The conference is organized in six sections:
Section 1 : History of an aesthetics of technological communication
From the "chess games" that were played using the first telephone line installed by Morse (1844) to Moholy-Nagy's "telephone pictures" (1923), from the Futurist manifesto "La Radia" (1933) to Fontana's manifestos of "spatialism" (1946 etc.) history attests that from the beginning communication technologies were associated with the idea of their aesthetic potential.
This section proposes to establish and examine the history of the relations that exist between communication technologies and aesthetic experimentation.
Section 2
This section proposes to study thoroughly the questions that are located midway between aesthetics and general philosophy. Its purpose is three-fold :
a- Body, Cortex and Networks
In what new situation do networks place the body? Do they foster and accelerate the obsolescence of the body, as Leroi-Gourhan foretold, or do they amplify its multi-sensorial capacity and involve it as never before? As network servo-mechanisms develop, which will come to the fore, the cortex or the body? How is the networked mind in operation called and stimulated to think? Is it plugged into the network which is allowed to penetrate it through and through, or does it shut itself away in the "cogito"?
b- Presence at a Distance - Telepresence
What happens to the fundamental categories of Da Sein (the being in the world) and Mit Sein (the being in the world with others), as related to those of "proximity" and "distance"? In what way do distance communication technologies compel us to reformulate Heidegger's fundamental category of Zuhandenheit (the essence of things, which is that of being used by us)? What new phenomenology of presence has technological communication at a distance introduced? What about presence at a distance in the connection between networks and robotic devices?
c- Form and Event in the Networks
Is Nietzsche's distinction between the arts of "form" (the Apollonian) and the arts of "event" (the Dionysian) still valid and pertinent to qualify aesthetic productions found on the network? Do the networks foster a new appearance of "form" or will they dissolve it in the "flux" and temporality of the "event"? How many kinds of time pass and are embodied in network "events" ? Can a network "event" be "given form"?
Section 3
This section is halfway between aesthetics and criticism in its literal sense, and proposes, among other things, to analyse the new aesthetic practices found on the network. Its purpose is two-fold:
Starting with the distinction made by Lessing between the "space arts" and the "time arts", aesthetic thought has unceasingly reflected on and questioned these fundamental categories and the relations they maintain with different artistic practices. Someone like Suzanne Langer, for example, was led to declare that the very function of certain arts is none other than implementing a representation and a virtual experience of space and time.
But with distance communication technologies, space and time, when looked at closely, reject any function of "containing" and move away from the idea of surface or support that can be covered with signs, to exhibit themselves intrinsically.
"Communications artists" were the first to perceive this, and they began very early on to consider space and time as new "materials" to "thematize" and "aestheticize".
Here the speakers will outline a phenomenology, underline differences, indicate the specificities of each one in the artistic and aesthetic appropriation of new "materials".
In our world, next to the field of "art" which has a weaker and weaker identity, another aesthetic movement has appeared which has become more and more widespread. We can see it at work in many behaviours and in an indefinite variety of hybrid products.
We intend to verify how this drive expresses itself on the network, to analyse its productions, attempt to classify them and formulate a new aesthetic-critical vocabulary.
Section 4: Net Art in the Museum Context, Commercial and Institutional Circuits in Times of Globalization
Net Art in its best models of production and expression, has found a place and a genuine aesthetic legitimacy. These products of the mind require the same type of aesthetic attitude which had previously been reserved for the arts. This poses a whole series of questions which must be answered.
How should these products be treated in institutions devoted to the arts? How will the museums, already subject to change (networked museums, virtual theatres etc.), be expected to evolve? Will it be necessary to find new channels or strategies of distribution? What's happening to copyright laws ? What forms of economic transaction do these products give rise to? How can net art be preserved (collection, archive)? Will the net be the only form of presence of these products? How are the authorities being called to intervene with regard to this type of production?
Section 5: Networks and the Future of Writing
Questions related to electronic writing have dealt up to now with hypertext, non-linear and non-sequential processes. But questions concerning writing on a network, alphabetical writing as such, but supported by the network, come forward as much more problematic and profound.
What is the destiny of writing? Which previously existing fringes between speaking and writing have been eliminated by the network? What cognitive attitudes are required by written communication on the network? And what do we think, what do we write when our networked thought-writing is immediately transferred to others? What do we write when there is no longer an interval, what happens to waiting time? And last of all what do we write when writing is an immaterial and abstract trace, which asks to be erased, to disappear rather than be preserved anonymously as hard copy?
Section 6: Architecture, Urban Design and Communication Technologies
This section poses the question of the presence of "communications artists" -outside the strictly artistic networks and spheres- working with architects, urban designers, town planners, etc.
The "aesthetics of communication", in its earliest version as well as its most recent, gives artists the possibility of going beyond the circles and the ghetto of art, to take part, as in the time of the cathedrals in the movement of civilian life and to oppose the loss of meaning.
The projects and rare accomplishments of "home automation" that show the successful combination of engineering, architecture and communications technologies provide the first example; they constitute an embryo of that new function which has obviously fallen to "communications artists" and remains entirely to be invented and developed.