ISEA 2011. International Symposium on Electronic Art

Rather than being a conference, ISEA 2011 is a festival of digital media, art and culture. The many different formats and activities are stimulating, but it is also sometimes difficult to find an overall perspective from which to describe the whole event. This year ISEA, which is one of the major digital festivals, was held in Istanbul, a city whose diversity was a mirror of the event itself. Among the many sessions can be highlighted themes such as “the logarithmic turning point”, which focuses on the influence that digital programming has had on global culture; ”media architecture”, understood as interactive façades in urban spaces; ”the curatorial gesture”, about curating and archiving new media and the issues around the role of New Media Art in art history. More generally, ISEA was permeated by the new media replication and unpredictabi- lity of new media, one expression of which was the festival’s ”Uncontainable” curatorial theme. As a negotiation of form and content, museums of cultural history in particular have something to learn from art and new media.