Roy Ascott has been wikified

By: Roman Tol

On: September 28, 2006

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Pioneering the place of cybernetics and telematics in art, Roy Ascott has been working with issues of art, technology and consciousness since the 1960s.

He was born in Bath, England on 26 October 1934, and educated at the City of Bath Boys’ School. His National Service was spent as a Pilot Officer in the Royal Air Force working with radar defence systems and fighter control at Northern Command. From 1955-59 he studied Fine Art at King’s College, University of Durham (now Newcastle University) under Victor Pasmore and Richard Hamilton, and Art History under Lawrence Gowing and Quentin Bell. On graduation he was appointed Studio Demonstrator (1959-61).

Roy Ascott has shown at the Venice Biennale, Electra Paris, Ars Electronica, V2 Institute for the Unstable Media [1], Milan Triennale, Biennale do Mercosul, Brazil, European Media Festival, and gr2000az at Graz, Austria. His first seminal telematic project was La Plissure du Texte (1983) [2], an online work of “distributed authorship” involving artists around the world in the construction of a non-linear narrative.

In his first one-man show (1964) at the Molton Gallery, London (Annely Juda) he exhibited Analogue Structures and Diagram Boxes , transformable works in wood, perspex and glass, involving the participation of the viewer, and informed by cybernetics. The art historian Frank Popper addresses the significance of this early work. In 1964 also Ascott published “Behaviourist Art and the Cybernetic Vision” in Cybernetica: journal of the International Association for Cybernetics (Namur). With Gordon Pask as his mentor, he was elected Associate Member of the Institution of Computer Science, London, in 1968. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1972.

Roy Ascott has shown at the Venice Biennale, Electra Paris, Ars Electronica, V2 Holland [1], Milan Triennale, Biennale do Mercosul, Brazil, European Media Festival, and gr2000az at Graz, Austria. His first seminal telematic project was La Plissure du Texte (1983) [2], an online work of “distributed authorship” involving artists around the world in the construction of a non-linear narrative.

Interactive Computer Art

Since the 1960s Roy Ascott has been one of Europe’s most active and outspoken practitioners of interactive computer art, and is internationally recognised as the pioneer of telematic art [3]. Ten years before the personal computer came into existence, Ascott saw that interactivity in computer-based forms of expression would be an emerging issue in the arts. Intrigued by the possibilities, he built a theoretical framework for approaching interactive artworks, which brought together certain characteristics of the avant-garde (Dada, Surrealism, Fluxus, Happenings, and Pop Art in particular), with the science of cybernetics championed by Norbert Wiener.

Current Research

Ascott’s work involves the exploration of what he has identified as “cyberception”, “technoetics”, “moistmedia”, and syncretism in art, amongst many other influential concepts and theories that he has published in six books and over 170 articles and papers worldwide in the past three decades. His most recent (2006) publications include:

The Syncretic Imperative [4]
Syncretic Reality: art, process, and potentiality [5]
“Technoetic Pathways toward the Spiritual in Art: A Transdisciplinary Perspective on Connectedness, Coherence and Consciousness” [6]

Academic career

He is the founding president of the Planetary Collegium [7], an advanced research center based in the University of Plymouth, UK, with nodes in Zurich, Milan and Beijing. He has been Dean of San Francisco Art Institute, California, Professor for Communications Theory at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, and President of Ontario College of Art, Toronto. He has advised new media arts organisations in Brazil, Japan, Korea, Europe and North America, as well as UNESCO and the CEC, and since 2000 has been a Visiting Professor in Design|Media Art [8] at the UCLA School of the Arts. He is the founding editor of Technoetic Arts, journal of speculative research[9].

Students

As a teacher Ascott has had many notable students e.g. Brian Eno, Paul Sermon [10], Pete Townsend, Stephen Willats [11]. As director of studies his doctoral graduates include Peter Anders, Jon Bedworth, Geoff Cox, Char Davies [12], Elisa Giaccardi, Dew Harrison, Pamela Jennings [13], Eduardo Kac, Joseph Nechvatal, Miroslaw Rogala, Gretchen Schiller, Jill Scott, Bill Seaman, Christa Sommerer, Victoria Vesna [14].

He has published over 150 articles and academic papers in the journals and magazines of many countries.

Publications

Ascott, R. (ed). 2005. Engineering Nature. 2005.Bristiol UK:Intellect.
Ascott,R.2003. Telematic Embrace. {E.Shaken, ed.] Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ascott, R. 2002. Technoetic Arts (Korean translation: YI, Won-Kon), (Media & Art Series no. 6, Institute of Media Art, Yonsei University). Yonsei: Yonsei University Press
Ascott, R. 1998. Art & Telematics: toward the Construction of New Aesthetics. (Japanese trans. E. Fujihara). A. Takada & Y. Yamashita eds. Tokyo: NTT Publishing Co.,Ltd.
Reframing Consciousness. Exeter: Intellect. 1999
Art Technology Consciousness. Exeter: Intellect. 2000

References

Packer, R. & Jordan, K. (eds). Multimedia: from Wagner to Virtual Reality, New York: Norton, 2001.
Amelia Jones (ed), The Blackwell Companion to Contemporary Art since 1945 (London: Blackwell, 2005). pp562, 567-9
Pioneers ArtMuseum.net
People.i-dat.org
Factbites [15]