David Schmudde
(Software Engineer)

Mercoledì 14 ottobre 2020, ore 17.00 – 19.00

Stanza virtuale: https://didattica.polito.it/VClass/NexaEvent
A brief survey of net art from the 1990s and early 00s will demonstrate the challenges faced by curators and preservationists. The absence of physical art objects presents the central problem. Although some works of art can be meaningfully reproduced, often all that is left is documentation and some physical artifacts. This presents countless trappings because art’s borders are necessarily blurry. Works of engineering must provide their prescribed functionality. Results from scientific processes must be replicable. Art’s subtle intent is always in danger of being overshadowed. For example, technological artifacts such as period computers may depict networked artwork as a relationship between things when, in reality, the artwork is about relationships between people. The savvy archivist knows that every net artist casts human concerns in the shape of computation using the tools of their day. The nature of the medium dictates that individual artifacts are trivial to reproduce if stored properly. However, the interdependent digital systems that are the artifacts’ raison d’être are impossible to recreate. This seminar will address the existential questions, current best practices, and future technologies that may help combat a generational loss of culture.
Biografia

David SCHMUDDE is a researcher and computational artist who creates experiences that examine the everyday realities of our post-digital society. Over the last fifteen years, he has installed interactive work at the Center for Holographic Arts in New York City, projected video art in the Schusev Museum of Architecture in Moscow, performed at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, screened at the Chinese Theater in Los Angeles. He has given talks across Europe and the United States on the structure and transmission of information, the social impact of technology, digital art, and the nature of computation. He is currently working on distributed identity at Ruca.
Letture consigliate e link utili
- Berry, David M. “The Post-Archival Constellation: The Archive under the Technical Conditions of Computational Media”. Memory In Motion, 2017, 103-126. doi:10.2307/j.ctt1jd94f0.8.
- Connor, Michael J, Aria Dean, and Dragan Espenshied. “The Art Happens Here: Net Art Anthology”, 2019.
- Kraynak, Janet. “Contemporary Art and the Digitization of Everyday Life”. University of California Press, 2020.
- Grau, Oliver, Janina Hoth, and Eveline Wandl-Vogt. Digital Art Through the Looking Glass: New Strategies For Archiving, Collecting and Preserving in Digital Humanities. Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2019.
- Baas, Jacquelynn. Buddha Mind In Contemporary Art. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004.
Slide
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