School of Culture and Creative Arts, 2Nd Research Symposium
School of Culture and Creative Arts, 2nd Research Symposium
‘Technology and Aesthetics’
16th April 2012
Level 5, Sir Alwyn Williams Building, Lilybank Gardens
(D20 on Campus Map)
9.30-10.00
TEA and COFFEE
10.00- 10.45
Timothy Barker (Digital Media, Film and Television Studies)
"Electronic Nature"
The natural environment and technology, particularly information technology, have tended to be separated. Since the development and widespread use of electronic media, the flow of information has been independent of human travel through the natural environment. Information now flows as pulses of light from air-conditioned room to air-conditioned room, with nature set as a vague background against which cultural routines are played out. Recently however, philosophers such as Michael Serres and Don Ihde have begun to respectively express the importance of conceptualising the atmospheric and energetic transmission of information and the implication of electronic technology with a cultural-natural system. Taking a starting point from some of the ideas outlined in Serres’ The Natural Contract, the paper examines the re-connection between information and the environment as illustrated in a set of contemporary art works that experimentally apply digital sensing technology. It asks how ‘information aesthetics’ can be used to rethink the relationship between technology and nature and begins to sketch out a media theory of nature.
10.50- 11.30
Anita Quye (Centre for Textile Conservation and Technical Art History)
Fantastic Plastic
Plastic – friend or foe of the modern age? Whatever your feelings, there’s no denying that these materials have reshaped the twentieth century and had enormous impact in society, including the arts as well as technological innovation. Attitudes towards plastics have changed dramatically over this period too. Many people consider the 1940’s as the time when plastics first entered the public arena in the guise of nylon and PVC, but by then they had already been around for over 70 years.
These early plastics, made from chemically-modified natural materials like paper and wood, were used to simulate expensive natural materials such as tortoiseshell, ivory, amber and silk, as well as glass. Today they are often overlooked in historical material culture, yet the early plastics and their applications in decorative arts, social history and modern artworks offer a fascinating insight into the meeting point of technology and aesthetics. Anita will illustrate this with examples from her conservation science research of museums and galleries collections.
Debbie Lewer (History of Art)
Image, Symbol and Type in German Dada magazines 1916-1922
This paper will report in a current piece of work in progress. I am working on the visual elements of some of the small journals and other pieces of ephemera published by Dadaists, in particular in Berlin and Cologne, in the period immediately following the end of the First World War and in relation to the failed Revolution in Germany. Focussing on the publications’ design, visual qualities and multiple functions, I will suggest some new terms for approaching these vital documents of the European Avant-Garde.
11.40-12.20
Katie Gough (Theatre Studies)
'Haptic Allegories: Rethinking Paradigms in Historical Research'
Katie will discuss her research project 'Haptic Allegories: Kinship and Performance in the Black and Green Atlantic' with particular attention to how technology and aesthetics - when thought together - allow for a revision of historiographical methods.
Laura Bissell (Theatre Studies)
“They Made Me Do It” Technological Interventions into Spectator/Performer Roles.
This paper analyses performance collective Gob Squad’s recent performance We Are Gob Squad and So Are You in relation to Jacques Ranciere’s study The Emancipated Spectator (2009). This paper argues that by using wireless headphones to instruct audience members to participate in “remote acting”, Gob Squad’s “performance-lecture” blurs the boundaries between spectator and performer roles and complicates the idea of spectating as “the opposite of acting”. The use of technology as a device to absent the performer and defer the experience and action of “performing” to the spectator interrogates conceptions of authenticity and voice in contemporary performance.
12.20-13.00
LUNCH
13.00-14.00
David J. Code (Music)
Filming Audio Culture: Kubrick’s Music and the History of Recorded Sound
Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) has long held pivotal status in film music history for its deployment of pre-recorded snippets of ‘art music’ in place of a commissioned film score. After 2001, Kubrick continued to explore the questions raised by such ‘compilation scores’ right up to his last film, Eyes Wide Shut (1999).
So far, most writing on Kubrick’s music has operated on a relatively straightforward hermeneutic plane: i.e., tracing emergent structures of meaning across an unfolding sound-image interaction. But at another level, we might also consider how these films reflect key moments in the history of sound technology and listening practice. Starting with a glance to 2001, where this background largely remains implicit (e.g. in the ‘high-fidelity’ stereo sound of Strauss’s ‘Blue Danube’ waltz and the lush performance style it serves) I offer a brief ‘show and tell’ about Kubrick’s infamous next film, A Clockwork Orange (1971). Here, the ‘hi-fi’ culture of LPs and cassettes comes explicitly into view even as the score also draws on W. Carlos’s response to the epoch-defining development of the Moog synthesizer. What critical paths open with this cinematic reflexivity about audio culture?
Martin Parker Dixon (Music)
His Master's Voice (or"It requires a very artificial and complicated frame of mind to 'hear' a 'pure noise'.")
I've been trying, of late, to build up a picture of Heidegger's analysis of the act of listening: i.e., listening to others, listening to discourse.
One essential component (repeated by Lyotard) is that listening occasions a moment of obedience, of "thraldom", a notion now modernised (or de-feudalised?) as "entrainment". I would like air some thoughts on how sound recording technology might play into - or across - Heidegger's naturalistic descriptions.
Nick Fells (Music)
The computer and social-musical process
This presentation, part paper, part practical demo, outlines a few examples of my creative practice that uses computer technology, setting it within the Glasgow context. It considers how such practice invokes musical personal histories and embeds (and enhances) social processes, suggesting a re-thinking of the notion of ‘ensemble’. Much of this work lies (arguably) in the realm of ‘post-digital’ aesthetics; it also reawakens the improvisatory impulse as a basic foundation of musical performance. The discussion will focus on one piece in particular, arine (a quartet for Japanese instruments and electronics commissioned by London-based ensemble Okeanos), and will include some live demonstration of the kind of sound processing and programming involved.
14.00-14.30
Concluding remarks and group discussion