ISEA2015 / /DISRUPTION: The 21st International Symposium on Electronic Art to be held in Vancouver

Simon Fraser University’s Faculty of Communication, Art & Technology (FCAT) and the School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT) have won the bid to host the prestigious 21st International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA) in Vancouver, Canada, August 10-14, 2015.

ISEA is one of the world’s most prominent international arts and technology events, bringing together scholarly, artistic, and scientific domains in an interdisciplinary discussion and showcase of creative productions applying new technologies in art, interactivity, and electronic and digital media. The event annually brings together artists, designers, academics, technologists, scientists, and general audience in the thousands. The symposium consists of a peer reviewed conference, a series of exhibitions, and various partner events—from large scale interactive artwork in public space to cutting edge electronic music performance.

In the last three years ISEA has been hosted in Istanbul (2011), Albequerque, New Mexico (2012), and Sydney, Australia (2013), with an upcoming ISEA2014 in Dubai. ISEA2015 in Vancouver marks its return to Canada, 20 years since the groundbreaking first Canadian ISEA1995 in Montreal. Conference events will be held at the Woodward’s campus of Simon Fraser University in downtown Vancouver with exhibitions and events taking place at Emily Carr University of Art + Design and other sites and venues throughout the city.

ISEA2015’s theme of DISRUPTION invites a conversation about the aesthetics of change, renewal, efficiencies and game-changing paradigms. We look to raw bursts of energy, Davids and Goliaths, reconciliation, error, and destructive and creative force of the new. Disruption contains both blue sky and black smoke. When we speak of radical emergence we must also address things left behind. Disruption is both incremental and monumental. Anachronisms; earlier versions. The moments of peace and crisis: the state of things now and a moment ago; the proud Luddites and the insecurity of change; the unstoppable giants, now only shells.

We are familiar in art, design, science, and media with strategies in which something is overturned in order to create something new. In practices ranging from hacking and detournement to inversions of place, time, and intention, creative work across disciplines constantly finds ways to rethink or reconsider object, context, body, network, function. Artists push, shape, break; designers reinvent and overturn; scientists challenge and re-state; technologists hack & subvert to rebuild. We hope to broaden the spheres in which disruptive aesthetics can be explored, crossing into the worlds of science, technology, design, visual art, contemporary and media art, innovation, performance, and sound.

Symposium Directors for ISEA2015 are Dr. Phillippe Pasquier and Dr. Thecla Schiphorst from Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts + Technology (SIAT) within the Faculty of Communication, Arts & Technology (FCAT). Artistic Directors are Malcolm Levy, Founder and Director of the New Forms Festival and Kate Armstrong, Director of the Social + Interactive Media (SIM) Centre at Emily Carr University of Art+Design.

The series of ISEA symposia is coordinated by ISEA International. Founded in the Netherlands in 1990, ISEA International (formerly Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts) is an international non-profit organization fostering interdisciplinary academic discourse and exchange among culturally diverse organizations and individuals working with art, science and technology. ISEA International Headquarters is supported by the University of Brighton (UK).

For further details please contact international ISEA Director Sue Gollifer at info@isea-web.org or visit the project website at www.isea2015.org.

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Kate Armstrong

Director, Social + Interactive Media (SIM) Centre

Emily Carr University of Art and Design

http://www.simcentre.ca

http://www.katearmstrong.com

twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/kate_armstrong

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