SOFT CONTROL: ART, SCIENCE AND THE TECHNOLOGICAL UNCONSCIOUS, International Interdisciplinaty Conference

In context of project: SOFT CONTROL: ART, SCIENCE AND THE TECHNOLOGICALLY UNCONSCIOUS

Exposed

International conference involving theoreticians and artists from Europe, USA, Canada, Japan, Australia, Russia and Singapore, to be held 16–17 November 2012. Conference participants include recognised experts in the field of contemporary art and new technologies, famous artists and philosophers. The conference will place special emphasis on the presentation of new strategies in contemporary technological art and education in the field, as well as practical presentations. 2-day conference consists of 2 thematic sections: “Technological Matter and the New State of the Living” and “The Technological Unconscious as
a Medium”. A publication forthcoming in 2013 will sum up the project.

DAY 1: Technological Matter and the New State of the Living
Friday, November 16 (2.00 p.m. – 8.00 p.m.)
Location: Portal – Valvazorjeva 40, Maribor, Slovenia
Moderator: Dmitry Galkin, Tomsk State University, Russia
The thematic section “Technological Matter and the New State of the Living” is devoted to discussion of the technological unconscious as a physical condition of experience. Can we talk about technology as an outotelic ontological entity that possesses its own materiality and its own reality? Is this technological matter capable of having a structuring influence on human life? Does technology break the rules of the living world, or is it a direct continuation of the development of nature, in which the human is only one of many instruments of self-organization? The participants in our international exhibition “Soft Control,” as well as leading experts in the spheres of art, science, and technology, will attempt to find answers to these questions.
Keynote speakers:
Andrew Pickering, University of Exeter, United Kingdom
Stelarc, Brunel University London, UK / University of Western Sydney, Australia
Panel speakers include:
Oron Catts, Ionat Zurr, SymbioticA – The Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts, School of Anatomy and
Human Biology, the University of Western Australia
Polona Tratnik, University of Primorska, Slovenia
Artist presentations:
Leo Peschta (AT), Seiko Mikami (JP), Ursula Damm (DE), Andy Gracie (UK/ES), Bill Vorn (CA),
James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau (UK), Kuda begut sobaki (RU)

DAY 2: The Technological Unconscious as a Medium
Saturday, November 17 (2.00 p.m. – 8.00 p.m.)
Location: Portal – Valvazorjeva 40, Maribor, Slovenia
Moderator: Dmitry Galkin, Tomsk State University, Russia
The thematic section “The Technological Unconscious as a Medium” is devoted to anthropocentric variants of technological development. Examining the technological unconscious as a medium, i.e., as a form and generative principle of a whole new generation of ideas, the discussion participants raise the question of how the language that constructs and describes the world of technologies forms. Which discourses of the technological unconscious can be singled out today, and which will it be essential to reconstruct tomorrow? Is the artist capable of reinventing and rewriting the very foundations of the
technology myth? Well-known practicians and theoreticians of contemporary art will talk about different aspects of the creation of new forms and new identities.
Keynote speakers:
Roy Ascott, Plymouth University, United Kingdom
Erkki Huhtamo, University of California Los Angeles, USA
Panel speakers:
Louis-Philippe Demers, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Jurij Krpan, Kapelica Gallery, Slovenia
Artist presentations:
Brandon Ballengee (US), Maja Smrekar (SI), Stefan Doepner and Lars Vaupel (SI, DE), Vicky Isley and
Paul Smith (UK), Suzanne Dikker and Matthias Oostrik (NL), David Bowen (US), Guy Ben-Ary and
Kirsten Hudson (AU), Tuur Van Balen (BE)

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