SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP

SPATIAL AESTHETICS

AND

ARTIFICIAL ENVIRONMENTS 

WORKING SPACE AND FORUM


Everyone interested in "Spatial Aesthetics and Artificial Environments"

is invited to become a member of this SIG.

If you have any questions,

please contact:

Dr. Gerriet K. Sharma

(gerriet@spaes.org)

Endorsed by the Executive Board of The Society for Artistic Research

After all, […] artist’s work is originally engaged in the question of the sensibility of the other.

(Stiegler, B., (2014), Symbolic Misery, Volume 1, The Hyper-Industrial Epoch, p.1.)

Founding members

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Agenda 2020/21


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Agenda 2022


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THE GROUP

 

In this Special Interest Group (SIG) we want to intersect different practices and discourses as heterogeneous but complementary articulations of ‘space’, that address, operate on and contribute, in different ways and capacities, to the transformation of the contemporary environment and its challenges: the social, the infrastructural, the technological, the sensory, the virtual, the built and the unbuilt.

 

 

 

THE IDEA

 

The IDEA was and is to found a group of media theorists, composers, media artists, performers, linguists, architects (...) for the interdisciplinary delineation of the field. Therefore, the group started in January 2020 with multidisciplinary research on the social impact of space(s) in our society to be able to define certain strategies dealing with the multi-layered meanings of space in the mediatised every day and the arts.

For example, every member provided a bibliography, mirroring the most important media productions, tools, literature, performances (etc.) in his or her respective field.

 

 

THIS PAGE

This network of links and references shall be open to the SAR community as well as are the topics and the joint projects of the group on this RC page.


We are happy to invite everyone who wants to do research work contributing actively with their practices, knowledge, interests, concepts and desires in the broad field of spatial aesthetics and artificial environments to join us in the upcoming calls.


RECOMMENDATIONS FOR SPATIAL EXPLORATIONS

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OPE_NCALL

SPATIAL PRACTICES NETWORK WITHIN THE RESEARCH CATALOGUE

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ARCHIVE OF SHARED PERCEPTUAL SPACES

OBJECTIVES

 

  • - Understanding spatial models as fundamental narratives of the status quo of our societies
  • - Utilizing spatiality as a parameter in cultural production (e.g. composition, performance, sciences, journalism)
  • - Understanding the Arts as polyvalent representations of space(s)
  • - Developing personal research approaches with and of spaces.

 

ARTISTIC RESEARCH // UTOPIA:

 

S_HARED P_ERCEPTUAL S_PACES

INTEREST

We are interested in these contexts within Artistic Research practices and want to provide a framework for contextualisation and reflection on these practices.

DESCRIBING THE STATUS QUO

 

Today, we are witnessing an unprecedented awareness of space, be it in philosophy, art, geography, and other such as academic discourses.

However, after ages of discussion about time and its descriptions, what is behind all this?

Why space, and why today?

Since organising, redistributing, promoting, annexing, and defending territories are basic exercises of political as well as economical and military decisions, to enthrone space as the new all-round theory means no less than to refer to the most traditional power dynamics we can imagine.

This may be no surprise in given the strong effects of de-territorialisation as one main feature of the world’s status quo.

 

How do we as Artistic Researchers deal with this status quo?

 

Studying - emergences

 

Through cultural-historical shifts of 'spatiality' throughout the history of knowledge, the concept of space is subject to fundamental change, which both reflects the respective framework conditions in itself and leads the philosophical undertaking of an empirically-free categorisation ad absurdum:

 

At the beginning of philosophising stands the metaphysical question of the beginning or the “ground” of all things (Greek: arche), to which space as a conception of origin provides an answer;

 

at the end we find the insight into the ('an-archic') structure of space that cannot be justified by thought alone and an insight into its emergence from political, economic, historical and above all social contexts.

 

 

‘...the perceptual “something” is always in the middle of something else, it always forms part of a field’

(Merleau-Ponty, PhoP, 1945).

 

CAN WE AGREE ON WHAT SPACE IS?


Concepts, definitions and interpretations of space and of spatiality are essentially how we construct the world and by extent how we create means to intervene into that world, with our day-to-day practices.

‘Space’ thus accumulates plural constructs, poetic artifices that we collectively produce and reproduce through time, within our cultures, our sciences, our arts. Through the dimension of time, these are the spaces that serve as vehicles for adaptation and transformation, from the scale of the individual to that of collective societies and of the environment at large.

 

Now, after a year of lockdowns and Corona reflections, the awareness of space seems to have affected all kinds of systems, including academic discourses and art, to subordinate their targets under a new paradigm within a wide range of empirical, deductive, discursive, historical, scientific and intuitive methods.

 

However, even basic spatial descriptions, terms like “close”, “closed”, “narrow”, “high”, “low”, “far”, or “open” have drastically changed their meanings due to daily experiences with mediated campuses and online-conferences, online exhibitions and concerts as streamed events, and computer camera views of private homes.

Thus, it is still unclear what this means for cultural practice in terms of perception, composition, aesthetics, engineering and culture.

 

 

 

SPATIAL MODELS

How are we dealing with different models interdisciplinarily?

 

In how far can we compare these models, how can we share our ideas and backgrounds and how can we dare to formulate  more informed and advanced models in the future?

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