[ISEA2010] Paper: Söke Dinkla – The Aesthetics of Electronic Art in Public Spaces

Abstract

Our idea of the public has been informed by political and social constructions ever since Greek antiquity. It was in its apparent heyday in bourgeois society that the term “public” was defined by a whole range of social exclusions. Under the post-war era’s systemic pressure to consume, the notion of a bourgeois public disintegrated and its communicative space became mythical, i.e. “a secondary semiological system in the Barthesian sense” (Habermas).
The question today is what (public) effect art can achieve in this situation.

  • Söke Dinkla (DE) studied Art History, Literature, Anthropology; 1994 grant of the DAAD for the USA; 1996 Ph.D. on the history and aethetics of interactive media art. Curator at the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg. Since 2005 she is Artistic Director of the European Capital of Culture Office RUHR.2010 Duisburg.

Full text (PDF) p.  116-117