Hola Ada I have just returned from Valencia and the conference “Expanding the Space” (3-7 October) organised by the fledgling Spanish arts organization the Octubre Centre and the Leonardo/Olats. Despite sensorial overload in a gorgeous city I did manage to go indoors, don my translation headset and settle into some excellent papers at the “palau de pineda” in Valencia’s historic centre.
The aim of the small (but diverse) transdisciplinary conference was to allow space scientists interested in art and artists interested in space science to engage in a workshop setting. The conference also syphoned off some speakers from the large scale 57th International Astronautical Conference held at the city of Arts and Sciences complex at the same time. See the website for a detailed description of participants see http://www.expandingthespace.net/ (and papers will be published sometime on Leonardo magazine’s website.) The first day opened with an excellent paper by Roger Malina from Leonardo on “Dark Matter: an astronomers view of scientific uncertainty.” He discussed the augmentation of the senses from the perspective of a builder of scientific instruments that extends the possibilities of the contemporary body. He drew attention to the fact that the room we sat in was full of ‘dark matter’ that our senses could not understand and pointed out the partial, fragmentary knowledge that we have of the existing world. The involvement of artists as the providers of the “questioning principle” is viewed by Malina as crucial to the directions science and technology will take * he stressed that the future of techno-science is OPEN. This was followed by artist Nina Czegledy, Marta Blassnigg and Michael Punt from the department of Art and Technology and Transtechnology Research at the University of Plymouth. They gave a stimulating joint paper about the visual mapping of space. Nina Czegledy suggested that digital visualisations of space may play the same role as earlier maps as instruments of social and political control; she asked - do current representations support or impede our interpretation of the world around us? Martha expanded on Nina’s discussion of the loss of the symbolic in contemporary mapping compared to a medieval cosmological map (ie angels blowing on the planets used to indicate the overlapping of the symbolic and geographical positions in space.) Her interest was in the “anthropology of outer and inner space rather than a cartography of space.” Second day highlights included a discussion of art and the experience of weightlessness led by Annick Bureaud (Leonardo). Her focus was on artworks that are made specifically for the 20 seconds of zero gravity in parabolic flights ( microgravity) including experimental performances by Kitsou Dubois and the more humourous velcro artworks made for zero gravity. In the same session Japanese choreographer Setsuko Ishiguro showed video footage of a stunning composition she had designed for dancers in zero gravity on a parabolic flight based on traditional Japanese flying deity figures. Her current project involves training astronauts for creative movement in space flight. This session was followed by an intense video and sound triggered performance by Marcel-li Antunez in the near by botanical gardens. He vj’ed the video documentation of his parabolic flight performance, which countered any romantic illusions I might have had about the freedom of weightlessness * his work was punctuated by live technologically enhanced piercing screams as his wired body recalled the experience. My session examined art projects and ideas about climate change. I discussed my recent project from the University of Waikato residency where I collaborated with earth scientists and Landcare research on a moving image and sound project for satellite and micrometweorological data based on carbon emmissions. I also discussed Australian artists Nola Farman’s collaborations with ocenographers and Maria Miranda and Norie Neumark’s (from Out of Sync) recent work for SCANZ in Taranaki on climate change. In the same session Julian Knebusch, from the Sorbonne, gave a poetic discussion of the phenomenology of climate change. (He is also part of YASMIN * an online discsussion group for the Mediterranean rim who met while we were there.) Dr Jill Scott also discussed her programme “Artists-in-labs” developed in Switzerland for artists to collaborate with scientists on long term (ie 6 month periods) in Labs to create ‘deep’ relationships between art and science. I think this is a great idea for particular artists but it did raise some questions for me over the privileging of artists who engage in “deep interaction” with science to the extent that they almost have to “become” scientists over those who may have a more conceptual or poetic “lighter” engagement. Complete fluency in science is not necessarily a prerequisite to raise questions about climate change issues as “Out of Sync’s” project “talking about the weather” highlights. Scientist Bernard Foing from the European Space Agency who heads the Smart1 moon mission gave a (sometimes) speculative presentation on projects for lunar exploration which include the potential for setting up a “robot village” on the moon. Stations from different countries could be set up on certain moon sites to investigate the possibilities for human life there. The future colonisation of space was discussed as a reality (but not thoroughly critiqued in further sessions.) This was an example of a point in the conference where more time for discussion would have been useful to tease out a controversial point. Other space scientists discussed the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence ( SETI) and human migration into space. The conference ended with the question “does space exist?” from Indian philosopher Sundar Sarukkai, which was a timely juxtaposition with the often realist/materialist approach of the scientists (who were probably equally frustrated by the claims of artists). In the workshop at the end of the session the need for more time in the conference for discussion to allow more engagement between participants from different disciplines was highlighted. At times the views of artists and scientists were brought into sharp contrast in terms of positivism versus social/theoretical analysis but at its best moments “expanding the space” allowed a fluidity of thought that countered the separation of art and space science into distinct categories. Worth the trip! best Janine Randerson _______________________________________________ Ada_list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz/
