Panel Statement

Panel: Unsitely Aesthetics: the Reconfiguring of Public Space in Electronic Art

Draw­ing on Guy De­bord’s no­tions of the de­rive and de­tourne­ment, as well as Ouli­pean con­cepts of po­ten­tial­ity and be­com­ing, this paper will en­gage with the au­thor’s re­cent ex­per­i­ments in re­defin­ing urban space as aes­thetic space.  It will offer a crit­i­cal en­gage­ment with the au­thor’s de­tourned ex­pe­ri­ence of the chance iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of po­ten­tial, or ac­ci­den­tal art in the streets of Mel­bourne and Rome, a com­men­tary upon emer­gent sit­ings of art in un­sitely places.  It will also argue for an al­ter­na­tive con­cep­tion of art in­stal­la­tion be­yond the sit­u­at­ed­ness of the gallery, using GPS satel­lite co-or­di­nates to di­rect local and re­mote vis­i­tors to si­mul­ta­ne­ously en­gage with un­sitely aes­thet­ics in both cities, thereby ex­tend­ing both telem­at­i­cally and aes­thet­i­cally the no­tion of what art and in­stal­la­tion can be­come.

• Dar­ren Tofts is Pro­fes­sor of Media and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Fac­ulty of Life and So­cial Sci­ences, Swin­burne Uni­ver­sity of Tech­nol­ogy, Mel­bourne, AU.  His pub­li­ca­tions in­clude Pre­fig­ur­ing Cy­ber­cul­ture: An In­tel­lec­tual His­tory, Il­logic of Sense: The Gre­gory L. Ulmer Remix, Mem­ory Trade: A Pre­his­tory of Cy­ber­cul­ture, Par­al­lax: Es­says on Art, Cul­ture and Tech­nol­ogy and In­ter­zone: Media Arts in Aus­tralia.

Full text (PDF) p. 2402-2406 [Different title!]