[Image: Daniel Rozin “Circles Mirror” 2005] Upgrade! Boston: Spectral Analogies: Casey Reas and the Art of Programming. A talk by Meredith Hoy :: September 28, 2010; 7:00 – 9:00 pm :: MIT Media Lab, Lecture Hall (6th Floor, Room ), 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Abstract: Incorporating the work of Daniel Rozin, Casey Reas, and Sol LeWitt, Spectral Analogies places the notion of the digital in an expanded field, framing it as a mechanism, a process, and a constructive method that operates well beyond the boundaries of computational technology. Taking as its starting point the hypothesis that “the digital” is a term that most often refers to a technological milieu rather than an aesthetic category, this talk addresses some of the features that identify the sensorially apprehensible, aesthetic characteristics of digitality. It argues that the digital as an aesthetic category can be disaggregated from computational technology, such that digital features are observable in artworks and artifacts that pre-exist the invention of computers by decades or even centuries. Whereas some computationally generated or aided pictures, such as the photographs of Jeff Wall, obscure their digital configuration, this talk will focus on examples of contemporary computational artworks that foreground the aesthetic category of the digital as I have defined it. An artifact whose digital structure is visible on its surface speaks, in a visual language with its own distinct syntax, about the relationship between surface and infrastructure, representation and technology. This talk seeks to open the notion of the digital to renegotiation and renewed interrogation, and to create the possibility of a new conversation between contemporary media arts and art of both the recent and deep past.

[Image: Casey Reas “Process 14” 2006]

Meredith Hoy is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 2010. Her dissertation, entitled From Point to Pixel: A Genealogy of Digital Aesthetics, traces links between contemporary digital art and modern painting. Drawing on theories of visuality, space and spatial practice, cybernetics and systems theory, phenomenology, and post-structuralism and semiotics, her research focuses on the impact of technology on art and visual culture. She has written on modern and contemporary art and architecture, generative art, information visualization, and the phenomenology of networked space.

Upgrade! Boston is curated by Jo-Anne Green for Turbulence.org. It is one of 34 nodes currently active in Upgrade! International, an emerging network of autonomous nodes united by art, technology, and a commitment to bridging cultural divides. If you would like to present your work or get involved, please email jo at turbulence dot org.