LASER Talks at Stanford | Leonardo/ISASTwith Arizona State University

LASER Talks at Stanford

LASER (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous) is Leonardo/ISAST's international program of evening gatherings that brings artists and scientists together for informal presentations and conversations.

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CHAIRED BY: Piero Scaruffi

Panel on "Rethinking Art for the Online World: Online Art, Online Exhibitions, Online Audience " (Part 1 of a discussion about Online Art)
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After the event, the video will be posted here.

The pandemic forced many activities to move online, and the art world was not spared; but what does it mean to move art online? The pandemic provides an opportunity to rethink art on and for the medium of the Internet. Which art is "exhibited" online (as opposed to just "documented")? What is an online exhibition of art? The World-wide web "is" an exhibition of offline art, and any artist's website is an exhibition of the artist's physical art: but is that really an "exhibition"? or is it just the equivalent of a book describing the art? What do artists do online that they don't do in a physical space? What is the role of the curator in an online exhibition? What is the role of the gallery and of the museum for online art? One line of action that opens up online is collaboration, but collaboration has never been widespread in the visual arts. Why is it natural for sound artists to collaborate and perform as a unit while visual artists rarely do? Why is it normal for the Rolling Stones to be a band whereas a visual artist is expected to work individually, and often in solitude? Historically the moments of great crises have often resulted in an explosion of creativity: the "Spanish flu" and World War I witnessed the birth of revolutionary movements like Dadaism, De Stijl, Constructivism besides the first jazz record and the boom of cinema; the polio pandemic and World War II witnessed the birth of bebop jazz, abstract expressionism, existentialist philosophy and Italian neorealist cinema. Could the Covid pandemic, coupled with international tensions, be the trigger for another quantum jump in cultural creativity?

  • Chris Chafe is a composer, improvisor, and cellist, developing much of his music alongside computer-based research. He is Director of Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). In 2019, he was International Visiting Research Scholar at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies The University of British Columbia, Visiting Professor at the Politecnico di Torino, and Edgard-VarŠse Guest Professor at the Technical University of Berlin. At IRCAM (Paris) and The Banff Centre (Alberta), he has pursued methods for digital synthesis, music performance and real-time internet collaboration. CCRMA's jacktrip project involves live concertizing with musicians the world over. Online collaboration software and research into latency factors continue to evolve. An active performer either on the net or physically present, his music reaches audiences in sometimes novel venues. An early network project was a simultaneous five-country concert was hosted at the United Nations in 2009. Chafe's works include gallery and museum music installations which are now into their second decade with "musifications" resulting from collaborations with artists, scientists and MD's. Recent work includes the Earth Symphony, the Brain Stethoscope project (Gnosisong), PolarTide for the 2013 Venice Biennale, Tomato Quintet for the transLife:media Festival at the National Art Museum of China and Sun Shot played by the horns of large ships in the port of St. Johns, Newfoundland.
  • Caroline Jones is Professor of art history, Director of the Transmedia Storytelling Initiative, and Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives in the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT. She studies modern and contemporary art, with a particular focus on its technological modes of production, distribution, and reception, as well as its interface with science. Dr. Jones has curated exhibitions such as Sensorium (2006), Video Trajectories (2007), and Hans Haacke 1967 (2011) at the MIT Visual Arts Center; her solo-authored publications include Machine in the Studio (1996/98), Eyesight Alone (2005/08), and The Global Work of Art (2016). She has edited Picturing Science, Producing Art (1998), Sensorium (2006), and Experience (2016). Her current research into bio-art and planetary symbiosis will result in an exhibition and publication Symbionts: Contemporary Artists and the Biosphere, slated for October 2022. Jones received her MA/PhD from Stanford University. She has been a fellow at the Institut national d'histoire de l'art in Paris, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Susan and Donald Newhouse Center for the Humanities at Wellesley College, and the Wissenschaftskolleg and Max-Planck-Institut fr Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin. Jones has received Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Humanities awards, and her films and exhibitions have appeared at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Arts in Tokyo, the List Visual Arts Center at MIT, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
  • Joel Slayton is a pioneering artist, researcher, and curator. He is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Art and Art History at San Jose State University, and has been the founding director of the CADRE laboratory for New Media (Computers in Art, Design, Research, and Education), Executive Director of Zero1 that organized four international biennials in San Jose and exhibited the work of dozens of emerging art/tech artists, a member of the Board of Directors of LEONARDO/ISAST (International Society for Art, Science and Technology), Senior Fellow of the American Leadership Forum in Silicon Valley, and Editor in Chief of the Leonardo MIT Press Book Series. He has been Visiting Artist in Russia, Ireland, and New Zealand, besides the Art Institute of Chicago, UC Santa Cruz's Art-Science Institute, Mills College, the San Francisco Exploratorium, and Xerox PARC among others. He has exhibited his art installations at dozens of venues nation-wide, as well as in Canada, Germany, Netherlands, South Africa, Mexico. He was executive director of CADRE's Switch Journal (1998-2014), one of the earliest online journals focusing on art and technology, editor in chief of the Leonardo Book series, has published dozens of essays and has curated several exhibitions including the two most recent LAST Festivals.

 

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LASER (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous) Talks is Leonardo's international program of evening gatherings that bring artists and scientists together for informal presentations and conversations. LASER Talks were founded in 2008 by Bay Area LASER Chair Piero Scaruffi and are in over 30 cities around the world. To learn more about how our LASER Hosts and to visit a LASER near you please visit our website

The mission of the LASERs is to provide the general public with a snapshot of the cultural environment of a region and to foster interdisciplinary networking.

When
June 23rd, 2020 3:00 PM
Location
Virtual, CA
United States