Art Research

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Art Research

• Presented by Sara Diamond
• Artistic Director Media and Visual Arts
• Director of Research
• The Banff New Media Institute http//www.banffcent
  re.ca/bnmi/
• October 24, 2003

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What is research?

• Research is the discovery of new knowledge and
  the advancement of current knowledgea sustained
  process of discovery
• Originality, innovativeness
• Can be proved or challenged
• New or substantively improved devices, methods
• Generalized and influencing disseminated
• Peer reviewed
• Provides learning opportunities
• Research cyclebasic, applied, development

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What is new media?

• Digital forms, interactive art, Internet or
  networked art-- includes art and science
  projects, nanotechnology
• Art infers creative process and its
  expression, arms length from commercial pressures
  
• Includes design and commercial forms such as
  games
• Emphasis on the new despite the ubiquitous
  nature of digital media and tools throughout the
  world.
• Can also be described as art and technology

Trip Switch
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Why is new media important?

• Machine has been favoured over human process
• Globalization
• Youth culture is digitalfrom skateboarders and
  rappers, to game players, to fashionistasfrom
  games, to information discovery to interactive
  playYOUTH IS THERE

http//www.the-phone-book.com/version6/company.php
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Why is new media so important?

• Carbon and silicon are integrating
• Tech sector recoveryagain economy on the rise
• Integration of technology discovery with content
  and services--reciprocity needed for economic
  health
• Health care, education, business applications
  related to culture

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New media research--content and technology
invention combined

• Talk Nice -- Art work
• Social consideration of technology
• Perceptual and physiological research
• Invent tools--Artists deliver data through tools
  not just the data itself
• Cross-disciplinary knowledge sharing artists,
  programmers, computer scientists, designers

Talk Nice
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New media research centres

•      Banff Centre/TR Labs Pan Western Network
  Encart ZKM, V2, Ars Electronica, C3 NECTA
  CalIT2 (UC system) and other related projects
•         Hexagram Brazilian Art and Technology
  group Mexican Initiative SAT NTT and ATR in
  Japan MIT Media Labs Mobile Platform (Finland)
  Heritage Research networks (includes CNICE etc.)
  BBC Creative Innovation
•         Growth Area

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Art and science collaboration

• Iconoclasm within art and design
• External deadlines require presentation of
  research
• Artists job is to CHALLENGE, see in NONINTUITIVE
  WAYS. Some of the best discovery in all science
  is counterintuitive
• Development opportunities on top of the research
• e.g. http//www.geograffiti.com/geograffiti.html

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Relationship research and productionresearch
cycle

• Speaking the Language of Spiders was research
  into hypertext, Cree and Salteau narrative
  cycles affect Production as proof of concept
• Public as test bed
• http//www.snacc.mb.ca/projects/spiderlanguage/

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Creation and research combined

• Responsive environments
• (FOAM/T-Garden)
• http//f0.am

T-Garden
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Artists as researchers

• Creativity is fundamental to artistic practice,
  need to harness and understand
• Rich traditions in artistic media
• Knowledge work as creative work
• Studio method of critique
• Lateral thought

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Globalization and cultural differencescience
needs to be cross cultural
Digital capital interventions
http//www.t0.or.at/cae/critical.htm
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Globalization cultural threat and potential

• Tools are culturally specific and shape creative
  language
• Emerging economies
• Hybridity and adaptation
• Guillermo Gomes-Pena and Roberto Cifuentes The
  Shame-Man

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Positive products of new media research

• Art works
• Tools that enable collaboration and creation
  (Keystroke)
• Context and critique
• New formations and collaborations
• Training
• http//www.waag.org/

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A context to test tools

• http//www.mediascot.org/drift/audiorom.html

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Tools for creation

• Data management
• http//www.horizonzero.ca
• Mongrel
• http//www.linker.org.uk/Linker/index.html

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Collaboration tools chat analysis

• Analysis of scientific or social data
• Conversation Map
• CodeZebra
• www.codezebra.net

TextArc by Brad Paley
CodeZebra
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Collaborative tools movement

• Very Nervous System and nCHANT
• http//homepage.mac.com/davidrokeby/nchant.html

n-Cha(n)t
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Collaborative tools archives and gallery links

• Archiving
• http//www.rhizome.org/

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Participatory culture Design methodologies

• Community created through contributing stories
  and images
• Wayne Dunkley
• http//www.horizonzero.ca
• http//www.fllanos.com/
• Design with the user
• Incorporate ethnography

Feel
http//www.sharemyworld.net/
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Participatory design social responsibility and
good business

• http//www.interaction-ivrea.it/en/projects/applie
  d/index.asp
• http//www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/incite/ethnography.htm
  
• IVREA and INCITE
• Future Farmers
• http//theyrule.net/

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Social science/humanities and new media

• Ethnographic studies (actor/network theory)
• Material studies and new media (how tools are
  invented and used)
• Games and performance theory
• Cultural and gender studies
• http//www.nsu.newschool.edu/blur/thegame.html

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Context and Critique

• Face to face and on-line debates are a strength
  of sector (e.g. Next Five Minutes, Banff
  Summits)
• http//theyrule.net/

They Rule
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Context and Critique

• Associative structures
• http//www-apparitions.ucsd.edu/manovich/FLN/

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Context and Critique

• Code creates a recursive structure (Read Me and
  Code Art)
• Narrative takes new forms
• http//www.manovich.net/

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Material Science and Digital

• Ubiquity buildings and clothing carry
  information and its design
• http//www.futurephysical.org/pages/content/wearab
  le/wearme/info_processdemo_061202_dl_thecla.htm

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Training

• Train highly qualified person
• www.interaccess.org

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What are the models of research collaboration?

• Degrees of separationparallel research, merged
  research or quasi-autonomous research
• New identities emerge
• Mutual benefit
• Create appropriate ways of working
• Boundary objectslanguage and tools (ethnographic
  studies)

http//www.horizonzero.ca
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New formations and collaborations

• Collaboration Process is Key to Success
• Shared basis of project
• Appropriate scale
• Facilitation
• Work out linguistic differences
• http.www.codezebra.net

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Formations

• Institutes in Universities that can gather
  researchers and resources and establish new
  methods
• Established cultural institutions that create
  research core
• Art and technology labs

2002 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art
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Research structures

• Art and Technology Labs
• Artists Networks and Organizations
• Future Physical http//www.futurephysical.org/

Future Physical
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Research Networks

• Flexible creative tools that various communities
  can use
• New forms of two way (or multipoint)
  communicationcollaboration on-line around a
  shared object for e.g.
• Brings variety of knowledge together
• Amortize resources (capital, gird computing)

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Networks

• Provides management resource for complexity
• New forms of interaction within the research
  process
• Networks are also unpredictable as they are
  larger than the s um of their parts

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Networks as solution

• Require excellent facilitation elegant
  technologies
• Dissemination activity
• Make use of high speed network potential
• http//www.canarie.ca/about/index.html

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Are networks organically collaborative?

• Communication--Technological and Human actors
• Topology of local/global
• System of Flows
• E.g. Live culture over the Internet highly
  collaborative
• http//www.sat.qc.ca/

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Casual Networks that Work
Interventions (90s) , list serves (nettime)
blogs, social networks
irational.org
http//www.irational.org/cgi-bin/front/front.pl ht
tp//www.mongrelx.org/
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Artists and scientists-parallel divergent
cultures

• Success when collaboration motivated
• Failures when collaborations are forced or power
  inequities not resolved
• Failures when rights not sorted and pressures to
  commercialize too soon (NewMIC)
• Failures when no public disclosure of results
  (Interval)

Luke Jerram
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Role of companies

• Consortium models
• Sponsors
• Partnered or contract research
• Commercialization
• SME formation or support

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Commercializationthe challenge

• Keep pressures off of creative researchers to
  deliver yet look at potential to make products

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Challenge for art labs

• Strength is understand creative process
• Yet, cannot attract university level researchers
  for long term because of the loss of
  statuseither junior or turn over
• Tendency towards weak project management and over
  extension

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Challenge for university and corporate labs

• Working process favors science not art
• Speed of discovery is slow
• Rights

Exhibitions at the Tate
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Need hybrid formations and networks

• Division of labor between types of research and
  types of labs
• Strong consortia and networks
• Ability to address issues of power, share
  leadership

Encart organizations
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Rights are a core challenge

• Challenge and source of conflict
• Collective creation
• http//www.bakteria.org/
• http//www.negativland.com/

Negativland
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Use different rights models

• Open source, collective creation and ownership
• Rights commons
• BUT also need commercialization models
• http//www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

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Funding schemes are critical

• Arts councils, research councils, art and
  technology laboratories with universities and
  companies
• Research fund with arts programs
• SSHRC
• Joint councils--NSERC/Canada Council

Can you see me now?
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International Collaboration

• Residency programs
• Foundation funds
• EU Framework
• NSERC/SSHRC
• Broadband initiatives and networks
• e.g. Subtract the Sky
• THANK YOU!

Subtract the Sky