Media Arts

Book (in French) published in 2003 at the occasion of the first exhibition staging exclusively biomedia art works at the national art center Le Lieu Unique in Nantes/France. Hauser Jens (ed.): L'Art Biotech. Nantes/Trézélan, 2003.

The publication has not been available anymore since 2008; this PDF is made accessible with the agreement and the kind support of the Filigranes publishing house, until an augmented new edition will be be available. Great thanks to Filigranes and Patrick Le Bescont! https://www.filigranes.com

Introductory chapter to the "L''Art biotech" book published in 2003 in conjunction with the first exhibition exclusively presenting art work using biotechnological means in actual practice, at the Lieu Unique Nantes.

https://www.paris-art.com/lart-biotech/

Countless non-traditional artistic and archival media projects have emerged post-2011 to preserve and commemorate the collective memory of the Egyptian revolution, such as the crowdsourced documentary “The 18 Days”, the “Augmented Archive” which can be best described as a mobile site-specific app that reimagines Walter Benjamin’s Arcade Project in the “digital age of transmission and real time”, there’s also the meta documentary “Filming Revolution”, Lara Baladi’s “Tahrir Archives”, and soon to be launched Mosireen media collective’s “858- Archives of Resistance” which features 858  indexed-time stamped hours of footage collected since 2011 and made publicly accessible for the first time.
Notwithstanding the current upsurge in memory and the national obsession with anything archive-related, I’ll be looking at the example of Amira Hanafi’s database storytelling project “Dictionary of the revolution” as a case study of a digital publication that also serves as an archive-based artwork. I’ll attempt to explore these questions: How can we challenge the official discourse in their accounts of political events, in their timeline of these events, in the politics that drove the events by taking an active role in the knowledge production and dissemination of media culture? How can the act of excavating, remembering and representing oppositional temporal memories help in the reconstruction of parallel imaginations and political possibilities? How can experimental publishing using digital technology push the frontiers of archive-based art? And what are the limitations of archives and archive-based art?

Un-Greening Green: Materials - Metaphors - Media - Misunderstanding. This first interdisciplinary (OU)VERT symposium at the Medical Museion/University of Copenhagen on 19 May 2017 invited philosophers, artists, art historians, science and technology scholars, as well as researchers from the natural and the medical sciences to confront positions inherent in the pervasive greenness trope, and to debate contradictions emerging with its migration across different cultures of knowledge.

Often used as a synonym of ‘definition’, the term ‘resolution’ indicates the quantity of detail a raster digital image holds, and may refer to image resolution (the size of a digital image file), display resolution (the total number of pixels or the pixel density of a digital visual display), or optical resolution (the number of image sensor elements in a digital camera). Resolution may be increased or decreased, and its various degrees determine not only the visual appearance of an image, but also the conditions of its production, storage, and circulation. As a way of measuring and controlling visibility, resolution raises a whole series of aesthetic, epistemological, and political implications, and may be tackled from the different perspective of media theory, media archaeology, and visual culture theory. Reaching back to McLuhan’s reflections on the low definition of the television screen and on its analogies with mosaics and pointillisme, this introduction examines the question of resolution in a number of film, media, and artistic practices from the 1960s to today.

The author has been has been mixing realities for many years. In his paper "Ethico-aesthetics in t* performative spaces" he outlines his history of theoretical and critical discussions, that are enlightening and contextualising
in many ways. Coming from a mathematics background, his take on the use of scientific ideas and technology in the arts is somewhat distinct yet related
to the papers in this volume. He uses the term "media choreography" as a term that attempts to describe MR environments not as databases and rule systems,
but rather as dynamics and quasiphysics. This ties in nicely with some of the concepts thrown around in the discussions of Digital Physics in the Data Ecologies Workshop: attempting to build quasi- or pseudophysical environments.

Sha concentrates mainly upon (approximations of) continuous systems rather than accepting / working with / exploiting discrete systems. He is, however, aware of the differences between these things, which not all practitioners in these fields are. One language point that remains pertinent is the use of the expression "co-structure" rather than "interact" when referring to the behaviour of visitors and systems in complex MR environments. There is no turn taking involved, it is much more a case of the visitors and the environment taking part in a collaborative structuring of the media architecture in an inter- twined and simultaneous collection of actions. His closing comments, where he forcefully holds the term "play" to be distinctly different from the ideas of ("the carcass of") "game" are a rallying call to all those who continue to believe that there is and should be an important difference between the two.

The environment of zero gravity affords a unique medium for new modalities of musical performance, both in the design of instruments, and human interactions with said instruments. To explore this medium, we have created and flown Telemetron, the first musical instrument specifically designed for and tested in the zero gravity environment. The resultant instrument (leveraging gyroscopes and wireless telemetry transmission) and recorded performance represent an initial exploration of compositions that are unique to the physics and dynamics of outer space. We describe the motivations for this instrument, and the unique constraints involved in designing for this environment. This initial design suggests possibilities for further experiments in musical instrument design for outer space.

Hybrid Radio opens dialogue around the possibilities of re-thinking radio communication as an open tool for transmitting and receiving in order to create streams for civic communication, engagement, and expression. This text explores the history of radio, as well as free radio theories around the world, and proposes to re-appropriate the space of the airwaves that has been drastically re- gulated, privatized and institutionalized.
Radio acts as an invisible and mobile architecture, having the characteristic of breaking down boundaries, territories, and walls. Understanding radio as a parasitic system can provide a setting to grow in an organic and molecular way. The objective is to explore the potentials in radio infrastructure, its invisibility and the possible ways of using it to foster expression, and trigger discus- sions about decentralized communication networks and open streams of coexistence.

Diastrophisms is a sound installation with a modular system that sends images through rhythmic patterns. It is built on  a set of debris from the Alto Río building that was destroyed by the 27F earthquake in 2010 in Chile. Diastrophisms explores  poetical,  critical  and  political  crossings  between  technology  and  matter  in  order  to  raise  questions  about  the  relationship  between  human  beings  and  nature,  to  consider  the  construction  of  memory  in  a  community  by  questioning  the  notion  of  monument,  and  to  imagine  new  forms  of  communication  in  times  of  crisis.

In film, like in any other media which uses a dynamic picture, the illusion of movement appears as a result of a quick projection of an arranged sequence of static frames. Movement, or actually its illusion, appears out of stillness. The author starts the analysis of this paradoxical phenomenon by differentiating between the terms of continuity and discreteness and introduces the definition of discrete illusion of movement. Jernajczyk investigates the history of scientific-artistic attempts at recreating physical movement and discusses the basic properties of visual perception thanks to which the illusion of movement is able to occur. The author's deliberations on the properties of a moving picture lead him to the questions about the nature of movement and other foundations of physical reality – time and space. The theoretical discussion is accompanied with a presentation of chosen artistic projects, the makers of which (staff and students of the Media Art Department) not only use a moving picture, but also consciously refer to the mechanism in which that moving picture is created.       
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W filmie, jak i we wszystkich innych mediach posługujących się dynamicznym obrazem, złudzenie ruchu pojawia się w wyniku szybkiej projekcji uporządkowanej sekwencji statycznych kadrów. Ruch, a w zasadzie jego iluzja, wyłania się więc z bezruchu. Analizę tego paradoksalnego zjawiska rozpoczynamy od rozróżnienia pojęć ciągłości oraz dyskretności i wprowadzenia definicji dyskretnej iluzji ruchu. Śledzimy historię naukowo-artystycznych prób odtworzenia ruchu fizycznego i omawiamy podstawowe własności percepcji wzrokowej, dzięki którym możliwe jest powstawanie iluzji ruchu. Rozważania dotyczące własności ruchomego obrazu prowadzą nas do pytań o naturę ruchu oraz innych fundamentów rzeczywistości fizycznej – czasu i przestrzeni. Rozważaniom teoretycznym towarzyszy prezentacja realizacji artystycznych, których autorzy nie tylko posługują się obrazem ruchomym, ale również w świadomy i twórczy sposób odnoszą się do mechanizmu jego powstawania.

Autoreferat zawiera opis dzieła habilitacyjnego MathArt, na które składa się sześć instalacji wideo, powstałych w latach 2014–2016: „Reszta”, „Zenon^2”, „Ciałka oznaczone”, „Granice koła”, „Przegięcia i ekstrema” oraz „Obraz wyczerpujący”. Prace te w sposób twórczy odnoszą się do wybranych problemów matematyki, zaś w warstwie formalnej cechują się geometrycznym minimalizmem. Tekst podsumowuje również mój dotychczasowy dorobek artystyczny i naukowy oraz działalność dydaktyczną, edukacyjną i popularyzatorską. W celu ogólnej charakterystyki twórczości artystycznej, w której aspekt poznawczy jest równie istotny co wartość estetyczna dzieła, proponuję tutaj autorski termin: sztuka poznania (cognition art).

Art has always been a transgressive way of exploring in-between and liminal aspects of human experience. Within the current era of social upheaval and crisis, it is of great interest how extreme emotions can be aestheticized and examined under new interdisciplinary lenses. Anger has constituted an excluded emotion – often a taboo within rationalized social norms – although the politics of repression in various threads of contemporary life are often a provoking factor. Yet, it has always been an emotion with not only great expressive qualities but also located near wisdom, virtue and wrath. Can anger be spatialized through intermedia practices? How can the aesthetization of such an emotion reveal political aspects of such works of art? The current article seeks to explore the potential and aesthetics of anger in contemporary art and in particular how it becomes performed, spatialized and mediatized with poetic and political implications. Having as the starting platform the philosophical, cultural and socio-spatial aspects of emotions within wider contemporary affective structures of the everyday, it explores such an emotion through different trajectories (philosophical, cultural, spatial) and forms of artistic expression, ranging from video art and installation to hybrid performances and documented walking actions. Therefore, the article focuses on a number of artists including the works of Bill Viola, Pipilotti Rist, Claire Fontaine, Lanfranco Aceti, Regina Galindo and Bill Psarras.

The paper corresponds an educational experience about the impact of the pedagogical practices of digital media in the classroom. In this main objective is to understand the relation between the complementary
subject (Art Education and Technology Education) and the interdisciplinary methodology. As well as a new methodology for technological education in media arts. In this context of the inclusive school, the role of educational innovation assumes great importance, however, in order to improve and merge with a modernized model
between teaching duo, digital content and inclusive students in the virtual classroom. As the results of the activities carried out in the different workshops of: Stop Motion Animation for primary education, and Video Art for secondary education. In both workshops, those that
correspond to the simple of the plan of complementary subject in different artistic-technological activities, depending on the level of schooling. Therefore, a true educational change for the whole of society and the inclusive school. One of the great challenges of the future in the educational task in the classroom, which contributes to satisfy the needs of new educational opportunities both the professionals and the teaching leadership, sharing and promoting with collaborative work towards a new alternative method of strategic learning and the participation of students within the virtual classroom.

Photography as the Evidence deals with scepticism and relativism introduced by media theories regarding evidentiary status of digital photography. It proves that similar or even the same type of material, having no capacity of being an evidence, existed previously, in the era of analogue photography, so no substantial or revolutionary change occurred with new, digital, technologies. This analysis is undertaken inside discourses of three realisms that emerged simultaneously with the invention of photography. These discourses are; pragmatism, positivism and historical realism. All of them are defining photography in terms of its evidence. These discourses allocate discussion on photography in different domains as; science, philosophy and political theory or political history. They claim that: (1) the photography can bring the knowledge or can at least serve as its tool (in terms of philosophical machine), (2) that photographic referent is necessary, not only possibly existing (thus; if something exists can be photographed), and that (3) the photograph can only serve to illustrate the vanished time. Still, each of these perspectives is partial, as excluding some other practical usage of photography as the medium. Obviously, as all of them are starting with the nearest definition of vernacular photography, or what is depicted as “normal” or “average” photography, they are producing a fallacy of incomplete induction. A new definition deriving possible photographs from the capacity of its medium, is introduced. Returning to the very start of the photographic process, to seemingly banal parameters as technological specificities, as well as to photographer’s choices made upon it, the dissertation is introducing new domains of interpretation. Introduction of the photographic agent into the discourse, namely, allows proceeding to the domain of photographic ethics, or even into wider domain of philosophy of politics, giving an overview of critical issues when photography is presented as evidence, in moral sense. Primary author is distinguished from the secondary one in regard to rules given in commission, bringing up notions of responsibility, as the only fact being provable, and that is – the photographer „has been there,“ which is coming important for repressive (political, military..) exploitations of photography, predominantly using photography as the evidence.