ISEA2015 DISRUPTION Art Catalogue Edited by Kate Armstrong Design: Milène Vallin Printed and bound in Canada This book can be downloaded as a .pdf or ordered in print at http://isea2015.org/publication © New Forms Art Press, artists and writers 1255 West Pender Street Vancouver, British Columbia Canada V6E 2V1 Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication International Symposium on Electronic Art (21st : 2015 : Vancouver, B.C.) ISEA 2015 disruption artistic program / edited by Kate Armstrong. Catalogue published in conjunction with the 21st International Symposium on Electronic Art held in Vancouver, Canada, from August 15 to 19, 2015. Issued in print and electronic formats. ISBN 978-0-9878354-1-3 (paperback) ISBN 978-0-9878354-2-0 (pdf) 1. Computer art--Exhibitions. 2. Art and technology--Exhibitions. I. Armstrong, Kate, 1971-, editor II. Vancouver Art Gallery, host institution III. Title. IV. Title: 2015 disruption artistic program. V. Title: Disruption artistic program. N7433.8.I58 2015 776 C2015-904663-7 C2015-904664-5 Acknowledgments This incredible event could not have happened without our amazing team and our many collaborators. First, a thank you to Thecla Schiphorst and Philippe Pasquier, the Symposium Directors of ISEA2015 who have closely worked with us throughout the long process of developing the artistic pro- gram for ISEA. Thanks to our many programming partners. A big thanks to everyone at the Vancouver Art Gallery, especially Wade Thomas, Diana Freundl, Debra Zhou, Jennifer Wheeler, Jennifer Sorko, and Sunny Kooner, and the spectac- ular Boca Del Lupo team – Jay Dodge, Carey Dodge, and Sherry Yoon – who have been such a pleasure to collaborate with during this project. Enormous thanks to Hanna Cho, Gregory Dreicer, Paul Carr, Myles Constable, and the whole Museum of Vancouver team, and to our outstanding partners at the H.R. Macmillan Space Centre. Thanks to all our guest curators whose work and ideas are catalogued in this publication, and to the organizations that supported them, includ- ing grunt gallery, VIVO, Western Front, New Media Gallery, WAAP, MUTEK, OCAD, 221A, MUME, Metacreation Lab, Algorave, and Vancouver New Music. Special thanks to New Forms, which has been a pivotal program- ming and funding partner organization for ISEA2015. We are indebted to Simon Fraser University for their support, especially the School for the Contemporary Arts, the Faculty of Art, Communication and Technology (FCAT), the School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT), the Woodward’s Cultural Unit, and SFU Galleries. Thanks to Lynne Jamieson, Martin Gotfrit, Owen Underhill, Nik Williams-Walshe, Melanie O’Brian, Amy Kazymerchyk, Ben Rogalsky, Stefan Smulovitz, Heather Lamb, David Ship, Kate Stadel, Steve Hanna, Lynda Hewit, and to Paul Zuurbier and the MITACS team. We are grateful for the energy contributed to ISEA2015 overall by the many program chairs including Maria Fedorova, Kristin Carlson, Megan te Boekhorst, Miles Thorogood, Mirjana Prpa, Robin Kwiatkowski, Veronika Tzanikova, Victoria Moulder, Rachel Ward, Reese Munteab, Carolina Bergonzoni, Sarah Fdili Alaoui, and Gabriela Aceves- Sepulveda, and by the many volunteers who made the event possible. Thanks to Post Projects for their design development on ISEA2015, and the many people who helped with the print, media and communications including Maria Fedorova, Jordan Yerman, Kristin Trethewey, Theo Wong, George Chaves, and most of all Milène Vallin who designed this book. Thanks to our funders, the Canada Council for the Arts, the City of Vancouver, Creative BC, the Province of BC and the BC Arts Council, the Hamber Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Institut Francais, the Consulat General de France a Vancouver, the Instituto Italiano di Cultura Toronto, and the Goethe Institut. Most of all, thanks to the artists for participating in ISEA2015. And fnally, we literally could not have done any of this without our stellar production and technical team: Kristina Fiedrich (Artistic Program Manager), Deborah Turnbull Tillman (Exhibitions Production Manager), Elisha Burrows (ISEA2015 Technical Director, Art Program), Emmy Willis (Videography), Matt Smith (ISEA2015 Technical Director, Vancouver Art Gallery), Steven Wong (ISEA2015 Technical Director, Vancouver Art Gallery), Carey Dodge and Jay Dodge (Boca Del Lupo & Medialab, FUSE Producers, Vancouver Art Gallery), and Colin Griffths (ISEA2015 A/V Director). The incredible creativity and gener- osity of this group has brought the whole machine together. — Kate Armstrong and Malcolm Levy Artistic Directors ISEA2015 ISEA INTERNATIONAL 5600K NEW TEXT: PERFORMANCES 15 138 curated by Sarah Joyce 158 LITERARY AND ARTISTIC 197 · Hakenai INTRODUCTION and Gordon Duggan EXPLORATIONS INTO · Emergence 17 WHAT IT MEANS · Deepening Scenery ALL IS HERE DISRUPTION TO READ, WRITE, · Octophonic Soundscape 25 curated by Kate Armstrong 142 FROM NOW ON AND CREATE Compositions and Malcolm Levy Khan Lee with Holyhum curated by Dene Grigar · Soundwalks · MuseBot QUOTING THE QUOTIDIAN · Information Erupts LIVELY OBJECTS SPOTTED SENTIENTS: 120 curated by Caroline Langill 144 curated by Wil Aballe 174 DISPATCHES FROM into Perception and Lizzie Muller AN UNEVEN FRONTIER ARCTICNOISE ALGORAVE curated by Elisa Ferrari BEYOND THE TREES 204 curated by Philippe Pasquier : 150 curated by Britt Gallpen 136 WALLPAPERS IN DIALOGUE and Yasmin Nurming-Por THE MUTEK CABARET AV DISRUPTION WITH EMILY CARR 182 curated by Alain Mongeau TOGGLE 210 curated by Philippe Pasquier curated by Diana Freundl and Caitlin Jones 152 curated by Brian McBay NEW FORMS FESTIVAL LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS 192 curated by Scott Woodworth MARAYA: SISYPHEAN CART 217 154 curated by Brian McBay ISEA International ISEA International is pleased to present the 21st International Symposium on Electronic Art –ISEA2015– in Vancouver this year. Since 1988 ISEA has been situated at the global frontier of digital media, creating an open discourse around electronic art, science, interdisciplinarity and culture. In 1989 Tim Berners Lee sat down to begin the www, http and html protocols for a barely understood internet. From speculations on the nature of hypertext and notions of supreme multimedia at early ISEA symposia, through to hybridized internet spaces in the mid 2000’s, academics and art- ists - in many situations one and the same - have simultaneously developed and explored the nature of interactivity. Our relationship to technology has been scrutinized and extended through creativity and academic debate. Such is the work presented at symposia and art events held annually, in cit- ies from Utrecht to Dubai. In an era where the term technology has received the prefxes of eco, nano and bio, the transitioned state of contemporary culture under the impact of electronic media made it possible to hear casually in the halls of ISEA2013 Sydney that culture had become electronic. It is in this hybrid diversity of nomadic journeying, typical of contemporary culture, that ISEA is so well located. Twenty years after Montreal hosted the sixth ISEA, the event has returned to Canada –to be hosted by Simon Fraser University in Vancouver– for the foremost iteration of what has become electronic heritage. ISEA International Foundation Board Peter Anders – Chair Wim van der Plas – Treasurer Bonnie Mitchell – Secretary Paul Catanese Ian Clothier Sue Gollifer – ISEA International Headquarters Director Introduction Kate Armstrong As I write this, 186 forest fres are raging in the province of British Columbia and the air in Vancouver is thick with yellow smoke. It is 35 degrees outside and the silver city is an alien outpost against a gasoline sky. The ships, flled with oil and plastic lawn furniture from Shenzhen, are using foghorns to navigate. When we were initially conceiving Disruption as a theme for ISEA2015 I’d written that disruption conjures both blue sky and black smoke. Blue sky with reference to the term used in Silicon Valley and elsewhere to indicate the bold innovations and endless possibilities introduced by disruptive tech- nologies. In that vision, blue sky is imaginative space, a notion of the beauti- ful, limitless new: We as humans are poised at an historic intersection where we will be able to use our comely machines to realize visionary ideas that will change how we live and work. We are to be hopeful because we can change anything if not everything, including the power structures that hold some of us back. These technologies ultimately offer a broad redistribution of money, time, resources. This blue sky, which will make all of us smarter and richer, more relaxed, is possible because of youth and energy, hard work, luck, and a 10x return to investors. Our persistent use of expensive handheld devices will overturn a century of public sector atrophy. Our sparkling connectivity will magically tidy up the cancer and dirty tricks that have produced and upheld the contemporary system of economic inequality that surpasses even the sick ratio of the robber barons. More of today’s black smoke: 40% of senior citizens have student debt. We pay Nestle the same amount of money for 1.5 litres of water as it pays us for a million litres. In 2007 the top 20% of Americans owned 85% of the country’s wealth and the bottom 80% of the population owned 15%. Wall Street was occupied but nothing happened. It is three months since Freddie Gray was killed and Baltimore erupted, and three weeks since Senator Clementa C. Pinckney and eight parishioners were shot at the