Roy Ascott lecture at SCAD April 14

Roy Ascott
Orleans Hall
Savannah College of Art & Design
Savannah, GA
Thursday, April 14th, 7:00pm

“Transdisciplinary Transformations:
Art and Design in a Culture of Connectivity”

Abstract: New developments in art, science, and technology generate new discourse calling for new language. Terms such as technoetics and moistmedia, signal the emergence of new media practices. The material, conceptual and spiritual infrastructure needed to support this emergence calls for research strategies, institutional forms, and cultural organisms hitherto unknown. This requires dynamically constructive as well as reflective and expressive practices in art and design, which progressively over the next years will involve us in such fields as telematics (planetary connectivity), nanotechnology (bottom up design), and quantum computing (accelerated and expanded cognition). There would be some wisdom in attempting closer integration with the spiritual domain that has been blocked by the excessive materialism and insistent reductionism of our times. In seeking a matrix that integrates questions of society, the self, materiality, and consciousness, we can place transdisciplinary research at the intersection of five objectives: to amplify thought (concept development); to share consciousness (collaborative processes); to seed structures (self-organising systems); to make metaphors (knowledge navigation); to construct identities (self-creation).

Bio: A pioneer of cybernetic and telematic art, Ascott is an internationally renowned artist, theorist, and educator. He is Founding Director of the Planetary Collegium Ph.D. program and Professor of Technoetics at the University of Plymouth, England, and Adjunct Professor in Design|Media Arts at UCLA. Ascott’s work has been shown at the Venice Biennale, Centre Pompidou Paris, Ars Electronica Linz, V2 Holland, Milan Triennale, and European Media Festival, Osnabruck. His book, Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology, and Consciousness, was published by University of California Press, 2003.

For more information on Roy Ascott and the Planetary Collegium: