independent cinema. Through a diverse collection of essays and 870 full-colour illustrations, animate! aims to explore the relationship between art and animation. Published by LUX and distributed by Wallflower Press, the book also contains a DVD of ten experimental animation films created as part of a groundbreaking commissioning project established by Arts Council England and Channel 4 to support risk taking in animation. Discounted copies will be available for students from the Cornerhouse bookshop.
For more information on these and other Wallflower Press titles, including full contents lists, sample chapters and reviews please visit http://www.wallflowerpress.co.uk
Wednesday 17 January: Introduction, what is [new] media?
The themes for the course including the Internet, Networked Space & Telematic Art, Locative Work, Interactivity and New Narratives, Devices & Interfaces, and Generative & Artificial Life, Bio Art …..? Art, will be introduced.
Wednesday 24 January: The Internet
Net art is probably one of the first media art fields to be taken up by art galleries. It can act as a display medium as well as a tool for communication, promotion and archive, aswell as a broadcast medium. This session will explore a few of the ways in which the Internet has facilitated a range of work.
Sites to consider will include:
www.soundtoys.net;
www.superchannel.org;
www.sodaplay.com
www.potatoland.org/shredder/;
www.unitedwestandmovie.com/
www.unitedwestandmovie.com/
www.calarts.edu/~line/history.html
www.folly.co.uk/adeleprince
As well as www.youtube.com, www.myspace.com and www.flickr.com
Wednesday 31 January: pylon new critical writing & website re-launch
6.00pm – 8.00pm in the galleries (drop-in times)
Course participants are invited to the launch of pylon’s revamped website, which includes new writing and an archive of the group’s activities over the past three years. pylon supports the work of new media installation artists Andy Gracie, Jen Southern & Steve Symons.
Course participants will be able to see documentation a number of installed new media works by Andy Gracie, Jen Southern and Steve Symons, and meet and talk with them and other practitioners in the field.
See www.pylon.tv for more details of pylon and the pylon artists.
Wednesday 7 February 2007: Networked Space, Telematic Art
Following on from artworks that exist purely on the Internet, we begin to see how real space and the experience of place is mediated through networked and media systems. This session will consider artists including: Paul Sermon, Rafael Lorenzo Hemmer and Andrea Zapp.
Wednesday 14 February 2007 – no session
Wednesday 21 February 2007: Locative Work
As global positioning system (GPS) technology has become smaller and cheaper, artists have responded to this through exploring how space and place interact to make stimulating art experiences. This session will explore the works of a number of artists whose work utilises social, cultural, political and narrative aspects of place and space. Terry Raub, Steve Symons, Jen Southern and Janet Cardiff.
Wednesday 28 February 2007: Interactivity and New Narratives
The use of fractured and non-linear narratives within art works, offering multiple paths and outcomes, if any at all, has undergone exciting transformations in recent years. This session will explore the new practices where time, space and screen are restructured and re-defined. By this point in the course we will have seen enough work to attempt a dissection of the much used term ‘interactive’. We will debate if the word has lost its meaning in this context? What does it mean to make interactive artwork? What are the myths that surround ‘interactive’ work?Under discussion will be artists including Andrea Zapp, Luc Corchense and Jeffery Shaw, Toshio Iwai and Jim Campbell .
Wednesday 7 March 2007: Devices and Interfaces
Although debatable whether the ‘art device’ alone should be categorised as ‘new media’, there is an argument that the historical influence of Kinetic Art on the field adds weight to supporting this argument. This session will explore a number of the devices and interfaces created by artists over recent years to ‘support’ their work. The focus of the discussion will be to consider what experience that artist intends the audience to have. Of interest will be Owl Project, Steve Symons, Perry Hoberman, Shaun Desker and Sine Wave Orchestra.
Wednesday 14 March 2007: Generative and Artificial Life, Bio Art ….. ? Art
The final session will explore the outer limits of the field, where the role of artist, scientist, programmer and engineer merge. What happens when the artwork interacts with itself?
We’ll look at the weird and wonderful – www.we-make-money-not-art.com