Panel Statement
Panel: Don’t Anthropomorpise Me: Electronic Performance Tools, Automatons and The Vanity Apocalypse
My contribution to this panel seeks to analyse syncretic, hybridized agency, particularly in mixed reality data transfer systems. Syncretism has traditionally been regarded as an attempt to harmonise and analogise (in other words seeking likeness within unlike things, and unity in difference,usually relative to disparate beliefs and cultural practices. Recent developments in bridging autonomous relationships with machines through mixed reality interfacing has brought about the need for further analysis of these new post-biological, hybridized states of being that traverse traditional paradigms of time and space. Syncretism may facilitate further understanding of multi-layered world views, both material and metaphysical, that are emerging from our engagement with such pervasive computational technologies and post-biological systems. It is a popular belief that we are now, through a media convergent, participatory culture (that is integrated socially through a subnetwork of platforms) creating a ‘collective intelligence’ that exists in a ‘global village’ of knowledge (data) transfer. This perspective evades traditional mythological notions of anthropomorphic interaction as it moves beyond the individual and into a universal model of open access.
- Julian Stadon is a PhD candidate at Curtin University of Technology, Australia. Julian’s research has included residencies with the Interface Cultures, Linz; Salford University, Manchester; Human Interface Technologies Lab, New Zealand (HITLabNZ), The Australian Centre for Virtual Art (ACVA), Melbourne, The Fogscreen Research Centre, Finland and The Banff New Media Institute, Banff. At Curtin University, Julian is a member of the Centre for Research in Arts Science and Humanity (CRASH), The Media Arts Postgraduate. Julian lectures in the School of Art and Design and the School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts at Curtin University and computer technologies and marketing at the SAE/Quantum Institute, Perth. Research assistant for the National Organisation of New Media Arts Database (NOMAD), and the director of Dorkbot Perth. His thesis title is Post Biological Digital Identity in Artificial Mixed Reality Real Time Data Transfer Systems.
Full text (PDF) p. 2300-2304 [title somewhat different]