Concepts

"ROUNDTABLE" concept:

To intensify the connection with different cooperation partners and to establish a dialogue with their research topics, in summer semester 2012 the Art & Science project work is, in part, orchestrated as ‘Roundtable Discussions’ that combine the courses of Virgil Widrich (artistic director Art & Science) and Bernd Kräftner (Department for Ontological Patchworks). The task for participating students is to acquaint themselves with the specific everyday routine of the chosen cooperation partner. The weekly Roundtable discussions intend to support the "field research", and help to process and guide the collected experiences. The intentions of the method lie in ethnographic research, with an understanding of participatory observation. Over the course of the semester, every student should be able to develop a research interest, with a specific research foci or question, that can be engaged with rigour in the following winter semester.

"Roundtable" concept and moderation: Virgil Widrich, Bernd Kräftner
assisted by: Valerie Deifel, Brishty Alam

 

"SOFTWARE MARATHON" concept:



Doing a Software Marathon we try to get familiar with digital tools in order to have a brighter spectrum of available solutions for different needs. The Software Marathon is an innovative format based on short presentations which are project oriented. In this way learning about tools is connected with specific interests, generating an atmosphere of exchange and fostering our interdisciplinary approach in the ways of production. This event is an introduction to tools where we can exchange methods of how to approach digital and analogue issues. Taking advantage of our diverse backgrounds, we select quite exotic softwares, assigning to students, professors, staff members of the Art & Science class and guests from related departments of the University of Applied Arts Vienna the task to present their tools in context of a work in twenty minutes.

"Software Marathon" concept and direction: Virgil Widrich

 

JOUR FIXE Art as Research. Research as Art. Anything goes?

Discussing Methods and Materials

A central part of a scientific paper is its "materials and methods" section that helps colleagues to elucidate and reproduce a given experimental set-up. It is this closer look that may decide upon the (mis) fortune or further development of the finding. In the JOUR FIXE we would like to provide a forum for discussion that has the goal to approach the practice of artistic and scientific methods. It is about the questions of traceability, precision and rigor, about the role of (lucky) chance, contingencies and accidents, about processes and plans, sketches and (art) works. Is there a necessity for using a "method"? What is a method actually "doing" - not merely in its very context but also in a societal sense? Is a method a constraint that should be avoided? The guests will report on their work and their approaches of engaging with interdisciplinary boundaries, artistic positions, and socio-cultural or economic strategies. In the best case, the audience will experience how things, processes, concepts, or matters of concern, that may affect us, are generated, negotiated or constructed.

"Jour Fixe" concept and direction: Bernd Kräftner
assisted by: Valerie Deifel, Juliana Herrero