Confirmed keynote speaker:
MAURICE BENAYOUN (FR) | SAMUEL BIANCHINI (FR) | JEFFREY SHAW (AU)
MAURICE BENAYOUN (FR)
Artist, Researcher, Professor at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, Chair of the School of Graduate Studies committee, PhD coordinator.
SAMUEL BIANCHINI (FR)
Samuel Bianchini is an artist, researcher and associate professor at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs—Paris (ENSAD) / PSL Research University Paris.
JEFFREY SHAW (AU)
Artist, Researcher, Chair Professor of Media Art and Dean of the School of Creative Media (SCM), City University of Hong Kong.
Jeffrey Shaw (AU)
The Aesthetic and Corporeal Embodiment of Big Data
Two challenges face us in the age of digitization. First the techniques and technologies of visualization that can allow us to meaningfully represent an ever growing density of information. Second the techniques of embodiment that will allow us to meaningfully experience, navigate and transact such big data sets in mixed reality situations. Professor Shaw’s presentation will demonstrate a multidisciplinary approach to these challenges, with many examples of his groundbreaking artistic research in immersive interactive visualization.
Professor Jeffrey Shaw is internationally renowned for his pioneering activities as an artist and researcher. His numerous internationally exhibited and extensively cited works are milestones of technological and cultural innovation that have had seminal impact on the theory, design and application of digital media in art, society and industry.
Maurice Benayoun (FR)
“Matter under control: a human dream made true”
“One of the oldest dreams of the human kind is probably to control matter with the mind. To see our dreams eventually realized. Information technologies have made our potential coming closer to this objective. We can give shape to matter and get the physical outcome without touching it. The process should be called Reification.
It’s opposite is another antique dream: to convert matter, let’s say the world, into a “thinkable” material, computable material. Converting the world into data that can be understood by natural or artificial brains is the counterpart of Reification. I call it Sublimation.
Like both sides of the same coin, Reification and Sublimation are becoming some of the main forces that control our prospective research. The Brain Factory, as an effective metaphoric artwork allows the “brain workers”, the public, to give an evolving shape to human abstractions. Deeply human, these abstractions are then printed out, completing the process of reification. This is at the same time a “vanity”, a desperate attempt to pursue a paltry objective, so the resulting model is not universal; it is one moment in the evolution of an individual mind inheriting from previous generations.”
Professor Maurice Benayoun is a pioneering researcher, artist and theorist in the field of New Media Art. His work explores the frontiers of emerging medias, creating the very first 3D CG animation series on TV, developing innovative concepts and technologies for virtual and augmented reality, interactive art and urban media large-scale public installation. He has exhibited internationally in museum and key venues of media art and scientific exhibitions: Centre Pompidou (Paris), contemporary art museums in Lyon, Montreal, Seoul and Helsinki, Eyebeam and Museum of the Moving Image (New York), the Machida Museum, the ICC Tokyo. Cite des Sciences de la Villette, Science Museum Shanghai… His work is also in the permanent exhibition inside Arc de Triomphe (Paris). Prof Benayoun created CITU LAB and the Scientific Interest Group H2H Lab and co-founder of Arts-H2H Lab of excellence Paris 8 University. Expert ANR, AERES and European Committee for Research, he created Z-A Production and MoBen Fact, 2 private companies that played a significant role in New Media innovation.
Samuel Bianchini (FR)
“Practicable: From Participation to Interaction in Contemporary Art”
How are we to understand works of art that are realized with the physical involvement of the viewer? A relationship between a work of art and its audience that is rooted in an experience that is both aesthetic and physical? Today, these works often use digital technologies, but artists have created participatory works since the 1950s. In his talk, Samuel Bianchini will offer diverse perspectives on this kind of “practicable” art that bridges contemplation and use, discussing and documenting a wide variety of works from the last several decades. Considering both works that are technologically mediated and those that are not, as long as they are characterized by a process of reciprocal exchange, this presentation will propose an historical frame for practicable works, discussing, among other things, the emergence and influence of cybernetics.
Samuel Bianchini is an artist and associate professor at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs—Paris (EnsAD) / PSL Research University Paris.
Supporting the principle of an “operational aesthetic,” he works on the relationship between the most forward-looking technological “dispositifs”, modes of representation, new forms of aesthetic experiences, and sociopolitical organizations, often in collaboration with scientists and natural science and engineering research laboratories.
His works are regularly shown in Europe and across the world: Nuit Blanche Toronto 2016, Waterfall Gallery (New York), Medialab Prado (Madrid), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Kunsthaus PasquArt (Biel), Art Basel, Institut Français of Tokyo, Stuk Art Center (Leuven), Fiac, Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), Deutsches Hygiene-Museum (Dresden), National Museum of Contemporary Art (Athens), Jeu de Paume (Paris), Laboratoria (Moscow), Thessaloniki Biennale, Centre pour l’Image Contemporaine (Geneva), space_imA and Duck-Won Gallery (Seoul), Museum of Contemporary Art Ateneo de Yucatán (Mexico), ZKM (Karlsruhe), Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, etc.
