ROUNDTABLE

Introduction to the department and topics this year. Followed by a lecture by Victoria Vesna.

In the academic year 2015/2016 the “Roundtable Discussions” will host two overarching topics, which will be featured alternating in the meetings:

1. Project Work I/II: Information through sound?

The term sound is often, but not only, used in a musical context, where people try to describe a specific tone or colour of an instrument. Beside this general definition of anything that is a source for a sound, there is another term used to describe something sonorous – noise, a definition that is often connected to a non-pleasant kind of listening or sounding, maybe something disturbing. This opens the question, among others, on it`s political indications and dimensions when differentiating between these two terms. In Information theory noise is used in a more general way, and describes a signal that interferes with the reception of a message by a receiver and next to that, in the field of sonification, sounds and signals are often used to transport, transform and convert data into sound and/or vice versa.

By using sound as a tool, medium and/or metaphor for creating this annual project work, we try to understand information within sound through possible practices like field research, where listening, hearing and sensing the everyday life is a method (which i.e. R. Murray Schafer has done within his project “tuning the world”). We can access the archives of various theories to question theoretical hypotheses and investigate in critical analysis or even try to develop a sonic utopia by creating new sonic artefacts to then create works, which will be publicly presented at the end of the year.
 
Chair: Virgil Widrich
In collaboration with Karl Salzmann

Contained courses WS 2015/2016:

• Art & Science Interdisciplinary Project Work I, Virgil Widrich, PA, 3 SH, 12 ECTS (1st semester students)
• Art & Science Interdisciplinary Project Work III, Virgil Widrich, PA, 3 SH, 20 ECTS (3rd semester students)

Contained courses SS 2016:

• Art & Science Interdisciplinary Project Work II, Virgil Widrich, PA, 3 SH, 12 ECTS (1st semester students)

Related course:

• Sound as source. Theoretical and practical strategies for embodiment, Karl Salzmann, VO, 2 SH, 2 ECTS (Praxis and Theory)

 

1. Transdisciplinarity: Caring. Enactments of Heterogeneous Relationships

When hearing the term "care" we may think of bodies in the context of health care; or we think of citizens taken care of by social workers, educators, psychologists etc.. Maybe we think of the state and democratic models of governance thereby instantiating a consensualised form of civility. Sometimes (maybe not so frequently) we are reminded that "to care" shares its etymological root with "to curate", describing the role of the curator as organiser of aesthetic experiences who must care for artists and their audiences.

We are familiar with the tendency of opposing care to technology: care then has to do with warmth and love while technology, by contrast, is cold and rational – a dichotomy that can be extended: care is nourishing, technology is instrumental; care is overflowing and impossible to calculate; technology is effective and efficient.  However, we live in a heterogeneous world and the question is how to think of a (artistic) research agenda that refrains from purifying the poles of this dichotomy and that tries to analyse both together?

The annual topic "Caring" aims at exploring the logic of care within different domains. It investigates the role of the deterministic body known by modern science and a fragile body in it's intricate surroundings. It investigates the individual as autonomous being and as relational being. It investigates the enlightened citizen with a body that does not interfere with his or her plans, cognitive operations, impartial judgements, firm decisions and the citizen in a fleshy, fragile and mortal body situated within continuous inter-dependency. It investigates interactions within social and material situations where norms are negotiated and practised within these situations and where those norms do not exist as standards outside of them.
 
The topic will be organized into chapters. In the process of researching these chapters, the investigation should materialise in the form of small exhibits throughout the year. These will be archived and presented in their entirety in a public presentation at the end of the year. 
 
Preliminary list of chapters:

• Care for care - Between a logic of care and a logic of choice
• Care for the Other - Pain and the question of "humour of truth"; medicine and the question of relation; cause & effect
• Care for the immaterial - How we care for the dead
• Care for material - Forging knowledge
• Care for (technological) instruments - Tinkering ("doctoring") vs control
• Care for the social - Statistical data and the crafting of a society
• Care for the living - Lab animals, Model organisms, companions
• Care for a future - Intricacies of Nuclear waste management; scenario building, how to become a speculator

Chair: Bernd Kräftner
In collaboration with Brishty Alam, Valerie Deifel

Contained courses WS 2015/2016 (+ attendance of guest lectures):

• Experimental Studies I, Bernd Kräftner, SE, 2 SH, 4 ECTS (1st semester students)
• Experimental Studies III, Bernd Kräftner, SE, 2 SH, 4 ECTS (3rd semester students)

Contained courses SS 2016 (+ attendance of guest lectures):

• Experimental Studies II, Bernd Kräftner, SE, 2 SH, 4 ECTS (2nd semester students)
• Experimental Studies IV, Bernd Kräftner, SE, 2 SH, 4 ECTS (4th semester students)

Related courses:

• Methods and Practices of Experimental Cultures, Bernd Kräftner, VO, 2 SH, 2 ECTS
• Applied Visualisation Cultures, Bernd Kräftner, VO, 2 SH, 2 ECTS
• Transdisciplinarity and Representation I/II, Bernd Kräftner, VU, 5 SH, 9 ECTS