[artinfo] ISEA2008 - Artist in Residence Program - SIngapore

[Vladimir Todorovic]

Dear friends,

we are pleased to announce the open call for Artists in Residence program
which will constitute the core of the ISEA2008 exhibition in Singapore.

please help us distribute this to all the possible and interested parties.

thanks a lot.
best regards,
v

ISEA 2008 Call for Proposals - Artist In Residence @ National University of
Singapore
The organizing committee of the International Symposium of Electronic Arts
2008 (ISEA2008) with generous support from the National University of
Singapore (NUS), is soliciting proposals from New Media artists to work
collaboratively with  NUS centers of research and arts in preparation of
work to be submitted for exhibition during the July 2008 ISEA in Singapore.
Unlike previous symposia where there was a separate call for artists in
residence and one of art works for exhibition, ISEA2008 will only have one
call for artists' submission. The submissions selected for the AIR will also
be subsequently produced and shown in the main ISEA exhibition. Submissions
from countries and cultures underrepresented at other New Media venues are
particularly encouraged.


Residencies of up to 3 months in duration can be supported, and must be
completed before July 2008. Financial support from NUS is available for:

- Economy airfare to and from the artist/designers country of residence,
- University housing while the artist is in Singapore,
- A monthly allowance of  S$2000,
- Materials cost of up to S$1000.

In addition, NUS Host Centers will provide equipment, facilities, and
expertise as agreed to on a per-project basis.

Artists will have the opportunity and be expected to participate in public
and academic community activities such as lectures and demonstrations during
the course of their residency.


More details and the guidelines about AIR call submissions can be found at:


http://www.isea2008.org/air.html




Symposium Themes
http://www.isea2008.org/themes.html


The global and unequally distributed proliferation of information,
communication and experiential technologies has led to the development of a
highly differentiated and structurally complicated media arts field. Even as
the advent of some technologies is actively celebrated and their potential
exploited by some, some others have barely come to grips with the
possibilities of 'long-obsolescent' technologies.

Even as some struggle with the newness of certain technologies, others
somewhat jaded with the determinative influence on their lives and
creativity are consciously opting for "old" and "low" technologies. In such
a globally differentiated situation, the very notions of "new" and "old"
technologies though pandered as an issue of relative sophistication is
revealed as an issue of relative access largely determined by historical,
political, economic and cultural contexts. That such technologies have
become important engines of economic development has made a critical
evaluation of their complicities in and complex relationships to particular
socio-cultural, economic and political ways of being especially difficult.
That one can simultaneously critique technologies and yet enjoy the benefits
and pleasures of some particular technologies might seem like a compromise
and sell-out for some, but is a necessary aspect of one's being in a world
infused with such technologies to a point where opting out is both
pragmatically impossible and ethically irresponsible.

In the art world, the problems of how one critically evaluates creative uses
of technology are often confused with the questions of how one creatively
enables the critical uses of technology. The themes for ISEA2008 Symposium
have been selected to respond thus to the challenges of new and old
technologies in creatively engaging the critical problems and possibilities
of our age.


Locating Media

The oft-heard rhetoric of recent media technologies is that it complicates
traditional notions of spatial and geographical location insofar as these
technologies are said to attend to one's technological needs without regard
to where one is; for example, one common myth goes like this: 'one can
access information about anything and communicate with people on the net
without regard to which country one is in'.

Such postulations of location-neutrality, however, are based on a fallacious
assumption that one's location is merely a secondary aspect of one's
experiential environment and thus can be phenomenologically simulated or
even negligibly circumvented by the mediation of communication, information
and experiential technologies.

Location, however, is a complex experience constituted by one's cultural,
economic, political and technological environment that is differentially
distributed and conceived in different parts of the world. Thus, new
technologies, even while purporting to surmount location, seem to be merely
following the contours of the location-specific 27 variables that operate in
any particular space. While many recent technologies also present themselves
as 'location-aware' that enable one's ability to address these
location-specific variables in some ways, it is noteworthy that such
experiences very often rely on simulating only an indexical notion of
location through a series of sensory cues related to a particular space.

In the light of the centrality of location as a critical problematic and
possibility, this theme seeks to examine how the specificities of location
mediate and are mediated by both old and new technologies of information,
communication and experience. We invite academic research, design and
artistic explorations that explore the possibilities and problems of
addressing location through media technologies. We are especially keen on
works that address the complex historical, cultural, socio-political and
economic contexts that affect location-specific interactions with such
technologies.


Wiki Wiki

It is interesting that the Hawaiian word, 'wiki wiki', meaning "quick" has
become co-opted to label the revolutionary systems and practices that
support the easy and speedy tele-collaborative authoring of knowledge online
- i.e., wiki.

Wiki is an extremely easy-to-use authoring system for online content that
cannibalizes on the HTML protocols with additional facilities to monitor all
the changes being made, revert to content prior to editing as well as a
space to discuss the evolving content. The fact that users are able to
access the pages and change content without any restrictions, defies the
development of a notion of single authorship and thus also the possibility
of authorial responsibility for such content.

The relative ease in developing online content with a community of 'at a
distance' presents wiki as a model tool for tele-collaborative production.
Wiki is yet another example of how technologies are changing the ways in
which creative knowledge production is being transformed by enabling
collaboration between diverse individuals. In this theme, we seek to
initiate discussion, deliberation and development in collaborative creation
using new technologies. How have new and old technologies contributed to the
development of collaborative making? What are some of the issues raised by
collaborative creation; for example, authorship, artistic responsibility,
claims to intellectual property, conflicts and confluences of disciplinary
knowledge and practices, etc. What are the spaces of such collaborative work
- what are the transitional spaces between the artists' studios and
scientific labs?

We invite artistic and academic work that addresses and/or exemplifies the
problems and possibilities of collaborative creative work that are enabled
by technologies. Works that are created by collaborations between diverse
and geographically diverse communities are especially encouraged.


Ludic Interfaces

The infantilization of play, that is, the historical association of playing
with children and non-serious activities, has led to the systematic
exclusion of play and fun from 'serious' creative, scientific and
technological investigations. While the ludic (i.e., play-related)
dimensions of artistic creativity have been variously explored recently in
both art works and in scholarly research, the interactions between
technological developments and the pleasures described as 'fun', are few and
far between.

In fact, the history of technological development has more instances of
people enjoying technologies than of those willing to acknowledge or
systematically deliberate on such pleasures. It has been argued recently
that the phenomenal development of the game and entertainment industries,
primarily driven by various technologies that engender the expanded
exploration of embodied pleasures, has highlighted the potential of
technologically-driven experiences of fun.

However, there are those who assert that there is still much more need to
investigate the complicities between technology and pleasure in these
experiences and to develop alternative modalities of exploring the
technological possibilities of pleasure and vice versa. In this theme, we
seek to address the ways in which fun and enjoyment interact with and
complicate new media technologies both in its design, creative development,
everyday uses and discursive articulations. We especially encourage works
that critically explore the entertainment industries and their use of recent
technologies.

Reality Jam

While the reality effects of photography had forced a re-evaluation of the
conventions and concerns of painting as well as of perception in the mid
19th century, the realistic aspirations of recent visualization and
experiential technologies (e.g., in animation, gaming, immersive
environments, mixed / augmented reality) are forcing us to reconsider our
registers of the 'real' in our media and our everyday lives.

The confusing of the real and the virtual through seamless transitions and
the perpetual obfuscation of the edges that demarcate them are increasingly
the focus of scientific research as well as of creative works. The
improvisational nature and interference potential of such 'reality jamming'
- i.e., this pressing together of the real and virtual in a context where
their distinctions are deliberately obscured - open further possibilities
for research, scholarship and creative production.

In this theme, we also seek to encourage artists and researchers to explore
the ways in which the 'virtual' presences and experiences of folklore,
religious beliefs, magical rituals and science and media-fiction interact
with and counteract the lived experiences of the 'real'. Scholarly
presentations, art works and research in the areas of virtual, mixed and
augmented reality, not restricted to the technological platforms and
equipment that enable such experiences, are especially encouraged.

Border Transmissions

The 'borderless world' and the 'global village' are different imaginaries of
a world seemingly transformed by the speed and efficiency of information,
communication and experiential technologies - of a world where the political
borders of nation states were considered to be either irrelevant or
difficult to sustain.

The age that announced the 'borderless world' is, however, ironically also
the one that has displayed the greatest anxiety about this breakdown and
invested the largest amount of resources and time in the increasing
surveillance and control of these borders. While these borders historically
have been permeable to certain kinds of economic, socio-cultural, political
and military transactions (i.e., trade, cultural objects and experiences,
religious missions, etc.), the development of technologies that facilitated
greater communication and transportation across them has only increased the
anxiety to control these transactions. The contestation over these borders
and of the transmissions across them continues to be a struggle as much
determined by technological developments as it is by the politics, cultures
and socio-economic systems that mediate within and between these borders.
The question of how one negotiates technological developments that
simultaneously contribute to the increasing opening and ossification of
borders is of utmost significance and in this theme, we invite artistic and
scholarly work that engages this question.

We seek to showcase research and creative interventions that deal with the
strategic and tactical possibilities of networking, communication and
experiential technologies in ways that enable the emergence of different
conceptions of borders, nation-states and of the infectious transmissions
that problematize these demarcations.


best regards,

ISEA2008 organizing committee
http://www.isea2008.org/



-- 
Vladimir Todorovic
http://tadar.net/