Mon 23 August 2010
10:00–12:00h
Volkshochschule Dortmund, L 103

Moderated by Edward Shanken (us/nl)

1. 10:00h | Oliver Grau (at): Media Art in Exploration of Image History
2. 10:25h | Lioudmila Voropai (de): Media Art and Its Theories. Discourse Analysis Approach
3. 10:50h | Ji-hoon Kim (us/kr): Machines of the Audiovisual. The Development of Synthetic Audiovisual Interfaces in Avant-garde Art Since the 1970s
4. 11:15h | Christo Doherty (za): Rethinking Cybernetics and Electronic/New Media Art

ISEA2010 Conference Proceedings | P5 Theory and History of Media Art I (PDF, 61.05 KB)

Oliver Grau (at)

Media Art in Exploration of Image History

During the last decade renowned artists created optical experiments, phantasmagoria, perspective theaters, anamorphoses, etc. Slowly the prehistory of the visual culture of the 20th century arrives at the surface, transported by artists. This talk focuses on the question in which manner the newly created images differ. In which way are they included into innovative experimental and critical contexts that contribute to the development of a thinking space for reflection of visual strategies? How can the epistemic conditions and (political) consequences of (visual) media be analysed?

ISEA2010 Conference Proceedings | Media Art in Exploration of Image History (PDF)

Oliver Grau is Professor for Image Science/Media Art at Danube University. Translated in 12 languages, publications include: Virtual Art, MIT Press 2003; MediaArtHistories, MIT Press 2007; Imagery of the 21st Century, MIT Press 2010. He also developed virtualart and gssg.

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Lioudmila Voropai (de)

Media Art and Its Theories. Discourse Analysis Approach

Exploiting the methods of a critical discourse analysis the paper retrospectively examines the changes in a use of terminology and theoretical references within the media art discourse since its establishment in the 80s till the present. Scrutinizing some representative curatorial and artistic statements as well as writings on the media art theory it analyses a paradigmatic shift from a philosophy of a New Avant-garde to a neo-positivistic ideology of Science-Brut art practices.

ISEA2010 Conference Proceedings | Media Art and Its Theories. Discourse Analysis Approach (PDF)

Lioudmila Voropai is a Russian independent curator, art critic and researcher in media art. Currently she is enrolled in a Ph.D. program at the Academy of Media Arts (KHM) in Cologne and accomplishes her doctoral thesis about an impact of cultural policy on the institutionalisation of media art.

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Ji-hoon Kim (us/kr)

Machines of the Audiovisual. The Development of Synthetic Audiovisual Interfaces in Avant-garde Art Since the 1970s

This paper investigates ways in which alternative models of the audiovisual apparatus have developed since the early 1970s as a number of filmmakers and video artists experimented with a synthetic relation between sound and image in the terrains of avant-garde art. It will suggest a revisionist approach to thinking media technologies and their aesthetics, one that builds into an expanded, corresponding relation between different media that were presupposed as distinct in period, material, and art form. Examples under investigation include Guy Sherwin, Paul Sharits, and Bruce McClure (Film), Steina and Woody Vasulka and David Stout (Video), and Granular Synthesis and Ryoji Ikeda (Computer).

Ji-hoon Kim is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Cinema Studies at New York University, where he is currently finishing a dissertation on Intermedial Configurations: The Art of the Moving Image between Cinema, Video, and the Digital. His essays appeared in Screen (journal) and Global Art Cinema: New Theories and Histories (Oxford Univ. Press, 2010).

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Christo Doherty (za)

Rethinking Cybernetics and Electronic/New Media Art

This paper argues that the perspective of science studies/history of science is an indispensable part of understanding media art and shouldn’t be neglected by the turn to art history. It looks at the relationship between the science of cybernetics in its heyday between 1946 & 1950 and the positions taken by the artists, Roy Ascott and Nam June Paik, who embraced cybernetics in their writings and manifestos during the popularization of cybernetics in the 1960s.

ISEA2010 Conference Proceedings | Rethinking Cybernetics and Electronic/New Media Art (PDF)

Professor Christo Doherty is Head of Digital Arts, in the Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He is also a photographer and video artist, his most recent exhibition, Small Worlds, examined rail technology, nostalgia and the South African landscape.

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