[Nettime-bold] excavation the future

["milos" <milos.vojtechovsky@fcca.cz>]

CALL FOR PROPOSALS: Excavation the Future
July 17, 2001
Deadline for proposals: October, 2001

Term: December, 2001

EXCAVATING THE FUTURE - ENCOUNTERS OF ARTISTS,  SCIENTISTS, HISTORIANS, AND
FUTUROLOGISTS

1.Virtual Man: An Archeology of Moving Pictures
Prague, December 4.5. 2001
Goethe Institut Prag, Center for Contemporary Art Prague

As we tend more and more rely on new communication technologies, we need to
understand where they are coming from and what the ramifications of their
use are. Hence there is internationally a growing interest in the history
and archeology of media. Excavating the Future seeks shed a light on this
questions and to facilitate this movement by connecting individuals and
institutions, artists and scientists, and by initiating their future
collaborations.
In his dissertation published in Prague in 1818, Jan Evangelista Purkyne
(Purkinje) was first to observe that we see an object a fraction of a second
after it disappears from our visual field. The discovery of this phenomenon,
which was described in a greater detail by Peter Mark Roget in 1824 and
called later persistence of vision, has been the basis of devices and media
that have turned still images into moving pictures, including cinema,
television, as well as digital audiovisual technology that is transforming
the present world.
Electronic media increasingly influence our everyday life as they provide us
with new possibilities and change the way of life as well as the way we
understand ourselves. This fastest growing field necessitates its
self-examination, a reflection of its historical and theoretical concepts
and preconceptions, raising questions such as follows:
How do cognitive models contribute to the evolution of electronic media and,
conversely, what is the role of digital technology in cognitive science? How
is the rapid growth of electronic media embedded in history?
How do cultural traditions condition the use and development of new media on
one hand, and how do new media reconfigure these traditions and our notion
of history on the other?
The conference will seek to confront the latest findings of cognitive
science with the present development of electronic media and their aesthetic
explorations by foregrounding self-reflectivity and historicity in these
closely related, and yet different fields. The purpose of this conference is
to bring together scientists and artists, artists who are using the
scinetific methods, historians and futurologists in the hope that such
encounters can contribute not only to the emerging field of electronic media
archeology and history but could also inspire new collaborations between
artists and scientists. The theme of the December conference, Virtual Man:
An Archeology of Moving Pictures, highlights the perception and simulation
of movement as a driving force behind the development of new media in the
last two hundred years.

The project Virtual Man is continuin of the Flusser Media symposium series
organized by Goethe Institut Prag between 1992 and 1999.

Organizers and their partners: The Goethe Institut and the Center for
Contemporary Art in Prague, Faculty of Fine Arts Technical University Brno,
Academy of Fine Arts Prague, The National Museum of Technology in Prague,
Center for Culture and Technology Budapest,  Institute for Advanced Studies
at Charles University and further initiatives and institutions.

Invited speakers: Lev Manovich, Miklos Peternak, Siegfried Zielinski,
Friedrich Kittler, Jonathan Crary, Tom Gunning, Erkki Huthamo, Semir Zeki,
Nicholas Wade, Knowbotic Research,  Jiri Fiala, Ivan Havel, Michael
Bielicky, Bohuslav Blazek, Andrej Smirnov, Carsten Holler, Roy Ascott.

contacts:

Milos Vojtechovsky
Center for Contemporary Arts
Jeleni 9
118 00 Praha 1
Czech Republic
tel +420 2 24373178
email: milos@fcca.cz
http://www.fcca.cz/newsite/cz/page2/info1.html

Jaroslav Andel
New York
email: jaroslavandel@hotmail.com



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