scholarly journals Earth Forces: Contemporary Land Arts, Technology and New Materialist Aesthetics

2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jussi Parikka
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Land Art ◽  
Media Art ◽  
Robert Smithson ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
David Gauthier ◽  
Contemporary Artists

This article addresses recent art projects that are discussed under the notion of new materialist aesthetics. This term is used to elaborate connections between these projects and their methods and recent discussions of the nonhuman and posthuman philosophy.  The article also elaborates some positions in technological or 'media art' practices that work on hardware and infrastructure but also on the geophysical underpinnings of media. It expands on more geocentric perspectives in art and aesthetics through connecting a range of such projects by a contemporary artists including Martin Howse, Jonathan Kemp, Ryan Jordan, Terike Haapoja, Jamie Allen and David Gauthier to the body of land art (as represented by Robert Smithson) and current new materialist discussions.

Re-imagining Reproduction: Unsettling Metaphors in the History of Imperial Science and Commercial Surrogacy in India

Somatechnics ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kalindi Vora
Keyword(s):  
Assisted Reproductive Technologies ◽  
Reproductive Technologies ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Commercial Surrogacy ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
History Of ◽  
Travel Industry

This paper provides an analysis of how cultural notions of the body and kinship conveyed through Western medical technologies and practices in Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) bring together India's colonial history and its economic development through outsourcing, globalisation and instrumentalised notions of the reproductive body in transnational commercial surrogacy. Essential to this industry is the concept of the disembodied uterus that has arisen in scientific and medical practice, which allows for the logic of the ‘gestational carrier’ as a functional role in ART practices, and therefore in transnational medical fertility travel to India. Highlighting the instrumentalisation of the uterus as an alienable component of a body and subject – and therefore of women's bodies in surrogacy – helps elucidate some of the material and political stakes that accompany the growth of the fertility travel industry in India, where histories of privilege and difference converge. I conclude that the metaphors we use to structure our understanding of bodies and body parts impact how we imagine appropriate roles for people and their bodies in ways that are still deeply entangled with imperial histories of science, and these histories shape the contemporary disparities found in access to medical and legal protections among participants in transnational surrogacy arrangements.

Reviews

Screen Bodies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 86-98
Author(s):  
Josh Morrison ◽  
Sylvie Bissonnette ◽  
Karen J. Renner ◽  
Walter S. Temple
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New Media ◽  
The Body ◽  
Media Art ◽  
University Of Minnesota ◽  
Body Images ◽  
New Media Art

Kate Mondloch, A Capsule Aesthetic: Feminist Materialisms in New Media Art (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018), 151 pp. ISBN: 9781517900496 (paperback, $27) Alberto Brodesco and Federico Giordano, editors, Body Images in the Post-Cinematic Scenario: The Digitization of Bodies (Milan: Mimesis International, 2017). 195 pp., ISBN: 9788869771095 (paperback, $27.50) Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper, editors, What’s Eating You? Food and Horror on Screen (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017). 370pp., ISBN: 9781501322389 (hardback, $105); ISBN: 9781501343964 (paperback, $27.96); ISBN: 9781501322419 (ebook, $19.77) Kaya Davies Hayon, Sensuous Cinema: The Body in Contemporary Maghrebi Cinema (New York: Bloomsbury, 2018). 181pp., ISBN: 9781501335983 (hardback, $107.99)

Materiality of visuality. About relationships and transformations of visuality and politics

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Lompe ◽  
Cezary Wicher
Keyword(s):  
Manufacturing Process ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Media Art ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Political Statement ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
Final Effect

In the hazy anthropocene era, which M. Chaberski (2019) understood as a serious epistemological crisis, even wider than the climate crisis, visuality plays a very important role -it becomes a vector for visibility and invisibility of discursive and non-discursive practices. The spirit of new materialism has developed a number of concepts, which emphasized non-linguistic ways of shaping meanings and interpretations of reality, and at the same time appreciated non-humans agencies. The article is constructed around the thesis “visual is material,” because in the end every representation refers to the materials, on which our world is build. We can treat this thesis as a political statement, following J. Ranciere observations, that the thought is material (2007). We would like to analyze the significance of materiality by taking a look at media art practices. We can sink into the thicket of connections between materials and track the journey of things, not focusing on the final effect (manufactured item), but rather on manufacturing process (Ingold 2019; Deleuze, Guattari 2015).

From Vertical Roll to .MOV File

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 22-42
Author(s):  
Annie Dell'Aria
Keyword(s):  
Single Channel ◽  
Video Art ◽  
Media Art ◽  
Video Installation ◽  
Cultural Engagement ◽  
Screen Media ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
History Of ◽  
Contemporary Media ◽  
Bruce Nauman

In this article, I examine artworks from two periods in the history of media art—the 1970s and the 2010s—to demonstrate how changes in our haptic relationship to screen media shift the site of criticality in contemporary media art from disruption of electronic feedback toward an intensification and embrace of image flows that actively seek the viewer's touch and gesture. I situate video art within the shifting concept of flow in everyday media consumption, reading video art practices within a larger matrix of bodily and cultural engagement with screens. I locate touch and gesture as both themes in the content of single-channel works and components of the structure of video installation. Artists discussed include Camille Henrot, Joan Jonas, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Bruce Nauman, and Hito Steyerl. My analysis bridges media theory and art history with close readings of salient works of art, connecting the structure of artworks employing haptic input to shifts in the broader media ecology and the dynamic interplay of touch, image, and power under our fingertips.

scholarly journals Bodily relations and reciprocity in the art of Sonia Khurana

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 255-274
Author(s):  
Leon Wainwright
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Digital Art ◽  
Radical Politics ◽  
New Delhi ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Public Expectations ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Ontological Turn ◽  
Discursive Field ◽  
Affective Relations

This article explores the significance of the ‘somatic’ and ‘ontological turn’ in locating the radical politics articulated in the contemporary performance, installation, video and digital art practices of New Delhi-based artist, Sonia Khurana (b. 1968). Since the late 1990s, Khurana has fashioned a range of artworks that require new sorts of reciprocal and embodied relations with their viewers. While this line of art practice suggests the need for a primarily philosophical mode of inquiry into an art of the body, such affective relations need to be historicised also in relation to a discursive field of ‘difference’ and public expectations about the artist’s ethnic, gendered and national identity. Thus, this intimate, visceral and emotional field of inter- and intra-action is a novel contribution to recent transdisciplinary perspectives on the gendered, social and sentient body that in turn prompts a wider debate on the ethics of cultural commentary and art historiography.

scholarly journals Understanding with Water: Hydro-art in Osieki (1973)

2021 ◽  
pp. 356-374
Author(s):  
Karolina Majewska-Güde
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Land Art ◽  
Environmental Humanities ◽  
Active Participant ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
New Materialisms ◽  
Water Surfaces ◽  
History Of ◽  
Feminist New Materialisms

The paper is located at the intersection of the art history of the Polish neo-avant-garde and the environmental humanities informed by feminist new materialisms. It proposes an interpretation of performative works in which artists used aqueous matter as an object of interaction, a source of artistic transcription, and as an active participant in artistic scenarios. It concentrates on works that were realized during the open-air art meetings in socialist Poland and in particular at the Osieki meeting in 1973 with the title The Art of Water Surfaces [Plastyka obszarów wodnych]. Based on the analyzed works, it offers a speculative reflection on Hydroart, which is defined as region-specific development parallel to land art practices.

scholarly journals La construcción del paisaje. Plan Parcial de Urbanización de Lanzarote. 1963.

ZARCH ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Arcaraz Puntonet
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Land Art ◽  
Robert Smithson ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Palabras Clave ◽  
Cultura Popular ◽  
The City

El viaje en el año 1963 de Fernando Higueras y César Manrique a la isla de Lanzarote reafirmó en ambos su interés por la integración entre paisaje y arquitectura. Esta visión de la arquitectura desde el territorio fue alentada por la vivencia de la isla en la que paisaje, agricultura y arquitectura popular convivían en armonía. Los proyectos que en este viaje pergeñaron desarrollaron la estrategia de la cohesión propia de la cultura popular. El Plan Parcial de Urbanización de Lanzarote incluía tanto el Proyecto de Urbanización de Playa Blanca como el Proyecto de la Ciudad de las Gaviotas en el Risco de Famara y el Proyecto de Urbanización en el Playa de Montana Bermeja. Todos ellos podrían entenderse, en términos artísticos, como el trabajo de una materia de una intensidad concreta en la inmensidad del paisaje. Como resultado, estas actuaciones deben considerarse como un trabajo precursor, que se adelantó a lo que, pocos años más tarde, otros autores, como Robert Smithson o Christo, denominarían Land-Art. La reintegración de las artes a escala territorial no hacía otra cosa que valorar los paisajes características de la geografía habitada. PALABRAS CLAVE: Cohesión. Reintegración de las artes. Territorio. Land-Art. Paisaje. The trip in 1963 of Fernando Higueras and César Manrique to the island of Lanzarote reaffirmed in both their interest in the integration between landscape and architecture. This vision of the architecture from the territory was encouraged by the experience of the island in which landscape, agriculture and popular architecture coexisted in harmony. The projects that in this trip conceived developed the strategy of the cohesion proper to popular culture. The Partial Urbanization Plan of Lanzarote included both the Playa Blanca Urbanization Project as well as the Project of the City of the Gulls at the Famara Risk and the Urbanization Project at the Bermeja Beach. All of them could be understood, in artistic terms, as the work of a matter of a concrete intensity in the immensity of the landscape. As a result, these actions should be considered as pioneering work, which was ahead of what, a few years later, other authors, such as Robert Smithson or Christo, would call Land-Art. The reintegration of the arts on a territorial scale did nothing more than assess the landscapes characteristic of the inhabited geography. KEYWORDS: Cohesion. Reintegration of the arts. Territory. Land-Art. Landscape. 

scholarly journals The Body, the Threshold, and the Cut: The Aesthetics and the Ethics of Measuring in Interactive Media Art

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Heidi Tikka
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Interactive Media ◽  
The Body ◽  
Media Art ◽  
Interactive Art ◽  
New Media Art ◽  
Boundary Making ◽  
Short Commentary ◽  
Responsive Environments ◽  
Interactive Installations

New media artists working on interactive installations often rely on different monitoring techniques, such as variable sensors in the design and the production of responsive environments and objects. In this short commentary, I will inquire into my installation Mother, Child (2011/2000) to address a new media art practice as productive alignment of agencies at the interface. The term body-sensor co-performance is used to foreground both the performative nature and the fundamental integrity of the technology and the body in interactive art. I will suggest that the setting of threshold values for different measuring operations can be understood as the boundary-making process, through which the installation feeds off the embodied liveliness of its audiences for its responsive actions. Drawing on Karen Barad’s work, these thresholds can be thematized as agential cuts. A number of specific examples in using sensors for interactivity are then addressed in order to inquire into the ways in which the questions of ethics and aesthetics entangle in creative and collaborative labors for Mother, Child.

Virtual nature, inner forest: Prospects for immersive virtual nature art and well-being

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-146
Author(s):  
Jessica Laraine Williams ◽  
Susannah Langley ◽  
Ann Borda
Keyword(s):  
Design Research ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Psychosocial Health ◽  
The Body ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Positive Health ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Biophilic Design ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Positive Health Outcomes

Over a number of decades, studies have revealed compelling relationships between experiences of the natural environment and positive health outcomes in adult communities. These psychosocial health benefits have typically been described via key theoretical frameworks in the health sciences, such as the biophilia hypothesis. Despite the body of evidence for nature design and well-being, propositions for immersive virtual nature experiences are still emerging across the fields of creativity and health. In this article, we identify the potential for immersive virtual nature art as a creative well-being intervention, articulated through a discussion of background literature and concepts leading to the development of our artwork, Inner Forest (2020–21). This article incorporates a transdisciplinary suite of perspectives across three key parts; in the first section, we review key health and design research around beneficial nature experiences, with particular emphasis on designing technological nature. Secondly, we propose considerations for immersive virtual nature experiences, as distinct from prior iterations of technological nature; these considerations are framed through discussion of our artistic and well-being rationale for designing the collaborative artwork Inner Forest. This extended reality (XR) project was developed in response to well-being challenges such as social isolation and restricted nature access- of particular valence during the COVID-19 pandemic. The artwork incorporates multisensory, aesthetic elements drawn from biophilic design guidelineswhich support creative, evidence-based approaches to designed nature and societal health. To conclude this article, we report on prospects for further scaling of the Inner Forest artwork, with ongoing scope to contribute to both nature-health design and immersive virtual nature art practices.

[Re]readings of the perfect. Mysticism of James Lee Byars

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Mancebo
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Meaning Of Life ◽  
The Body ◽  
Broad Sense ◽  
Andy Warhol ◽  
Joseph Beuys ◽  
The World ◽  
Contemporary Artists

The complex contextualization of the work of James Lee Byars (1932–1997) in contemporary artistic practices was determined by its timelessness in both form and concept. Considered by Kevin Power as one of the key artists of the second half of the twentieth century alongside figures such as Joseph Beuys and Andy Warhol, his legacy seems to have declined probably because of the discomfort caused by the approach to his work, since any previous consideration and attempt at cataloging, escapes through the loopholes on which they are based. Byars’ performances and pieces were mostly structured around the cryptic concept of perfection. The artist’s mission, in this case, takes on the roles of a shaman and a magician who questions the illegibility of a world whose materialism seems to have expelled any consideration of the sacred, thus articulating a work that, far from providing answers, raises questions about the ultimate meaning of life. Gold, geometry, time (and its transience), space (re-signified by his cultural heritage), language and the body expressed a proposal in which installations and actions are the instruments he uses primarily to question us about the big questions. Byars in this sense has been considered a mystic, since he places us at the doors of a new perception to make us uncomfortable and provoke us, to transmit us the questions about being in the world. This article is modulated on the poetics of the work, thought and actions of James Lee Byars, one of the few contemporary artists who can be defined as mystic in the broad sense of the word and for whom the sacred, contrary to the current of unidirectional thought, is inherent to the contemporary subject.

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