The Anthropocene]]> Technology]]> Yvonne Volkart]]> Europe]]> The Anthropocene]]> Technology]]> 16 Nov 2018, Fri 12:00 PM - 01:30 PM
NTU ADM (School of Art, Design and Media) Library Cinema Room, Mezzanine Level

This lecture presents the Basel part of the exhibition series Eco-Visionaries. Art, New Media and Ecology after the Anthropocene, of which Yvonne Volkart is a co-curator. The exhibition is related to her research project Ecodata – Ecomedia – Ecoaesthetics which investigates new media, technologies, and techno-scientific methods (registering, collecting and interpreting data) in the arts in view of understanding their role and significance for the perception and awareness of “the ecological.”

Assuming that there is no escape of technology in our technosphere, the belief in technologies as tools for information and help is widespread in both technophile and critical discourses of the Anthropocene. Many artists use technologies like sensors and methods like Big Data to get in touch with what has been unknown for a long time. They try to “translate” earthbound signals into human perception, in order to deliver information and establish new relations between non-humans and humans. But what exactly do ecomedia and ecodata deliver/narrate? How do they affect us? Drawing on the Basel part of the group exhibition Eco-Visionaries, as well as on a further aesthetic projects and theories of media-ecology, this lecture discusses how ecomedia might enable (or not) participation and transversal thinking. What does the current euphoric take to the non-human imply, if we want to overcome the paralysis of the Anthropocene? At which point do come the people into play?

This programme is part of Nature and Urbanity: Acts of Life, a critical research residency and presentation project that seeks to explore the relationship between environments and humankind in times of rapid urbanisation and digitalisation. The project is transdisciplinary in nature and lends itself to discussions between fields of art, philosophy, sociology, urbanism, and technology. Acts of Life is a collaboration of NTU CCA Singapore and MCAD Manila, commissioned by the Goethe-Institut Singapore and Manila.]]>
Yvonne Volkart]]> Europe]]>