Panel Statement
Chair Person: Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo
Presenters: Una Chung, Eric Forman, Harald Kraemer & Annette Weintraub
Immersed in a constant stream of information, losing our ability to meaningfully read anything longer than a page, and connected through a social network that in users represents the 3rd largest country in the world, what happens to how we make, view, and participate in electronic arts? If our tools are also those which our accelerating our lives, how are we able to still make meaningful art? Do artists disconnect from the expectations of 24/7 and retreat in their “studios”? This panel focuses on the topic of slowing down and electronic arts. Is slowness a useful concept for artists working with technology to consider? Are electronic artists using the same tools to comment on this acceleration? Have we lost our ability to slow down in the viewing and appreciation of art? Furthermore, do electronic artists feel a responsibility to comment on and demonstrate alternative technologies that may promote slowness and considered thought? A panel of both artists and academics will address these questions, focusing on both theory and practice, and always grounded in examples of electronic artwork. They will speak about aesthetics and politics in electronic arts, the “hand waving” phenomen in interactive art, the challenges and successes of teaching deceleration to students, and the speed at which internet art is forced to change, and therefore becoming ephemeral at a rapid rate. Though diverse in their approaches and foci, notions of slowness and duration will be the common threads for the presentations and the discussion to follow.
- Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo is an artist, technologist and educator. She works primarily with digital media and on themes of time and transience. Her artwork has been internationally exhibited and performed, including at Giacobetti Paul Gallery, Exit Art and HERE Arts (NYC), UCLA Hammer Museum (LA), Point Éphémère (Paris) and the Museums of Modern Art in Bogotá and Medellín (Colombia). She recently self-published “Of and In Cities,” an academically framed art book about five of her photographic projects, and “Cross Urban,” which documents the first two years of an ongoing collaboration with Klaus Fruchtnis. Since 2007 she has been an active participant in the university-wide project DEED: Development through Empowerment, Entrepreneurship, and Design, which she now directs. Cynthia has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá) and a Masters in Interactive Telecommunications (ITP) from New York University. She is currently Assistant Professor of Integrated Design in the School of Design Strategies at Parsons The New School for Design and an active member of Madarts, an arts collective in Brooklyn, NY, USA. cynthialawson.com/site