ATC Lecture: Darklife, Eugene Thacker

Events at both the macro-scale and the micro-scale continually remind us of the radically unhuman aspects of life. Natural disasters, global pandemics, the manifold effects of climate change are just some of the ways in which life expresses itself in ways that are at once 'above' and 'below' the scale of the human being. Life, it seems, is expressed 'in itself' as much as it is determined to exist 'for us'. Indeed, the very concept of life itself has become a major preoccupation in contemporary culture, from the latest developments in science and technology to the emerging forms of biopolitics that are becoming synonymous with global culture.

But what exactly do we mean when we evoke the concept of life itself? Is there really a concept of life that is common to all the manifestations of the living? Is a concept of life itself necessary for thinking about all the different forms of the living? Are the twin concepts of life and the living always determined within the framework of 'generosity' - that is, as becoming, process, and flow? Or are there alternatives to thinking about life as defined neither in terms of being nor in terms of becoming?

In this talk we will explore the twists and turns of the idea of life itself as a key philosophical problematic in modernity, beginning with the question posed by Kant, and the responses to that question provided by three main philosophical traditions: vitalism, phenomenology, and the 'dark' or meontological concept of nothingness.

Biography:

Eugene Thacker is a writer and theorist whose works examine the philosophical aspects of science and technology. His most recent book is entitled 'After Life' and will be published by the University of Chicago Press. He is also the author of the books 'The Exploit: A Theory of Networks' (co-authored with Alexander Galloway), ‘The Global Genome: Biotechnology, Politics, and Culture,' and 'Biomedia.' Thacker is Associate Professor in the School of Literature, Communication & Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Contact: info.bcnm@berkeley.edu

New Media RoundTable: Responsive Environments and Topological Media, What's At Stake?, Sha Xin Wei

For ten years, the Topological Media Lab has been working as atelier-laboratory transversal to computer science, performing arts, and more recently architecture and the built environment, generating insights and techniques in the domain of new media and responsive environments. The Topological Media Lab creates responsive environments and new forms of computational matter. With the techniques and expertises gathered at the TML, we build responsive environments as phenomenological experiments charged with symbolic and / or philosophical questions.

Two decades ago, Felix Guattari pointed to the heterogeneous machines around us: material, semiotic / diagrammatic / algorithmic, corporeal, mental / representational / informatic, libidinal / affective, and asked whether we could construct experimental apparatuses that act "transversally" across those disciplines. We hybridize engineering lab practice with theatrical production and studio practice, relying not only on black-boxed emerging technologies, but also on scientific research that give rise to those technologies. My question is to what extent can we instantiate such transversal machines as novel technologies of performance, and as novel performance practices outside conventional marked settings for performance. Complementary to this, I also describe the political economy of running such an atelier laboratory that has evolved in the context of the current economy. This is part of a study on art research and artistic practice modeled after scientific laboratory practice as well as the pre-industrial atelier.

Website: http://topologicalmedialab.net -> Showcase + Research

Biography:

Sha Xin Wei’s art work ranges from video and sound installations that respond to gesture or movement to complex, collaboratively-built events. These works explore the relations people create with one another in the presence of dense, continuously evolving responsive media.

Since 1997, Sha has worked with the art research groups, Sponge, which he co-founded in San Francisco, and with FoAM in Brussels. Major series of environmental projects include the TGarden play spaces (1997-2001), Hubbub public speech-painting (2002-2004), and the Sauna urban immersion installations (with Sponge, 2003-2004). In 2004, Sha embarked on a series of “softwear” projects exploring fields of gesture and subjectivity using sensate, gestural, media-saturated fabrics. These works have been recognized and supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, Creative Work Fund, LEF Foundation, the Fondation Daniel Langlois, FQRSC among other cultural agencies. Sha was supported by an Individual Artist grant by the Fondation Daniel Langlois in 2004, and his most recent work in this area, WYSIWYG sounding tapestries, was funded by Hexagram in 2006. Sha has also created a series of responsive video installations, including a 42 channel multi-perspective video installation called Slip/Enter, with Tirtza Even (exhibited in Postmasters Gallery NYC 2001); the responsive Van Nelle Fabriek membrane installation in Rotterdam DEAF 2005, Cosmicomics responsive sky (Elektra Montreal 2007), and the IL Y A series of installations entangling historical with present day people in movement. Recently, Sha's installations have taken more architectural dimensions, such as a wall-sculpture blending solar with pedestrian activity in a plaza in Shanghai (e-Arts Festival 2008).

Dr. Sha has degrees in mathematics from Harvard and Stanford Universities. He is Canada Research Chair Media Arts and Sciences at Concordia University, and Associate Professor in the Faculties of Fine Arts and Computer Science. He is writing a book on poiesis and enchantment in topological matter as a Visiting Scholar in French and Italian at Stanford University.

Contact: info.bcnm@berkeley.edu, 510-495-3505

New Media RoundTable: Paths of Memory and Painting - Authoring New Media Narrative Poetry on the Web, Judy Malloy

Created between 2008-2010, Paths of Memory and Painting is a new media poetry trilogy that is composed of a series of composite screens of narrative poetry. Paths through the work that would normally be somewhat concealed in hypertext interfaces (where the reader makes link choices and moves between unseen narrative structures) are simultaneously visible in this work. This talk documents the creation of the contrapuntal arrays that comprise this work and discusses how these arrays were varied in the three different parts. It looks at the role of the "lexia" as a molecular unit in the creation of hypernarrative. And it also sets forth how color, design and time dependent display contribute to the reading experience.

Biography:

Judy Malloy is a new media poet and information artist whose work has been exhibited and published internationally. A pioneer on the Internet and in electronic literature, in 1986 she wrote and programmed the seminal hyperfiction "Uncle Roger," and in the ensuing years she created a series of innovative hypernarratives, including "l0ve0ne," the first selection in the Eastgate Web Workshop. In 1993, she was invited to Xerox PARC, where she worked in the Computer Science Laboratory as the first artist in their artist-in-residence program. In 1994, she created one of the first arts websites, "Making Art Online". (currently hosted on the website of the Walker Art Center) Her recent work includes "where every luminous landscape" that was short listed for the 2009 Prix poesie-media, France, and featured at The Future of Writing, UC Irvine, on Cover to Cover on KPFA radio, and at the 2009 E-Poetry Festival in Barcelona.

She is the editor of "Women, Art & Technology" (MIT Press, 2003) and the host of the Authoring Software project. She is also the host of the Art California Web Project, in partnership with the California Studies Association.

Judy Malloy has a mobility disability and has walked on crutches/cane for

over fourteen years.

Contact: info.bcnm@berkeley.edu, 510-495-3505

ATC Lecture: Something Besides Super Monkey Ball, Joe McKay

This talk will feature artworks that question our culture's love affair with technology. Central to this will be a presentation of BigTime, a new time keeping system that uses an iphone app and a website to reconnect us with the planet and the true nature of time. Far from a productivity tool, living by BigTime can be an annoying pain in the butt, yet, (like a booster shot) it's an important one. BigTime is currently hosted by the Berkeley Art Museum (http://netart.bampfa.berkeley.edu). Joe Mckay’s talk will also feature talking robots, video games, misbehaving progress bars, Streetview mashups, and Gmail hacks.

Biography:

Joe McKay is Assistant Professor of New Media at Purchase College. He has an undergraduate degree from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and a MFA from UC Berkeley. In 2000 Mckay participated in the Whitney Independent study program. He has exhibited his work at VertexList, the New Museum, Berkeley Art Museum, ICA (san Jose), The Neuberger Museum, Postmasters Gallery, La Casa Encendida, and the National Gallery of Canada. In the fall of 2010 Joe will have a solo show at Pari Nadimi Gallery in Toronto. Joe works in several different mediums: photo, video, programing, performance, websites, games, sculpture and he enjoys the flexibility this grants him. Joe is disproportionately proud of how incredibly googleable he is.

Co-presented with Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive

Contact: info.bcnm@berkeley.edu

Dance Performance: Fragment 3, Ashley Ferro-Murray

Choreographer Ashley Ferro-Murray presents the third fragment in a process-based series that began in the fall of 2008. Exploring the space between digital spectrality and digital saturation, this piece moves through various networks as it leads an audience through various iterations of digital choreographies. Wireless accelerometers used throughout the choreographic process inspire the conceptual context of this piece. These sensors are deleted are not worn in performance to explore the body in movement as it exhibits a digital tone in the absence of digital technology. In contrast to the spectral presence of the sensors, the performance space itself is saturated with digital interface. A live video feed of the real-time performance will be input into French digital installation artist Maurice Benayoun's online network for artistic collaboration The Art Collider (TAC). Simultaneously, Ferro-Murray projects real-time images from other artists using TAC. A live feed of the performance will also be broadcast throughout Sutardja Dai Hall on LCD screens that are placed in various locations throughout the building, thereby extending a network throughout the physical space of the building.

Ashley Ferro-Murray (US) is a choreographer who uses interactive

performance technologies as a means for exploring dance and new media in our contemporary culture. She is currently a Performance Studies doctoral student in the Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies at UC Berkeley.

Presented by CITRIS, in association with UC's Berkeley Center for New Media.