NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Roy Ascott

Pioneering the place of cybernetics and telematics in art, Roy Ascott has been working with issues of art, technology and consciousness since the 1960s. Roy Ascott has shown at the Venice Biennale, Electra Paris, Ars Electronica Linz, V2 Holland, Milan Triennale, Biennale do Mercosul, Brazil, European Media Festival, and gr2000az at Graz, Austria. His first seminal telematic project was La Plissure du Texte (1983), an online work of "distributed authorship" involving artists around the world in the construction of a non-linear narrative. Cybernetics is the study of communication and control, typically involving regulatory feedback, in living organisms, in machines and organisations and their combinations, for example, in sociotechnical systems, computer controlled machines such as automata and robots. ... The term telematics is used in a number of ways: The integrated use of telecommunications and informatics, also known as ICT (Information and Communications Technology). ... View of Pump Room, a work by the Hungarian artist BalÃ¡zs Kicsiny at the Venice Biennale in 2005. ... The Grazer SchloÃŸberg Clock Tower Graz [graËts] (Slovenian: Gradec IPA: /gra. ...

Interactive Computer Art

Since the 1960s Roy Ascott has been one of Europe's most active and outspoken practitioners of interactive computer art, and is internationally recognised as the pioneer of telematic art [1]. Ten years before the personal computer came into existence, Ascott saw that interactivity in computer-based forms of expression would be an emerging issue in the arts. Intrigued by the possibilities, he built a theoretical framework for approaching interactive artworks, which brought together certain characteristics of the avant-garde (Dada, Surrealism, Fluxus, Happenings, and Pop Art in particular), with the science of cybernetics championed by Norbert Wiener. La Plissure du Texte [2]is his generic work of "distributed authorship". Cover of the first edition of the publication, Dada. ... Surrealism[1] is a movement stating that the liberation of our mind, and subsequently the liberation of the individual self and society, can be achieved by exercising the imaginative faculties of the unconscious mind to the attainment of a dream-like state different from, or ultimately â€˜truerâ€™ than, everyday reality. ... Fluxus (from to flow) is an art movement noted for the blending of different artistic disciplines, primarily visual art but also music and literature. ... Happenings has multiple meanings (besides the straightforward dictionary definition): The Happenings were a 1960s pop music group whose major hits were See You In September and a cover of I Got Rhythm updated for the nascent pop/rock era. ... House I, created by Roy Lichtenstein in 1996, is designed to be an optical illusion. ... Cybernetics is the study of communication and control, typically involving regulatory feedback, in living organisms, in machines and organisations and their combinations, for example, in sociotechnical systems, computer controlled machines such as automata and robots. ... Norbert Wiener Norbert Wiener (November 26, 1894 - March 18, 1964) was a U.S. mathematician and applied mathematician, especially in the field of electronics engineering. ...

Academic Career

He is the founding president of the Planetary Collegium[3], an advanced research center based in the University of Plymouth, UK, with nodes in Zurich, Milan and Beijing. He has been Dean of San Francisco Art Institute, California, Professor for Communications Theory at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, and Principal of Ontario College of Art, Toronto. He has advised media organisations in Brazil, Japan, Korea, Europe and North America, as well as UNESCO and the CEC, and since 2000 has been a Visiting Professor in Design|Media Art [4] at the UCLA School of the Arts. He is the founding editor of Technoetic Arts, journal of speculative research[5]. WHAT IS THE PLANETARY COLLEGIUM? Founded and directed by Professor Roy Ascott, the Planetary Collegium is a worldwide transdisciplinary research community whose innovative structure involves collaborative work both in cyberspace and at regular meetings around the world. ... One of the University of Plymouths newly renovated buildings in the City of Plymouth with the university logo on it The University of Plymouth is the largest university in the southwest of England, with over 30,000 students (the 4th UK university regarding the highest numbers of students), almost... The San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) is an accredited undergraduate and graduate school of contemporary art located in the Russian Hill district of San Francisco, California, United States. ... The University of Applied Arts Vienna (German Universität für angewandte Kunst, or informally just Die Angewandte) is an institution of higher education in Vienna, the capital of Austria. ... The Ontario College of Art & Design is Ontarios premier school devoted entirely to art and design. ... UNESCO logo UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) is a specialized agency of the United Nations established in 1945. ... The University of California, Los Angeles, popularly known as UCLA, is a public, coeducational university situated in the neighborhood of Westwood within the city of Los Angeles. ...

Students

As a teacher Ascott has had many notable students e.g. Brian Eno, Paul Sermon[6], Pete Townsend, Stephen Willats[7]. As director of studies his doctoral graduates include Peter Anders, Jon Bedworth, Geoff Cox, Char Davies[8], Elisa Giaccardi, Dew Harrison, Pamela Jennings[9], Eduardo Kac, Joseph Nechvatal, Miroslaw Rogala, Gretchen Schiller, Jill Scott, Bill Seaman, Christa Sommerer, Victoria Vesna[10]. Brian Eno in 2006 Brian Peter George St. ... This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Peter Anders. ... Eduardo Kac was the first person to have a microchip implanted in his body. ... Joseph Nechvatal (1951â€“) is a post-conceptual artist and art theoretician known for creating computer-robotic assisted paintings and computer software animations, often using custom created computer viruses based in cellular automata models. ... Miroslaw Rogala (b. ... Jill Scott (born April 4, 1972) is a Grammy Award-winning jazz, rhythm and blues, and neo-soul singer and songwriter from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. ...

He has published over 150 articles and academic papers in the journals and magazines of many countries.

Publications

Ascott, R. (ed). 2005. Engineering Nature. 2005.Bristiol UK:Intellect.
Ascott,R.2003. Telematic Embrace. {E.Shaken, ed.] Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ascott, R. 2002. Technoetic Arts (Korean translation: YI, Won-Kon), (Media & Art Series no. 6, Institute of Media Art, Yonsei University). Yonsei: Yonsei University Press
Ascott, R. 1998. Art & Telematics: toward the Construction of New Aesthetics. (Japanese trans. E. Fujihara). A. Takada & Y. Yamashita eds. Tokyo: NTT Publishing Co.,Ltd.
Reframing Consciousness. Exeter: Intellect. 1999
Art Technology Consciousness. Exeter: Intellect. 2000

References

Packer, R. & Jordan, K. (eds). Multimedia: from Wagner to Virtual Reality, New York: Norton, 2001.
Amelia Jones (ed), The Blackwell Companion to Contemporary Art since 1945 (London: Blackwell, 2005). pp562, 567-9
Pioneers ArtMuseum.net
People.i-dat.org
Factbites [11]

Selected Texts

[12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34]

Blog references

Roy Ascott's Cybernetic Vision The Architecture Of Cyberception Ascott and Blog-Art The Syncretic Imperative Technoetic Art in Korean – review Cyberception and the Paranatural Mind Embracing technology Behavioural Art La Web Chamantica

Family links

Partner: Josephine Coy: http://www.axisweb.org/seCVPG.aspx?ARTISTID=2135 Son: Lincoln Ascott: http://www.londonfilmacademy.com/about/lfa_team.asp http://www.healing-link.com/ Son: Justin Ascott: http://web.mac.com/justinascott/iWeb/justinascott/Welcome.html Daughter: Claudia Ascott: http://www.axisweb.org/grCVFU.aspx?SELECTIONID=16431

Results from FactBites:

Review of Roy Ascott, The connectivist turn, by Jan Baetens (895 words)
	The exceptional merit of Roy Ascott’s work as a theoretician of the relationships between art, science, and technology, is that it in spite of their often shattered and overtly ‘visionary’ character, they are not just a succession of speculations in which new links replace or destroy the previous ones.
	Ascott’s visionary thinking is always deeply rooted in concrete, professional contexts: his many appointments (academic, advisory, and editorial) all over the world have insured that he has always been in very close contact with the wishes and the needs of students, artists, researchers, and the interested audience.
	Ascott is antimodern, since he rejects absolutely the ideology of the purity of art and the celebration of its objects, and in this respect his visionary thinking can be linked with post-structuralism (one is not surprised to see that in the recent texts by Ascott the name of Deleuze starts appearing).

The Art of Roy Ascott (692 words)
	Ascott talks of his interest in setting up certain physical and possibly banal situations like 'wardrobe' or 'supermarket' or 'bathtub' and introducing into this kind of benign everyday theatre a particular metaform or assortment of metaforms, which upon contact will then animate themselves and their contexts together, charging both with new meanings.
	If, in Ascott's work, we see the neutral physical situation of say 'bathtub' as the 'problem' we are attempting to animate, then we bring to that situation not aphorisms or puns but Ascott's metaforms', concrete visual objects (visual ideas) capable, like McLuhan's aphorisms, of wide energetic interpretation.
	As Ascott points out, one of his table-tops loaded with arrangeable objects is not so much itself a proposition (except for the mutually animating one we have discussed) as it is the raw material with which a proposition can be made.

More results at FactBites »

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