Research : Critical Engagement

New media requires a new critical language - to describe it, to analyze it and to teach it. Where shall this language come from? We can't go on simply using technical terms such as "a web site" to refer to works radically different from each other in intention and form. At the same time, traditional cultural concepts and forms prove to be inadequate as well. Image and viewer, narrative and montage, illusion and representation, space and time - everything needs to be re-defined again.

Research Projects

TEKNIKA RADICA is now accepting proposals for an interdisciplinary colloquium investigating arts technologies and received histories. Powering Up/Powering Down will take place on the campus of UC San Digo and surrounding venues in San Diego and Tijuana. From January 28 - February 1, 2004, artists, musicians, writers and scholars of diverse backgrounds will collaborate on a living laboratory-opera through their individual contributions and the exchanges they ignite. Contributors include Maryanne Amacher, Ron Athey, Sharon Daniel, Johanna Fateman (Le Tigre), DJ Kuttin Kandi, George Lipsitz, Los Cybrids, Lisa Nakamura, Pauline Oliveros, Pat Payne, and T. Kim-Trang Tran, and many more.

We welcome performances and objects/installations in any medium or combination of media, as well as scholarly papers, panel proposals, workshops and skill-shares.

The Infrastructures of Digital Design: Thinking/Building/Living, a graduate conference, was held at CRCA from Jan. 31 - Feb. 2, 2003. The critical gathering argued that there is a great deal of aesthetic, political and cultural heat in infrastructure. To conceive of thinking/building/living infrastructures is a call to move beyond conventional understandings of design and focus attention on the ways people work and play, create and critique within the interstices of digital environments. Speakers and discussants included: Howard Becker/UCSB, Geof Bowker/UCSD, Sharon Daniel/UCSC, Ed Hutchins, Lev Manovich/UCSD, Kate Rich/UK, and Leigh Star/UCSD. For more information, or to view archive streamed files, visit here.

The Language of New Media - In Lev Manovich's book he analyzes the language of new media by placing it within the history of modern visual and media cultures.

Re-Visioning Television Online Forum - Bringing together artists, critics, curators, academics, and industry professionals in an exploration of the past, present, and future of televison.

UC DARNet - The University of California's Digital Arts Research Network.

SEARCH - A music department initiative that invites leading music technologists, musicians, theorists, and performers for residencies, lectures, and concerts at UCSD.

Digital Culture Symposium - A new media symposium that explored new conceptual categories appropriate for analyzing computer culture and its objects.

updated November 13, 2003. cjh