History of Networked Art, people, places, events, technologies and theories.

History of Networked Art

a conference curated by Tommaso Tozzi and Alessandro Ludovico

Friday, July 29, 2005

Accademia di Belle Arti (Academy of Fine Arts)
Via Roma 1 – Carrara (Tuscany, Italy) tel. +39 0585 71658

9.30am – 1.30pm / 3.00pm – 7.00pm

with (in alphabetical order):

Robert Adrian (Wien, AU)
Hans Bernhard (Wien, AU)
Arturo Di Corinto (Roma, IT)
Steven Kovats (Rotterdam, NL)
Enrico Pedrini (Genova, IT)
Cornelia Sollfrank (Hamburg, DE)
Luca Toschi (Firenze, IT)

installation:
Giuseppe Chiari (Firenze – IT)
“Audio and Video recording from the seventies and eighties”

program:

9.30am – 1:30 pm

Tommaso Tozzi – coordinator of Multimedia Art Department, Academy of Fine Arts Carrara, Florence, IT

– Enrico Pedrini – critic, Genova, IT

– Luca Toschi – director of the Communication Strategies laboratory and head of the Communication Theory master’s degreee, Florence, IT

Robert Adrian – artist – Wien, AT

Arturo Di Corinto – teacher of Online Communication Psichology – Rome – IT

– discussion

3.00pm – 7:00pm

Alessandro Ludovico – new media critic, Neural.it – Bari, IT

Hans Bernhard – artist, Ubermorgen, Etoyholding – Wien, AT

Steven Kovats – international programs developer, V2_Institute for the Unstable Media – Rotterdam, NL

Cornelia Sollfrank – artist, Old Boys Network – Hamburg, DE

– discussion

In the networked art the artwork ‘s boundaries dissolve in the intertwined relationships between subjects, objects, strategies and theories. This process not only modifies artistic, political and commercial models, but it transforms the culture, the languages and the logic behind the theories of the interconnected society. Inter-disciplinarity, indetermination, transformation, decentralization and interaction, are among the key concepts of the sixties. But they are also the background of the artists that have used the telematic networks to plan new worlds or to critique the existing ones. The conference ‘History of the Net Arts’ has the purpose to gather some important experiences about some of the most active subjects, their actions and external collaboration with institutions, groups and movements, the technologies they used and, even more importantly, their theorical, social and cultural goals.

Biographies.

Robert Adrian X (CA/AT)
Celebrated contemporary artist, produces installations, radio art and sound art works from 1957, and he’s one of the recognized pioneer of telecomunication art. He started to work and experiment in this field already in 1979. He lives in Vienna.

Hans Bernhard (CH/AU)
One of the Etoy founders and creator of practices like the ‘digital hijack’. He founded the Ubermorgen group with Lizvlx, and realized famous net.art works like ‘Vote-Auction’, ‘Injunction Generator’ and ‘Google Will Eat Itself’. He won many awards like the prestigious Prix Ars Electronica’s ‘golden nica’. He lives and works in St.Moritz and Vienna.

Giuseppe Chiari (IT)
Musician and artist. He’s a composer from 1950 and he’s the most important Italian representative of the Fluxus movement, and one of the most important italian artists of the 20th century. He wrote books, essays and writings that have changed the music system, and his works are exhibited in museums all around the world. He’s author of happenings and music experiments and he wrote music for different media.

Arturo Di Corinto (IT)
Cognitive psychologist and new media expert. Researcher at the University of Stanford (1997-1998), teacher at the Carrara Academy of Arts and University of Rome. He’s author of essays on the technological innovation and social behaviours relationship. He’s a founding member of the Avvisi Ai Naviganti BBS, Isole nella Rete and Cittadigitali. He also writes for the national newspapers Il Manifesto, La Repubblica and for the magazine Aprile.

Stephen Kovats (CA/NL)
Canadian born architect and media researcher Stephen Kovats spent a decade upon German unification designing and establishing media art and culture related programs at the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. His “Studio Electronic Media Interpretation” hosted numerous international projects, symposia and exhibitions. Kovats founded several media culture oriented exchange and network programs including Archi-Tonomy, EMARE, ECX and the Bauhauskolleg. Editor of the book “Media Revolution. Electronic Media in the Transformation Process of Eastern and Central Europe”. Currently Kovats is international programs developer at V2_Institute for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam.

Alessandro Ludovico (IT)
Media critic and editor in chief of Neural magazine from 1993. He has written media culture books and essays. He’s one of the founding contributor of the Nettime community and one of the founders of the ‘Mag.Net (European Cultural Publishers)’ organization. He writes for various international magazines and he’s also an expert in the Runme.org board and a collaborator of the Digitalkraft exhibitions.

Enrico Pedrini (IT)
He curated international exhibitions and he was one of the curators of the Taiwan Pavillion in the 1995 Venice Biennale. He has written many essays on contemporary art. Actually he’s studying the interactions amongst the Dissipative Systems, the Theory of Chaos and the Possible Worlds that bring to the art universe the cathegories of the dissipation and possibilism.

Cornelia Sollfrank (DE)
Studied Fine Arts in Munich and Hamburg, taught at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Hamburg, founder member of the female artists’ group «Frauen und Technik» and ‘-Innen’. She’s a founder-member of «Old Boys Network» and facilitator of the conference series ‘Next Cyberfeminist International’. She works in the field of Internet art. She lives in Hamburg and Berlin.

Luca Toschi (IT)
Director of the ‘Laboratory of the communication strategies’ and head of the master’s degree in Communication Theory, University of Florence. Author of the book ‘Il linguaggio dei nuovi media’, he has written essays on the relationship between education and the language of new media. Ha has started his career as researcher in 1970 at the UCLA, during the establishment of the first Arpanet nodes. He’s a consultant for private and public firms.

Tommaso Tozzi (IT)
Teacher at the University of Florence and at the Carrara Academy of Arts, where he coordinates the Multimedia Arts Department. Director of uCAN – Center for Research and Documentation on Networked Arts and Digital Cultures. He has been the head of the cultural association Strano Network. Editor of Hacker Art BBS (1990) and creator of the first worldwide netstrike (1995). Founding member of the italian newsgroup Cyberpunk (1991) and of the net Cybernet (1993).