The Banff New Media Institute at The Banff Centre will be joining it's
friends, colleagues and peers across Canada and around the world in a
celebration of new media on September 25th. Visit our website
HTTP://WWW.BANFFCENTRE.CA/BNMI on the 25th to learn about our recent
full time recruitment of world-class digital media researcher Pamela
Jennings, PhD. and tune into the launch of five hours of video content
highlights from our critically acclaimed creative producers lab
Interactive Screen 0.8.
During the last week of August 2008 the Banff New Media Institute ran
it's annual creative producers lab Interactive Screen 0.8 - the theme of
which was SUSTAIN. Over sixty participants gathered in Banff to consider
strategies and ideas that allow those working with new media to better
reflect and act upon the economic, social, cultural, natural and
technological synergies and dichotomies of our changing world. Our
guest speakers were chosen because their current practice or discourse
raises critical, sometimes crucial, questions about the practice,
theory, and meaning of new media.
Five keynote addresses were given over the course of the event. These
keynotes framed the dialogue for the day and brought to the foreground
considerations of culture and what it means to produce it, sustain it
and share it, global economics and local environments; memories of new
media, how real can games get and the pervasiveness and interdependence
of technology of the ages.
On September 25th in celebration of National Digital Media Day the BNMI
will launch the following 5 hours of high altitude reflections on the
very real impact and reach that new media, art and digital technologies
are having in the world we live in today and implications for the world
of tomorrow.
Radical Traditionalism: The Gift, The Commons and The Future - Keynote
Rick Prelinger, archivist, writer, maker, San Francisco, CA
At first glance, today's makers face a dilemma: whether to lean towards
the traditional media industry and its old-fashioned cultural economy of
"billable events" or, alternatively, to pursue emerging alternative
paths of production, distribution and sharing. Most still opt for
certainty rather than innovative experiment. But what if the "new ways"
weren't really so new or so radical? Could the rise of open-content and
freer-culture models actually signal a return toward traditional ways of
living and working? And are we really going to have a choice in the
matter?
In late 2001, we began to reengineer our film archives away from the
classical model of scarcity and around a model of plenty. Since that
time, we've tried to have it both ways - selling images commercially
while simultaneously giving them away to a receptive world. After
millions of downloads, we've found that the results point to new ways of
making and distributing media that don't rely on "billable events." And
we've also grown to believe that our collective survival rests on
openness, flexibility and sharing.
It's All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye - Keynote
Stephanie Rothenberg, Artist, Brooklyn, NY
The computer video game has become the idealized commodity form of the
21st century offering hours of enhanced game play through seductive new
technologies. From whimsical business applications and corporate team
building retreats to online education, advertising and the military,
digital gaming is a cultural phenomenon that pervades contemporary life.
Yet the sweat, stamina and natural resources that drive this
multi-billion dollar global industry are often overlooked. Through three
interrelated multimedia projects that use participatory, interactive
formats, critical issues concerning the social and environmental
consequences of the global game industry and tactics for intervention
will be discussed.
Curating Immateriality through an Archival Paradigm - Keynote
Vincent Bonin, Freelance Curator, Montreal, QC
Between 2000 and 2008, I occupied the position of archivist at
the Daniel Langlois foundation for Art, Science and Technology in
Montreal. While at the foundation, I was both a witness of emerging new
media practices and had access to a wealth of historical materials on
its so-called pioneering decades (1960s, 1970s). After leaving this
institution, I shifted roles and became a curator working on projects
solely based on archives. In this presentation, I want to suggest that
curating historical exhibitions can be a strategy to fight up the notion
of programmed obsolescence in media art that often translate in
historical amnesia. In her anthology entitled Curating Immateriality,
published in 2006, Joasia Krysa gathered scholars to address the impact
that systems of immaterial production (databases, programming, net art,
software art, generative media) now have on the practice of curating. I
would add another level to this proposition: how can curatorial
strategies informed by an archival paradigm can open up new theoretical
areas by showing a layered political context as the points of origin of
current dematerialized art practices? My talk builds on a few examples
of such approaches. The exhibitions curated by Catherine Morris since
the mid 1990s, especially Food (on Gordon Matta-Clark's food restaurant
founded in 1971, New York) and 9 Evenings Reconsidered: Art, Theatre and
Engineering, 1966 (on this important event at the Regiment Armory) are
investigating the complex origins of current issues like artistic
collaborations and the juncture between art and technology as they
emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. In a similar vein but limited to a
Canadian context, my own curatorial project, Documentary Protocols,
addresses the emergence of information-based practices of this era
(conceptual art, video) as prefiguring the artist's role in an economy
of immaterial labour.
The Games of Life - Keynote
Cindy Poremba, PHD Candidate/ Curator, Kokoromi Collective, Montreal, QC
The art of documentary videogame practice lies in designing a non-
fiction experience that allows for deep engagement and experimentation,
within the constraints of a rule-structured, computational form. A
tremendous challenge to be sure - but one that, where successful, can
provide new opportunities for re-engaging the archive, exploring the
complex, unseen or unseeable, and renewing interest and excitement in
"the real." Can a videogame not only capture, but sustain an aura of
reality? This presentation examines the cultural shifts in documentary,
games, and digital representation that have led to the emergence of the
documentary videogame.
Information, Energy - Keynote
Julian Priest, Independent Researcher, Informal.org, Wanganui, NZ
The talk Internet, Environment at Interactive Screen 07 looked at the
technological and cultural relationships between the Internet and the
Environment as part of an ongoing exploration of how Digital Media
informs issues of Sustainability. This year, as energy concerns come to
the fore, the theme is developed by focusing on the relationship between
Information and Energy. The talk takes as its starting point
electromagnetic radiation, which is both the underlying medium of
information transmission, and the bearer of energy. How does sunlight
relate to the light coursing through up our fibre optic cables?
HTTP://WWW.BANFFCENTRE.CA/BNMISusan Kennard
Director & Executive Producer
The Banff New Media Institute
The Banff Centre
107 Tunnel Mountain Drive
Box 1020, Station 40
Banff, Alberta Canada T1L 1H5
Tel. +1 403 762 6481
Fax. +1 403 762 6665
http://www.banffcentre.ca/bnmi
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