[ISEA2010] Paper: Inês Albuquerque, Ricardo Torres & Rosa Maria Oliveira – From Art as Knowledge to the Aesthetics of the Subject: New Ways of Thinking the Art of the 21st Century

Abstract

The article proposes the development of a new aesthetic approach to contemporary art produced in or for technological platforms, focussing on interactive art and art as knowledge.

Art as knowledge
The work of art is a trustee of subjective, empirical and emotional information, accessible to those available to fit in the role of receiver and interpreter of that information. Authors such as Claudia Giannetti are working under the perspective of art as knowledge related with new forms of artistic expression rooted in mediatic or technological environments, where the public plays a multiple role: as receiver, as collaborative partner, almost as an artist. Understanding art as knowledge means comprehend the interaction between public and artwork.

Structuration of the subjective
One cannot fully analyse art by simply decontextualizing it (Panofsky, 1983; Bourdieu, 1979). It is necessary to take in consideration properly the micro and macro societal aspects, in a perspective ideally resembling that of Simmel’s snapshots, where the ordinary of everyday life is stripped for its given symbolic meaning and relation to the broader symbolic articulations of society.

  • Inês Albuquerque (PT) is a Ph.D. student and art researcher in Art Studies, at Communication and Art Department, University of Aveiro, Portugal. The main interests of her research are the relations between art, science and technology, and the questions around the public, artist and work in contemporary art.
  • Ricardo Torres (PT) is a Sociologist at Lisbon University Institute, researcher at Centre for Research in Anthropology, focuses Art, Internet, and Social Movements, trying to understand a new world with new strategies and social organization. Ph.D. student in Technology and Social Movements, supervised by Tom R. Burns.
  • Rosa Maria Oliveira (PT) is a professor at Communication and Art Department, University of Aveiro, Portugal. Develops the artistic work under holography, and the research in ID+ Research Institute for Design, Media and Culture, under the relation between art, science and technology and artistic education.

Full text (PDF) p.  481-483