Barbara Büscher: Live Electronic Arts und Intermedia: die 1960er Jahre (2002) [German]
Filed under thesis | Tags: · 1960s, art, art history, computer art, cybernetics, dance, electronic art, electronic music, expanded cinema, intermedia, intermedia art, media art, performance art, systems theory, technology, theatre
“Die in der Geschichte der Künste als Neoavantgarde der frühen 1960er Jahre bezeichneten Entwicklungen der Grenzüberschreitung und Prozessorientierung bilden in exemplarischen Analysen das Zentrum des Gegenstandsbereichs dieser Arbeit. Sie umfassen sowohl die grundlegenden Innovationen, die – von John Cages Ideen und Konzeptionen angestoßen – die Arbeit der Komponisten/Performer der Live Electronic Music prägten, wie die Erweiterung der künstlerischen Materialien und Veränderung der Verfahren der Bildenden Kunst seit Happening und Fluxus. Sie umfassen die minimalistischen Verschiebungen des Verständnisses von Körper-Bewegung und Objekten in der Tanz/Performance vor allem der New Yorker Judson Dance Group und die performative Erforschung der Grundlagen von Kino/Film-Wahrnehmung im Expanded Cinema.
An diesen drei Bereichen wird eine doppelte historische Bewegung aufgezeigt: zum einen die des Durchstreichens, Verschiebens, Ersetzens konventionalisierter Parameter und Wert-Hierarchien; zum anderen eine durch den Entwicklungsschub technischer Medien und deren Auswirkungen auf Gesellschaft und Wahrnehmung angestoßenes Interesse an der Verbindung von Kunst und Medien. Eine wichtige Schnittstelle dieser Entwicklungen manifestiert sich in den Aufführungen der inzwischen legendären Nine Evenings: Theatre and Engineering, die 1966 in New York stattfanden. Die Analyse dieses Ereignisses, des Arbeitsprozesses, der ihm vorausging und an dem in gleicher Weise Künstler und Ingenieure beteiligt waren, wie der einzelnen Performances bildet einen Ausgangspunkt dieser Untersuchung.
Dass Systemtheorie und Kybernetik als Denkmodelle für die Kunstproduktion erschlossen werden sollten, lässt sich nicht nur anhand der Manifestationen dieses Ereignisses zeigen, sondern auch anhand der Analyse zeitgenössischer Diskurse im Kunstfeld nachweisen. Live Electronic Arts heißt in diesem Zusammenhang: das unmittelbar (aktuell) vorgeführte Handeln mit technischen Medien in einer performativen Anordnung. Diese Verbindung wird von den Künstlern selbst als Mensch/Maschine-Kopplung verstanden – der Konstruktionsprozess wird zu einem wesentlichen Bestandteil künstlerischer Strategie. Der Einbezug zeitgenössischer Technologien wird so nicht als Frage nach der Neuartigkeit von Darstellungsmodi relevant, sondern als eine Frage nach Prozessen des Regelns, Steuerns und der Signalübertragung (control&communication) – also nach den Prozessen, die das Agieren mit ihnen strukturieren.
Ausgehend von den Nine Evenings und der an ihnen beteiligten Künstler – Musiker, Tänzer und Choreographen sowie Bildende Künstler und Filmemacher – widmet sich die Arbeit in detaillierter Untersuchung den Versuchsreihen der einzelnen Künstler, denen die experimentellen Performances zugerechnet werden können. Sie zeigt für alle drei Bereiche – Live Electronic Music, die performativen Praktiken der Judson Dance Group und Expanded Cinema – unter welchen Bedingungen, ein Interesse und die Arbeit an der Kopplung von Körper-Bewegung und technischen Systemen entstand.”
Live Electronic Arts und Intermedia: die 1960er Jahre. Über den Zusammenhang von Performance und zeitgenössischen Technologien, kybernetischen Modellen und minimalistischen Kunst-Strategien
Habilitationsschrift an der Fakultät für Geschichte, Kunst- und Orientwissenschaften der Universität Leipzig
Betreuer: Theo Girshausen
Gutachter: Inge Baxmann, Siegfried Zielinski
284 pages
Christopher Kullenberg: The Quantification of Society: A Study of a Swedish Research Institute and Survey-based Social Science (2012)
Filed under thesis | Tags: · actor-network theory, data, research, social science, society, sweden, welfare state
This thesis is concerned with the contemporary history of quantitative surveys in Sweden. The core epistemic practice of constructing surveys is examined empirically through a case study of the SOM Institute (Samhälle, Opinion, Medier) at University of Gothenburg. The SOM Institute has performed surveys in Sweden since 1986. However, the methodology of quantitative surveys with representative sampling techniques dates back to the 1940s. A central theme in this theses is to follow how these methods and techniques have been made to work under different historical circumstances.
Theoretically, this thesis relies on concepts that are derived from classical Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and then further developed. This conceptual tool-box is then utilized to select moments in the history of surveys that are of special importance for understanding how Swedish society has been quantified.
Special attention is drawn to how the accuracy of surveys is established through mutual reinforcement with previous data. By closely studying how the SOM Institute conducted their first postal surveys in the 1980s, the relation and importance of other, contemporary surveys is emphasized. Moreover, the creation of a state-science interface is described by going back in time to the 1950s and the creation of the first academic surveys. This was also the moment in history when random samples were established. Here, the impact of the creation of the welfare state and the role of science in this political project is discussed and related to the expansion of the social sciences.
To further understand the border between academic science and pollster research, a controversy that took place during the elections of 1985 is studied. The controversy was ignited because pollster data predicted that the conservative party (Moderaterna) would win the elections. However, this turned out to be false. What followed was a debate concerning both the accuracy of different methodologies and the political bias of different surveys. Academic scientists succeeded in creating a position that guaranteed value-free social science, which later would have an impact on the future of social scientific investigations.
The dissertation concludes that the way social phenomena are quantified today, must be understood in a historical context that includes the epistemic practice of social scientists. The creation of large-scale quantitative surveys not only presupposes certain aspects of modern society, it also transforms these societies.
Keywords: Quantification, survey, SOM Institute, social science, epistemic practice, Actor-Network Theory, welfare state, center of calculation.
Dissertation thesis
Department of Philosophy, Linguistics, and Theory of Science, University of Gothenburg
ISBN 978-91-628-8458-1
Kopimi
225 pages
Stefan Szczelkun: Exploding Cinema 1992 – 1999: Culture and Democracy (2002)
Filed under thesis | Tags: · 1990s, cinema, democracy, exploding cinema, film, film history, mail art, theory of communication
The Exploding Cinema is a fusion of projection, performance and social occasion. Architectural spaces, transformed with the use of slides and looped film projections, are used as the backdrop for a programme of short videos, film and performance. A ‘master of ceremonies’ sets up an informal dialogue with the audience, introduces the films and gives filmmakers who are present the chance to speak. She invites the audience to show their films in the future – with the promise that nothing will be censored and everything will be shown. By thoughtful programming this open way of soliciting material results in a varied and lively programme, which continues to attract large audiences.
The Exploding Cinema is democratically run by an open collective. In the last ten years it has put on more that 100 events, showing the work of around 1000 filmmakers, with audience numbers averaging around 200. It is fiercely independent of public grants and supports itself entirely from admission charges.
The group is contextualised against a background of, on the one hand, similarly open cultural formations experienced by the author since 1967 and, on the other, by a history of underground cinema and home movies.
Culture’s central function is taken as being the ongoing total qualitative assessement of any community’s condition. The need for a theoretical framework to develop this basic concept leads to a consideration of Jurgen Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action (1981) critiqued using Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge. The relation between cultural expression, a community of understanding and democratic consensus is argued as being at the base of an appreciation of such collective activity.
Groups like Exploding Cinema are often complex and multi-layered, with multiple and dynamic authorship. Their discourses can be largely informal, oral and unrecorded. Research methods used should be transparent and their limitations acknowledged.
It is proposed that representations that arise from a triangulation of several methodologies would provide a better basis for historical discourse than any singular approach. Two methodologies are used to analyse existing data (Content Analysis and Semiotics) and two are used to obtain new data (Participant Observation and Oral History). The partial results of each of these are then brought together with traditional archival methods to construct a historical account in which thematic and chronological strands are interwoven.
Phd Thesis
School of Communications, Royal College of Art London, 2002
ExplodingCinema.org online resource
View online (HTML)
Comment (0)