Roy Ascott has been wikified
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]
Links
Selected Texts
Blog references
Roy Ascott’s Cybernetic Vision
The Architecture Of Cyberception
Technoetic Art in Korean – review
Cyberception and the Paranatural Mind
Family links
I wanted to make a substantial wikipedia contribution and found out that there is no Dutch description about the online webgame Utopia.
So I wrote one here –> http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_%28online_spel%29 and subsequently fucked up the URL.
Oh well.
I love Wikipedia, I use it on a regular basis, but I never thought about contributing anything. Why not? I’ve never searched for something that wasn’t there and I’ve never encountered something that I thought was incomplete or incorrect (yet). I also do not feel the urge to enter all my interests or research findings into an entry. There must be Wikipedia freaks who continuously want to add or expand or correct posts. I can see some kind of competition element that might be there, but apparently this is not my kind of game.
A friend was inspired after a conversation about the cut-up method and the article William S. Burroghs wrote. The result is below the fold, enjoy.
I put Hui Chen, the eight year old boy who is staying in jail in Zeist because his mother hasn’t got a valid visa, on Wikipedia.nl
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hui_Chen
Let’s hope he doesn’t get deported so he will see the entry himself one day…
At Wikipedia I have added a quote from Marshall McLuhan. I found this quote last year when I was writing my bachelor thesis. However, I could not find the book or article where this quote came from. So I sent an e-mail to the official Marshall McLuhan website and I got an e-mail back from Eric McLuhan, Marshall’s son. This is what he said in his e-mail:
Wikipedia as band promotion? Maybe, it sure makes your band better searchable on the internet. I added an entry to the Dutch Wikipedia about the band I play in, check out the entry at Wikipedia NL.
Of course Wikipedia is no Myspace in terms of bandpromotion and marketing, but an addition of your band with pure factual information (forget about putting in a ‘we-want-to-play-do-you-have-any-gigs-for-us’) can help people find some background information on what you’ve done in the past.
Besides that I also edited the Dutch entry on Virtual Reality, which is actually far from complete. Just for starters I added an example of virtual reality in fiction: William Gibson’s Neuromancer. What bothered me was the amount of what seems like random information on topics like Virtual Reality, I don’t even know where to begin to clean it up and just tell the plain facts instead of some random thoughts of people on the subject. Just as an example on how it should work, here is a link to the English post on Virtual Reality.
I also made a start with a Dutch Wiki about Cyberspace, the term coined by William Gibson in Neuromancer.
I managed to update an english wiki on the subject of my BA thesis. It’s been annoying me for years that racial stereotypes are widely studies in all media except for video games. Considering the’re very influential and played by millions of kids there should be a moral standard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ethnic_stereotypes_in_popular_culture#Video_Games
Some Video games, like the Grand Theft Auto (video game) series, also use ethnic stereotypes. A 2001 study[2] bij Children Now shows that most protagonists (86 per cent) were white males, non-white males were portrayed in stereotypical ways—seven out of ten Asian characters as fighters, and eight out of ten African-Americans as sports competitors, and nearly nine out of ten African-American females were victims of violence (twice the rate of white females). Finally, 79 per cent of African-American males were shown as verbally and physically aggressive, compared to 57 per cent of white males. Other games, like Command & Conquer: Generals stereotype Arabs, which are portrayed as vile, brutal and backward, in contrast to the morally and technologically superior western military.
Besides that you might notice a slight change at http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_en_cultuur
We raised our voices at the crossmedia conference PICNIC06
We raised questions at the conference such as:
- Gestural interfaces sound swell, but what if you are disabled? (John Underkoffer about G-speak)
- Aren’t brainwaves more practical and less tiring for controlling an computer in the near future?
- How do gestural interfaces work when you’re in a small space?
- How do you envision g-speak at home or at work (in the office) where there may not be enough physical space to properly navigate & isn’t g-speak physically taxing after a while?
- (add more)
Click to enlarge
Anne’s extensive review about PICNIC06
Print templates:
T-shirt front (Set printer to landscape! Acrobat: File – Printsetup. Choose landscape/liggend)
T-shirt back : good for 2 t-shirts (Set printer to landscape! Acrobat: File – Printsetup. Choose landscape/liggend)
And of course we need some business cards:
Masters of Media business cards (suited for HEMA 150 Visitekaartjes 90×51 mm)
Browsing through 43 Things is intended to give you inspiration on goals yet to achieve and stimulate you to realize at least one. However some people will feel down and helpless, they are reminded of their infinite debts, their broken dreams and a life without prevailed aspiration. I don’t belong to the latter group. I was pleasantly surprised how easy it is to set 43 aims in my life, there is yet so much to be done. Most of the forty three things I want to do are a little over the top, things like winning an Oscar or being on the cover of Time Magazine seem only able to be attained when I set my priority accordingly and lower my attention on 42 other dreams. I recon realizing this is one of the effects that makes 43 things so superb, you learn to set priorities and are pushed to think of the right way in getting there.
After making your preferred selection of things to do, 43 things offers to remind you on a regular basis (weekly/monthly/yearly) to get to work (and ultimately spamming your mailbox with 43 unaccomplished objectives every week). You are supposed to rank your 43 things according to it’s its importance. I haven’t done so yet. I guess ordering 43 things takes the most time and will provide an intimate sketch of one’s profile. 43 things tells allot about someone. If I would take 43 things seriously and organize my to-do-list accurately, I would spend a whole day reflecting on my life, persona and future. I would also be strategizing ways to achieve my goals in an order that would fit the order of the to-do-list. My unwillingness to spend a day investing in perhaps a flourishing future perhaps says more then anything else.
When an aim has been fulfilled you can show others with what way you managed. Maybe one day I’ll manage to manage my management tasks.
43 things is a site that is built on the principles of tagging, rather than creating explicit interpersonal links (as seen in Hyves and Friendster). 43 Things was launched on January first 2005, by the Robot-co-op, a small company based in Seattle founded by prominent blogger Erik Benson, Daniel Spils, and former Amazon.com and Microsoft executive Josh Petersen. The site was developed using the Ruby programming language and the Ruby on Rails framework.
Sneakko Peekko
Peekko Chat was launched in January 2006 and put on the notorious Web 2.0 Products and Services list on Listible.com 1 month later. The start was promising and a new Web 2.0 succes seemed to be born, but what has happened since? Before I answer this question, let me first give a short description of what Peekko Chat is and how it works.
What’s it for?
On Listible I found the website Webjay which is a so called ‘playlist community’ from Yahoo. The site introduces itself as ‘a tool that helps you listen to and publish web playlists.’ People can upload songs from the web or from their own pc to create lists of songs of their own taste. Those lists can be listened to by every visitor of the site, using MP3 players like WinAmp, iTunes, RealOne or Windows Media Player. There are two tabs in the menu option browse: one is a ranking of popular playlists, the other one of new playlists. Users name their lists, they can give an indication on what to expect of the style. On the right side of the page the most popular or newest songs are highlighted and there’s a link to the creator of the list. The website claims to be legal, ’cause it does not store or transmit music itself, it just provides the links to the music.
Great PDF about how to analyze our blog statistics/audience: E-metrics
Might help us to improve.
I have looked around for the creative commons “problem” and I have found out that the best way to show that all posts are under creative commons is to add the logo to our header. Does everyone agree?
I found this list to be very helpful…. (as we discussed in class). I couldn’t find it anymore, so I wanted to save it here!
This is also a good website to use every once in a while to see who is linking to our posts….
(I’ll add the links to del.icio.us)
Stuff I Really Hate.com is a parody on feel good sites like 43 Things.com where you can share your dreams and goals with people around the world and let them join in. Whereas the main question on 43things.com is “What do you want to do with your life?”, Stuff I Really Hate.com evolves around “What do you really Hate?”, which might turn out to be just as interesting. Or even more!
I have tried to make a footer for the creative commons license, but unfortunately this theme cannot be changed, for as far as i could see. Therefore I have added the creative common license on top. Perhaps this is the right place, since visitors see the CCL immediately when the visit the blog.
If anyone would like to know more about the CCL, please visit this link:
Creative Commons License
Feed Shark is a service that will allow you to list your blog at the main blog services, such as Technorati, GeoUrl, and Weblogs.com. All you have to do is fill out the form in which you have to give the name and URL of the blog and the RSS URL, or/ and the podcast URL. The last two options are optional.
Next you will have to select the services that accept blogs, services that accept RSS feeds, and/or services that accept podcasts. This step is very easy, since you can select all services by using the “select all” button. Now you have to summit your entry and your blog will be listed at the selected services.
Finally, you can add the add a code to your blog to allow Feed Shark to track your submission.
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To see how this program works, I have used the MLGK blog to list at all these services. I did not think it would be wise to select our blog, since the final URL is not in use yet. As soon as this URL is in use, I will list our blog at all services that allow blog and all RSS services. Then I will also investigate if the blog has been listed at all these services. This sounds like a good service to use. It’s very easy to use and it saves a blogger a lot time getting listed services that list blogs.
So I’ll update this post as soon as our new URL is available.
There’s an article about the upcoming crossmedia event & the multimedia climate of Amsterdam in today’s “PS van de week/Parool”. Unfortunately it has not been published online, but I’ll bring it to class on Monday for those who are interested.
“Het Parool” did publish yesterday’s interview with Philip Rosedale (founder of Second Life) online
Hi all,
I started working on our t-shirts, here are my first two suggestions:
T-shirt 01: Tetris style (t-shirt_mom01.pdf)
T-shirt 02: Floppy style (t-shirt_mom02.pdf)
Comments? Suggestions? (Black and white & vector-based)
PS: Too bad we don’t have our own URL yet, we could print it on the back.
One of the many upcoming Web 2.0 applications is Remember the Milk (RtM), an online personal agenda with the very appealing option to add the locations of your appointments to the map. And yes… it is Beta.
Since this coming weekend is going to be very busy, I decided to enter all my weekend appointments in RtM to see just how it works and if it is really usefull. The interface to add your appointments is quite basic, but with some very usable features.
The following article was published at Dutch newspaper NRC. The article reveals that the Dutch government is going to invest 173 million euro in order to preserve the Dutch audiovisual heritage. This money will be used to preserve 285,000 hours of films, video, and audio and 2,9 million photographs. The institutions that will receive this money believe that the return on investment will be huge, because jobs will be created in the creative industry. Furthermore they believe that the audiovisual heritage will mainly be used by schools and universities for educational purposes.
If anyone was interested in further investigating the subject of the article of Lev Manovich ( ‘The Poetics of Augmented Space: Learning from Prada’ (2002)) that we have read for our last class of “Nieuwe Media Theorieen“, they may like to attend this seminar (or workshop) from VP and V2!