Jonathon Keats readings

Readings for Jonathon Keats are up on the syllabus and supplemental reading pages.

Jonathan Keats (Artist, SF) 10/27/06, 7:30-9pm

Please post your questions as comments on this message.

We will meet at 6:30 in 105 Northgate to discuss the questions. On November 6, we will meet in 150D Moffit to discuss the lecture.


Extraterrestrial Aesthetics, Divine Genetics, and Other Thought Experiments
Jonathon Keats, Artist, SF

=====================================================
Is art a science? Is science an art? In contemporary artistic
practice, the studio may be a genetics laboratory, while the
theoretical physicist, working years ahead of any plausible
experiment, often formulates reality according to mathematical
aesthetics. Have these two disciplines lost their bearings in the
widening wake of postmodernism? Are we seeing just another breed of
mash-up? Or do art and science need one another if either is to remain
meaningful in the 21st Century?

Conceptual artist Jonathon Keats will address these questions by
describing the role of scientific research in his creative process. He
will discuss his attempts to genetically engineer God in a petri dish
and to facilitate the intergalactic exchange of art, as well as his
efforts to customize the metric system and to apply string theory to
real estate development. Thinking of his projects as 'thought
experiments', which rigorously misapply practices borrowed from
biology, chemistry, and physics (as well as law and economics), Keats
strives to take up where natural philosophy left off -- and to enlist
others in his interdisciplinary investigation.

=====================================================
Jonathon Keats is an artist, critic, and novelist. His art projects
have been presented at venues including the Judah L. Magnes Museum,
the San Francisco Arts Commission, and the Exploratorium, as well as
galleries including Refusalon and Modernism, which currently
represents him -- and have been documented by KQED-TV and the BBC
World Service, as well as in periodicals ranging from The San
Francisco Chronicle to the Boston Globe to New Scientist. Keats also
serves as the art critic for San Francisco Magazine and as a columnist
for both Artweek and Wired Magazine. He is the author of two novels,
as well as museum catalogue essays and monographs. He has lectured in
spaces ranging from the UC San Francisco Department of Neurology to
the Happy Ending Bar in New York City, and has been awarded
fellowships by Yaddo, the Ucross Foundation, the MacNamara Foundation,
the University of Arizona, and the MacDowell Colony.

http://www.modernisminc.com/artists/Jonathon_KEATS/

Monday, October 23

We will meet in 150D Moffit at 6:30 pm. Please come prepared to discuss Cory Arcangel's lecture. Jonathan Keats will speak on November 6. Start looking for information on him. We will post some links shortly.

Cory Arcangel (Artist, NYC) 10/16/06, 7:30-9:30pm

Please post your questions as comments on this message.

The Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium of UC Berkeley's Center
for New Media, in conjunction with Dept of Art Practice
"Interventions" Lecture Series, presents:

Recent Experiments in Modern Composition, Software, and
Stand-Up Comedy
Cory Arcangel, Artist, NYC

Monday, Oct 16, 7:30-9pm: UC Berkeley
* Note Location: 105 Northgate Hall (see website for map)
All ATC Lectures are free and open to the public
* 10th Anniversary Season *

=====================================================
Lets say for a second you are an artist. And just for the sake of
argument, that you make work which deals with the moving
image... maybe,...Video. So you are a video artist. And yeah, its
2006, ... and your videos are short, like 2-3 minutes long. So what
do you do with them? Do you screen them on public access? Do you
upload them to youtube? Do you sell them in limited editions in a
gallery? Do you make music videos for bands? Do you enter in them in
underground video/film festivals? How can you make sense of it
all???? And that's just for video, imagine what a headache you'd have
if you made other forms of media art as well....

This lecture proposes different ways artists (not just video artists),
can make sense of the internet and the explosion of low cost
distribution opportunities that are available today. Given that there
is no easy solution, and that distribution interest is often tied in
with content, Internet memes, comedy, the "Avant Guarde", "hacking",
open source code, MySpace, and Kurt Cobain, will all be discussed in
no particular order, with Cory's work serving as the underpinning
structure.

=====================================================
Cory Arcangel is a computer artist, performer, and curator who lives
and works in Brooklyn. His work centers on his love of personal
computers and the Internet. He is currently a senior fellow at
Eyebeam Atelier in Manhattan. He is a member of the artist groups,
BEIGE, + R.S.G. His work has shown recently in the Whitney Museum of
American Art, The Guggenheim Museum, New York, the MOMA, New York,
Space1026, Philly, the Migros Museum, Zurich, Team Gallery, New York,
and Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, Paris. Aside from gallery installations,
most of his projects can be downloaded with source code from his
Internet web log ---> http://www.beigerecords.com/cory/

Meet at JSchool Courtyard Today - 6:30pm

Today we will meet in the JSchool Courtyard (North Gate Hall) for class.
Please come prepared to discuss Marianne Weems's lecture.

I will hand out a reading for Cory Arcangel that isn't available on-line.