The notion of cross-media storytelling is creeping into academic and art. A sibling concept, ‘distributed aesthetics’, is being bandied about at a few ‘spaces’. Here are a couple in Australia:
Fibreculture Journal: upcoming Distributed Aesthetics Issue
It has been widely argued by sociologists, cultural and media theorists such as Manuel Castells, Arjun Appardurai and Geert Lovink that we now live in a landscape shaped by the flows and traffic of globally networked information. We have become, in Castells words, a ‘networked society’ and our cultural, social and economic practices must operate within this global space of flows. The geography of place and history in which association through physical proximity and tradition such as neighbourhood, or through identification based upon race, class or sex, recedes to give way to information space. Artists have responded to this shifting cultural landscape by taking up the net itself as a medium for practice, by forming their own artistic networks facilitated by net infrastructure and functionality, and by critically responding to what distributed spatio-temporalities might mean for the art object itself, for art production and for audience interaction. Beyond the identification of an historical art movement – net.art – distributed aesthetics names ways of artistically operating in a time and space of information flows, and of engendering modes of perception specific to these flows.
In this issue of fibreculture journal, we are seeking contributions to the aesthetic and artistic theorisation, use and development of networked spaces, times and technologies. How, in short, has the network considered in its broadest sense contributed technically and culturally to contemporary modes of perception? Writers may approach this from the perspective of speculative, empirical, historical and/or critical theories. Specific case studies of online artistic practice, the use of ICTs in artistic community and collaboration, politics and networked aesthetics, and analyses of networked art projects are encouraged.
The Art Association of Australia & New Zealand [NSW Chapter]in association with the Art Gallery of NSW and the Centre for Contemporary Art and Politics, UNSW present the 2005 Conference: TRANSFORMING AESTHETICS, 7-9 July 2005, Art Gallery of New South Wales Sydney, Australia.
DISTRIBUTED AESTHETICS: HISTORIES AND THEORIES
Anna Munster
The ‘undoing’ of New Media Art: Towards a distributed aestheticsDarren Tofts
On the street where you live: stencil art and the
poetics of ephemeraPia Ednie-Brown
Processual Consistency: a form of compositionDISTRIBUTED AESTHETICS: MEDIA AND PROCESS
Andrew Murphie
Distribution and assemblage in the work of
Joyce Hinterding and David HainesSusan Ballard
Flickering and delay: materiality in digital installationSean Cubitt – CLOSING KEYNOTE
New light: fragments and responsibilities