PROJETS / STATUT ESTHETIQUE DE L'ART TECHNOLOGIQUE / PARTICIPANTS
 Groupe de recherche en arts mediatiques (GRAM)
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Professeur en esthétique au Département d'arts plastiques de l'Université du Québec à Montréal. Elle dirige le GRAM qui termine la rédation d'un dictionnaire sur les arts médiatiques. Elle a coscénarisé une série télévisée sur les arts et les technologies, Ne Art, et elle est l'auteur de plusieurs articles dans le domaine des arts dont Pragmatique esthétique (1994). |
La traduction anglaise de ces textes est parue sous le titre Thinking Art, Montréal, Musée des beaux-arts, avril 1986
Série
documentaire pour la télévision
Conception générale, coscénarisation avec
Derrick de Kerckhove et coproduction d'une série de 13
émissions de 30 minutes sur les arts et les technologies : Ne
Art. La série a été coproduite avec TV Ontario
et TÉLUQ. 1995
Les émissions que j'ai scénarisées sont
marquées d'un *
Titres des 13 émissions :
*Matière et lumière
*Tailler dans la lumière
*Le spectre dans la machine (sur le copy-art)
Les holotechnologies
*La vidéo : une nouvelle écriture d'histoire
*Les muses acoustiques et numériques
Les arts interactifs
L'art branché (sur les arts réseaux)
La robosculpture
* Le multimedia
* La simulation : rêve ou réalité
* Les machines à peindre
La réalité virtuelle
Série
de documentaires sur des artistes
Coproduction avec le Musée d'art contemporain d'une
série de vidéos documentaires portant sur des artistes
exposés au Musée. Coscénarisé avec
Chantal Charbonneau du Musée. J'ai mené toutes les
entrevues.
Molinari (27 minutes) mars 1995
Char Davies : Osmose (26 minutes) sept 95
Gilles Mihalcean (10 minutes) oct 95
Kim Adams (10 minutes) avril 96
Luc Courchesne (10 minutes) avril 96
Jean-Paul Mousseau (27 minutes) oct 96
ARTS TECHNOLOGIQUES : STRUCTURATION DU
JUGEMENT
Par leurs origines, les oeuvres d'art technologiques apportent un
défi de compréhension et d'évaluation. A chaque
époque, des créateurs essayent de confronter les
implications et le sens des nouvelles connaissances apportées
par les sciences contemporaines et les nouvelles technologies.
Pour certaines oeuvres, les critères d'évaluation
déjà établis permettent le jeu du jugement, pour
d'autres, de nouveaux critères doivent être
élaborés.
J'essaierai d'élaborer une structuration du jugement pour le
spectateur devant une oeuvre d'art technologique,
"intéractive", "art-réseau" par exemple. Je discuterai
aussi le problème institutionel de l'art (écoles,
musée, marchés) particulièrement
problématique pour les arts technologiques qui ne
répondent souvent pas au besoin des institutions
traditionnelles de l'art. Le point de vue que je prendrai est celui
du rédacteur de la revue d'art Leonardo.
The artist who works in the technological arts is an exile from meaning, a person condemned to circulate, to multiply links and crossovers, becoming like the tools used to create the art itself, adaptable to a variety of uses. The cybernaut who finds inspiration and material that can be shaped within the immaterial and interactive nature of computer networks has agreed to be transported by a stream of communicating currents. And invents what are now called interfaces: new ways of travelling, new procedures, new means of locomotion. The net persona is called to explore other territories, other areas of social stratification, other psychological dimensions. Indeed, a number of artists use the metaphor of the map to represent the concept of identity, a map where paths and visits mark and delineate different zones. But the boundaries remain blurry and must be reconfigured with each exploratory journey.
A Plastic Identity
The notion of travel is itself being transformed. The issue is no longer one of surveying a territory or visiting a site, though these two types of trips are possible. Now the focus is more on establishing contacts and experiencing encounters that trigger new aspects of the self through the permeability of the other, through the other's difference. Fred Forest talks about the aesthetic of relationship. Roy Ascot talks about connectivity and the distributed artist to describe these practices that do not transit through the object.
The media technology era is imbued with the modernist ideology of change, but presents its concept of identity more precisely in the plastic form of reconfiguration and mapping, a series of paths linking points that end up forming the textured map of a territory with its accidents and contours, something that is never perfectly delimited. In some ways, it is an open area where zones are defined by the act of linking, and where each visit becomes an epiphany, drawing its presence to the visitor's attention. A provisional presence to be sure, but a determining one nonetheless. Liberated from the anxious mobility that characterized modernity, travel in all directions, at different rhythms, favours a topological exploration rather than a race to an ever-unattainable ideal. Thus, mapping procures slices of identity for the designer-traveller insofar as the places visited reveal and determine one's identity.
Neighbours and Hybrids
Nomadism also brings a different notion of neighbour. As Roger Malina has shown so well, the concept of neighbour depends essentially on our technologies, and more specifically, on our means of transportation. For the medieval peasant, the neighbour lived in the next hamlet, a walkable distance away. In an era where telepresence is ubiquitous, neighbour takes on a planetary scope. Teleportation actualizes the metaphor of the global village: the neighbour is the person you talk to in the morning, whether he or she is in Japan or just down the hallway.
These visits foster hybrids. Combined with the technologies of cyberspace, they will enable the creation of virtual environments to which each partner contributes. Reflecting the colours, rhythms and measure of the parties involved, these places will tend to be defined in terms of experimentation rather than colonialism. The new explorations no long move in the direction of conquest of territory or space. Humans must now learn about cohabitation. As Michel Serres has pointed out, we are all, north and south, on the same boat, and no one has the option of getting off. Which is why we are being forced to invent new postures and different attitudes. From this perspective, one comes to realize the true importance of all the experimentation with devices and roles to achieve a common realization. That is the spirit that imbues most of the works in the art network, including the Electronic Cafe developed in the 70s by Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinovitch. These artists describe themselves as meta-designers, the advance guard whose mission is to develop the environments in which contacts will be made and who work with other artists on intercultural or interdisciplinary projects.
Interfaces and the Sensorial
Works that introduce interfaces add a new dimension to the role of the cyberartist. Such devices induce other behaviours and, ultimately, new sensory experiences. Philippe Perrot reminds us quite appropriately of the effect of the introduction of new hygienic techniques on olfactory culture. When certain materials were treated as dirty or contaminated, they became nauseating. This led to the development and cultivation of a whole new olfactory palette in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Similarly, the technologies that allow us to enter into and circulate within cyberspace elicit new forms of tactility, vision and hearing that reshape the eye and ear and create a certain multisensory experience. And what is astonishing is that it is a kind of shared meaning, digital technology, that makes these sensory experiences possible. This enterprise, which consists of revealing other aspects of humanness and human sensibility, is an extension of one of the great projects of modernity: the alteration of the human. But for the social and political engagements of the artists of earlier avant-gardes is substituted a project more directly oriented to reprogramming the human. The automaton and the clone are two extremes that have fascinated the artists who have fashioned amazing creations, sometimes promising, sometimes disturbing.
The Totemic Function of Art
In electronic and digital museums, artists have found other sources of inspiration that have taken art into uncharted territory. Human reprogramming, the great challenge of the media arts, is an attempt to remodel biological, psychological and sociological material. And it is no longer, as in the past a matter of conquering spaces and having power over the environment, but, more modestly, of learning to live on the one planet we have, a no less challenging task.
Comment qualifier ces interfaces issues du génie électronique ou du bidouillage ludique d'un artiste branché ?
Comment mesurer la force de la rhétorique qui se développe ?
Quels types de relation s'établissent dans la bulle de la virtualité ?
Internautes et cyberespaciens conduisent l'amateur d'art dans des univers multisensoriels à plusieurs dimensions qui ressemblent apparemment bien peu à de l'art. Et pourtant, ces démarches nous relient peut-être au sens le plus authentique de l'activité artistique.
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