The 27th International Symposium of Electronic Art is taking place in Barcelona this year under the title Possibles. Founded in the Netherlands in 1990, ISEA International (formerly Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts) is an international non-profit organization fostering interdisciplinary academic discourse and exchange among culturally diverse organizations and individuals working with art, science and technology.
Some words about the theme POSSIBLES:
The Possible started with the polis, the city, and is political by definition.
The Possible has nothing to do with the unreal, the impossible, or the fictitious, but rather with the unfinished real in front of us.
The Possible shapes our reality, and that is precisely why it is a political problem in itself. From “everything is possible” to “be realistic and ask for the impossible”, from an “infinitude of possible worlds” to “this is not possible and cannot be done”.
Sometimes we are trapped in a world of pre-designed Possibles – “this is it” – where it seems that nothing could have been left out, there are no alternatives. Sometimes it is living an illusion of freedom in an impossible world where the critical just disappears. How to open towards contingency, not only to the becoming but also its uncertainty?
How to draw new Possibles to come, and not just confirming those that are there waiting to be confirmed, experienced and thought, as Possibles that can be brought to existence in our worldview? How to move from the impossible, the fable or the utopia to directly bite into our reality?
The Possible is inscribed within the arts, design, sciences and technologies that surround us now and those yet to come.
We see these Possibles behind climate change and global warming, behind robotics and biotechnologies, inside algorithms, artificial intelligence and data science, in between quantic worlds trying to get a grasp of what matter is, up there above our heads in outer space and the multiverse.
This year four members of the DXARTS community are participating in different events of the symposium:
DXARTS faculty Afroditi Psarra will be presenting the Ventriloquist Ontology performance with Tingyi Jiang at Recinte Modernista de Sant Pau on June 14th:
DXARTS faculty Tivon Rice will be screening his work Models for Environmental Literacy, in collaboration with Sónar festival, from June 11th-16th:
DXARTS PhD candidate Chanhee Choi will be presenting her animation video Unreal Window at the main exhibition at the arts center Santa Mònica, from June 9th to August 21st:
DXARTS third year graduate student Esteban Agosin will be presenting his short paper Extended Listening: Towards non-humans interpretation of the sound environment through AI systems at CCCB on June 15th:
In addition, three DXARTS alumni will also be showing work there:
Robert Twomley will be leading a workshop entitled Radio Play: Live Participatory Worldbuilding with GPT-3, at CCCB on June 11th:
Inmi Lee & Yunmi Her will be screening their work The Erection of Phygital Graveyard, in collaboration with Sónar festival, from June 11th-16th:
