[ecrea] The Futures of Digital Media Arts and Culture - Issue 11 of the Fibreculture Journal - online now

>The Futures of Digital Media Arts and Culture - 
>Issue 11 of the Fibreculture Journal
>
>edited by Andrew Hutchison  and Ingrid Richardson
>
><http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue11/index.html>http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue11/index.html
>
>---
>
><http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue11/issue11_bruns.html>The 
>Future is User-Led: The Path towards Widespread Produsage - Axel Bruns
>
><http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue11/issue11_bizzocchi.html>The 
>Aesthetics of the Ambient Video Experience - Jim Bizzocchi
>
><http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue11/issue11_degger.html>Technology 
>transfer present and futures in the electronic arts - Brian Degger
>
><http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue11/issue11_harrell.html>Cultural 
>Roots for Computing: The Case of African 
>Diasporic Orature and Computational Narrative in 
>the GRIOT System - D. Fox Harrell
>
><http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue11/issue11_fullerton_morie_pearce.html>A 
>Game of One's Own: Towards a New Gendered 
>Poetics of Digital Space - Tracy Fullerton, Jacquelyn Ford Morie, Celia Pearce
><http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue11/issue11_knoespel_zhu.html>
>Continuous Materiality Through a Hierarchy of 
>Computational Codes - Kenneth J. Knoespel and Jichen Zhu
>
><http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue11/issue11_mccaw.html>Art 
>and (Second) Life: Over the hills and far away? - Caroline McCaw
>
><http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue11/issue11_penny.html>Experience 
>and abstraction: the arts and the logic of machines - Simon Penny
>
><http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue11/issue11_rettberg.html>Dada 
>Redux: Elements of Dadaist Practice in 
>Contemporary Electronic Literature - Scott Rettberg
>
><http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue11/issue11_suominen.html>The 
>Past as the Future? Nostalgia and Retrogaming in 
>Digital Culture  - Jaakko Suominen
>
><http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue11/issue11_whitelaw.html>Art 
>against Information: Case Studies in Data Practice - Mitchell Whitelaw
>
>---
>
>In the early 1990s, the very term 'digital' was 
>new and novel. Yet over the past several decades 
>it is apparent that applications and innovations 
>in e-mail, the Internet, mobile media, complex 
>data systems and computational practice, video 
>games and networking software have become an 
>essential and dynamic part of contemporary art 
>and culture. Increasingly, research in new media 
>(and 'newer' new media) interprets the arrival 
>of these emergent forms, addressing the 
>sometimes unexpected social, cultural and 
>aesthetic uses and implications of developing 
>digital technologies and interfaces.
>
>The eleven papers presented here from the 
>perthDAC (Digital Arts and Culture) 2007 
>conference offer a broad spectrum of 
>perspectives on the future of digital media art 
>and culture, speculating on recent trends and 
>developments, presenting research outcomes, 
>describing works in progress, or documenting 
>histories and challenging existing paradigms of 
>digital media use, creation and perception. They 
>range in topic from the participatory culture of 
>Web 2.0, video art and electronic literature, 
>biological art and emerging art practices in 
>online environments, to the compound relation 
>between art, data and computation, the gendered 
>poetics of game space and evolving character of game culture.
>
>In his paper Axel Bruns identifies a unique type 
>of media experience to emerge from the user-led 
>Web 2.0 environment  that of produsage. As he 
>insightfully notes, the boundaries between media 
>producers and consumers are currently breaking 
>down to enable 'the collaborative and continuous 
>building and extending of existing content in 
>pursuit of further improvement'. Jim Bizzocchi's 
>paper also considers an emergent aesthetic and 
>cultural phenomenon  ambient video  which 
>includes video art works and living video 
>paintings that reside on buildings, the walls of 
>our homes and offices, and in an increasingly 
>array of public spaces. Such artworks, he 
>argues, play 'in the background of our lives', 
>yet paradoxically they must be at-the-ready to 
>reward a glance or more sustained contemplative 
>gaze; Bizzocchi reflects upon the creative and 
>receptive implications of such a phenomenon. The 
>artistic potential of online virtual 
>environments such as Second Life is the topic of 
>Caroline McCaw's paper; she adopts her own 
>Second Life avatar in a deep engagement with the 
>work and ideas of DC Spensley (aka Dancoyote 
>Antonelli in Second Life). In discussing the 
>relation between this new aesthetic space and 
>the values and methods of traditional art 
>practices and histories, McCaw suggests that at 
>the very least emerging art practices in online 
>environments invite us to critically examine 
>'the way we think and talk about art'.
>
>Simon Penny examines the 'theoretical crisis' 
>that exists at the nexus of computational 
>technologies and artistic endeavour, where the 
>rationalist Cartesian values of the 
>hardware/software binary are antagonistic to the 
>creative aims of the artist. He argues 
>convincingly that such a crisis 'demands the 
>development of a critical technical practice'. 
>The legacy of Cartesian dualism embedded in our 
>understanding and interpretation of language, 
>computer code and the physical world is also the 
>focus of Kenneth Knoespel and Jichen Zhu's 
>paper. They suggest that the notion of 
>'continuous materiality' can effectively capture 
>the complexity of the relation between 
>materiality and immateriality, and they 
>effectively deploy this idea through the 
>diagrammatics and design morphology of 
>architectural practice. On a connected yet 
>divergent theme, D. Fox Harrell makes the case 
>that when computational systems are made to 
>intentionally and critically engage with 
>cultural values and practices  for example, in 
>the representation and manipulation of semantic 
>content  new, invigorated and expressive 
>computing practices can result. In this context 
>he describes the GRIOT platform which implements 
>interactive and generative narratives 'deeply 
>informed by African diasporic traditions'.  In 
>'Art Against Information', Mitchell Whitelaw 
>examines the way in which artistic practice 
>might break away from the representation of 
>information; he suggests that data art can 
>effectively work to separate 'information' and 
>'data', to create 'figures of data as 
>unmediated, immanent, material and 
>underdetermined', and speaks of the importance 
>of critically reflecting on the potential of such practices.
>
>Scott Rettberg explores the legacy of the 
>Dadaist avant-garde upon contemporary new media 
>artists and digital writers, arguing that there 
>is a close correlation between Dada 'anti-art' 
>practice and the methods deployed by new media 
>artists and digital/electronic writers. Such an 
>association, Rettberg claims, can be used to 
>critically contextualise the properties and 
>artifacts of contemporary new media literature. 
>Brian Degger considers another arena of cutting 
>edge artistic practice, the sometimes 
>controversial arena of mixed reality and 
>biological arts which are deeply enmeshed in 
>technoscientific and biotechnological innovation 
>and experimentation; in his paper he deliberates 
>upon issues of access, affordability and 
>technology transfer through the work of SymbioticA, Blast Theory and FoAM.
>
>Finally, two of the contributions chosen for 
>this special issue attend to aspects of computer 
>game culture and game space. In 'A Game of One's 
>Own' Tracy Fullerton, Jacquelyn Ford Morie and 
>Celia Pearce critique the predominantly male 
>sensibility of game space in first-person 
>shooters and massively multiplayer games. Via 
>feminist writings and literature, contemporary 
>game studies and Bachelard's theory, they 
>explore the possibility of rethinking and 
>re/degendering the spatial poetics and cognitive 
>models at work within the 'virtual playgrounds' 
>of computer games. In his article Jaakko 
>Suominen turns to an interesting emergent 
>phenomenon in game culture  that of 
>retrogaming. Retrogaming can include the 
>appropriation or remediation of older games, 
>devices and applications into present-day games, 
>or more broadly the nostalgic collection and 
>playing of first and second generation games and 
>consoles. Suominen investigates both the 
>increasing popularity of such practices, and the 
>way in which the culture and content of 
>retrogaming becomes incorporated into the latest game devices and gameplay.
>
>We hope that you find this to be both a 
>thought-provoking collection and a worthwhile 
>sampling of the perthDAC 2007 conference.
>
>
>
>Andrew Hutchison and Ingrid Richardson
>
>
>--
>"Take me to the operator, I want to ask some questions" - Barbara Morgenstern
>
>"Of course it is always possible to work oneself 
>into a state of complete contentment with an 
>ultimate irrationality" - Alfred North Whitehead
>
>"I thought I had reached port; but I seemed to 
>be cast back again into the open sea" (Deleuze and Guattari, after Leibniz)
>
>Andrew Murphie - Associate Professor
>School of English, Media and Performing Arts, 
>University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, 2052
>web:<http://empa.arts.unsw.edu.au/staff/staff.php?first=Andrew&last=Murphie>http://empa.arts.unsw.edu.au/staff/staff.php?first=Andrew&last=Murphie
><http://adventuresinjutland.wordpress.com/>http://adventuresinjutland.wordpress.com/
>http://researchhub.cofa.unsw.edu.au/ccap/
>fax:612 93856812 tlf:612 93855548 email: 
><mailto:(a.murphie /at/ unsw.edu.au)>(a.murphie /at/ unsw.edu.au)
>room 311H, Webster Building

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Nico Carpentier (Phd)
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Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Free University of Brussels
Centre for Studies on Media and Culture (CeMeSO)
Pleinlaan 2 - B-1050 Brussels - Belgium
T: ++ 32 (0)2-629.18.56
F: ++ 32 (0)2-629.36.84
Office: 5B.401a
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Katholieke Universiteit Brussel - Catholic University of Brussels
Vrijheidslaan 17 - B-1081 Brussel - Belgium
&
Facultés Universitaires Saint-Louis
Boulevard du Jardin Botanique 43  - B-1000 Brussel - Belgium
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Sponsored links ;)
----------------------------
NEW BOOKS OUT
Understanding Alternative Media
by Olga Bailey, Bart Cammaerts, Nico Carpentier
(December 2007)
http://mcgraw-hill.co.uk/html/0335222102.html
----------------------------
Participation and Media Production. Critical Reflections on Content Creation.
Edited by Nico Carpentier and Benjamin De Cleen
(January 2008)
<http://www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/Participation-and-Media-Production--Critical-Reflections-on-Content-Creation1-84718-453-7.htm>http://www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/Participation-and-Media-Production--Critical-Reflections-on-Content-Creation1-84718-453-7.htm 

----------------------------
European Communication Research and Education Association
Web: http://www.ecrea.eu
----------------------------
ECREA's Second European Communication Conference
Barcelona, 25-28 November 2008
http://www.ecrea2008barcelona.org/
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E-mail: (Nico.Carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
Web: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~ncarpent/
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