Artist Animal by Steve Baker, University of Minnesota Press:

Artist Animal examines the work of contemporary artists who directly confront questions of animal life, treating animals not aesthetically or symbolically but rather as beings who actively share the world with humanity. Featuring full-color examples of their art, it situates artists within the wider project of thinking beyond the human, asserting art’s power to open new ways of thinking about animals.

Animals have always been compelling subjects for artists, but the rise of animal advocacy and posthumanist thought has prompted a reconsideration of the relationship between artist and animal. Continue reading

Digital Prohibition: Piracy and Authorship in New Media Art by Carolyn Guertin:

In the first book to discuss the global politics of creativity and emergent models of authorship in a digital age, Guertin explores the creation of new media forms by artists who use technology to challenge established modes. Redefining authorship within remix culture, the book identifies the potentialities in the social nature of electronic works to foster new creative practices – from sampling to mashups to digital anthropophagy – on a global scale.

Carolyn Guertin holds a dual appointment in digital media — as Assistant Professor and Director of the eCreate Lab at the University of Texas at Arlington and as a member of the graduate faculty at Transart Institute in Berlin, Germany. Continue reading

DEAF2012 (Dutch Electronic Art Festival) :: Symposium: Vital Beauty – May 16-20, 2012 :: DeBalie, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

The symposium focuses on the question of how the age-old notion of beauty can regain an importance appropriate to the 21st century.

Our need for beauty has not diminished, as hard as modernism tried to erase it from art and life and supplant it with the sublime. It was a sublime that increasingly associated itself with negation and deconstruction. In contrast, vital beauty, as defined by John Ruskin more than 150 years ago, is a beauty of sympathies and affinities with life forms. Yet vital beauty must be reinvented, since life forms today can be technological as well as natural. Continue reading

PLATFORM3: B∃SETZT– Discourse on Art, Politics and Aesthetics :: International Video Call — Deadline: June 1, 2012.

PLATFORM3 – Spaces for Contemporary Art is a unique, progressive art location in Munich. Since March 2009 it has been offering space for local as well as international exhibitions and discourse projects. It is a production location as well as experimental field for artists, young curators and culture managers.

In the summer of 2012 PLATFORM3 is organizing a series of events on the topic of occupying strategies in art. Besides lectures by experts and panel discussions, there will also be a screening on the topic of art in urban space. Continue reading

Click on image to go to video. Transcription of talk here. Related: James Bridle’s The New Aesthetic and Bruce Sterling’s An Essay on the New Aesthetic. Continue reading

Berkman Luncheon Series: Dalida Maria Benfield: Unexpected Development: Decolonial Media Aesthetics and Women’s ICT4D Video :: April 17, 2012; 12:30 pm :: Berkman Center, 23 Everett Street, second floor, Cambridge, Massachusetts + webcast :: RSVP required for those attending in person via this form.

ICT4D (Information Communication Technology for Development) powerfully frames women’s grassroots video production in the Global South, much of which is distributed widely through YouTube. Often, these videos reproduce racialized and gendered discourses — legacies of colonialism — in their narratives of economic, social, and technological progress. Continue reading

Data Is Political: A Symposium on Art, Design and Information Politics :: March 15, 2012; 10:00 am – 6:00 pm :: Bergen National Academy of Art & Design, Strømgaten 1, 5015 Bergen, Norway.

Data Is Political brings together artists, designers and scientists to discuss such questions as: What are the aesthetic, ethical and spatial dimensions of information and its relation to power, the production of knowledge, and the construction of urban spaces? Speakers include Philippe Rekacewicz, Peter Sunde, Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas, Max Van Kleek, and Daniel van der Velden with contributions from Steve Dixon, Michelle Teran, and Jill Walker Rettberg. The event is organized by Amber Frid-Jimenez and Ben Dalton. Continue reading

Codings with Giselle Beiguelman, Commodore, Adam Parrish, Jörg Piringer, Casey Reas, Pall Thayer; curated by Nick Montfort :: until March 30, 2012 :: Pace Digital Gallery, 163 William Street, New York City. Continue reading

The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities (Micha Cárdenas, et al) explores the use of multiple simultaneous realities as a medium in contemporary art, including mixed reality, augmented reality and alternate reality approaches. Building on the notion of “trans” from transgender, signifying the crossing of boundaries, the book proposes that transreal aesthetics cross the boundaries created by a proliferation of conceptions of reality that occurred as a result of postmodern theory and emerging technologies.

Proposing three operations for dealing with multiple realities, The Transreal discusses artists and art collectives including Blast Theory, mez breeze, Reza Negarestani, Ricardo Dominguez and Zach Blas. Through these artists’ work and Micha Cárdenas‘ own artwork, including Becoming Dragon and collaborations with Elle Mehrmand Continue reading

Mengele’s Skull: The Rise of Forensic Aesthetics :: February 4 – May 6, 2012 :: Portikus, Alte Brücke 2 / Maininsel, 60594 Frankfurt am Main. Continue reading