Victoria Vesna

Toward a Third Culture: Being In Between

Artists working with technology are frequently informed and inspired by exciting scientific innovations, and often turn to contemporary philosophical interpretations of these events, which positions them in between the two cultures, a position that creates the potential for a Third Culture, as predicted by C.P. Snow himself. This emerging culture is not composed of the scientific elite as some propose, but will emerge out of triangulation of the arts, sciences and humanities. Although media artists are posed to play an important role in bridging the cultural and language gaps, this essay warns against adopting humanist interpretations of scientific work or taking for granted scientific assertions without active dialogue with both.

Databases are us

In the age of information overload, the primary concern for many knowledge areas becomes the organisation and retrieval of data. Artists have a unique opportunity, at this historical juncture, to play a role in the definition and design of systems of access and retrieval, and at the very least comment on the existing practices. In this article I show how some personalities have foreshadowed and indeed influenced the current practices and huge efforts in digitising our collective knowledge. This article is an effort to broadly contextualise the current atmosphere and environment that ‘information architects’ are confronted with.

The state of aesthetic computing or info-aesthetics: curated panel discussion

Aesthetic computing is one of several related new fields: info-aesthetics, database aesthetics, network aesthetics, and software aesthetics. What are their similarities and differences? What are the aesthetic issues driving them, and how are they linked to technological developments? And what exactly is the role of aesthetics is this context?

Genetic technologies and animals

As North American editor of AI & Society I was charged by the executive editor, Karamjit Gill, to bring forth more articles on media arts, specifically to technological innovations and societal issues in culture at large. I felt that this was a unique opportunity to solicit authors to address issues that are frequently not delved deep enough into, precisely because of the arts context. One such subject is biotechnology and art which has had a few years of real boom with many artists either toying with the surface of these issues or plunging deep into controversy. Eduardo Kac is one such artist who took a huge leap into the center of uncharted territory and created much emotional and intellectual response. Since he is my close colleague as we both worked on our PhDs in the CAiiA program headed by Roy Ascott, I was very close to his seeing a public drama unfold around a piece he created during this time—GFP Bunny. Carol Gigliotti, who I solicited to develop this special issue, is also a friend and colleague of Kac, supporting his previous work and curating an earlier work into the SIGGRAPH art show. So naturally though Gigliotti herself had already written the essay, ‘‘Leonardo’s Choice,’’ she was somewhat uncomfortable with having his work be the basis of a more general critique of the ethics of using animals in artwork. But, she also felt that their friendship is not based on agreement on everything and that it could withstand this difference of view. When I reviewed the essays by the authors Steven Best, Lynda Birke, Susan McHugh and Steven Baker, I was struck with the realization that all discuss his work, and even if they are critical, that this is a testament to his important role

Artist Round Tables

Taking the Planetary Collegium as their starting point, members of the round table address research issues as they relate to the development of practice and theory in the context of collaborative criticism and inquiry across a wide field of knowledge and experience. The Collegium network is worldwide, in terms of its meeting and conference locations, the cultural identity of its members, and its ambition to develop nodes based on and complementary to its unique procedures and method-ologies. The Collegium emerges from 10 years of experience with CAiiA-STAR in gathering doctoral and post-doctoral researchers of high calibre whose work transcends orthodox subject boundaries, and whose practices are at the leading edge of their fields. We are living in a time of crisis for universities, museums and corporations, a time in which old cultural and academic structures need to be replaced by research organisms fitted to our telematic, post-biological society. The Collegium combines the physical, face-to-face transdisciplinary association of individuals with the nomadic, trans-cultural requirements of a networking community. The panelists, all members of the Collegium at various stages in its development, present their personal visions of the direction future research might take and the structures needed to support it.

Bird Song Diamond in Deep Space 8k

The Bird Song Diamond (BSD) project is a series of multifaceted and multidisciplinary installations with the aim of bringing contemporary research on bird communication to a large public audience. Using art and technology to create immersive experiences, BSD allows large audiences to embody bird communication rather than passively observe. In particular, BSD Mimic, a system for mimicking bird song, asks participants to grapple with both audition and vocalization of birdsong. The use of interactive installations for public outreach provides unique experiences to a diverse audience, while providing direct feedback for artists and researchers interested in the success of such outreach. By following an iterative design process, both artists and researchers have been able to evaluate the effectiveness of each installation for promoting audience engagement with the subject matter. The execution and evaluation of each iteration of BSD is described throughout the paper. In addition, the process of interdisciplinary collaboration in our project has led to a more defined role of the artist as a facilitator of specialists. BSD Mimic has also led to further questions about the nature of audience collaboration for an engaged experience.

Assistive Device Art: aiding audio spatial location through the Echolocation Headphones

Assistive Device Art derives from the integration of Assistive Technology and Art, involving the mediation of sensorimotor functions and perception from both, psychophysical methods and conceptual mechanics of sensory embodiment. This paper describes the concept of ADA and its origins by observing the phenomena that surround the aesthetics of prosthesis-related art. It also analyzes one case study, the Echolocation Headphones, relating its provenience and performance to this new conceptual and psychophysical approach of tool design. This ADA tool is designed to aid human echolocation. They facilitate the experience of sonic vision, as a way of reflecting and learning about the construct of our spatial perception. Echolocation Headphones are a pair of opaque goggles which disable the participant’s vision. This device emits a focused sound beam which activates the space with directional acoustic reflection, giving the user the ability to navigate and perceive space through audition. The directional properties of parametric sound provide the participant a focal echo, similar to the focal point of vision. This study analyzes the effectiveness of this wearable sensory extension for aiding auditory spatial location in three experiments; optimal sound type and distance for object location, perceptual resolution by just noticeable difference, and goal-directed spatial navigation for open pathway detection, all conducted at the Virtual Reality Lab of the University of Tsukuba, Japan. The Echolocation Headphones have been designed for a diverse participant base. They have both the potential to aid auditory spatial perception for the visually impaired and to train sighted individuals in gaining human echolocation abilities. Furthermore, this Assistive Device artwork instigates participants to contemplate on the plasticity of their sensorimotor architecture.

Vibration matters: collective blue morph effect

Once an artist takes on the challenge of making the invisible visible, or the inaudible audible, he/she is almost immediately thrown into the realm of energy at the edge of art and science. The established art world based on visual culture finds it difficult to place this kind of work. The scientific community, used to working in this realm in a reductionist way, finds it hard to comprehend. Yet, the public seems to be drawn to artwork residing “in between,” and there seems to be a universal need for a connection to the spiritual realm beyond what established religions offer. As many speculative ideas in the West circulate around ideas of energetic approach to matter in general, particularly the body and mind, alternative medicine and other Eastern philosophies are thriving. This essay will show how, in collaboration with nanoscientist James Gimzewski, we have investigated these ideas from the sounds of cells to the concept and realization of the Blue Morph installation at the Integratron [the Integratron is the creation of George Van Tassel and is based on the design of Moses’ Tabernacle, the writings of Nikola Tesla and telepathic directions from extraterrestrials. This one-of-a-kind building is a 38-foot-high, 55-foot-diameter, nonmetallic structure originally designed by Van Tassel as a rejuvenation and time machine (The Integratron 2009)].

Blue morph: metaphor and metamorphosis

The authors describe the Blue Morph installation they developed and produced in full collaboration as an art/science hybrid. Together, Vesna and Gimzewski created an art | science project that uses nano-scale images and sounds derived from the metamorphosis of a chrysalis into a butterfly as the overarching metaphor for the collective shift in consciousness. This is a condensed version of the conceptual and scientific background for the artwork that was developed with the goal of creating many different interpretations and experiences.

The Katrina project: NO-LA

The Katrina Project: NO-LA involves collaborators from art, design, behavioral science, journalism, and community outreach. A database-driven, activist web site explores the psychological and social effects of the storm and its aftermath through interviews with, and works by various artists in New Orleans and Los Angeles.