Syncretic reality: art, process, and potentiality

Autores

  • Roy Ascott University of Plymouth/Professor

Resumo

This paper will argue that Syncretism, which has been seen historically as an attempt to reconcile and analogise disparate religious and cultural practices, may contribute today to our understanding of the multi-layered worldviews -material and metaphysical -that are emerging with our engagement in, amongst other things, ubiquitous computing and post-biological technology. The ‘other things’ are numerous and varied, and reach across conflicting ideologies, commercial and political strategies, ecological events, and cosmological conditions. The emphasis in this paper however is on digital and biological technology, and especially in its relation to and effect upon, art practice. In short, it’s about new media art and the syncretic reality that is both construed and constructed by that practice. Above all it is about breaking boundaries while maintaining cohesion, a most subtle attribute that is as necessary in the aesthetic as in the social sphere. Of the myriad universes of discourse that constitute whole cultures and countries, only those open to change and adaptation are likely to survive the step change in evolution exerted by scientific development and technological innovation. If countries and communities are to avoid homogenization in this process, it will need to be a syncretic process that maintains the plurality of difference.

Biografia do Autor

Roy Ascott, University of Plymouth/Professor

Roy Ascott is the founding president of the Planetary Collegium, the director of CAiiA, and Professor of Technoetic Arts in the University of Plymouth, England [www.planetary collegium.net]. He is also Visiting Professor in Design|Media Arts at the University of California Los Angeles. He is a pioneer of telematic art and a seminal theorist in the field of new media art. He has exhibited widely, including: Venice Biennale, Ars Electronica, V2 Holland, Milan Triennale, Biennale do Mercosul, Brazil, European Media Festival. He founded Technoetic Arts: a journal of speculative research (Intellect Books, UK), and is a member of the editorial boards of Leonardo (MIT Press), and other refereed journals. He has advised new media art centers and festivals in the UK, North and South America, Europe, Japan, and Korea, as well as for the CEC and UNESCO, and convenes the annual international Consciousness Reframed conferences. His recent books include: Engineering Nature. Bristol: Intellect Books, 2005;Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art Technology and Consciousness, edited with an Essay by Edward A Shanken, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. He is widely published and translated in many languages.

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Publicado

2021-02-24

Edição

n. 02 (2009): Design digital e inteligência coletiva

Seção

Artigos

Licença

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