Creative Un(A)Counting

Numeric representation of reality, as ubiquitous as it is, is not being commonly approached as one of the typical creative strategies. Participants of Migrating Art Academies from different European countries will gather for a creative workshop organised in Vilnius 9-14 December and will try to apply counting methods to creative processes. All lectures during this event will be open to public.

"The aim of this expanded academic encounter is to enhance the understanding of counting as a creative condition, to assist in participants’ engagement with various types of media", - says Žilvinas Lilas, the initiator of the workshops on numbers, professor at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne.

During this creative laboratory emerging artists will look into the variety of numeric information as well as into the surrounding social, political and economic reality. Measuring as an action will be challenged by a number of questions – what is measured, why it is measured, what are the measuring units, how is the relative value to be defined etc. By the process of creating artwork certain elements of objective reality will be addressed such as research of statistical data. A point of view, according to which numeric representation of reality is based on its own ideology, will be suggested.

Public lecture series will begin on the 9th of December with a lecture by Žilvinas Lilas, a professor of Academy of Media Arts Cologne, who will offer some insights into Enlightenment‎ era and its development after numbers started to be regarded in a particular way. Algirdas Javtokas, a lecturer at Vilnius University, will introduce to the background of mathematics and to the understanding of basic mathematical structures. In his lecture on the 10th of December Alvydas Lukys, a professor of Vilnius Art Academy will introduce the audience to some issues of a hypothetical idea of the Social Fractal function. The following lecture by artist and researcher Mindaugas Gapševičius will unfold the idea of cellular automata and will show how creative patterns emerge from simple calculations.

The Migrating Art Academies (MigAA) platform is aimed at innovation and experience exchange in art teaching and research. It is a network of European universities and independent organisations. The Creative Un(A)Counting laboratory is supported by the European Commission Culture Program and the Culture Support Foundation of the Republic of Lithuania. The laboratory is organised by the Department of Photography and Media Art of Vilnius Art Academy together with the Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association.