The Pacific Rim New Media Summit
How are information technology and creativity shaping new directions in the arts and sciences around the Pacific Rim? What challenges face organizations and individuals in the region who are working in the fields of architecture, design, literature, theater, music? How do the puzzle pieces of academic research and information technology-based industry fit into this picture?
The political and economic space of the Pacific Rim represents a dynamic context for innovation and creativity. Experimentation in the many disciplines that encompass art, science, and technology is resulting in
the emergence of new forms of cultural production and experience unique to the region. The complex relations and diversity of Pacific Rim nations are exemplified as well throughout the hybridized communities
that comprise Silicon Valley.
The Pacific Rim New Media Summit will be a gathering of organizations and representatives from the Pacific Rim and Asia to look at the complex relations and diversity of Pacific Rim nations and to focus on the development of partnerships in order to address the multiple challenges
faced throughout the region as it develops its arts and sciences networks in tandem with its increasing economic influence. This trans-disciplinary event will have a specific focus on educational methodologies and practices.
The summit is organized into seven working groups according to the following topic areas:
- Distributed Curatorial (Chair: Steve Dietz)
- Education (Co-Chairs: Rob van Kranenburg, Gustaff H. Iskandar and Fatima Lasay)
- Place, Ground and Practice (Chair: Danny Butt)
- Urbanity and Locative Media (Chair: Soh-Yeong Roh)
- Latin America/Pacific-Asia New Media Initiatives (Chair: Jose-Carlos Mariategui)
- Piracy and the Pacific (Chair: Steve Cisler)
- The Invisible Dynamics of the Pacific Rim and the Bay Area (Co-Chairs: Susan Schwartzenberg and Peter Richards)
Summit objectives include exploration of innovative models for cooperation among institutions, development of interaction strategies with technology corporations, investigation of radical responses to emergent cultural issues and conditions, engagement with Diaspora
communities, and the establishment of an on-going Pacific Rim Network of New Media Educational Institutions.
Special issue of Leonardo (Vol. 39, No. 4)
A special issue of Leonardo will be devoted to the work of the seven Pacific Rim working groups, featuring new media educational programs and artists from the Pacific-Asia region. The print issue of the journal,
due to be released in conjunction with the symposium, will include statements by artists as well as articles by cultural theorists looking at issues germane to the seven working group topics, plus introductory texts by the working group chairs.
Some of the topics covered in the issue include:
- Surfing the Outernet: Where net art presented the medium of the Internet, locative art brings to the fore those of mobile and wireless systems. Drew Hemment unfolds a taxonomy of locative-art approaches to
the gap between the perfect grid and the reality of the mapped world.
- Cyber-Mythologies and Portraits of Dispossession: Rachel O'Reilly examines how Asian and Pacific understandings of place in recent work by Vernon Ah Kee, Lisa Reihana and Qiu Zhijie expand the frames of contemporary locative art.
- Cartographies of the future: Annie Lambla discusses the San Francisco Exploratorium's Invisible Dynamics project, which considers the museum's relocation from a perspective integrating art, science and geographic
context.
- Culture, uncontained: Commerce, communication and technology intertwine in the works of the Pacific Rim New Media Summit exhibition Container Culture. Artists from Mumbai to Vancouver use the medium and metaphor of shipping containers to explore regional and global complexities.
For more information about the summit and special issue of Leonardo,
please visit:
leonardo.info/isast/isast_activities/pacificrim_newmedia.html
ISEA 2006 and ZeroOne San Jose
The 13th International Symposium on Electronic Arts will be held in San Jose, CA, August 7-13, 2006 in conjunction with the inaugural biennial ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge. Three summits
will be held Monday August 7th and Tuesday August 8th prior to the main ISEA 2006 Symposium: the Global Forum on Economic and Cultural Development, the Pacific Rim New Media Summit and the Interactive City
Summit. Information about all of the events and symposiums can be found on the official ISEA 2006 website: 01sj.org.
FREE COPY of Leonardo 39:4 will be distributed to every Early Bird registrant of the ISEA conference (through June 15th). Visit 01sj.org to register.