[spectre] The Pacific Rim New Media Summit + Special Issue of Leonardo

[Leonardo/ISAST]

ANNOUNCING

The Pacific Rim New Media Summit
A Pre-Symposium to ISEA2006
7--8 August 2006, San Jose, California
Co-sponsored by CADRE Laboratory for New Media and Leonardo/ISAST

Plus

Special Issue of Leonardo
Leonardo Vol. 39, No. 4 (August 2006)
Pacific Rim New Media Summit Companion


The Pacific Rim New Media Summit

How are information technology and creativity shaping new directions in 
the arts and sciences around the Pacific Rim? What challenges face 
organizations and individuals in the region who are working in the 
fields of architecture, design, literature, theater, music? How do the 
puzzle pieces of academic research and information technology-based 
industry fit into this picture?

The political and economic space of the Pacific Rim represents a dynamic 
context for innovation and creativity. Experimentation in the many 
disciplines that encompass art, science, and technology is resulting in 
the emergence of new forms of cultural production and experience unique 
to the region. The complex relations and diversity of Pacific Rim 
nations are exemplified as well throughout the hybridized communities 
that comprise Silicon Valley.

The Pacific Rim New Media Summit will be a gathering of organizations 
and representatives from the Pacific Rim and Asia to look at the complex 
relations and diversity of Pacific Rim nations and to focus on the 
development of partnerships in order to address the multiple challenges 
faced throughout the region as it develops its arts and sciences 
networks in tandem with its increasing economic influence. This 
trans-disciplinary event will have a specific focus on educational 
methodologies and practices.

The summit is organized into seven working groups according to the 
following topic areas:

* Distributed Curatorial (Chair: Steve Dietz)
* Education (Co-Chairs: Rob van Kranenburg, Gustaff H. Iskandar and 
Fatima Lasay)
* Place, Ground and Practice (Chair: Danny Butt)
* Urbanity and Locative Media (Chair: Soh-Yeong Roh)
* Latin America/Pacific-Asia New Media Initiatives (Chair: Jose-Carlos 
Mariategui)
* Piracy and the Pacific (Chair: Steve Cisler)
* The Invisible Dynamics of the Pacific Rim and the Bay Area (Co-Chairs: 
Susan Schwartzenberg and Peter Richards)

Summit objectives include exploration of innovative models for 
cooperation among institutions, development of interaction strategies 
with technology corporations, investigation of radical responses to 
emergent cultural issues and conditions, engagement with Diaspora 
communities, and the establishment of an on-going Pacific Rim Network of 
New Media Educational Institutions.


Special issue of Leonardo (Vol. 39, No. 4)

A special issue of Leonardo will be devoted to the work of the seven 
Pacific Rim working groups, featuring new media educational programs and 
artists from the Pacific-Asia region. The print issue of the journal, 
due to be released in conjunction with the symposium, will include 
statements by artists as well as articles by cultural theorists looking 
at issues germane to the seven working group topics, plus introductory 
texts by the working group chairs.

Some of the topics covered in the issue include:

- Surfing the Outernet: Where net art presented the medium of the 
Internet, locative art brings to the fore those of mobile and wireless 
systems. Drew Hemment unfolds a taxonomy of locative-art approaches to 
the gap between the perfect grid and the reality of the mapped world.

- Cyber-Mythologies and Portraits of Dispossession: Rachel O'Reilly 
examines how Asian and Pacific understandings of place in recent work by 
Vernon Ah Kee, Lisa Reihana and Qiu Zhijie expand the frames of 
contemporary locative art.

- Cartographies of the future: Annie Lambla discusses the San Francisco 
Exploratorium's Invisible Dynamics project, which considers the museum's 
relocation from a perspective integrating art, science and geographic 
context.

- Culture, uncontained: Commerce, communication and technology 
intertwine in the works of the Pacific Rim New Media Summit exhibition 
Container Culture. Artists from Mumbai to Vancouver use the medium and 
metaphor of shipping containers to explore regional and global complexities.

For more information about the summit and special issue of Leonardo, 
please visit: 
http://leonardo.info/isast/isast_activities/pacificrim_newmedia.html


ISEA 2006 and ZeroOne San Jose

The 13th International Symposium on Electronic Arts will be held in San 
Jose, CA, August 7-13, 2006 in conjunction with the inaugural biennial 
ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge. Three summits 
will be held Monday August 7th and Tuesday August 8th prior to the main 
ISEA 2006 Symposium: the Global Forum on Economic and Cultural 
Development, the Pacific Rim New Media Summit and the Interactive City 
Summit. Information about all of the events and symposiums can be found 
on the official ISEA 2006 website: http://01sj.org.

FREE COPY of Leonardo 39:4 will be distributed to every Early Bird 
registrant of the ISEA conference (through June 15th). Visit 
http://01sj.org to register.