Telematic Embrace

The workshop will be predominantly practical and the students are expected to create a new original work as a response to the topic proposed by the workshop.

The objective is to explore the possible ways in which the digital space, created by the internet and the telematic technologies connecting remote places, can become an environment for art and creativity. And to use this space for developing a telematic art work.

By 'telematic' we mean that the art work exists in a dynamic relation between the digital and the physical space, using Internet to connect locations that are geographically distant, with collaborators, partners, performers, audiences interacting with each other from different locations. Such art work can be experienced live from one of the connected locations, or by any other access single point through the online stream, using computers or mobile devices.

The title of the workshop finds inspiration from the famous book Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology, and Consciousness a collection of writings by British pioneering artist and theorist Roy Ascott. The book explores Ascott’s ideas on how networked communication has shaped behavior and consciousness within and beyond the realm of what is conventionally defined as art.

PROPOSED TOPIC: DIASPORA

The workshop encourages the participants to investigating the lives of separated people, families and communities and how these manage to stay connected with each other thanks to the use of Internet, social media, instant chat messaging and videoconferencing applications.

Throughout human history people have moved to foreign lands, crossing borders to find new homes. In recent years the phenomena has reached record numbers. Communities all over the world have been experiencing such diaspora: the displacement, migration and dispersion of individuals away from their homes because of forces such as globalization, neoliberalism, imperialism, poverty, violence, political persecution, ethnic conflicts, environmental challenges, etc.

We want to collect stories of people that live in a state of physical separation and understand on how they use the digital media in order to stay close to their loved ones, participate in their communities, exchange ideas and make art, driven by the need to make contact, share experiences, maintain sensible human relations, find intimacy and the resemblance of a normal life.

These stories will be then be used as sources of inspiration for creating a new telematic art work.