[ISEA2011] Panel: Luke Robert Mason – Anti-Dis­ci­pli­nary Art: Re­ject­ing the Stan­dard Forms

Panel Statement

Panel:  The Institute of Unnecessary Research

“…as art col­lapses into sci­ence, cen­tral­ized con­trol dis­si­pates into net­works, and cul­ture mi­grates be­yond man, the old mod­els of ex­pla­na­tion, clas­si­fi­ca­tion and dis­cus­sion are ren­dered ob­so­lete.”     _Vir­tual Fu­tures Con­fer­ence (1996)

In an en­vi­ron­ment of in­creas­ing in­for­ma­tion com­plex­ity and emerg­ing tech­nol­ogy should art’s role be to merely rep­re­sent cul­tural de­vel­op­ments or in­stead com­mit it­self to cul­tural en­gi­neer­ing? As pace of change in tech­no­log­i­cal in­no­va­tion oc­curs in a pre­sent of ter­mi­nal ve­loc­ity and fu­ture of in­creas­ing ac­cel­er­a­tion are we in a state in which an an­thro­po­log­i­cal analy­sis of our cur­rent vir­tual state seems im­pos­si­ble? Where tra­di­tional acad­e­mia may fail can per­for­mance based re­search take up the chal­lenge of en­gag­ing a new pub­lic in the dis­sem­i­na­tion of this com­plex­ity? This paper will ex­plore the his­tor­i­cal work of the Uni­ver­sity of War­wick’s Cy­ber­netic Cul­tures Re­search Unit in de­con­struct­ing, de­ter­ri­to­ri­al­iz­ing and de­volv­ing the work of aca­d­e­mics to allow for a new level of artis­tic un­der­stand­ing. I will be look­ing at what we can learn from this cult mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary group, who chose to track con­ver­gences in the post-hu­man­i­ties through artis­tic ex­pres­sion.

  • Luke Robert Mason is a researcher, filmmaker and digital media artist. Having recently graduated from the University of Warwick he will be joining Philter Phactory early next month as their Research Director helping to develop their post-user software Weavrs.com.His work deals with issues of cyberculture, the post user web and infomorphology. Mason was also responsible for the revival of the cult cyber-conference conference Virtual Futures, which aimed to reconnect the University of Warwick with one of the most important intellectual and cultural developments of our times – the technological extension of the human condition. virtualfutures.co.uk