Conference: Creativity & Cognition 2011
Website: http://dilab.gatech.edu/ccc/index.html
Conference dates: November 3-6, 2011
Location: Atlanta, Georgia, USA

Keynote Speakers: We have Guy Claxton (creativity and learning), Sara Diamond (creativity and visual arts), Atau Tanaka (creativity and music), and Ben Shneiderman (social creativity) as our keynote speakers.

Conference Program: The main conference consists of 32 rigorously-refereed cutting-edge papers, as well as three provocative panel discussions on Creativity and Technology.

Evening Program: The evening program consists of exciting art demos, exhibits and performances as well as a stimulating poster session.

The conference also includes tutorials, workshops, and a graduate student symposium. Details at

<http://dilab.gatech.edu/ccc/index.html>. Please come and join us in the fun!

Ashok Goel, Chair

Brian Magerko and Kurt Luther, Local Chairs

Alexandra Mazalek, Treasurer

Evan Barba, Registration

Brian ONeill, Webmaster

Gail Wynens, Administration

In Praise of Copying by Marcus Boon Reviewed by Amy Ione Anyone who followed Barack Obama’s popularity leading up to the 2008 presidential election in the United States no doubt recalls the iconic Hope image that seemed to become the unofficial poster of the campaign because many felt it defined Obama’s message so well. The poster itself was so powerful in a symbolic sense that the Smithsonian Museum acquired it when he took office, despite the museum’s usual policy of collecting official portraits of presidents as they are leaving office. As it turned out, the artist, Shepard Fairey, had used an Associated Press (AP) photograph to achieve the likeness. As a result, a question arose: Did Fairey’s use of a photograph, taken in April 2006 by Manny Garcia, require permission or was it covered by fair use? The ensuing legal case, which was settled out of court, has stimulated enormous amounts of discussion because of the many examples of artists who have copied photographs to create their work. [For example, Gerhard Richter has conceived numerous series based on photographs].

More amusing are the Jeff Koons’ cases. Koons recently sent a ‘cease-and-desist’ letter to an artist he claimed was copying his balloon dog sculptures. Like Fairey, Koons settled this case out of court.  The Koons case received quite a bit of coverage because this artist has been sued several times for copyright infringement. The best-known case is perhaps Rogers v. Koons in 1992, in which the court agreed with Art Rogers, a photographer, who claimed that Koons had used Rogers’ material to model three sculptures he sold for $367,000.

These vignettes are among the many that touch upon the variety of questions concerning the nature of copies and originals.  While the computer, the Internet, and our global society has perhaps heightened awareness of what we gain and lose with copies, as Marcus Boon shows in his book, In Praise of Copying, the subject of copying is neither new nor simple.  Walking us through an immense volume of information, Boon argues that copying is an essential part of being human and demonstrates the complexity of the subject.

The strength of Boon’s book is his ability to write easy to read text and to simultaneously provide an erudite discussion.  In part this is accomplished by putting many of the nuances into the footnotes.  This is an effective approach given the breadth of the presentation.  Equally compelling is the volume’s originality, particularly in light of a thesis that validates copying.  I wondered if he would argue, like a Nietzsche quote he includes, that life itself is an appropriation and thus his work is more a compilation of material than an original perspective.  In any case, in my view, the presentation is novel due to Boon’s use of Buddhism as a touchstone to the broad sweep of Western ideas.

The author explains that his impetus to write the book grew out of the observation that copying is pervasive in contemporary culture, yet at the same time subject to laws, restrictions, and attitudes that suggest “copying” is wrong.  Proposing that we need to rethink how we see the tension between copies and originals, Boon suggests that Mahayana Buddhism, in its various historical forms, offers entry into the subject because it provides a way to rethink common duality of terms that have historically supported Western views.  While Buddhism may offer an alternative to dualistic types of ideas such as subject/object, I didn’t find the dualistic thesis convincing in terms of copies. Even before reading the volume, I found that the tensions between originals and copies did not strike me as a dichotomy.

One interesting aspect of the Buddhist perspective is that it allowed for a comprehensive overview and did not compel a “new” ethics, so to speak.  Rather the effort highlights the role of copies in our culture, largely through a weaving of critical theory, philosophical history, and cultural examples. Platonic mimesis is meshed with memes.  The history of copyright laws and patent laws is introduced in terms that look at both modern law and philosophical perspectives we can trace back to Plato and Aristotle.

Boon has an interest in what words mean and how they affect the discussion.  “Copia,” for example (as in “cornucopia”), is the subject of one chapter. Boon claims the nuances of the word, which originally referred to the abundance, multiplicity, and variation of copies that were not mere imitations, was lost due to a variety of reasons.  These include the development of the disdain people had for copying as imitation and how the printing press, copyright, and other societal values favored individual ownership. On the other hand, before the printing press “publishing” meant making an original available for scribes and students to copy. Through doing so they would glean a deep sense of the material and, in some cases, make it material to others as well.  Indeed, a book that remained uncopied was unlikely to survive.

Although there is much discussion on film, art, and literature, it still seemed to me that the book was weighted too heavily toward philosophical ideas and cultural products (e.g., counterfeit Louis Vuitton bags and bootleg Harry Potter products).  Academia is woven into the discussion, as is plagiarism, but in a generalized fashion.  He does mention that copying is a subject he teaches to students at York University. Many of the examples seem targeted to that cohort (e.g., comparing iTunes with tape mixing and Internet downloads).  There are also many examples related to education in the university.  These range from the fact that student readers are subject to copyright laws (that increase their cost) to the use of services such as Turnitin.com at universities to spot plagiarism.

Given how copious my copy (!) of the volume is, it surprises me that some of my favorite examples of the tension between copies and originals were not mentioned.  While art is not neglected, for example, he mentions the important role Andy Warhol played in making artistic copying a part of contemporary aesthetics.  I would have liked a chapter on art that discussed both the historical discussion and the trope of copies AS art, epitomized in the multiples of Andy Warhol and the mass production techniques. Warhol and other artists are discussed (e.g., Mike Kelley, Duchamp, Cindy Sherman, Sherrie Levine, etc.), but their work is blended in more than looked at in terms of the language of art.  Boon does note that Warhol turned the ethos of preciosity on its head to embrace the multiplicity of copies as an aesthetic in its own right and the use of appropriation as an artistic strategy.  What I felt was missing was a section that zoned into the tension between the original and copy in art in a larger sense, in terms of artists, collectors, forgeries, education, etc.

Historically, for example, there were many arguments about what constitutes “great” art.  On the whole, artists were trained by copying the work of others.  Yet, particularly with the Renaissance, the goal for the artist was to achieve recognition as an innovator, a genius who made original work.  This not only created a conflict in the studio/atelier, it also created an academic tension since good “technique” and the qualities that made works exceptional were not seen as the same thing. Moreover, with the invention of photography in the nineteenth century we find many fine artists using the ease of the photographic copy to “sketch,” which facilitated in the production of their work.  Nonetheless, as recent research has shown, they often hid their photographs because of the stigma attached to working from copies.  His contemporary examples, like Andy Warhol, seemed to buttress the cultural orientation rather than to look at art per se.

Finally, I also would have liked some integration of how the ideas about originals and copies interface with multiple discoveries.  For example, Darwinism is discussed in several places, but the attribution of evolutionary theory is not. It is well known that Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) was thinking about ideas similar to Charles Darwin’s before Darwin’s publication of The Origin of Species in 1859 (1809-1882); yet, Spencer was accused of copying the idea. Similarly, there has been much research on the seventeenth-century calculus controversy between Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz. At the time it was said that Leibniz copied Newton’s work, although later research suggests the two approaches were independently developed.

Despite these minor limitations, In Praise of Copying is a splendid book. It will appeal to anyone who wonders about the nuances of how we think about copies and where copies “fit” in our world today.  The discussion ranges from what is a copy and copying as deception to montage and the mass production of copies.  The text moves quickly, and it is only upon closing the book that one realizes how much territory the author covered.

Published: http://www.leonardo.info/reviews/apr2011/ione_boon.php

For more information and to register, click this link

Evoking Washington’s status as an artistic and scientific center, “The Book in Art & Science” is a theme open   to multiple interpretations. Besides prompting considerations of the book as a force in either art or science or  the two fields working in tandem, it also encourages examinations of the scientific text; the book as a work of  art; the art and science of manuscript, print, or digital textual production; the role of censorship and politics in the creation, production, distribution, or reception of particular scientific or artistic texts; the relationship between the verbal and the visual in works of art or science; art and science titles from the standpoint of publishing history or the histories of specific publishers; and much more. Such topics raise a host of possible questions:

§  What tensions exist between the book in art and the book in science?

§  What collaborations emerge? How do these tensions or collaborations differ according to time or place?

§  What roles have material forms—manuscript, print or digital embodiments or books,   periodicals, journals, editions—played in the histories of artistic and scientific works?

§  How does the lens of art or science inform histories of reading and readers?

§  What does this lens reveal about histories of authorship?

§  How have commercial factors or economics influenced the production or distribution of scientific or artistic works?

§  What roles have states or institutions played in the history of the book in art and science?

The conference hopes to welcome many longstanding SHARP members but also aims to attract new members. The conference’s address of art and science in its title invites those working on the illustrated book, book arts, the history of science, technology, knowledge production, or the scientific book, to join us. Similarly, it is hoped that the stellar holdings in Russian, Eastern European, Iberian, Latin American, Caribbean, Middle-Eastern and Asian written and visual texts held in Washington libraries and museums will encourage both scholars from these parts of the world and those who are working in the media histories of these cultures to attend. As always, proposals dealing with any aspect of book history are welcome.

Sessions will be 90 minutes in length, including three twenty-minute papers and a discussion period. In addition, the program committee will consider proposals for sessions using other formats—for example, roundtables or demonstrations of resources and methods. We encourage proposals for fully constituted panels but also welcome proposals for individual papers. While SHARP membership is not required to submit a proposal, all presenters must be members of SHARP before the registration deadline for the conference.

The deadline for both panels and individual proposals is 30 November 2010. Proposals for panels should list the session chair and names of participants along with abstracts for each talk. All abstracts should be no more than 400 words. The program committee will determine which proposals to accept and will notify proposers about its decision.

SHARP has allotted $5,000 to fund 7 to 10 travel grants to help scholars with limited funds attend the conference. Grants typically will not exceed $500, although one or two awards may be slightly higher if circumstances warrant. Scholars interested in being considered for such grants should complete the appropriate section of the proposal form.

For proposal questions, please email SHARP2011proposal@gmail.com (program committee). For all other questions, email SHARP2011@gmail.com.

The link to the electronic form for both session and individual-paper proposals is available now at www.sharpweb.org <http://www.sharpweb.org/>  and will be posted on the conference website.

If you want to propose a session with an alternative format, please email the program committee at the address above to obtain a special form for such submissions.

Lanier ends by saying “I am a technologist, and so my first impulse might be to try to fix this problem with better technology. But if we ask what thinking is, so that we can then ask how to foster it, we encounter an astonishing and terrifying answer: We don’t know.

The artifacts of our past accomplishments can become so engrossing in digital form that it can be harder to notice all we don’t know and all we haven’t done. While technology has generally been the engine that propels us into unknowable changes, it might now lull us into hypnotic complacency. ”

Published: September 16, 2010
Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/magazine/19fob-essay-t.html

By BENEDICT CAREY | New York Times
Published: September 6, 2010
Full article

Read more: When is self-plagiarism ok? – The Scientist – Magazine of the Life Sciences http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/57676/#ixzz0z36u9V3v

=> FIRST INTERNATIONAL MASTER OF MEDIA.ART.HISTORIES
(low-residency; English language, international faculty)

The postgraduate program MediaArtHistories conveys the most important developments of contemporary art through a network of renowned international theorists, artists and curators like: Erkki HUHTAMO, Lev MANOVICH, Christiane PAUL, Paul SERMON, Edward SHANKEN, Jens HAUSER, Sean CUBITT, Christa SOMMERER, Gerfried STOCKER, Knowbotic Research, Frieder NAKE, Oliver GRAU and many others.

Artists and programmers give new insights into the latest software, interface developments and their interdisciplinary and intercultural praxis. Keywords are: Strategies of Interaction & Interface Design, Social Software, Immersion & Emotion and Artistic Invention. Using online databases and other modern aids, knowledge of computer animation, netart, interactive, telematic and genetic art as well as the most recent reflections onnano art, augmented reality and wearables are introduced. Historical derivations that go far back into art and media history are tied in intriguing ways to digital art. Important approaches and methods from Image Science, Media Archaeology and the History of Science & Technology will be discussed.

http://www.donau-uni.ac.at/mah

=> DANUBE UNIVERSITY KREMS – located in the UNESCO world heritage Wachau, 70km from Vienna, is the only public university in Europe specializing in advanced continuing education by offering low-residency degree programs for working professionals and life long learners. Our students & faculty members come from the USA, Italy, Canada, Syria, Austria, Mexico, & Hong Kong, among others. Without interrupting their career, students have the opportunity to learn through direct experience, social learning in small groups and contacts with labs and industry. They gain key qualifications for the contemporary art and media marketplace.

The Center in Monastery Goettweig, where most MediaArtHistories courses take place, is housed in a 14th century building, remodeled to fit the needs of modern research in singular surroundings.

=> LEONARDO/ISAST – Leonardo creates opportunities for the powerful exchange of ideas between practitioners in art, science and technology. Through publications, initiatives and public forums, Leonardo/ISAST facilitates cross-disciplinary research in these fields, seeking to catalyze fruitful solutions for the challenges of the 21st century. Among the challenges requiring cross-disciplinary approaches are establishing sustainable environmental practices, spreading global scientific and artistic literacy, creating technological equity, and encouraging freedom of thought and imagination.

=>LEAF – The Leonardo Education and Art Forum promotes the advancement of artistic research and academic scholarship at the intersections of art,science, and technology.  Serving practitioners, scholars, and students who are members of the Leonardo community, LEAF provides a forum for collaboration and exchange with other scholarly communities, including the College Art Association of America (CAA), of which it is an affiliate society.

Application documents (digital) :
Letter of Motivation; Application form; Copies/scans of certificates; Copy/scan of passport

Application Deadline: 28. March 2010

Further Information:

http://www.donau-uni.ac.at/mah

www.leonardo.info
www.virtualart.at
www.mediaarthistories.org

Contact:
Andrea Haberson
Department for Image Science
Danube University Krems
Dr.-Karl-Dorrek-Str. 30, A-3500 Krems
Tel: +43(0)2732 893-2569
andrea.haberson@donau-uni.ac.at
www.donau-uni.ac.at/dis