Transpositions: Data Rush - Symposium Event

Data Rush: Is a meaningful dialogue possible between research practices in the arts and in science and technology?

A one day symposium organised by philosopher Cecile Malaspina in the context of the exhibition DA TA rush with Paulo de Assis, Lucia D’Errico, Luc Derycke, Gerhard Eckel, Artemi-Maria Gioti, Wolfgang Hofkirchner, David Pirrò, Michael Schwab, Volker Straebel, Phoebe Stubbs, Mauricio Suarez and Neal White.

Tuesday, May 17, 2016 10:00 – 17:00 (doors open at 09:00, no booking required)

The symposium will consist of a series of dialogues and panel discussions, interspersed by performances: visual artists, composers and performers will be in conversation with musicologists, philosophers of science and systems theorists. The topics will include artistic and scientific engagements with empirical data, representation and technical apparatuses. At the heart of the symposium are the following questions: Can there be a meaningful dialogue between scientific reasoning and artistic experimentation? Is a genuine relation possible between artistic reasoning and scientific experimentation?

It can be safely assumed that scientists and philosophers of science don?t know what?s coming: while the epistemological status of technical apparatuses and of visual representation has long been in question in scientific discourse, no feed-back from the critique of representation and critical engagement with technical apparatuses in the contemporary arts has been able to pierce the boundary between scientific and arts practices, between the theory of science and art theory.

No longer satisfied with merely representing or applying technical exploits coming from the sciences and technology, as in Holbein?s Renaissance painting The Ambassadors, artists have been tugging at the very fabric of scientific of knowledge production. In this endeavour, experimental performance based practices, but also conceptual and post-conceptual art practices, have often sought to develop a complicity with the critical and historical epistemology coming from continental philosophy. Still critical reflections in the arts, and even the domain of continental philosophy, are often seen as idle recreation in comparison with the hard working mind of the scientist.

Among the topics that will be discussed in a series of dialogues and panel discussions is the potential for an intersection between the critique of representation in scientific discourse and in the arts. It will be asked, in turn, what purchase scientific data and representation have on artistic experimentation. At stake is ultimately the question of whether thinking about our world in terms of complex systems is the appanage of mathematical modelization and scientific rationalization, or whether the arts contribute something essential to our understanding of complex open systems, notably via their engagement with noise.