[ISEA95] Panel: Derrick de Kerckhove – Panel Statement

Panel Statement

Panel: Electronic Art and Audience

Following a tour of the Sydney (Australia) Museum which is located in the basement of the old Governor’s mansion and which only has at its disposal archival documents, engravings and fragments of utensils, we come out thinking that, although poorly endowed, the institution succeeds in giving visitors a feeling of startling human riches and a true knowledge of the place and its history through the use of interactive technology. On this basis, I would like to examine the new modes of conservation which, in lieu of giving access to objects of memory, can now use technology to increase and accelerate the intelligence of their location.

  • Derrick de Kerckhove (Belgium), Director of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology, at the University of Toronto, Canada, he is promoting a new field of artistic endeavours, which bring together, art, engineering and emerging communication technologies. His most recent publication, The Skin of Culture, Investigating the New Electronic Reality (1995, Somerville Press, Toronto) addresses the differences between the effects of television, computers and hypermedia on corporate culture, business practices and the market. In 1989, he curated Transinteractivity, the world’s first video-conference for the arts, between Paris and Toronto. Other works include Brainframes, Technology, Mind and Business (Utrecht: Bosch and Keuning, 1991), The Alphabet and the Brain (Springer Verlag, 1988), Understanding 1984 (UNESCO, 1984) and McLuhan e la metamorfosi dell’uomo (Bulzoni, 1984).