March 07: Richard Shusterman

For the next colloquium of the semester, held on March 7, 2019 (Thursday), we are very pleased to welcome American philosopher Richard Shusterman, who will give a talk on the topic “Somaesthetics: Philosophical Roots and Performative Practice”

The talk will start at 4:00 pm in M6094 Future Cinema Studio.

Date: March 07, 2019 (Thursday)

Time: 4:00 pm

Venue: M6094 Future Cinema Studio, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, 18 Tat Hong Avenue, Kowloon Tong

Topic: Somaesthetics: Philosophical Roots and Performative Practice

Abstract:

After introducing the field of somaesthetics and tracing its philosophical roots and different branches, Richard Shusterman will illustrate its expression in contemporary art and philosophy, focusing ultimately on his own experience of performative practice as documented in his book The Adventures of the Man in Gold (2016).

Biography:

Richard Shusterman is the Dorothy F. Schmidt Eminent Scholar in the Humanities. Educated at Jerusalem and Oxford, he was chair of the Temple University Philosophy Department before coming to FAU in 2005. He has held academic appointments in Paris, Berlin, and Hiroshima and was awarded senior research Fulbright and NEH fellowships. His widely translated research covers many topics in the human and social sciences with particular emphasis on questions of philosophy, aesthetics, culture, language, identity, and embodiment.   Authored books include T.S. Eliot and the Philosophy of Criticism (Columbia), Practicing Philosophy (Routledge), Performing Live (Cornell), Surface and Depth (Cornell), Pragmatist Aesthetics (Blackwell, 2nd ed. Rowman & Littlefield, and translated into 12 languages), and most recently Body Consciousness (Cambridge). His non-technical essays have been published in the Nation and the Chronicle of Higher Education and in various art reviews and catalogues, such as artpress and Dokumenta. He directs the FAU Center for Body, Mind, and Culture (www.fau.edu/artsandleetters/bodymindculture).

His FAU webpage is http://www.fau.edu/artsandleetters/humanitieschair/.

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March 05: Erin Johnson

For the next colloquium of the semester, held on March 05, 2019 (Tuesday), we are very pleased to welcome American new media artist Erin Johnson, who will give a talk on the topic “The Way Things Can Happen”

The talk will start at 4:00 pm in M6094 Future Cinema Studio.

Date: March 05, 2019 (Tuesday)

Time: 4:00 pm

Venue: M6094 Future Cinema Studio, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, 18 Tat Hong Avenue, Kowloon Tong

Topic: The Way Things Can Happen

 Abstract:

 Erin Johnson makes interdisciplinary and collaborative single and multi-channel video installations that blend documentary, experimental, and narrative practices.

These research-driven projects explore social, political, and geographical imaginaries through site-specific performances that foreground the ways in which individual lives and socio-political realities merge together.

Biography:

Erin Johnson is a feminist, interdisciplinary artist, and curator who uses video, sound, performance, and social practice to explore the blurred lines between rehearsal and performance; real and imagined landscapes and borders; and perception, memory, and interpretation. Johnson’s work has been exhibited at museums and galleries such as Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Vox Populi, HERE Arts Center, New Mexico State University, Pelican Bomb, Southern Exposure, Root Division, 1708 Gallery, Cornell University, ZERO1 Biennial, and the Asheville Art Museum. Johnson has been a visiting fellow or artist-in-residence at institutions such as the The School of Information at University of Texas at Austin.

February 26: Professor Thomas Tsang

For the next colloquium of the semester, held on February 26, 2019 (Tuesday), we are very pleased to welcome Professor and curator Thomas Tsang, who will give a talk on the topic “A room with many houses”

The talk will start at 4:00 pm in M6094 Future Cinema Studio.

Date: February 26, 2019 (Tuesday)

Time: 4:00 pm

Venue: M6094 Future Cinema Studio, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, 18 Tat Hong Avenue, Kowloon Tong

Topic: A room with many houses

Abstract:

Can exhibition practice serve as a universal language, where image and text are exchanged and expanded? How does the craft meet through these languages? As an artist, architect, designer, educator, editor, and among the many things, and everything – Tsang will share his experience from his studies at the Cooper Union to his residency at the American Academy in Rome, as the Rome Prize in Architecture fellow, from his one-year stint working as a carpenter at Juilliard School to his recent collaboration with composers to develop his personal endeavor in Sounding Architecture.

The presentation will articulate his cross-border works and the reflection on his curatorial practice in design, visual art, sound art, and other forms practice dealing with the foundation of the social practice that the work itself, to discuss on the more considerable extent how he emerges from science and art in architecture.

Biography:

Born in the Island of Borneo, East Malaysia. Received his professional degree in architecture at the Cooper Union. His work integrates artistic practice with architecture in installations and exhibitions. His curatorial projects includesCloud of Unknowing: A City with Seven Streets(2014) at Taipei Fine Arts Museum (w/ Roan Ching-yueh), Grand Opening Projects(2013–2016) at Miniature Museum in Beijing, ‘10 x 100 Exhibition’ at PMQ (2017), Mass Transit Railway (MTR) Art in Architecture Station for the Hong Kong West Kowloon railway station (2014-2018), and recently, 2018 Hong Kong Exhibition at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.

He is a recipient of numerous awards, including the coveted Marion O. and Maximilian E. Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, and Mellon Artist in Residence at the Wellesley College. His work has exhibited at the UABB (Shenzhen), M+ Museum, MNAC Bucharest, 10th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai Project and Sandwich Gallery in Bucharest. His current project entitled Sounding Architecturetackles in the area of sound and space exploring the diverse sensibilities in performance genre.

His publications include ‘On the Edge: Ten Architects from China’ (2007) and ‘Open City: Existential Urbanity’ (2015). He is the co-chief editor for The Hong Kong Institute of Architects Journal, Occupyand chief-editor of Sounding Architecture Manifest. Taught at the Cooper Union and China Academy of Art, currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture, at The University of Hong Kong.

More on:

www.dehow.com

February 14, 2019: Ruijun Shen

For the 3rd colloquium of the semester, held on February 14, 2019 (Thursday), we are very pleased to welcome Chinese curator and artist Ruijun Shen, who will give a talk on the topic “Into Nature: my practice as a curator and artist.”

The talk will start at 4:00 pm in M6094 Future Cinema Studio.

Date: February 14, 2019 (Thursday)

Time: 4:00 pm

Venue: M6094 Future Cinema Studio, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, 18 Tat Hong Avenue, Kowloon Tong

Topic: Into Nature: my practice as a curator and artist

Abstract:

Instead of images, Ruijun Shen constructs situations and create experiences in her work. She believes that human beings live in situations where every objects and events are interconnected. Everything can be transformed into something else in order to achieve a dynamic balance. Taking nature as reference, Shen’s work is involved in different media, including painting, drawing, installation and animation. As a curator, Shen has curated many successful exhibitions in China and the U.S.

Chinese garden is a long-term research topic on Shen’s curatorial practice. In this lecture, Shen will introduce her artistic practice as well as her method of taking Chinese garden as an entry point for contemporary curating. Some questions such as the function of art, the way towards professional artist and curator paths, the way of finding the self will be discussed.

Biography:

Ruijun Shen conceptualizes her painting-based practice as a form of extended meditation and a means of processing tensions between time and space in the world around us. Inspired by Confucianism and Tao Chinese philosophy, her work is deeply invested in exploring the various connections that define our everyday. Shen received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has exhibited extensively throughout China as well as internationally.

January 22: Dr. Giorgio Biancorosso

For the second colloquium of the semester, held on January 22, 2019 (Tuesday), we are very pleased to welcome Dr. Giorgio Biancorosso, who will give a talk on the topic “Wong Kar Wai’s Soundtracks or The Filmmaker as Music Bricoleur.”

The talk will start at 4:00 pm in M6094 Future Cinema Studio.

Date: January 22, 2019 (Tuesday)

Time: 4:00 pm

Venue: M6094 Future Cinema Studio, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, 18 Tat Hong Avenue, Kowloon Tong

Topic: Wong Kar Wai’s Soundtracks or The Filmmaker as Music Bricoleur

Abstract:

Composition, we are taught, is the creation from scratch of new sound structures. Yet since time immemorial musicians have repurposed already-existing music into their own work. This practice, referred to as borrowing, blurs the line between composition and performance and forces us to rethink the nature of musical creativity: Is it singular or diffused, individual or communal? Recording, tape and now digital technologies have added new dimensions to musical borrowing. By making it easier to encounter, store and play back vast amounts of repertoire, they have enabled countless people—including non-musicians—to mix and match musics from the most disparate sources. After anthropologist Lévi-Strauss, I call this mode of composition ‘musical bricolage’ and argue that filmmakers are among its most consummate masters. To bear this out, I examine the musical nexus at the heart of Wong Kar Wai’s cinema. Directing films is for Wong a way of channelling creatively the habit of chancing upon, collecting and listening to music in the commercial and artistic entrepôt of Hong Kong. Wong’s use of already-existing music is shaped by the circumstances of his films’ production and reception, his celebrated ‘musical ear’ as well as penchant for ‘poaching’ music from other films (ranging from old Chinese melodramas to European art films). There emerges is a unique modus operandi through which music loses its previous associations and acquires a new and sometimes surprising identity. Far from being instances of citation, homage or allusion, Wong’s musical borrowings are expedient and transformative. The soundtracks to his films chart his transformation from music lover and end-user into bona fide composer or better re-composer of the very repertoires he explores—the filmmaker as music bricoleur.

Biography:

Giorgio Biancorosso (PhD, Princeton, 2001) is the author, most recently, of Situated Listening: The Sound of Absorption in Classical Cinema(Oxford University Press, 2016) and “The Phantom of the Operaand the Performance of Cinema (Opera Quarterly, 34:2-3, 2018). His work on the history and theory of listening practices reflects a long-standing interest in musical aesthetics, film music, and the history of global cinema. Before moving to The University of Hong Kong, where he is now Associate Professor in Music and Director of the Society of Fellows in the Humanities, in 2001-2003 he was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Columbia University’s Society of Fellows in the Humanitiesand a Visiting Assistant Professor in Music also at Columbia in 2003-04. Aside from film music, film criticism, and musical aesthetics, his interests include musical dramaturgy and the psychology of music. Biancorosso is also active in Hong Kong as a programmer and curator. He is the Chairman of the Hong Kong New Music Ensembleand a member of the Programme Committee of the Hong Kong Arts Festival. In recognition of his work, HKU awarded him the Outstanding Young Researcher Award in 2009 and the Research Output Prize (Arts) in 2016/17.

January 17, 2019: Jacco Borggreve

For the first colloquium of the semester, held on January 17, 2019 (Thursday), we are very pleased to welcome Netherlands-based new media and performance artist Jacco Borggreve, who will give a talk on the topic“A Grey Dilemma: Artificial Life and Artificial Death.”

The talk will start at 4:00 pm in M6094 Future Cinema Studio.

Date: January 17, 2019 (Thursday)

Time: 4:00 pm

Venue: M6094 Future Cinema Studio, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, 18 Tat Hong Avenue, Kowloon Tong

Topic: A Grey Dilemma: Artificial Life and Artificial Death

Abstract:

As new and emerging technologies seem to act in an increasingly more lifelike manner and humans begin to tinker at the very fundamental of biological life and previously conceived binary states of being are increasingly more blurred or proven false, it is time to rethink our notions of the ontology of life and by extension rethink the concept of death. Using examples from philosophy, mythology, art, popular culture and media theories Borggreve will examine why the current definitions of life will soon prove to be problematic and how we could better prepare for new, artificial and perhaps alien forms of life.

Biography:

Jacco Borggreve is a Netherlands-based new media and performance artist who has used implants, biomedical sensors, data-exhibitionism and automated processing to research the quantified self, data-ontology, death, self, unity and the body. He became national news after using his implant to broadcast his location in a performance that lasted eight months. This performance lead to participation in an ethics committee regarding citizen surveillance and smart-city development for the Dutch government. He was a guest curator for a series of exhibitions in Lil’ Amsterdam Gallery, his work was awarded the Trias Innovationis prize for Art & Science by QAQS. The artist collaborated with the University of Twente on a series of projects regarding citizen participation and multiculturalism. Borggreve is currently involved in research within the faculties of Smart City Research, Smart Textiles and Ambient Intelligence at Saxion University of Applied Sciences where he is leading a course on capacitive relational thinking, supervising a graduation project on the use of EEG systems in Smart City development and furthering his research on performing arts, artificial life and complex system theory.

November 2: Soojin Lee

For the next colloquium, held on November 2nd, 2018 (Friday), we are very pleased to welcome Korean Professor Soojin Lee, who will give a talk on the topic “Art and Creativity in the Era of Artificial Intelligence”.
The talk will start at 4:00 pm in M6094 Future Cinema Studio.

Date: November 2 (Friday)
Time: 4:00 pm
Venue: M6094 Future Cinema Studio, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, 18 Tat Hong Avenue, Kowloon Tong

Topic: Art and Creativity in the Era of Artificial Intelligence – Models, Transformations and Contextualization 

Abstract:

My research over the past 6 years has focused on the visual and cinematographic representation of robots, A.I. and post-humans. I’ve been looked carefully cultural codes and filmic codes, also principles and structures of various artistic productions.
Nowadays I examine A.I. projects such as Sunspring written by Benjamin of New York Technology University and The Next Rembrandt project of Delf Technology University, etc. Various experiments on A.I. Art (or Computational Creativity) are taking place in many fields, the results are evolving surprisingly and rapidly. This presentation concerns this current needs to redefine the concept of creativity in the digital paradigm shift.
First, I will briefly introduce the principles of A.I. Art through the art project based on A.I. technology and we examine the concept of the algorithm. In fact, media art researchers explain that algorithms do not only appear in digital media and A.I. technology.
I want to look through shortly the history of Literature, Installation and Algorithmic Art to understand how algorithms can be understood from a Humanities studies’ point of view. Furthermore, we will think about how the creativity in the era of A.I. should be defined. I will introduce one example <Life Writer> of artists Laurent Mignonneau and Christa Sommerer as a new type of production in which algorithms are introduced.

Biography:

Soojin Lee (born 1974) is a professor in the Department of Cultural Contents and Management at Inha University in Korea, and PhD of French literature at Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis University. Specialty is the Semiotics of Cinema.

She is also a member of the research team of the project Technohumanities of Inha.
Her publications include A Reading of IM Kwon-Taek’s film (2005, in France), Beyond Pictures (2013, in Korea), Transhumanities (2013, in Korea), SF, Possibility of humans and machines (2017, in Korea). And the Korean translations of Christian Metz’s books: The Essay on Signification in Cinema I, II (2011) and The Imaginary Signifier (2009).

November 23: Alexey Marfin

For the next colloquium, held on November 23, 2018 (Friday), we are very pleased to welcome filmmaker and creative director Alexey Marfin, who will give a talk on the topic “The Neon-Lit Streets of Cinema”.

The talk will start at 4:00 pm in M6094 Future Cinema Studio.

Date: 23 November 2018 (Friday)

Time: 4:00 pm

Venue: M6094 Future Cinema Studio, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, 18 Tat Hong Avenue, Kowloon Tong

Topic: The Neon-Lit Streets of Cinema

Abstract:

What does ‘the future’ look like?

You could be forgiven for thinking of a dense neon-lit cityscape, a cross-breed of Shibuya and Kowloon Walled City, during a perpetual rainy night. But why do we have these associations? This particular vision of ‘the future’ appeared in 1980s movies because that was the rise of Japan as a superpower, during the personal electronics boom, when we walked around with Sony Walkmans, and neon signs illuminated streets across the world. Today we find ourselves in a very different society, with different hopes and fears – Japan as a rising superpower has given way to India or China, and even neon lights have been mostly replaced with LED ones – but these 1980s science-fiction cities still persist in our collective consciousness; once again confirmed in recent Hollywood blockbusters. The cities of cinema are mirrors of society at the time when they were written, but they also leave a tremendous cultural legacy for decades, shaping how we see our own world.

About the speaker

Alexey is a filmmaker and creative director, interested in life in contemporary cities. Many of his projects explore internet culture, and identity in the digital age. With a professional background in visual effects and an academic background in architecture, he brings a unique and visually rich approach to filmmaking, combining storytelling with world-design. Alexey’s work is linked to his academic research at SCI-Arc in Los Angeles, where he co-founded the MA Fiction & Entertainment program in 2015. The work of the program explores speculative fiction and critical design, through filmmaking and new media. The studio works with collaborators from Framestore, the Sundance Institute, Disney Imagineering, Netflix, Digital Domain, and more. Alexey has taught and lectured worldwide, including the Royal College of Art, Princeton University, and UCLA.

November 20: Tanya Toft

For the next colloquium, held on November 20, 2018 (Tuesday), we are very pleased to welcome researcher and curator Dr. Tanya Toft Ag, who will give a talk on the topic “Urban Media Art & Change (Expanded Reality)”.
The talk will start at 4:00 pm in M6094 Future Cinema Studio.

Date: 2O November 2018 (Tuesday)

Time: 4:00 pm

Venue: M6094 Future Cinema Studio, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, 18 Tat Hong Avenue, Kowloon Tong

Topic: Urban Media Art & Change (Expanded Reality)

Abstract:

We face a task with art today – especially art that evolves in contingency with our urban media and communicative existence (urban media art) – which is to figure out what we want from it. In our current ‘aesthetic regime’, art is freed from specific rules, hierarchies, subject matter and genres (Jacques Rancière), and increasingly floating free of historical determination, conceptual definition and critical judgement (Hal Foster). In this horizontal artistic domain, since art is not what it used to be, rather than ‘what art is’ we can question ‘what art does’ (Susa Pop et al.). This leads to questions of how art is implicated with creating a sense of difference or change in the world, a perspective that has been raised by many art movements historically and that feeds recent initiatives of bringing art into labs and conversations of science, biology, architecture, and urban development.

While art has traditionally operated in a symbolic, representational layer, dealing with representational issues and a ‘crisis of perception’, the real perceptual challenges today are however mechanisms of an expanded reality: a reality shaping with digital media, data aggregation and algorithmic operations cuing our human behaviors, structures of thinking and neurological evolution. With these, today’s data culture industries change the world by targeting our neurosensory systems – contributing to what neuroscientists have named a ‘cognitive crisis’. These mechanisms are radically changing what art – art that want’s to ‘do’ and create change in the world – is up against.

In other words: global urban environments are changing, and that changes the urban context for art and art’s forms and inquiries. This situation urges us to re-evaluate art’s role in the urban context as well as how we research, produce, curate, critique and further discourse around art. How can we seize the expanding routes of art that evolve very fast with media aesthetics, that take forms and idioms we cannot ground in one disciplinary discourse, or in perspective of conditions of previous times? What do we want from art – when implicated with how things change?

Biography:

Dr. Tanya Toft Ag is a curator, researcher, writer and lecturer examining trajectories of media art(s) and urban change. She holds a Master of Arts in Media Studies from The New School, and a Master of Arts in Modern Culture with specialization in Urbanity and Aesthetics from Copenhagen University. In 2017 she gained her doctoral degree from Copenhagen University with a critical perspective on urban media art as temporal, contemporary matter in perspective of conditions of intensity, intelligence and immersion in urban media aesthetics. She has taken up visiting scholarships at Columbia University, The New School and Konstfack – University of Arts, Crafts and Design (CuratorLab). In 2018-2020 she is a research fellow at the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong. She has presented her work at international conferences worldwide and held keynotes at Elektronika Festival 2018 in Belo Horizonte, Live the City 2016 in Bangkok, and City Link Conference 2015 in Copenhagen.
Her curatorial practice evolves with media art and media architecture in urban environments, as curator of the Screen City Biennial 2017 (Stavanger) and head of the biennial’s artistic research program, and associated with the Streaming Museum (NYC) since 2011 and Verve Cultural/SP Urban Digital Festival (São Paulo) since 2012. Independent exhibitions include Voyage to the Virtual (Scandinavia House, NYC, 2015) and Here All Alone (Copenhagen, 2015). She is chair and member of various conference and gallery boards (Media Art Histories – RE:SOUND 2019, Media Architecture Biennale 2018, Human-Computer Interaction Conference (HCI) 2017 and 2018, Open Sky Gallery 2015-2016). She is editor of Digital Dynamics in Nordic Contemporary Art (Intellect, 2018/2019) and co-editor of What Urban Media Art Can Do – Why, When, Where, and How? (av edition, 2016). In 2017 she co-initiated the globally networked Urban Media Art Academy.
More info on http://www.tanyatoft.com

November 13 at 4pm Stephanie Teng

For this colloquium, held on November 13, 2018 (Tuesday), we are very pleased to welcome photographer Stephanie Teng, who will give a talk on the topic “Honesty and ethics in art”.
The talk will start at 4:00 pm in M6094 Future Cinema Studio.

Date: 13 November 2018 (Tuesday)
Time: 4:00 pm
Venue: M6094 Future Cinema Studio, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, 18 Tat Hong Avenue, Kowloon Tong

Topic: Honesty and ethics in photography

Abstract:

In the digital and political climate we’re in, honesty and ethics have never been more paramount. The industry has never been more crowded with photographers and content creators. So how can we remain honest and stay true to who we are in terms of aesthetic and building relationships? Is it possible to balance making a living while also pursuing making art?

Biography:

Stephanie Teng is a commercial photographer by trade and a documentary photographer at heart. From fashion, lifestyle to still life photography – she believes in the power of versatility and having transferable skills across different genres of the visual arts. Her creative vision is shaped by her passion for creating compelling visual narratives that challenge convention and inspire action.

Since embarking on her freelance journey in 2015, she has worked with: GQ Japan, Conde Nast Traveler, Pacific Place Magazine, IC Magazine, The Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Swire Hotels & Restaurants, Design Anthology, #Legend, The Press Room Group, Grana, Clockenflap and more.