Art and Technology

2018

Slyce contributes an essay to this volume–deriving from the 2018 Verbier Art Summit with the theme More Than Real: Art in the Digital Age–that analyses our moment and its infatuation with the technological sublime. He examines drives towards Virtual Reality in light of both an earlier moment of technological innovation through Walter Benjamin’s writing on 19th century photography and then signal examples of 1960s practices coming out of post-Minimalism and Conceptualism that explored new technologies while not succumbing to their forces or distanced modes of production. Starting with two signal cultural products of the 1980s in a song by the avant-rock band Pere Ubu and then David Cronenberg’s Videodrome, Slyce considers the conditions of making and the experience of virtual reality as art now, some five years before it is imagined–at least by the corporate powers standing behind VR–when ‘we’ will all own at least two such devices. The book, published by Koenig Books, was launched a...

ISEA2025, 2025

This paper argues for the conceptualisation of art as a technology, exploring its implications through the lens of complexity. It challenges the traditional partitioning of art and technology, proposing that art is a codifying system that dislocates objects and materials from their original functions and meanings, and encodes them with new affective potential. In other words, it is a kind of technology that programs our capacity to attribute affective potential to objects. The analysis suggests that rethinking art as a form of technology has the potential to expand the creative possibilities for artists working with emerging technologies and offers a pathway to reconsidering our relationship with our technologies. Analysis of the author's own artworks form part of the argument. The conclusion invites artists who work with emerging technologies to explore an ethical mode of crafting that foregrounds interdependence and complexity.

Proceedings of the 2013 International Conference on the Modern Development of Humanities and Social Science, 2013

This essay proposes "We" human-and-technology as the new human identity performed by the collaborative action of human and technology. Its aim is to open a new way for intersections of art, technology and humanities, through the political and aesthetic intimacy of human and technology in the collaborative action based interdependent perspective. The concept of "We" human-and-technology emphasizes the process of when the collaborative action of human and technology is performed. It focuses on two ideas: Enframing and the fetish. The former presents that the instrumental perspective uses the binary frame of "Us" versus "Them" as an instrument for ideology subordinating both humans and technology into the instrument. The latter demonstrates that the instrumental understanding of technology governs our senses through the fetish as blinded practices and beliefs distorting relations between human and technology.

Art and Technology in the Third Millennium. Landscapes and Protagonists, 2020

The reflection on the pervasiveness of technologies in society and in contemporary artistic practices opens up multiple scenarios on our near future. Overcoming the classic dichotomy art + technology, the new areas of research are complex and full of implications: hyperintelligence; the posthuman between cyborg and anthropocene; the Expanded Internet Art; from reality extended to vide-ogame art; sound art; the artist as inventor. The second volume of the "I Quaderni della Collezione Farnesina" series is dedicated to identifying these new scenarios and identifying the new artistic trend, with particular attention to Italians whose first global mapping is carried out. Studying their work, understanding the disruptive potential of their lateral thinking, allows us to acquire essential reading tools of our hyper-technological society, even in the field of technology and science.

Artistic Narration 2018,, 2018

Technology and art define and continue to reshape the world we live in. Re-imagining what we know as real or as a solid ground, pushes not only our opinions and understandings of nature to the limits, but with new inventions and experiments, both the mind and the body, the language, and the world itself seems to be making room for a different sphere and fresh rules. Thenceforward a subsequent fusion towards substitution of the former with the latter was imminent. In other words, contemporary artistic practices reach the climax-through video and digital art, of critically engaging in their means of expression as much scientific and technological advance as never before, changing the face of art forever and completing the revolution of sociological and political infusion into the field of art. Less orientated towards the past, the present paper aims at reviewing the changing role of technology played in the art of the present with an interest taken in the artist status and the public involvement. Furthermore, the interdisciplinary and crossdisciplinary experimentation central to contemporary art is given attention in order to point out how individual aesthetics have been gradually replacing general aesthetics.

Lebenswelt. Aesthetics and Philosophy of Experience, 2017

The Forum presented here for the journal «Lebenswelt. Aesthetics and philosophy of experience» gathers together contributions, in form of comment or question, on different aspects of Groys’ essay collection. Moreover, in order to face the complexity and the vary range of topics of the volume, the perspectives of the contributors are varied, ranging from the philosophy of art to the theory of new media, from the history of art to the theory of the museums and others.Yvonne Förster concentrates on the relation between art and technology. She deepens the general framework of a time ‘in the flow’, and analyzes the conception of a humanity mediated and permeated by technology. With a series of examples from the dystopic narratives, drawn especially from the movie imaginary, she proposes a notion of art as a critical and performative practice of experimenting with new technology in direction of a critical Posthumanism as a new paradigm in contemporary art. At the end of the Forum, Boris Groys replies with a comment to the previous contributions.

The Artist as Inventor. Investigating Media Technology Through Art, 2021

The development of robotics, artificial intelligence, genetics, and many other sectors, is putting a strain on our very idea of humanity. We look at technology development as a linear process that goes from technology to society, we think that it is technology that changes the world and we are passive to the processes of innovation. The book aims to give a new approach to the study of media and technological development through the tools of art and media art studies. An approach that sees in the practice of artists a new engine, creator of contents and inventor of new technological tools that have often been subsequently placed on the market. An approach that combines art, technology and innovation. Artists working with technology can be an engine not only for the contemporary art world but for society in general. Artists today work in a team with technicians and engineers, inside scientific departments, companies operating in the technological sector, or in their own studio-company and, in some cases, limited companies. This kind of artist is by no means outside the world but, on the contrary, works within real processes of technological and scientific innovation. This attitude is not new. The intent of the book is to trace some fundamental moments in the history of the relationship between art, technology and innovation. From the avant-garde to Michael Naimark's experience at MIT in the late 1970s until the latest experiments with artificial intelligence, robotics and genetics.

(Français : Ci-dessous) What is the meaning of craftsmanship in the era of digital production? Applied Arts as Implied Art is a critical reflection on artistic creativity and its cultural significance today. In the light of a confrontation between the art theory of Aloïs Riegl and Frank Lloyd Wright, the essay debates the role of technology in craftsmanship and its impact on artmaking. Referring to the aesthetics of Paul Valéry and the design theory of Jacques Vienot, the author proposes a contemporary interpretation of applied arts as implied art, a form of art between fine art and design that describes human life, its experiences and the occasional poverty thereof. ____________________________________________________________________ Quel est le sens de l'artisanat à l'ère de la productibilité numérique ? Arts appliqués, art impliqué est une réflexion critique sur la créativité artistique et son importance culturelle aujourd'hui. A la lumière d'une confrontation entre la théorie de l'art de Aloïs Riegl et Frank Lloyd Wright, l'essai discute le rôle de la technologie dans le design artisanal et son impact sur la création artistique. Se référant à l'esthétique de Paul Valéry et de la théorie de la conception de Jacques Viénot, l’auteur propose une interprétation contemporaine des arts appliqués comme art impliqué, une forme d'art entre les beaux-arts et le design qui raconte des histoires sur la vie humaine, ses expériences et de la pauvreté occasionnelle de ceux-ci.

Modernism and Technology Nicholas Daly, University College Dublin Modernism first emerges during the transformations of time and space wrought by the age of steam, and it comes to dominance against the background of the 'second industrial revolution'. This revolution, which was really more of an intensification of earlier processes, was driven by, inter alia, the exploitation of electricity and the internal combustion engine, use of early plastics (celluloid, and later bakelite), the oneiric power of the cinematograph, the sound-reproduction technology of the phonograph, and the communications technologies of the telephone and later the radio. In theoretical terms one could argue that there is no space, no "and" between modernism and these technological shifts: they are bound together in a common culture. But for practical purposes we can describe a set of relations between the two: Modernism incorporates technological change as historical content; it appropriates new representational means for its own artistic practices; and at times it self--consciously draws on the machine world for aesthetic models. The flurry of innovation in mechanical reproduction brought the materiality of older media into sharp focus. 1 For some, of course, the era of mechanical reproduction appeared to undermine lingering conceptions of the artist as Romantic creator, or as bohemian rebel. Further, Modernism enters its mature phase during the industrialized slaughter of the First World War, and it is imbued with an awareness of the lethal potential of modern technology, and of the fragility of the human body. Keeping such factors in mind, in this chapter I will consider, among other things, the new cultural forms that were directly made possible by technology; the way in which human/machine relations are imagined in these years; and the development of "machine" aesthetics.

Anthropology & Materialism, 2019