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PostTraditionalDiscussion

Page history last edited by PBworks 17 years, 6 months ago

POST-TRADITIONAL MEDIA: ART CULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE WAKE OF POSTMODERNISM

 

OPEN ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION - PLEASE ADD YOUR CONTRIBUTION BELOW STARTING WITH YOUR NAME IN BOLD. PLEASE START A NEW PAGE IF YOU WANT TO DEVELOP A WIKI ON YOUR SUB-THEME.

 

As ubiquitous and wireless technologies drive representational and communications interfaces deeper into the personal space of the human body; and as the world’s communications channels gain global penetration under increasing monopolistic control, it becomes imperative to understand the role of media in constructing the human sense of being in the world. This session will explore contemporary art, culture and technology in the context of a theoretical review of modernist and postmodernist discourse.

 

Niranjan Rajah will contextualize this overarching inquiry in terms of a paradigmatic framework – that of the Post-Traditional. This discourse, emergent as it is in the fields of sociology, theology, postcolonial theory, architecture and the history of technology, will be developed in this session as being determined by the advance of media technologies in the 20th Century.

 

Nima Motamedi will explore culturally-conscious product design/culturally rooted computing. Here is an excerpt from Ranjit Makkuni's Sacred World Research - "Over the past decade there has been an increasing interest in bringing computing to developing cultures, and within these cultures bringing computing to untapped markets in rural areas. Since rural areas of the world represent the last remaining areas of living, “analog” cultures in the world, i.e., cultures that rely on hand based skills, and culture’s that carry timeless traditions of traditional modes of interfaces, our work seeks to integrate traditional knowledge, hand-skills and body-friendly design in new interface technology and learning applications. Indeed, our work suggests that a combination of tactile computing, tangible physical interfaces can create a new form of UI that will increase the usability in developing nations." (http://www.sacredworld.com/asp/research.htm) What are the implications for design when we work with post-traditional media? As creators of objects/interactions, what are our responisibilities when we encounter post-traditional societies? Is it possible to design for traditions that are not our own?

 

David Jhave Johnston will consider a brief excerpt of an ancient Haida story as technology; old myths and new myths as malleable data, permeable structures. It is the raconteurs, the keepers of the knowledge, whether they be academics, shamans, artists, hobos or bloggers, who transmit the vibrations of culture. The oral tradition is the transmission of meme waves traversing our species; blogs, rap and the internet represent the current modality. Our species is a skin, a species of data. Myth and technology intermingle at the interface of culture; theory describes the genealogy of their encounters.

 

Vicki Moulder will explore the concepts of interaction design and social engagement as they emerged through three separate projects Lines of Life, Pride 2006 and Cellular Narration (http://www.sfu.ca/~vmoulder/index.htm ) This process will bring to light key questions that address how interactive events create meaning - that an event is not the result of a singular, isolated, creative activity, but is itself a social process.

 

Josh Tanenbaum will initiate a brief dialogue about comic-books as a mirror for cultural mileaus, and how changes within the medium reflect and support the formulation of Post Traditionalism. Starting with the the stories of comic creators whose work is explicitly mythic and traditional (Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison) and moving forward to consider the emergence of comics on the web as a new model of the medium in a much more interactive environment, I hope to engage the audiance in a discussion of how more "popular" artforms are on the forefront of the cultural revolution.

 

Kim Goodliffe is writing an article on the role of light in the cultural and physical lives of Vancouverites for Vancouver Review magazine. Some of her questions are What are teh seminal moments in teh evolution of the relationship between humans and fire/light? How did these relationships become ritualized? What do lantern festivals her express about the psyche and physical needs of rainy place dwellers? The Festival of Light draws more crowds than any other festival in town -- why? How does human interest in light explain our attraction to tv and film? Is it a coincidence that the Vancouver School artist, Jeff Wall, known for mounting photos on light boxes, hails from a rainy city? What about SAD and the Vancouver population?

 

Malcolm Levy is exploring the idea of occidentalism and orientalism in the technological age. How has this affected the perception of other cultures from our own and vice versa? How has the internet, and other forms of mobile and locative technologies changed the way we discuss, perceive, and see outside of our traditional realms of perception.

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