Processpatching: How Art Can Stitch Research Fields Together

Public Lecture + Reception
Friday, October 19, 2012
4 – 6pm

Processpatching is a term Anne Nigten introduced in her PhD thesis (2007) as a transdisciplinary working methodology for aRt&D environments and creative laboratories. Based on personal observations Nigten collected over the course of almost twenty years in the art and technology field, Processpatching refers to the way electronic arts brings together expertise, processes, approaches, techniques and materials in an associative way. For this lecture, Nigten will share the first reviews of the practical implementation of the Processpatching methodology in The Patching Zone, a transdisciplinary media laboratory in the Netherlands that she directs. She will share the lessons learned and bring forward recommendations for everyone who is interested in engaging in this methodology.

Media Artists as Critical Makers and Thinkers

Graduate Seminar
Thursday, October 18, 2012
4 – 5:30pm

Through grounding in critical movements in art and popular culture, Anne Nigten will lead a seminar outlining the role of artists as critical innovators. Building on references from the 20th and 21st centuries provided by media theorists, authors of popular culture, journalists, philosophical references and Nigten’s own observations of media arts from the 1980s to the present, the seminar will addresspressing issues regarding the autonomy of art, the useless vs. useful paradigm, and the ‘value’ (not exclusively economic) of critical artistic innovation in this neoliberal era.The discussion will address the role of artists and engineers in relation to contemporary global issues such as sustainability and climate change. Nigten will illustrate her theory with cases from her own practice as professor and director of a media lab as well as references from innovative and critical art and technology. Nigten will examine the drivers of today’s media artists’ roles as innovators, and how their innovations lead to new forms of social engagement, questioning if this amounts to a typical survival attitude in the realm of the creative industry or if artists should be recognized as the new-born Homo Universalis.

Location for both events:
Hexagram Resource Centre, Concordia University, 1515 Saint Catherine St. W., Engineering, Computer Science and Visual Arts Integrated Complex, Room 11.705, Montreal, QC

Biography

Anne Nigten is the initiator and director of The Patching Zone, a transdisciplinary media laboratory, and professor of Popular Culture, Sustainability and Innovation at the Minerva Academy, Hanze University of Applied Art in Groningen, Netherlands. Prior to her current position, she was the manager of V2_Lab, the aRt&D department of V2_, Institute for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam, project manager at the Utrecht School of the Arts in the department of Art, Media & Technology in Hilversum, and chair of the Dutch Media Art Association. She lectures on research and development in the interdisciplinary field from an art perspective. She is adviser for several media art and science initiatives in the Netherlands and Europe. She completed her PhD at Smartlab, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, and frequently publishes papers on (social) innovation as the outcome from collaboration between art, engineering and (computer) science.

www.patchingzone.net
www.processpatching.net
www.hanze.nl

Cette publication est également disponible en : Français (French)