Hybridity: Arts, Sciences and Cultural Effects

Leonardo/CAA Special Session, 2005 College Art Association Conference, Atlanta, GA, February 16-19, 2005

Session Chairs: Yvonne Spielmann spielmann@medien-peb.uni-siegen.de and Jay David Bolter jay.bolter@lcc.gatech.edu

Description: The panel will address new forms of encounter, dialogue and interaction that are indicative of larger shifts in the arts, sciences and culture in the face of digital technologies and the hybridisation of media and media forms.

We start with the premise that science, art, and technology were closely connected in early modernity: new technologies (especially film) were regarded as the starting point for a new era of progress and anage of visuality. The European avant-garde movements developed the vision of a future society base on technological novelty, and, in the Futurist view, the artist and the scientist should collaborate to realize this vision. In contrast, after World War II and the experiences of the scientific and technological developments that led to the creation and use of weapons of mass destruction, the scientific and artist worlds have drifted apart (as analyzed/confirmed in critical cultural discourses of the Frankfurt School). Yet at the same time, important aspects of society's organization and structure are become increasingly dependent on sophisticated (global) technologies of networked communication.

What is happening now can be described as two apparently contradictory trends. On the one hand, complex technology has entered almost every household and affects cultural practices at many levels (mobile phones, e-mail, entertainment viewing, bill-paying). On the other hand, large segments of our society seem to be growing indifferent to the practice of science and technology. As the European Commission has recently reported, youth in Europe are hardly interested in the sciences any more. And yet there is a recognizable interest (if not a movement) in the arts towards the sciences, so that the old metaphor of the scientist-artist (Leonardo da Vinci's paradigm) is revitalized. In reviving this metaphor, artists are insisting on an important change in the constitution of the scientist -artist, because the artist has a new relationship to the technologies of representation that he or she uses -- above all, to the computer, which is itself a product of decades of scientific research. As video and computer artist Woody Vasulka puts it, the artist must share creativity with the machine (the computer), which is itself responsible for many of the processes of representation.

The new situation can be characterized as a hybrid, in which (according to media theoretician Edmond Couchot) the juxtaposition of real and virtual elements, the combination of logically incompatible situations (the term is borrowed from Lyotard), has become technically possible with the introduction of digital technologies (statement by Friedrich Kittler). Hybridisation in cultural terms means the two-way process of borrowing and blending between cultures where new (incoherent and heterogeneous) forms of cultural practice emerge in "translocal" places, so-called "third spaces." In applying the term "hybridisation" to the contemporary interrelationship between technology, arts, and sciences, we propose to discuss the "third space" as a leading paradigm, as the space where differing concepts, approaches, assumptions and techniques meet, merge, and interact. Hybridisation does not produce a new culturally dominant form, but rather demonstrates the multiplicity of possible interactions between science, art, and technology.

The approach is twofold. We find that digital media and media forms need to be examined for their incorporation of older techniques, aesthetic strategies, and cultural forms. We need to consider the heritage of analogue technologies as well as the development and use of emergent, digital technologies in the arts and sciences. We are in particular interested in discussing effects of combining real and virtual forms, hybrid combinations of simulation and physical reality. (An example would be the seamless incorporation of facial features/elements in the robot body in Chris Cunningham's video of Bjoerk's "All is full of love.") We must also consider what effects new aesthetic forms have on the understanding of the place of science and technology in our contemporary, increasingly hybridized societies (in respect to ethnicity, cultural traditions, languages, and so on).

With regard to global digitisation and the technological possibilities of merging the physical and the virtual, we wish to investigate critically:

- the place of the artist in society, the shift in creativity through technology, the possibilities of establishing a dialogue with the scientist, forms of collaboration between the arts and sciences in virtual and augmented reality;

- the place of the scientist in society, the shift in roles and responsibilities due to large-scale adoptions of technology, the interest in establishing a dialogue with the arts, forms of collaboration between the sciences and the arts, i.e. software art.


Panel:

Chair: Yvonne Spielmann, Professor of Visual Media, Braunschweig School of Art, Braunschweig, Germany spielmann@medien-peb.uni-siegen.de
"The Concept of Hybridity: Introduction to the Panel" (5 minutes)

Chair/Respondant: Jay David Bolter, Wesley Chair in New Media, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, jay.bolter@lcc.gatech.edu
"The Myth of Transparency in an Age of Hybridity" (15 minutes)

Amy Ione, Director, The Diatrope Institute, Santa Rosa, CA, ione@diatrope.com
"Innovation and Visualization: Trajectories, Strategies, and Myths"

Abstract: Looking closely at the visual imagery of any century it is apparent that art, communication, scientific research, and technology advance in step within a culture. This paper will broadly examine relationships between innovation and visualization that expand our views of these cross-disciplinary conjunctions. The overall goal is to underscore that when we trivialize communication across discrete domains, we lose our sense of how creative individuals from all disciplines build and balance intuitive and formal approaches. Juxtaposing the voluminous imagery in illustrated manuscripts, the representational allure of photography, and the visual saturation of our world today the first part of the paper will offer an extended sweep of imagery that concisely demonstrates the products of innovation over time. Contemporary projects combining art, science, and technology will next be introduced. Highlighting points of intersection, as well as strategies used by practitioners, this section will stress the value of collaboration across disciplines. A comparison of textual and photographic print technologies with the impact of electronic media today will emphasize the value of exchange is apparent even when the aims of innovators differ. In each case innovation and visualization combined to transform encounter, dialogue and interaction as novel forms and revised notions took root. Bringing both segments together, the paper will conclude it is time to put aside C.P. Snow's "two culture" framework in favor of cross-disciplinary examples that refute the science/humanities dichotomy. Within this, mention of other cultural myths that are frequently incorrectly interpreted in regard to art will be noted.

Abstract: Do-it-yourself (DIY) DNA testing in your own kitchen. Engineering, "culturing," and growing biological tissue, from hamburger to male scrota. A writing system that changes the visual character of the text according to your real-time, physiological states. A wearable that tickles your thighs and blows air up your skirt according to another's respiration. A book, made of meat, quivers as a user comes near; as its pages are turned, the book recoils, emanating feral sounds and indistinct odours. Rather than mere reflections upon notions of hybridity, artworks such as these provoke and enable participants to consciously experience and perform manifestations of hybridity with and through their own flesh. The focus of this presentation is on the visceral register. A phenomenological proposition for understanding the new methods for collaborative experience and innovative ways of identification of self and other that artworks such as these offer, the visceral register insists upon taking into account the varying levels of awareness and intensity of bodily forms of knowledge.

Abstract: The presentation will describe the challenges for teaching and research of an arts-engineering interdisciplinary program, and the collaborative nature of a teamtaught course by two faculty from an Engineering and Arts background. The interdisciplinary Media Arts & Technology Graduate Program at UCSB consists of faculty from Computer Science, Electrical Computer Engineering (ECE), Music/Sound, and Visual/Spatial Arts. The program offers Master of Science and Master of Arts with a PhD program on the way. MAT students choose an emphasis in one of three areas (multimedia engineering, electronic music and sound design, and visual and spatial arts) and work with other students and faculty in collaborative, multidisciplinary research projects and courses.