[rohrpost] "Surplus Art: Art – Science – Philosophy”, 40th International Colloquium, Slovenian Society of Aesthetics, Ljubljana, October 10–13, 2012

[Ingeborg Reichle]

Slovenian Society of Aesthetics

40th International Colloquium: “Surplus Art: Art – Science – Philosophy”

Collaborating institutions: Science and Research Center & Faculty of
Humanities, University of Primorska, Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana,
Gallery of Contemporary Art, Celje, Kapelica Gallery, Ljubljana,
Cultural Centre of European Space Technologies, Vitanje

October 10–13, 2012

Location: Museum of Contemporary Art, Metelkova, Maistrova 3, SI-1000
Ljubljana

Program committee: Polona Tratnik (president), Ales Erjavec, Mojca
Puncer, Misko Suvakovic, Krystyna Wilkoszewska, Marie-Luise Angerer,
Sue “Johnny” Golding, Maria Antonia Gonzalez Valerio

Organizing committee: Polona Tratnik, Monika Vrecar, Spela Pavli


“Surplus Art: Art – Science – Philosophy”

Between the 16th and the 18th centuries in Europe a transition takes
place from the scientific tradition of the Middle Ages to the new age
of science, which is today known by the term scientific revolution,
when the field of science is being constituted in a modern sense. At
the end of this period in a similar manner art as an autonomous sphere
has been established, which becomes the subject of aesthetics as
philosophy of art. In the 1980s and 1990s the discussions about the
end of art, philosophy of art, art history and modernity are very
dynamic and diagnose bigger changes that happen in the field of art.
In the middle of the 1990s several theories attempt to detect the
phenomenon of convergence of the fields separated in modernity. With a
group of colleagues John Brockman develops the concept of the third
culture (The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution, 1995) in
which he borrows from C. P. Snow (The Two Cultures, 1959) who, in the
second edition of his book (1963), already detects the emergence of a
new, i.e. the third culture. If Snow speaks about separation of the
two cultures, scientific and literary intellectual, Brockman detects
the appearance of third culture thinkers, who have become the new
public intellectuals, while science has become a public culture, a big
story. The term third culture soon became transmitted into the art
circles where it has started to denote the growing phenomenon of the
convergence and intertwining of art and science and which later echoes
also in the ideas about the fourth culture etc. Simultaneously with
the concept of the third culture a group of theoreticians of science
(Gibbons et al., 1994) publish a well-noticed theory about the Mode-2
science, which has started to appear along with the traditional, i.e.
the modern mode of science (Mode-1 science), but which is different:
therein interdisciplinarity is emphasized, present are heterogeneity,
greater social responsibility, with professionals temporarily
collaborating with the aim of solving specific problems, science moves
to nonscientific fields, applicability is increased, and collaboration
with economy becomes important—the paradigm characterizes humanities
as well. Seven years later a theory is re-considered with emphasizing
the relation between knowledge and public in the age of uncertainty
(Nowotny et al., 2001). In the last decade professional communities of
art/science consolidate and enable the work in laboratories and
similar specialized environments. Projects that arise from the
collaboration between artists and scientists are being shown and
discussed at the world-format festivals, financial sources are looking
for the ways to support such projects, carried out by the artists of a
new type, i.e. artists-researchers. We are witnessing an occurrence of
a phenomenon which sometimes holds a simple name: new renaissance.
However, the recent voices also oppose the possibility of art and
science to intertwine in a common enterprise (Jean-Marc Levy Leblond,
La science n’est pas l’art, 2010).

The colloquium is devoted to a re-consideration of the surplus art,
brought about with mixing and even traversing of art into science.
Attention will be devoted to the related issues, such as: what are the
grounds for, and consequences of, the convergences and divergences of
the two fields, art and science, what function attains art in the new
structure of the social fields and in regard to the changed modes of
production and communication of knowledge, what are its
socio-structural possibilities. Also: what is the role of philosophy
within the process of the intertwinement of art with science and in
what manner can in this connection philosophy of art today still be
thought?

The language of the colloquium is English.

The colloquium has been supported by Slovenian Research Agency and
Slovenian Book Agency.


WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2012

18:00–19:00 guest speaker and featured art scene: Jurij Krpan &
Kapelica Gallery: Producing and Showing Projects in the Intersection
of Art and Science

19:00 refreshment


THURSDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2012

08:45–09:00 opening of the colloquium

09:00–09:35 Polona Tratnik (Slovenian Society of Aesthetics,
president; Science and Research Centre & Faculty of Humanities,
University of Primorska): New Renaissance: Technē and Nature, Art and
(Bio) Technology

09:35–10:10 Krystyna Wilkoszewska (Head of the Department of
Aesthetics at the Institute of Philosophy, the Jagiellonian
University, Krakow, Poland; president of Polish Association of
Aesthetics, president): Between Art and Science. Tasks of Contemporary
Artists

10:10–10:45 Misko Suvakovic (Faculty of Music, Belgrade & University
of Arts, Belgrade): Art, Politics, Technology, and Science –
Spectacularisation

10:45–11:00 coffee break

11:00–11:35 Marie-Luise Angerer (Academy of Media Arts Cologne): From
a Post-Medium to a Post-
Biological Condition

11:35–12:10 Robert Mitchell (Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in
Science and Cultural Theory, Duke University): Media and Surplus:
Population Aesthetics

12:10–12:45 Maria Antonia Gonzalez Valerio (National Autonomous
University of Mexico): Bio Art on the Verge of Aesthetic Ontology

12:45–14:30 lunch break

14:30–15:05 Melentie Pandilovski (Video Pool Media Arts Centre
Winnipeg, director): Creativity:
Tool for Transcending of the Breakdown of Communication Between the
Cultures of Sciences and Humanities

15:05–15:40 Monika Vrecar (Slovenian Society of Aesthetics,
secretary): Calculating Creativity

15:40–16:15 Ernest Zenko (Science and Research Centre & Faculty of
Humanities, University of Primorska): Aesthetics, Technology, Media:
The Case of Friedrich Kittler

16:15–16:30 coffee break

16:30–17:05 Ingeborg Reichle (Hermann von Helmholtz-Zentrum für
Kulturtechnik, Humboldt
University Berlin): Modes of Visualization: Aesthetics and Realism in
Scientific Visualization

17:05–17:40 Jan Babnik (Fotografija magazine, editor-in-chief):
Transparency and Documentary.
Photography in the Age of Simulation


FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2012

09:00–09:35 Nenad Jelesijevic (KITCH Institute): Toward
Disidentification. Entering the Common In- between Art, Philosophy and
Science

09:35–10:10 Darko Strajn (Educational Research Institute; Institute
for Studies in Humanities, Ljubljana): Fictions of Science

10:10–10:45 Kenneth G. Hay (University of Leeds): Two Cultures Still?
Some Considerations of Scientific and Artistic Method

10:45–11:00 coffee break

11:00–11:35 Lev Kreft (Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana; Peace
Institute, director):
(Dis)enfranchisement of Surplus

11:35–12:10 Stephen Crocker (Memorial University of Newfoundland):
Noise is to Communication What a Virus is to an Organism

12:10–12:45 Mojca Puncer (University of Maribor): The Surplus Art on
the Intersections with Science, through the Lens of Philosophy: A Few
Case Studies

12:45–14:30 lunch break

14:30–15:05 Sue “Johnny” Golding (Centre for Fine Art, Birmingham
Institute of Art & Design at Birmingham City University, director):
Ana-Materialism & The Pineal Eye: Becoming Mouth-Breast (or Visual
Arts after Descartes, Bataille, Butler, Deleuze, and Synthia with an ‘S’)

15:05–15:40 Zdravko Radman (Institute of Philosophy, Zagreb;
University of Split): The Primacy of the Aesthetic

15:40–16:15 Valentina Hribar Sorcan (Faculty of Arts, University of
Ljubljana): The Impact of Science on Abstract Art

16:15–16:30 coffee break

16:30–17:05 Spela Pavli: Contemporary Share and Permanent Transition
in Visual Praxis

17:05–17:40 Alan N. Shapiro: On the Conditions for the Valid and
Invalid Uses of Trans- and Trans- disciplinary

17:40 closing of the colloquium


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Slovenian Society of Aesthetics
Gosposka 13, 1000 Ljubljana, www.sde.si, info at sde.si