Description
The 8600 Art & Technology seminar is conceived as a node for synthesis. It brings together the area seminar that traditionally gathers graduate students concentrating in a specific media with in the Department of Art as well as an expanded group of students who share an interest in Art & Technology. As such it is structured to be more colloquial in nature, rather than a directed seminar, with all participants contributing to the presentation of related theory and practice. It also offers a conceptual space and evolving community space for each participant to synthesize her/his relationship to technology personally and within their work as artists, art historians, critics and theorists.
This topic was selected to coincide with Spring 2008 events such as Wonder Women :: Art & Technology 1968 – 2008, the exhibitions “culturing nature :: culturing technology� in the Nash gallery and “culturing technology� in the Quarter Gallery as well as the Spark Festival activities. The process is dialogic, with catalysts that include readings, critiques, shared participation in related events, guests speakers, impromptu happenings, etc.
The seminar does not culminate in a final project. It is intended to be a context that enables each participant to define a focus that offers the greatest promise for the integration of otherwise disparate research and artistic inquiry. Over the course of the last six weeks of the semester, each participant will select the focus for a colloquia that they will introduce to the group.