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digital_self

The artist Amanda Coogan presents ‘What is Performance Art? in which she considers the role of the archive in relation to Irish performance art during the 70s and 80s.

Picture credit: Amanda Coogan

This talks took place on Saturday 17 January 2015.

What is...Performance Art?

An informal lecture in conjunction with the Goethe Institute, discussing technology and the artistic process, with input from: Maeve Con­nolly, writer, lec­turer and re­searcher, Dublin;
Ste­fan Hei­den­re­ich, au­thor and the­o­rist, Cen­ter for Dig­i­tal Cul­ture, Le­uphana Uni­ver­sity Lüneb­urg; Bjørn Mel­hus, artist, Berlin; 
Saoirse Wall, artist, Dublin

This informal discussion explores how dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies af­fect the process of artis­tic pro­duc­tion and cre­ativ­ity, as well as art's tra­di­tional me­di­atic forms of ex­pres­sion – such as paint­ing, sculp­ture, pho­tog­ra­phy, video and per­for­mance. Dig­i­tal tech­niques and tools have trans­formed tra­di­tional dis­ci­plines and blurred their ex­ter­nal bound­aries, while emerg­ing new forms of artis­tic pro­duc­tion re­flect the in­creas­ing ubiq­uity of the dig­i­tal in our daily lives. The first Lunch Bytes dis­cus­sion in Dublin in­vites artists and ex­perts who have worked with and writ­ten about the medium of film/video to pre­sent and dis­cuss their work in re­la­tion to tra­di­tional art his­tor­i­cal dis­ci­plines and media, as well as the cur­rent digi­ti­sa­tion of artis­tic prac­tice.

Does it still make sense to think in for­mal, me­dia-re­lated cat­e­gories or have we moved be­yond the medium as a rec­og­niz­able and clas­si­fi­able en­tity in the age of per­va­sive com­put­ing? Films, pic­tures, an­i­ma­tions, and draw­ings are sub­ject(ed) to the same dig­i­tal op­er­a­tions, while the web has es­tab­lished a com­pu­ta­tional stan­dard for mul­ti­me­dia doc­u­ments in which text, im­ages, and sounds con­verge. But if 'the medium', as a co­her­ent con­cept or en­tity, is no longer rel­e­vant and we have in­deed en­tered a post-medium era, then why are medium-re­lated cat­e­gories and dis­tinc­tions still so preva­lent?

This lecture took place on 12 March 2014, in the Lecture room at IMMA.

IMMA

1. Lunch Bytes Discussion: Film and Video

An informal lecture in conjunction with the Goethe Institut, discussing technology and social media in contemporary society, with input from: Mar­guerite Barry, Ad­junct Lec­turer at the School of Com­puter Sci­ence, Trin­ity Col­lege Dublin and in­de­pen­dent dig­i­tal media con­sul­tant, Dublin; Julius von Bis­marck, artist, Berlin;  Kylie Jar­rett, Lec­turer at the Cen­tre for Media Stud­ies, Na­tional Uni­ver­sity of Ire­land, Maynooth; Ras­mus Svens­son from De­sign Stu­dio PWR, Berlin

Data has come to play an in­creas­ingly im­por­tant role in our so­ci­ety, not only as a pri­mary source of sur­plus value and profit, but also as a re­source for the re­flec­tive work on our selves. Our use of dig­i­tal de­vices, soft­ware ap­pli­ca­tions, and so­cial media plat­forms con­tin­u­ally gen­er­ates im­mense streams of data, which are au­to­mat­i­cally cap­tured, archived, and or­ga­nized in ever-ex­pand­ing pro­pri­etary data­bases. Often with­out our knowl­edge or ex­plicit con­sent, these streams are ag­gre­gated into larger sets of 'big data' sub­jected to com­plex al­go­rith­mic analy­ses ("an­a­lyt­ics") in order to find rel­e­vant pat­terns and as­so­ci­a­tions that can pro­vide in­sight into con­sumer tastes, habits, and be­hav­iours. In this way user-gen­er­ated data is val­orised by sell­ing rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion to ad­ver­tis­ers. On the other hand, users in­creas­ingly make ac­tive use of the data they gen­er­ate, uti­liz­ing var­i­ous ap­pli­ca­tions (such as Klout) to gain in­sight into their on­line 'per­for­mance' and seek ways to im­prove their sta­tus or rep­u­ta­tion.

This edi­tion of Lunch Bytes fo­cuses on the con­tem­po­rary om­nipo­tence of data and asks ques­tions such as: In what ways does data be­come valu­able? What is the re­la­tion­ship be­tween quan­ti­ta­tive data ("num­ber") and qual­i­ta­tive ex­pe­ri­ence ("sense")? What is the im­pact of dig­i­tal data on our con­cep­tion of self and other? How have artists ap­proached the form and func­tion of data? How does data shape con­tem­po­rary artis­tic pro­duc­tion? How can we make data mean­ing­ful and gain knowl­edge? Can art be 'quan­ti­ta­tive' or 'quan­ti­fied'?

This lecture took place on 9 May 2014 in the Lecture Room at IMMA

Image credits courtesy of lunch-bytes.com

IMMA-Lunch Bytes

2. Lunch Bytes Discussion: Structures and Textures

An panel discussion in conjunction with the Goethe Institut, discussing public spaces and architecture, featuring Nathalie Bre­della, ar­chi­tect, lec­turer at Uni­ver­sität der Künste, Berlin; John Dingliana, As­sis­tant Pro­fes­sor in Com­puter Sci­ence at Trin­ity Col­lege Dublin; Chris Timms, artist, Dublin; Mar­lie Mul, artist, Berlin

This panel crit­i­cally re­flects on the var­i­ous ways in which dig­i­ti­za­tion has her­alded trans­for­ma­tions in ar­chi­tec­ture and of our built en­vi­ron­ment, both on a for­mal and ma­te­r­ial level. It dis­cusses the im­pact of dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies, whose in­ces­sant com­pu­ta­tion and con­nec­tiv­ity af­ford an aug­mented and ex­panded human per­cep­tion of build­ings and (pub­lic) spaces.

Dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies have al­tered the way build­ings can be con­ceived, con­cep­tu­al­ized and mod­elled. By no longer re­ly­ing on the for­mal geo­met­ri­cal con­cepts and units that were hith­erto used as part of the de­sign process, com­puter-aided-ar­chi­tec­tural de­sign tech­niques now have the po­ten­tial to cre­ate rad­i­cally dif­fer­ent, com­plex forms. This can be seen in the or­gan­i­cally shaped build­ings of ar­chi­tects like Zaha Hadid or Frank Gehry. This new power, how­ever, also leads to new pit­falls. When ar­chi­tect and critic Bernard Tschumi com­ments on the dig­i­ti­za­tion of the dis­ci­pline, he crit­i­cizes it for mainly cel­e­brat­ing spec­tac­u­lar forms and twisted, dec­o­ra­tive sur­faces. In order to achieve flashy new forms, ac­cord­ing to the Swiss critic, im­por­tant ar­chi­tec­tural con­cerns are often dis­re­garded, re­sult­ing in an ar­chi­tec­ture that favours the iconic at the ex­pense of other val­ues and con­sid­er­a­tions.

Next to these com­puter-aided ar­chi­tec­tural de­sign tech­niques, dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies have also spawned new ways of pro­duc­ing struc­tures and ma­te­ri­als (com­puter-aided man­u­fac­tur­ing), re­sult­ing in built en­vi­ron­ments that look and feel dif­fer­ently. In this way, such tech­nolo­gies have trans­formed our ex­pe­ri­ence of the spaces we in­habit and move through. Our world is in­creas­ingly per­me­ated by cal­cu­la­tive, soft­ware-en­abled in­fra­struc­tures run­ning silently in the back­ground, while we in turn be­come ever more at­tached to our de­vices, which reg­is­ter, process, and ex­change lo­ca­tion-aware in­for­ma­tion. This data space con­tin­u­ally and re­cur­sively in­forms how we nav­i­gate and per­ceive ar­chi­tec­tural spaces, by mak­ing them 'smarter', more com­plex, yet also less un­pre­dictable.

This lecture took place on 17 October 2014 in the Lecture Room, IMMA.

3. Lunch Bytes: Discussion Public Space/Architecture

IMMA Talks digs deep into its audio archive to present recordings of past public talks and discussions, that feature contributions by IMMA Collection Artists and/or responses by others. 

Track:  Lunch Bytes: Life/Memory, 2014                                                              

An informal lecture in conjunction wth the Goethe Institut, discussing life and memory in the digital age, with input from: Gareth Kennedy and Sarah Browne (Kennedy and Browne), an artist duo from Ireland; Christina Kennedy, Senior Curator: Head of Collection Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; and Erica Scourti, artist, London.

What happens to our capacity to remember – and the role of memory in everyday life – when our experiences and interactions are increasingly taking place on various web-based social platforms, mediated through our smart phones that constantly record and distribute images, comments, videos and recommendations relating to what we see, feel, hear and think? Digital devices are built to archive and organize the details of our ordinary lives – from the most intimate to the casually impersonal – and employ ever more sophisticated technologies to do so, moving from hardwired memory to the ethereal cloud. How have these technologies affected our individual and collective forms of recollection and commemoration? What position does the past have in relation to what some have called our 'expanded present'? How does this inform the way we imagine our future? And what is the relation between our embodied memory and the mnemonic objects we use to augment and communicate our experiences? Moreover, this discussion looks at the mnemonic practices of the museum and considers how new technologies have impacted the way its collection is treated.
This edition of Lunch Bytes asks artists and experts to reflect on such questions,focusing in particular on the ways in which artistic practices have explored the aesthetics of contemporary memory practices. Additionally, it asks what we might gain from conceiving art as itself an assemblage of mnemonic objects and practices.

This  talk took place on 21 November 2014 in IMMA, Dublin.
Image Courtesy oflunch-bytes.com and the Goethe Institut.

IMMA-IAF

4. Lunch Bytes: Life/Memory, 2014

Author Mark O’Connell draws on his acclaimed publication, To be a Machine (2016) in which to discuss our desires, delusions and use of technology to alter the human condition to escape mortality and our biological lives. This is followed by a discussion, moderated by Dr. Sinead Hogan, Lecturer & Co-Director, ARC, IADT. 

Further Information

To be a Machine - Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death - is the first book, by Dublin-based essayist and critic Mark O’Connell which explores the philosophical and scientific roots of transhumanism; a movement that believes we can and should use technology to control the future evolution of our species, to enable us to live, perhaps, forever. The transhumanism movement campaigns for the direct incorporation of technology into our bodies and minds, and strives to remove ageing as a cause of death. But what does this mean for human consciousness and an embodied sense of self? These are just some of the fascinating and critical questions that O’Connell’s book invites us to explore about possible futures of  technology.


Programmed in collaboration with IADT- ARC as part of the IMMA digital_self public programme of talks, events and online projects invites all ages to explore the ways new technologies are transforming how the self is voiced, shaped and understood in various digital realms.
 
Mark O'Connell is a journalist, essayist, and literary critic from Dublin. His book, To Be a Machine: Encounters With a Post-Human Future, will be published by Granta (UK & Commonwealth) and Doubleday (US & Canada) in 2017. He is Slate’s books columnist, a staff writer at The Millions, and a regular contributor to The New Yorker’s “Page-Turner” blog; his work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Observer, and The Independent. He is also the author of the Kindle Single Epic Fail: Bad Art, Viral Fame, and the History of the Worst Thing Ever (Byliner/The Millions).
He has a PhD in English Literature from Trinity College Dublin, and in 2013 his academic monograph on the work of the novelist John Banville, John Banville’s Narcissistic Fictions, was published by Palgrave Macmillan. He was an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow from 2011 to 2012 at Trinity College, where he taught contemporary literature. For more details visit here.

This talk took place on Tuesday 30 January 2018  at IMMA.

Digital_self

IMMA & IADT: ARC Talk / To Be a Machine – Mark O’Connell

IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) is Ireland's leading national institution for the collection and presentation of modern and contemporary art. IMMA TALKS is an activated live programme of talks and events that opens up conversations around the core themes of our exhibition programme, and permanent IMMA Collection, bringing you deeper into the thinking and making of contemporary art.

For further information on IMMA TALKS please contact Sophie Byrne, Assistant Curator, Talks & Public Programmes, IMMA. Email sophie.byrne@imma.ie

IMMA & IADT: ARC Talk / To Be a Machine – Mark O’Connell

IMMA Ireland