[spectre] Almat 2020 symposium on algorithmic agency in artistic practice - program online now

[Hanns Holger Rutz]

_Almat 2020 program online now!_

We are happy to announce the availability of the program of the Almat
2020 symposium on algorithmic agency in artistic practice.

https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/921059/921060

We thank all contributors who made their work available as dedicated
pages on the Research Catalogue. The program will be followed up by
round-table discussions on September 19, which we intend to make
available as video recordings.

The Almat 2020 symposium is interested in the genealogical, processual
aspects of algorithms and their transformative potential. We seek
critical approaches that avoid both mystification and commodification,
that aim at opening the black box of "wonder" that is often presented to
the public when utilising algorithms. We depart from the assumption that
algorithms possess an inherent material agency that emerges from the
intra-action between human and machine (K. Barad). In these exchange
processes, we experience gaps, breaks and bends in the flow, the
reconfigurative nature of the algorithmic which bounces back and
reconfigures our thinking and approach to artistic work. When algorithms
are inserted in the creative process, they actively shape this process
and spread outside the boundaries of a particular medium or artefact.
The symposium looks to rethink the relation between humans and
algorithms (N.K. Hayles) in terms of an organic or ecological
perspective (Y. Hui) in which actors are entangled and co-generative.

The foundation for the symposium is given by the eponymous artistic
research project Almat - Algorithms that Matter, funded by the Austrian
Science Fund (FWF AR 403-GBL) and hosted at the Institute of Electronic
Music and Acoustics (IEM) at the University of Music and Performing Arts
Graz.

Almat 2020 was originally planned to take place (06–07 July) adjoining
the 8th Conference on Computation, Communication, Aesthetics & X – xCoAx
(08–10 July). xCoAx is an exploration of the intersection where
computational tools and media meet art and culture, in the form of a
multi-disciplinary enquiry on aesthetics, computation, communication and
the elusive X factor that connects them all. Due to the Coronavirus
crisis, xCoAx went into an online-only mode, and the Almat symposium has
been replaced by an online assemblage of the submitted proposals only.

_List of contributions_

Luc Döbereiner and David Pirrò
Contingency and Synchronization

Kosmas Giannoutakis and Arthur Lanotte-Fauré
Confluent Currents

Dragica Kahlina
Game Audio as an Autonomous System

Steffen Krebber
The Modernist Anticlock

Ron Kuivila
Hearing Changes: Listening to the Air, The Fifth Root of Two, Sparkline
(with acceleration)

Daniel Mayer
Algorithms in Sound Synthesis, Processing, and Composition: a Dialectic Game

Jeffrey Morris
Bytebeat: Deterministic and Undeterminable

Tom Mudd
Algorithms and Agency in Electronic Music: Three Recent Projects

Daniele Pozzi
Relating Sound Algorithms and Concrete Spaces: Two Recent Works

Hanns Holger Rutz
Writing (about) Writing Machines

Casper Schipper
Cisp: a Live-Coding Language for Non-Standard Synthesis Algorithms

Oswaldo Emiddio Vasquez Hadjilyra
Material Composition

Rewa Wright and Simon Howden
Making a Software Assemblage with Plants-Bodies-Data

Stefano Zorzanello
Copernicus Listening. Creative Survival Strategies and Techniques in the
World of Sounds