CATASTROPHE, CATACLYSM AND THE SINGULAR ACCIDENT
Keynote Speakers
Paul Thomas
Dr. Paul Thomas is Associate Professor and Director of the Fine Arts program at University of New South Wales (UNSW), Art and Design. Thomas initiated and is the co-chair of the Transdisciplinary Imaging Conference series 2010, 2012 and 2014. In 2000, Thomas instigated and was the founding Director of the Biennale of Electronic Arts, Perth 2002 and 2004. Thomas is a pioneer of transdisciplinary practice. His work takes not only inspiration from nanoscience and quantum theory, but actually operates there. Thomas’s current practice is based on the research being conducted by Associate Professor Andrea Morello, Quantum Nanosystems (UNSW), looking at the probability of electron superposition in the development of quantum computing. Thomas’s previous projects investigated silver, the mirror and quantum theories of light and parallel universes in the work Multiverse. Thomas’s nanoart works Nanoessence explored the space between life and death and death at a nano level, and Midas researched what is transferred when skin touched gold. The Midas and Nanoessence installations were in collaboration with SymbioticA: Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts, University of Western Australia, and the Nanochemistry Research Institute, Curtin University of Technology.
http://visiblespace.com/
David Rokeby
Born in Tillsonburg, Ontario in 1960, David Rokeby has been creating interactive sound and video installations with computers since 1982. His early work Very Nervous System (1982-1991) is acknowledged as a pioneering work of interactive art, translating physical gestures into real-time interactive sound environments. Several of his works have addressed the issue of digital surveillance, including Watch (1995), Taken (2002) and Sorting Daemon (2003). Other works engage in a critical examination of the differences between human and artificial intelligence. The Giver of Names (1991-present) and n-cha(n)t (2001) are artificial subjective entities provoked by objects or spoken words in their immediate environment to formulate sentences and speak them aloud. David Rokeby’s installations have been exhibited extensively in the Americas, Europe and Asia. In 2002, Rokeby was awarded a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts, the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica for Interactive Art (for n-cha(n)t) and represented Canada at the Venice Biennale of Architecture with Seen (2002). In 2004 he represented Canada at the São Paulo Bienal in Brazil. In 2010/2011, Rokeby was a guest artist at Le Fresnoy Studio Nationale in Tourcoing, France, and artist-in-residence at the Ryerson Image Centre at Ryerson University, Toronto.
Catherine Richards
Catherine Richards is internationally known for artwork exploring the volatile sense of ourselves as new technologies shift our boundaries. Her work often crosses disciplines, and this project is undertaken in collaboration with the Cardiac Transplant Program, Toronto General Hospital. International and national exhibitions include: Sydney Biennale, ISEA, A/V Festival, ACM SIGGRAPH, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, V2, SPECTROPIA, the National Gallery of Canada, ZKM. Awards include: the Canada Council for the Arts, Media Arts Prize. Fellowships include the National Gallery of Canada and AIRes at the National Research Council of Canada. Grants include the Canada Council of the Arts, AT&T Canada and the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and Technology. Her work has been discussed by major theorists such as N. Katherine Hayles, Frances Tyson and Dot Tuer. She is professor and University Research Chair, Visual Arts at the University of Ottawa.
Speakers
Jonah Corne
Jonah Corne is an Associate Professor in the Department of English, Film and Theatre at the University of Manitoba. His articles on film and literature have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including, most recently, Thinking in the Dark (Rutgers) and New Silent Cinema (Routledge).
Tom Kohut
Tom Kohut is a new media art critic, curator and theorist living in Winnipeg. He has written nationally and internationally for arts magazines, academic journals, exhibition catalogues and scholarly books on film, video, visual art, sound art and bio art. He has presented papers on surveillance art, cybernetics, entropy and digital media at the University of Manitoba, Video Pool Media Arts Centre and the 2015 International Symposium of the Electronic Arts. Recent publications include “Bio Art and the Biotechnological Singularity” in Transformations and “Noise Pollution and the Eco-Politics of Sound: Toxicity, Nature and Culture in the Contemporary Soundscape” in Leonardo Music Journal (Politics of Sound issue). He is the co-editor of Marshall McLuhan and Vilém Flusser’s Aesthetic and Communications Theories Revisited and is presently writing on Canadian post-cinema.
Andrew Milne
Andrew John Milne is a self-taught Winnipeg-based interdisciplinary artist who interweaves new media, film, photography and performance. He has a background in mechanical, electrical and software design, contemporary dance, photography and film. In this work, Milne approaches cutting-edge media with obsolesced technologies and materials. These anachronistic yet functional devices that draw “mechanism” into a post-cinematic dream space that realizes future mechanisms of seeing and quantifying. Milne is the founder of the Museum of New Ideas a mobile new media exhibition and studio space, and is a founding member of Bent Light, a post-cinematic collective.
Melentie Pandilovski
Dr. Melentie Pandilovski is an art historian, theorist, curator and critic. He is Director of Video Pool Media Arts Centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He previously held the position of the Director of the Visual and Cultural Research Centre, Euro-Balkan Institute in Skopje, Macedonia; Director of the Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide, Australia; and the Director of the (Soros) Contemporary Art Centre in Skopje, Macedonia.
He has curated more than 140 exhibitions and organized numerous symposia, conferences and workshops in Europe, Australia and Canada, such as: Toxicity (Winnipeg 2013/14), SEAFair-Skopje Electronic Art Fair (Skopje, 1997-2011), Marshall McLuhan and Vilém Flusser’s Communication and Aesthetic Theories Revisited (Winnipeg 2012), Biotech Art – Revisited (Adelaide, 2009) and many others. His research examines the links between art, science and consciousness. He was Consultant Editor of Artlink’s “Bio Art: Life in the Anthropocene” (2014) and the editor of three volumes: Energy, Biopolitics, Resistance Strategies and Cultural Subversion (2012), The Apparatus of Life and Death (2011) and Art in the Biotech Era (2008). Recent publications include “How Biotechnology and Society Co-Constitute Each Other” in Technoetics Arts Journal (2012) and “On Modes of Consciousness(es) and Electronic Culture” in Glimpse: Phenomenology and Media (2000). He is a frequent contributor at the International Symposium of the Electronic Arts (Chicago 1997, Liverpool/Manchester 1998, Singapore 2008, Istanbul 2011 and Vancouver 2015).
Praba Pilar
Praba Pilar is a diasporic Colombian artist keen on disrupting the overwhelmingly passive participation in the contemporary “cult of the techno-logic.” Over the last two decades, Pilar has presented cultural productions that integrate performance art, street theatre, electronic installations, digital works, video, websites and writing. These projects have travelled widely to museums, galleries, universities, performance festivals, conferences, public streets and radio airwaves around the world; won numerous awards; and have been written about in several publications Pilar has a PhD in Performance Studies from the University of California, Davis (2014), and is actively developing a new body of work on ideology, interpellation and unintelligibility, titled Enigma Symbiotica, while covertly embarking on an all-encompassing, post-human interdisciplinary journey with artist Anuj Vaidya titled Larval Rock Stars.
Michelle Teran
Michelle Teran is a Canadian-born artist whose practice explores media, performance and the urban environment. Her work critically engages media, connectivity and perception in the city. Her performances and installations repurpose the language of surveillance, cartography and social networks to construct unique scenarios that call conventional power and social relations into question. Currently, she is a research fellow within the Norwegian Artistic Research Fellowship program at the Bergen Academy of Arts and Design, 2010-2014. She is the winner of the 2010 Transmediale Award, the Turku2011 Digital Media & Art Award, the Prix Ars Electronica Honourary Mention (2005, 2010) and the Vida 8.0 Art & Artificial Life International Competition (Madrid, Spain, 2005). She lives and works in Berlin.