"What a building desires" 2005. Excerpt from Richard Goodwin's Porosity Research into Public space.

National Institute for Experimental Arts (NIEA), COFA UNSW

Experimental Arts Double Conference

19-20 August 2011 Main Conference
17-18 August 2011 National Postgraduate Conference

John Niland Scientia Building
University of New South Wale
Sydney, Australia

Conference website
blogs.unsw.edu.au/niea-experimentalartsconference/

"We have entered the experimental age…Experiments are no longer conducted just in the laboratory. They have become collective experiments that concern each and every one of us." Bruno Latour, 2004 What is experimentation? What makes art 'experimental'? What are the results of aesthetic experiments and why do we need them? Could artists invent new modes of experimentation with/for science? What are the differences between experiments and inventions; experiments and failures; experiment and innovation? How do we set up ethico-scientific-aesthetic experiments?

This conference will showcase and discuss innovative arts projects by leading practitioners, thinkers and research groups that model new forms of transdisciplinarity and offer new ways of addressing real-world issues. These include works that have successfully 'changed the world' as well as speculative initiatives that radically change the way we think. It will survey the results and potential of Experimental Arts, inviting leaders in the field to discuss how we can extend and support a platform for path-breaking experimentation.

The main conference will be preceded by a two-day National Postgraduate Conference on Experimental Arts.

Speakers include:
James Crutchfield and David Dunn (Art-Sci Lab, U Davis); Donald Brook (Flinders), Amy Balkin (CCA; Stanford), Mischa Kuball (Academy of Media Arts, Cologne); Chris Bosse (UTS, L.A.V.A.), Victoria Vesna (UCLA); Adrian McKenzie (University of Lancaster); Pia Ednie- Brown (RMIT); Joyce Hinterding (USyd), Terry Smith (Pittsburgh); Elizabeth Ann McGregor (MCA); Douglas Kahn, Richard Goodwin, Paul Thomas, Anna Munster, Nigel Helyer, Jill Bennett (NIEA, UNSW); iCinema, Centre for Interactive Cinema, UNSW.

MAIN CONFERENCE PROGRAM

DAY ONE: 19 AUGUST

Plenary Session

Ross Harley (NIEA, UNSW) Chair
Stephen Jones (COFA UNSW) Introduction and Background
Donald Brook (Flinders) Key Speaker:The Rise of Experimentalism and Post-Object Art
Zanny Begg (Tin Sheds Gallery, USyd) Discsussant

Formative Technologies

Douglas Kahn (NIEA, UNSW)
American Experimentalism and Cold War Science
Joyce Hinterding (SCA, USyd)?Loops and Fields: An experimental approach to energy and objects
Dennis Del Favero (iCinema Centre, NIEA, UNSW)?
Maurice Pagnucco (CSE, UNSW)?Head, School of Computer Science and Engineering, UNSW
Artificially Intelligent aesthetics: recent experimental studies
Timothy Barker (iCinema Centre, UNSW)
Experiments with Time: Technology, Art and Temporality

Politics/History

Michael Goldberg (SCA, USyd)
Cracking the "Black Box": Experiments in Financial Capitalism
Ian Howard (COFA,UNSW)?
Physical Barriers, Virtual Freedoms- protection vs creativity amidst a global crisis
Zanny Begg (Tin Sheds Gallery, USyd)
Art and Revolution
Kathy Temin (Monash)
Experimentation and Provocation: Responses to the Holocaust in Contemporary Art practices

Open Session

Kerry Thomas (Creativity Research Group, NIEA, COFA,UNSW)
Karen Profilio (Head Creative Arts.,North Sydney Girls High School)
Smoke and mirrors: beyond a naturalistic explanation of experimentation in art education
Louise Fowler-Smith (ILIRI, COFA, UNSW)
Changing Perceptions - the new Land/Eco Art, ILIRI and the Creative Laboratory
Bonita Ely (COFA,UNSW)
Improvisation in the visual arts
John Conomos (SCA,USyd)
Outside the Canon : Experimental Arts, the Academy and Transdisciplinarity

Agency/Materiality

Petra Gemeinboeck (COFA, UNSW)
Thinking Machines or Why Matter Matters
Mari Velonaki (Centre for Social Robotics, Australian Centre for Field Robotics, USYD)
Multi-Objective Evaluation of Cross-Disciplinary Experimental Research
Ellen Balka (Simon Fraser University, Canada)
Artistic Experimentation and Tacit Knowledge: Applying Insights from Visual Art Practices to the Study of Large Scale Computer Infrastructures

Experimental Humanities

Edward Scheer (FASS, UNSW)
Dramaturgies: On interdisciplinary composition
Erin Brannigan (FASS, UNSW)
Yvonne Rainer's Trio A and Minimalist Composition in Dance
Stephen Muecke (FASS, UNSW)
After Critique, what drives Experiments?

Bio Art/Sense Perception

Andre Brodyk (UNewcastle)
Experimentation as attitude and the idea of the lab
John Tonkin (Digital Cultures Program, USyd)
Thinking how we think about thinking
Jondi Keane (Deakin)
The Science of Our Own Fiction: Affective experiments enacted through creative research

Experiments in Collaborative Experience

Adrian McKenzie (Lancaster University, UK)
Populations, data and probabilistic processes in experimental knowing
Anna Munster (CCAP, COFA, UNSW)
Experiments in Collective Experience
Pia Ednie-Brown (RMIT)
Creaturely Collectives: making architecture that lives

Affective Experiments

Jennifer Biddle (CCAP, COFA, UNSW)
Melancholic identification and other forms of 'madness' in Western Desert painting
Kirsten Hudson (Curtin)
Taste My Sorrow - A material exploration of elegy and empathy
Jennifer Deger (CCAP, COFA, UNSW; Center for Religion & Media, NYU)
Christmas Birrimbirr (Christmas Spirit): an experiment between Yolngu ritual and visual art

Soundscape/Filmscape/Landscape

Jon Dale (VCA, UMelbourne)
Microphonies & MateriaI(ism): Landscape, Sound and Socio-Politics
Jo Russell-Clarke (UAdelaide)
The Legacy of Landscape Urbanism: experience over experiment
Danni Zuvella (Griffith)
A Different Kind of Red Light District: DIY film laboratories in the digital age

Keynote Lecture

James Crutchfield (UC Davis, Art-Science Laboratory,USA)
David Dunn (Art-Science Laboratory,USA)
The Art Science Laboratory and The Bark Beetle Problem

DAY TWO: 20 AUGUST

Plenary Session

Amy Balkin (CCA; Stanford)
Public Smog and Other Space Based Projects
Misha Kuball (Academy of Media Arts, Cologne, Germany)
The Laboratory of Public Space
Chris Bosse (UTS; L.A.V.A.)
The Eco-sustainable City

Urban Construction

Richard Goodwin (Porosity Studio, COFA, UNSW)
Denatured Contingency: The New Engine of Sustainability
Heike Klussmann (University of Kassel, Germany)
Thorsten Klooster (Germany)
BlingCrete
Tim Schork (Monash)
Engaging Material (In)formation

New Materialities

Victoria Vesna (UCLA)
Vibration Matters: Collective Blue Morph effect (Skype)
Paula Dawson (COFA, UNSW)
Holographic Materiality
Paul Thomas (COFA, UNSW; Curtin)
New Material Agency

Health/Body

Sherryl Ryan (Culture at Work)
David Gallego-Ortega (Garvan Institute of Medical Research)
Art under the microscope: artist and scientist observing cancer histology using a two-head compound microscope
Michael Garbutt (COFA, UNSW)?The Heraclitus Project
Leah Heiss (RMIT)
Soumitri Varadarajan (RMIT)
Paul Beckett (RMIT)
Therapeutic Art Practice: How experimental art practice can radically inform the development of therapeutic technologies

Ecology/Sustainability

Stephen Healy (FASS, UNSW)
Ethics for an Experimental Age
Linda Williams (RMIT)?
Environmental art, the Aeolian harp and Gregor's metamorphosis
Lyndal Jones (RMIT)?
Propositions for an uncertain future: The Avoca Project: art, community and climate change
Nigel Heyler (NIEA,UNSW)
EcoLocated - and other adventures in the wide blue yonder (Skype)

Exhibiting

Kathy Cleland (Digital Cultures Program,USyd)
New Media Audiences: agency and experimentation in the gallery space
Susan Ballard (Dunedin School of Art, New Zealand)
Curiosity killed the cat: accidental encounters in the art gallery
Marco Pasqualini de Andrade (Federal University of Uberlandia, Brazil)
The Experimental Unit: A Brazilian Pioneer Proposition
Charles Green (UMelbourne)
Producing the Experimental: Mega-Exhibitions and Contemporary Art

Experimental Discourse & Practice

Jim Hamlyn (Grays School of Art, Scotland)
Lesley Punton (Glasgow School of Art, Scotland)
Experiments in Situated Knowledge
Cat Hope (Edith Cowan University)
Experimentalism is Dead: Long Live Experimentalism
Kate MacNeill (UMelbourne)
Barb Bolt (VCA, UMelbourne)
Unintended consequences? Experimentation, art and ethics
Julian Priest (Auckland University of Technology)
Participatory Empirical Aesthetics

Plenary Session

Terry Smith (Pittsburgh; NIEA,UNSW) Chair, Experimentality in Contemporary Art
Jill Bennett (NIEA, UNSW) Discussant
Elizabeth Ann McGregor (MCA Sydney) Discussant

Full program details and the postgraduate conference program available from the conference website: blogs.unsw.edu.au/niea-experimentalartsconference/