Sunday, August 28, 2011

"Visualizing new media art in Central Eastern Europe" paper presentation during ISEA2011, 14 September, Istanbul

Visualizing new media art in Central Eastern Europe (paper presentation) during panel titled New Media Art Education in Central and Eastern Europe in the Last Two Decades: experiments and transition.
The panel will discuss how the changes in Eastern and Central Europe have influenced the art educational system there during the last twenty years, with particular reference to education in the new media field. The reason for choosing such a seemingly broad timescale is to include the 'finalisation' of the political and economical integration of some post-Soviet countries (like Estonia) into the European Union whilst contrasting this with examples like Belarus, which have become (or remained) more autocratic and closed. One particular point of interest is the change in the understanding and interpretation of 'new media art' during the last two decades, partly due to the different technologies and specialities that this field of practice encompasses.

- Twenty years of change: in the political system, art paradigms, technologies and ways of thinking.
- Travel and transition: exported artists and imported ideas
- The transition from artefact-based artistic practice to process-based and non-material art
- The similarities and differences between 'West' and 'East' mentalities
- Initiatives, centres, departments and institutions of new media and education
- Resources, funding, financial practices, governmental support, business schemes for producing and exhibiting new media
- Changes in the art education system: from traditional and manual fine arts practices to mediated and technological education
- Different networks focused on the organisation, theory, and practice of technological art

Visualizing new media art in Central Eastern Europe abstract:
Numerous amounts of facts connected with New Media Art in the territory of Central Eastern Europe go unused because of the inability to see relationships between different kinds of information. To face this issue CEEMAC2000+: Central East European Media Art Chart (2000-now) has been developed. This paper focuses on understanding stereotypical terms as: Central Eastern Europe and New Media Art in the context of its history (Soviet times) and current situation (network society, data visualization) which are the basis of CEEMAC2000+ project.

Dates: Wednesday, 14 September, 2011 - 09:00 - 10:30
Chair Person: Raivo Kelomees
Presenters: Chris Hales, Agnieszka Pokrywka, Ala Pigalskaya, Piibe Piirma

Thursday, January 6, 2011

"New artistic cartography" presentation on .chance), 18 December 2010, Aix-en-Provence

International Conference on Social Networking in the Cultural Domain was organized in the frame of .chance) project and took place on 18th of December 2010 in Aix-en-Provence, France.

The main topic of this meeting was: how can the cultural community benefit from the recent boom of the social networking tools?

Artistic creation and cultural production has become dependent on the use of on-line social networks where basically anyone can remotely and for free collaborate, co-produce, discuss and learn as well as teach and guide one another. Given these new communication possibilities, a growing number of creative individuals and intercultural operators can innovate to produce excellent creative content and offer high-quality cultural services often with enormous social and environmental relevance and impact.
The event brought together international experts from the social networking domain, who shared their experience, views and ideas on the employing of the rise of the social networking tools in the cultural field for effectively announcing, managing, circulating and bringing visibility to cultural operators, groups of artists as well as creative individuals, across all sectors and regions.

.chance project itself focuses on different aspects of web technologies, social networking and web 2.0, with special impact on their future development. The main objective of the project is to harmonize and utilize the best of current social networking technologies in order to stimulate the intercultural dialogue with concrete artistic and cultural results.
.chance WEB: http://www.chance-project.eu/

Below is an abstract of my presentation "New artistic cartography: visualizing new media art activities in Central Eastern Europe" performed during above described conference.

Central Eastern Europe (CEE) hidden for ages behind Iron Curtain in many aspects is still undiscovered hybrid build out of past and present. Similarly local new media art (NMA) is a tangle of historical and political dependencies mixed with current global influences (e.g. networked society, high technologies). Very dynamic specificity of this region additionally blurs wider view on CEE NMA activities. In result big amounts of data and facts connected with this topic go unused simply because people can’t see relationships between them and visualize its quantities.
Trying to face this issue I established sketch project called CEEMAC2000+: Central East European Media Art Chart (2000-now). CEEMAC2000+ in its concept is meant to be a collaborative interactive map which could be able to present most of networks, dependencies, connections between art centers, projects and people which focus on local NMA development. CEEMAC2000+ aims to collect, share and present big amount of data in non- linear, clear and visually attractive way, simply to create new artistic cartography.
CONTENT OF THE PRESENTATION: http://prezi.com/31yigp-2rzop/new-artistic-cartography-visualizing-new-media-art-activities-in-central-eastern-europe