overcrowded / Art Everywhere Program

Seminar program : Art Everywhere

• Event: 2 days with conferences, round tables, and artistic exhibitions.
• Size: around 80 persons.
• Participants: mainly scholars, artists, and companies involved in innovation.
• Place : China, Beijing. Innovation Gardens (France Telecom R&D - Beijing) and Dashanzi
• Venue: October, 19-20, 2006

Contacts :
FranceTelecom R&D Beijing

General Introduction: Art – Innovation and Sensitive Intelligence.

- Christine Cayol
"The meaning of "the detour through art and culture".

"How works of art can inspire us and give us some keys to improve our creativity.
We will start with this Picasso’s sentence: « One can only work against. Even against oneself. This is most important. Most painters make themselves a little cake tin and then they can produce cakes…always the same cakes. They are very happy. A painter should never do what people expect from him. The greatest enemy of a painter is his style. » Picasso
Innovation is an attitude based on sensitive intelligence:
It means receptivity and curiosity: our aptitude to keep an open mind and to accept other cultures, languages, thinking.
It means sensitivity: our aptitude to have sharp eyes, sharp ears, sharp senses.
It means to dare and to break through with tradition."

Day 1 – Digital arts: when innovation questions standards

This part aims at understanding the dynamic of digital arts in the world with a specific focus on China. While artistic creation in the West is led by a concern for innovation, it seems that Chinese arts have long been made of reproduction and of a very subtle sense of copying. In this context, however, digital arts are blossoming in China far away from the very organized and rigorously standardized approach of the Chinese traditional artistic creation. What are the very specificities of digital arts? What relations do they have with more traditional forms of artistic creation? Are Chinese digital arts directly related to their cultural environment or are they experiencing a development similar to the West?

For our audience, this first day will be an introduction to the world of artistic creativity and to the particular artistic approach towards innovation.

Morning: Artistic globalization: cross-cultural stakes

Is digital art Western? Presentation : text & ppt
- Emmanuel Mahé
"This is obviously a provocative title, and I will answer that it is not. For example art has always been linked to technique (either in Europe or in China), but the relationship between tekhnê and logos is of course articulated differently. There are cultural specificities, I will show several cases of artists on different continents (in China but also in Australia and Europe), but cultural comparatism contains some limits…"

"Asian Cities Media: observation and intervention laboratories for current multimedia artistic practices."
- Eric Sadin
"We will examine how the technological environment that structures Asian megalopolis (Tokyo, Shanghai, Bangkok…) is marked by such phenomena as density and multiplicity of the devices (giant screens, interactive systems, electronic boards, mobile phones, digital voice…). This ecosystem constitutes a privileged laboratory for observing certain current mutations, and it displays public as well as private spaces saturated with information, which are likely to be invested by practices, and are able to propose new games of signs visibility. Cf "Times_of_the_signS", an inquiry held in 2002 in Asia (videos, installations, works)"

"Architecture in a globalized and digitalized world"
- Ma Yansong
What is the consequence of globalization and digitalization on creativity in the field of architecture? Given the rush on real-estate in urban China, is the Chinese environment favorable to innovative and thought-provoking architectural projects?

Afternoon: Challenging the artistic standards

Authenticity and innovation.
- Colin Chinnery
What does innovation mean for Chinese artists? What is the role and importance of copying, reproducing, and what is the Chinese approach towards the concepts of authenticity and creation?


What place for digital arts in Asia/China?
- Yao Bin
A digital epoch with no mouse or keyboard
We can imagine that, in a near future, we will use computers without any keyboard or mouse, that they will be omnipresent, beyond traditional interfaces. In any kind of sphere, our language can be turned into beautiful pictures in the air; it is the real exchange between the light and the air, and us. Traditional physical surfaces are being eliminated by science and technology. Research on cloning is assailing our conception of the true, the good, and the beautiful. Will value judgments associated to eastern sensations and perceptions be interpreted by science as well? What orientation can new media arts bring to humanity?
About the beginning of new media arts in 798
The development of new media arts
Presentation of some pieces of new media arts

A digital extension of the body
- Fei Jun
Various wireless communication and entertainment equipment, such as mobile phones, MP3s etc, have become necessities of our lives and existence. The ambiguity of their role and the extent to which they are attached to the body, continuously revises our definition of this equipment, these machines. They have become organs – digital extensions of our bodies. What can such a totally new "mobile media" (according to the industry definition) bring to us? As artists, designers and teachers, what can we create with media?


Round table : China Lab?
Given the great ability of Chinese artists to cope with the much codified heritage of Chinese arts on the one side and the globalized implementation of new technologies on the other side, is Asia an appropriate place to reshape our vision of the world?
Moderator: Bérénice Angremy

"Movidéo" : Mobile & Vidéo
Before the end of the day we will display 10 short MMS video movies to illustrate how some devices can be used in an innovative way, and illustrate how "art is everywhere".

Day 2 – In the "real world": when artistic creation questions innovation processes

This part focuses on the transfer from artistic creation to innovation. While artists and creative individuals are working independently or within a research centre or a company, many bridges already exist between innovative artistic creations and the high-tech industry. Artists show different ways of using new technologies to express emotions, or invent new ways to relate to the world. Their very innovative approach is an important source of inspiration for actors of the high-tech industry, who find ideas to develop new products or new services. But pushing to technological advancement is not the only way for artists to influence the industrial world. They also bring another kind of sensibility; they teach us innovative ways to use and develop what we already have. In today’s China, how is digital artistic creation bringing innovative ideas? How are those ideas influencing the economic world?

The second day will be an occasion to demonstrate that the artistic way of apprehending the world can help to implement all kinds of technological, industrial or even management innovations.

Morning: innovation despite and beyond technical constraints

Introduction : Here come the New Leonardos: why art-science-technology interaction matters
- Roger Malina
"A new generation of artists is now working in ways that will change both the direction of art and of techno-science. Innovation and cultural creation occur in a social, cultural and economic context; young scientists and engineers respond to this environment not only to make career choices but also to develop their own desires about what kind of science and technology will happen in the future. The Leonardo organisation, created in 1967 - forty years ago- has now documented the work of some 4000 artists and researchers whose work relies on art-science or art-technology interaction; they are more numerous than the creators who were active during the Renaissance. I will review the weak and strong cases for art-science interaction and why governments and institutions should invest in these new developments as well as the trends over the last 40 years."


Art and design: an interface for innovation?
- Rob Van Kranenburg
RFID & ARPHID, Art & Business
"Artists have always exploited the conditions for technological change, applications and services. In the move towards ubiquitous computing - from the internet to the 'internet of things' - the poetic process of making meaning and creating experiences is no longer only productive on the level of design, but it lies at the heart of the IT architecture of the system, its standards and protocols. In the EU working paper on RFID this is translated as going from 'privacy compliant applications' to 'privacy compliant technology'. Culture operates on all levels of your systems design, not just at output level. Nokia R&D talks about 'supersenses'. Philips researcher Mark van Doorn studies performance and theatre and claims that this has become fundamental to Philips Research and the creation of Ambient Narratives.
In this presentation I will discuss the role of artists in RFID projects ( or ARPHID as Bruce Sterling has asked to call artistic projects with RFID in order to find them with Google) and the importance of extelligence as a concept that a) addresses all the senses, b) testifies to the fundamental change in our data-information infrastructure, c) calls for the need to address the sustainability of wireless architectures."

How do digital arts push to technological innovation?
- Lu Xiaobo
Digital arts question the traditional modes of communication with more interactivity and reflexivity, leading to the development of new ICTs. For example, the difference between the content and the media tend to blur, leading to new demands and modifying the very meaning of creation and communication.

Afternoon: Art everywhere: what applications for industries and management?

What collaboration is possible between arts and sciences?
- Kenneth Fields
"The focus on artistic creation and technological innovation is essentially related to how we manage complex projects/problems using new online collaborative methods/tools.
Those without the ability to comprehend the new methods of collaborative work and attendant social and management issues will be essentially disadvantaged as players in the super-domain of Creative Industry (CI) - a mix of academic, non-profit, industry and government agencies.
My focus in the production pipeline is on concept emergence and development, specifically as related to a master degree at Peking University in which 200 students, who essentially comprise a large research and development laboratory, are trying to find their way in a new field of expertise called Digital Art and Design.
I claim that the development of concepts into demonstrable ideas is intimately related to mastering the new art of collaborative work methods/tools. Recently, I have focused on the development of an online management platform that collocates content issues with these methodological exigencies. The successful students are those who learn to navigate this ambivalence of 'content-method,' who can alternate their foregrounding and backgrounding function at will in order to grasp the wider phenomenon."

Creating Creative Commons for Culture
- Wang Chunyan
The term “Creative Commons” was coined as the appropriate name for a new non-profit organization that was founded at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. The organization is dedicated to building a “commons” of “creative” works which can be easily shared and built upon by offering the creators of those works flexible copyright licenses.
Creative Commons takes advantage of the infrastructure of the Internet by enabling a global digital commons in which creators can build upon each other’s works without legal friction.

The Chinese chapter (China Mainland version) of Creative Commons is one of the jurisdiction-based implementations of the global Creative Commons movement which is attracting artists, cyber activists, scientists, lawyers and academic scholars from around the world. The very idea of Creative Commons is based on the traditional Chinese approach of society sharing its intellectual creativity, under a reasonable set of guidelines. Adopting the Creative Commons licensing system in China would be a significant step forward in helping China further the development of culturally diverse creative works, and improve the ability of the people of China to communicate effectively with other societies and cultures around the world.

This presentation will review the development and the current status of the China Mainland version of the Creative Commons licenses and will demonstrate the usage of the licenses in China. It will also cover the significance of localization in the global Creative Commons movement.


Art and innovation: integrating artists in R&D units for a creative society
- Arantxa Mendiharat
"Disonancias is an art and industry collaboration project located in Spain (Basque country). The project seeks to promote the diversification in relation to the process of innovation inside research labs and R&D units, based on the potentials of experience and exchange generated by the relationship with artists. Ten international artists collaborate with ten R&D units during 6 months; the projects should result in the construction of a prototype or drawings of ideas, or development of new approaches or processes." www.disonancias.com

What partnership between artists and engineers?
- Engineer, working together with an artist to build new products.
How is it possible to build a dialogue between artists and engineers within an innovating structure? How to develop imagination when implementing projects?

Round table
Towards "Innovation 2.0"? From the definition of problems to practical solutions, what about working all together?
- Moderator: Jean-Francois Doulet
With also Olivier Allais and Jean Menu.

Cocktail and networking
Place: Dashanzi, Cubic Art Center. Inauguration of a digital arts exhibition that will illustrate some of the conferences.
+ Talking about future projects!

Speakers

Olivier Allais
Consultant and Senior Expert for the EU-China Information Society Project. Over 20 years of working experience with International Organisations (UN, EU). Follows issues related to cross-cultural (China and outside) exchange and cooperation programme, convergence, new mobile and internet services, public services transformation, ITC4D, digital media new value chain, Intellectual Property value enhancement and new business models, new multi-media contents and formats. Art collector. Founder of MMM-Multi-Media Millennium, a non-for-profit organisation supporting innovative new digital contents and applications.

Bérénice Angremy
Independent writer and curator, Berenice Angremy has been based in Beijing for four years. She is the co-initiator of the Dashanzi International Art Festival - an independent event in Beijing that is preparing for its fourth edition - and manager of Thinking Hands, a design, curatorship and events company. Angremy also opened the only theatre in 798 art district, South Gate Space, in 2005.

Christine Cayol
Philosopher, art critic, director of Synthesis cabinet, specialized in "the detour through art". Author of L’art en Espagne (NEF), L’intelligence sensible (Village Mondial), Voir est un art (Village Mondial), essay on innovation spirit in Western painting.

Colin Chinnery
Sino-British, he is both an artist and a commissioner. He is a former cultural attache at Beijing British Council and is now artistic director at Foundation Ullens which will open soon in Dashanzi Art District.

Kenneth Fields
Ph.D Professor, China Electronic Music Center, China's Central Conservatory of Music. Professor of Digital Art and Design, Beijing University.

Fei Jun
Multimedia artist and designer, with a Master of Electro-Arts from Alford University, New York, Fei Jun is currently Professor of Digital Media Studio at China's Central Academy of Fine Arts.

Lu Xiaobo
Professor
Vice Chairman of Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University
Dean of Information Arts & Design Department
Council Member of China Industrial Design Association
Vice Director ID Education Committee, Ministry of Education
Organizer of The 2nd Beijing International New Media Arts Symposium, and the Art and Science International Exhibition and Symposium.

Ma Yansong
Founder of MAD Architectural Design Studio in Beijing, Ma Yansong graduated from Yale University School of Architecture in 2002 with a Master’s Degree in Architecture and the Samuel J. Fogelson Memorial Award of Design Excellent. He has worked for Zaha Hadid Architects in London, Eisenman Architects in New York City and Murphy/Jahn Architects in Chicago. He is the first Chinese architect to win an international architecture competition abroad, in Mississauga, Canada.

EmmanuelMahe
Ph.D, Information and Communication Sciences, France Telecom R&D.

Roger Malina
Ph.D, astrophysicist and editor. Former director of the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille, and the Center for EUV Astrophysics at the University of California, Berkeley. He also serves as chairman of the board of Leonardo, co-chair of the International Advisory Board of the Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts …

Arantxa Mendiharat
Coordinator of Divergentes 2005 and Disonancias 2006.

Jean Menu
Director of multimedia and technical industries (head of the new technologies department) at the "Centre national de la cinématographie" (CNC) since 2000. Carrier in the field of communication and culture. Specialist of the Internet and new technologies. Within the CNC, which is a French public organism in charge of cinema and audiovisual regulations, he is responsible for aids to innovation and to new digital contents: research, technical industries of cinema, digital creation, video games, contents for mobile phones, physical video, as well as VOD and digital cinema.

Eric Sadin
Writer, conceptor of multimedia installations, he also presents conferences about the relation between arts, language, and technologies. He is the director of the periodical "éc/arts", and he won the Pompidou Prize with his site "Tokyo Reengineering".

Rob Van Kranenburg
Innovation and media theorist involved with negotiability strategies of new technologies and artistic practices, the relationship between the formal and informal in cultural and economic policy, and the requirements for a sustainable cultural economy.

Wang Chunyan
Project Lead, Creative Commons China Mainland;
Associate Professor, Renmin University of China Law School

Yao Bin
Chineze citizen, Yao Bin lived in Japan for ten years before coming to Beijing where he settled down. He is a multimedia artist (sound as well as image) and he is currently the artistic manager of the 11-Art.com, the only space in Beijing that is totally dedicated to numeric arts and new media. www.11-art.com

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