Database Aesthetics: From Network to Landscape, lecture

Tuesday 10th June 2008 at 8 pm Kibla - the lecture

Database Aesthetics: From Network to Landscape

Lecturers: Christiane Paul and Jack Toolin

Christiane Paul: Database Aesthetics: The Database as Cultural Form

The talk discussed data visualization in relation to database aesthetics, which can be understood as a new cultural form -- a way of revealing (visual) patterns of knowledge, beliefs, and social behavior. Among the topics discussed were various manifestations of database aesthetics -- from visualizing specific data sets to activist projects and locative media -- as well as current arguments regarding the inscription of "bodies" and social behaviors in databases.
Christiane Paul is the Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts at the WhitneyMuseum of American Art and the director of Intelligent Agent, a service organization dedicated to digital art. She has written and lectured extensively on new media arts, and a revised edition of her bookDigital Art (Thames & Hudson, UK, 2003) was published in the spring of 2008. She teaches in the MFA computer arts department at the School of Visual Arts in New York, the Digital+Media Department of the Rhode Island School of Design, the San Francisco Art Institute and the University of California at Berkeley. At the Whitney Museum, she curated the shows "Profiling" (2007) and “Data Dynamics” (2001); the net art selection for the 2002 Whitney Biennial; the online exhibition"CODeDOC" (2002) for art port, the Whitney Museum’s online portal toInternet art for which she is responsible; as well as "Follow Through"by Scott Paterson and Jennifer Crowe (2005). Other curatorial work includes "SOS 4.8" (Murcia, Spain, 2008); "Feedback" (Laboral Center for Art and Industrial Creation, Gijon, Asturias, Spain, 2007); "Second Natures" (Eli & Edythe Broad Art Center, UCLA, LA, 2006); the black box at ARCO art fair, Madrid (2006); "The Passage of Mirage"(Chelsea Art Museum, New York, 2004); "Evident Traces" (Ciber arts Festival Bilbao, 2004); "eVolution -- the art of living systems" (ArtInteractive, Boston, 2004); "CODeDOC II" (Ars Electronica, 2003); theNew York Digital Salon's 10th anniversary exhibition (NYC, 2003);“Mapping Transitions” at the University of Boulder, Colorado (2002); "Re-Media" (Fotofest, Houston, Texas, 2002); and a net art selection for “Evo1” (Gallery L, Moscow, October 2001).

Jack Toolin: The Technological Sublime

Artist Jack Toolin discussed the correlation between technology and our perception of landscape from the Industrial Revolution to the Information Revolution, and as it relates to the "Landscape Initiative," his recent work in locative media with the collaborative C5. Toolin was a founding member of the collaborative, and his works focus on data visualization, performance competition, and locative media.
Jack Toolin is an artist whose work combines digital photography, new media installation, and performance. He has worked both independently and as a member of the new media art collective C5 (http://www.c5corp.com), which has investigated our relationship to technology, and technology's relationship to culture through data visualization, installation, performance expedition, photography, and video. "The Perfect View" - part of C5's project "Landscape Initiative" - was shown as part of Rhizome's exhibition "Networked Nature" at Foxy Production earlier this year, and will exhibit at the San Jose Museum of Art this fall. Toolin's individual and collaborative work has been exhibited around the Bay Area, nationally, and internationally at venues including San Francisco Camerawork; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2002 Whitney Biennial); the New Museum, New York; the ICA, London; and the Museo Nacional de Bellas Arte, Buenos Aires, Argentina. He teaches Digital Photography at San Jose State University and has lectured widely at institutions such as the University of California at Berkeley, the San Francisco Art Institute, Emerson College (Boston, MA), and The Art Institute of Boston.