School of Culture and Creative Arts, 2nd Research Symposium
‘Technology and Aesthetics’
16th April 2012
Level 5, Sir Alwyn Williams Building, Lilybank Gardens
(D20 on Campus Map)
9.30-10.00
TEA and COFFEE
10.00- 10.45
Timothy Barker (Digital Media, Film and Television Studies)
"Electronic Nature"
The natural environment and technology, particularly information technology, have
tended to be separated. Since the development and widespread use of electronic
media, the flow of information has been independent of human travel through the
natural environment. Information now flows as pulses of light from air-conditioned
room to air-conditioned room, with nature set as a vague background against which
cultural routines are played out. Recently however, philosophers such as Michael
Serres and Don Ihde have begun to respectively express the importance of
conceptualising the atmospheric and energetic transmission of information and the
implication of electronic technology with a cultural-natural system. Taking a starting
point from some of the ideas outlined in Serres’ The Natural Contract, the paper
examines the re-connection between information and the environment as illustrated
in a set of contemporary art works that experimentally apply digital sensing
technology. It asks how ‘information aesthetics’ can be used to rethink the
relationship between technology and nature and begins to sketch out a media theory
of nature.
10.50- 11.30
Anita Quye (Centre for Textile Conservation and Technical Art
History)
Fantastic Plastic
Plastic – friend or foe of the modern age? Whatever your feelings, there’s no denying
that these materials have reshaped the twentieth century and had enormous impact
in society, including the arts as well as technological innovation. Attitudes towards
plastics have changed dramatically over this period too. Many people consider the
1940’s as the time when plastics first entered the public arena in the guise of nylon
and PVC, but by then they had already been around for over 70 years.
These early plastics, made from chemically-modified natural materials like paper and
wood, were used to simulate expensive natural materials such as tortoiseshell, ivory,
amber and silk, as well as glass. Today they are often overlooked in historical material
culture, yet the early plastics and their applications in decorative arts, social history
and modern artworks offer a fascinating insight into the meeting point of technology
and aesthetics. Anita will illustrate this with examples from her conservation science
research of museums and galleries collections.
Debbie Lewer (History of Art)
Image, Symbol and Type in German Dada magazines 1916-1922
This paper will report in a current piece of work in progress. I am working on the
visual elements of some of the small journals and other pieces of ephemera published
by Dadaists, in particular in Berlin and Cologne, in the period immediately following
the end of the First World War and in relation to the failed Revolution in Germany.
Focussing on the publications’ design, visual qualities and multiple functions, I will
suggest some new terms for approaching these vital documents of the European
Avant-Garde.
11.40-12.20
Katie Gough (Theatre Studies)
'Haptic Allegories: Rethinking Paradigms in Historical Research'
Katie will discuss her research project 'Haptic Allegories: Kinship and Performance in
the Black and Green Atlantic' with particular attention to how technology and
aesthetics - when thought together - allow for a revision of historiographical methods.
Laura Bissell (Theatre Studies)
“They Made Me Do It” Technological Interventions into Spectator/Performer
Roles.
This paper analyses performance collective Gob Squad’s recent performance We Are
Gob Squad and So Are You in relation to Jacques Ranciere’s study The Emancipated
Spectator (2009). This paper argues that by using wireless headphones to instruct
audience members to participate in “remote acting”, Gob Squad’s “performancelecture” blurs the boundaries between spectator and performer roles and complicates
the idea of spectating as “the opposite of acting”. The use of technology as a device to
absent the performer and defer the experience and action of “performing” to the
spectator interrogates conceptions of authenticity and voice in contemporary
performance.
12.20-13.00
LUNCH
13.00-14.00
David J. Code (Music)
Filming Audio Culture: Kubrick’s Music and the History of Recorded Sound
Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) has long held pivotal status in film music
history for its deployment of pre-recorded snippets of ‘art music’ in place of a
commissioned film score. After 2001, Kubrick continued to explore the questions
raised by such ‘compilation scores’ right up to his last film, Eyes Wide Shut (1999).
So far, most writing on Kubrick’s music has operated on a relatively straightforward
hermeneutic plane: i.e., tracing emergent structures of meaning across an unfolding
sound-image interaction. But at another level, we might also consider how these films
reflect key moments in the history of sound technology and listening practice.
Starting with a glance to 2001, where this background largely remains implicit (e.g. in
the ‘high-fidelity’ stereo sound of Strauss’s ‘Blue Danube’ waltz and the lush
performance style it serves) I offer a brief ‘show and tell’ about Kubrick’s infamous
next film, A Clockwork Orange (1971). Here, the ‘hi-fi’ culture of LPs and cassettes
comes explicitly into view even as the score also draws on W. Carlos’s response to the
epoch-defining development of the Moog synthesizer. What critical paths open with
this cinematic reflexivity about audio culture?
Martin Parker Dixon (Music)
His Master's Voice (or "It requires a very artificial and complicated frame of
mind to 'hear' a 'pure noise'.")
I've been trying, of late, to build up a picture of Heidegger's analysis of the act of
listening: i.e., listening to others, listening to discourse.
One essential component (repeated by Lyotard) is that listening occasions a moment
of obedience, of "thraldom", a notion now modernised (or de-feudalised?) as
"entrainment". I would like air some thoughts on how sound recording technology
might play into - or across - Heidegger's naturalistic descriptions.
Nick Fells (Music)
The computer and social-musical process
This presentation, part paper, part practical demo, outlines a few examples of my
creative practice that uses computer technology, setting it within the Glasgow
context. It considers how such practice invokes musical personal histories and
embeds (and enhances) social processes, suggesting a re-thinking of the notion of
‘ensemble’. Much of this work lies (arguably) in the realm of ‘post-digital’ aesthetics;
it also reawakens the improvisatory impulse as a basic foundation of musical
performance. The discussion will focus on one piece in particular, arine (a quartet for
Japanese instruments and electronics commissioned by London-based ensemble
Okeanos), and will include some live demonstration of the kind of sound processing
and programming involved.
14.00-14.30
Concluding remarks and group discussion