Flesh & Circuits: Rethinking Performance and Technology.

Submissions are invited for for a CAA 2020 panel

Flesh & Circuit: Rethinking Performance and Technology.

The relationship between performance and technology has received increased attention since the end of the 20th century. The live, embodied, material, and interactive qualities of performance have made it a notable means of exploring the creative potential of technological engagement acting as a critical vector for revealing and resisting the technological colonization of everyday life. The innovative collaborations of Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT) during the 1960’s with artists such as Yvonne Ranier and Robert Rauschenberg, Sterlac’s extreme body modifications, Guillermo Gomez-Pena’s poetic technology, and Blast Theory’s critical interactive productions, have mapped the advances in technology and opened new creative fields to explore. However, there are still some significant oversights in regard to the pervasive and intimate nature of technological tracking, surveillance, and behavioral modification of algorithmic governmentality. Currently, technological embodiment assumes new forms tied to data assemblages of unprecedented scope and granularity. The body is commodified as data to be exchanged, surveilled, and controlled in algorithmic regimes of governance and as raw material for machine learning and AI. New normative assumptions are being hard-coded into data-driven algorithmic systems that amplify and consolidate bias, which include disability, nonbinary gender, queer identity, and race. Artists working with performance and technology are engaging with these exclusions, re-defining embodiment for the 21st century.This panel invites submissions from artists and scholars that rethink the relationship between performance and technology. Potential technologies to consider include: mobile tech, augmented and virtual reality, sensors, open source hardware and software, customized interactive platforms, robotics, and biotechnology.

Chairs: EL Putnam,National University Ireland, Galway - el.putnam[AT]nuigalway.ie and Conor McGarrigle,Technological University Dublin - conor.mcgarrigle[AT]dit.ie

https://caa.confex.com/caa/2020/webprogrampreliminary/Session5062.html