Vista de la instalación, ‘Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg – Machine Auguries: Toledo’, Toledo Museum of Art, 2023. Procedencia, cortesía de la artista. Álvaro Sánchez, S. (2025). Arte, ciencia y planeamiento urbano: de la utopía tecnológica moderna …
Álvaro, Sandra (2025). Estética Ecológica y la Teoría Gaia: Arte y Paisajes Posthumanos en Matteo Mancini, María Teresa Chicote Pompanin, Diana Lucía Gómez-Chacón (eds.) Natura Potentior Ars, arte, naturaleza y ciencias para una disciplina del …
Art, data models and the complex city Invited Talk at the Governing AI and Cities/Visualising AI and Cities Data Think – Winter School – Digital Visual Studies (DVS) University of Zurich – 4 March 2025 …
AI as an Archival Tool Sandra Alvaro, Dominik Bönisch, María Cuevas, Bonnie Mitchell, Andreas Schiffler, Jill Scott,Janice Searleman Globally Connecting New Media Art Archives The New Media Art Archives Network is presenting the first Workshop …
The Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology including the article of my intervention “Art Development and Conceptual Shifts. From Life, Computers and the Ecosystem Paradigm Towards …
El graffiti transmite un mensaje y cuenta las historias de los habitantes de las ciudades
Desde 2018, NN Wallery, iniciativa de Nuñez y Navarro de arte urbano, se ha nutrido del graffiti. La idea nació para transformar los muros de obra de sus promociones en construcción y los espacios compartidos de sus locales y parkings en galerías de arte urbano al descubierto. Hemos tenido la oportunidad de dialogar con la doctora Sandra Álvaro, profesora del Departamento de Arte de la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (UAB). Ella nos describe el interesante mundo del graffiti y nos ofrece su visión sobre el impacto que el arte urbano genera en las calles de Barcelona. También nos habla sobre como este modo espontaneo de expresión urbana ha evolucionado hasta convertirse en un arte reconocido.
The 10thInternational Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology – RE:SOURCE – will celebrate Media Art Histories and the role that its main agents have had in the multiple developments of art, science and technology with a focus on the past 60 years. The title ‘RE:SOURCE’ refers to a sub theme specifically introduced in the MAH Venice edition of the conference series. This theme will be centred on the climate crisis and questions of ecological sustainability considered in all their ramifications analysed through the lenses of Media Art (History).
Venue: The Host Institution for MAH RE:SOURCE conference will be the Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities (VeDPH), Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, a public university in Venice, Italy.
Track 2: Climate Actions, Environment and Public Humanities – ECO-MEDIA ART HISTORIES- September 13 @ 15:25 – 16:40 at Sala Berengo – Ca’ Foscari University Sestiere Dorsoduro 3246, Venezia, VE, Italia
View the Program at the Official Website or get it as pdf
We invite submissions for the Cultural Data Analytics Conference 2023 / CUDAN 2023, organized by the ERA Chair project for Cultural Data Analytics at Tallinn University, generously funded by the European Commission. Inspired by initial large gatherings of the cultural analytics community, including UCLA/IPAM 2016, and multidisciplinary conferences such as NetSci, IC2S2, or CCS, we aim to bring together researchers, practitioners, and stakeholders using methods of cultural data analytics to understand cultures and cultural production. The conference is scheduled to happen in Tallinn, Estonia from December 13 to 16, 2023, including a number of leading invited practitioners, peer-reviewed talks, and poster contributions from the community.
Abstracts due: July 24, 2023 (23:59 CET) Notification of acceptance: September 14, 2023 Conference: December 13-16, 2023 Pre-conference workshops: December 13, 2023 Main conference: December 14-16, 2023
We invite authors to submit a single-page abstract pdf including a (mandatory) descriptive figure and caption by the 24th of July 2023 via our OpenReview submission system. We accept contributed talks, lightning talks, and posters (please indicate your preference). We strive for an in-person event to maximize community interaction, yet we will offer a limited amount of remote presentation slots. Review is single-blind.
Cultures and cultural production are multifaceted phenomena, which, like other complex systems, cannot be fully understood from the perspective of a single specific discipline. This is why the core mission of cultural data analytics is to join forces and make headway across disciplines and domains of expertise. Feeding into this mission, we welcome both multidisciplinary submissions, and contributions from specific disciplines, which aim to benefit from discussion in a multidisciplinary forum.
We encourage discussion towards a deeper understanding of cultures and cultural production including aspects, methods, and intersections of the following fields: – cultural analytics, culturomics, and socio-cultural data science; – digital humanities and computational humanities; – cultural evolution, including experimental and observational approaches; – cultural complexity science, network science, computational social science, and social physics; – computational linguistics, quantitative aesthetics, critical computer vision, and machine learning; – art history, cultural history, cultural semiotics, film studies, musicology, and urbanism; – artistic research, algorithmic curation, and AI art (including aspects of cultural data analysis); – creative industries research, media economics, and policy studies; – data journalism, data science, and information visualization.
Estética Ecológica y la Teoría Gaia: Arte y Paisajes Posthumanos
Sandra Álvaro (UAB)
La Estética Ecológica se refiere a un grupo creciente de proyectos artísticos realizados a partir del año 2000 que hacen frente a la, cada vez más acuciante, crisis climática y ecológica. Estos proyectos se caracterizan por reunir el arte y la tecnología, la ciencia y las humanidades en instalaciones complejas en las que se combinan procesos, medios y saberes a través de diversos campos de conocimiento, desde la biología y la computación a la antropología y la estética. Este proceder no solo responde a la adhesión a prácticas artísticas iniciadas en la postmodernidad y que se alejaron de la representación en favor de un encuentro con la realidad, sino que se hacen eco de un cambio de paradigma, propagado en los escritos de autores de campos tan diversos como la filosofía, los estudios de la ciencia y de género, la geología, la etología, la antropología o la ciencia ficción. Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour, Anna Tsing, Vinciane Despret, Ursula K.LeGuin, entre otras se constituyen en referencias habituales de los artistas que elaboran este campo, estos autores nos proponen un nuevo tipo de relación con el entorno. Si el Antropoceno manifiesta la capacidad del ser humano para administrar y modificar su entorno prolongando la división entre naturaleza y cultura, la reciente adopción de la hipótesis Gaia propuesta por Lovelock-Margulis en 1974, nos sitúa ante un paisaje posthumano, este no percibido como entorno o recurso sino como todo aquello con lo que estamos íntimamente complicados en nuestro devenir.
Facultad de Filosofía de la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela.
26 de abril de 2023
La mesa “La actualidad del pensamiento de Bruno Latour: de la epistemología a la ecología política” se ha programado dentro del ciclo “Cultura en Mazarelos” de la Facultad de Filosofía de la USC y cuenta con las intervenciones de Jean-Marc Besse, director de l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) y investigador du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Sandra Álvaro del departamento de Arte y Musicología de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Guillermo Rodríguez Alonso, investigador de a USC y Xavier de Donato decano de a Facultad de Filosofía de la USC.
Sandra Álvaro introducirá la relación del pensamiento de Bruno Latour con el arte contemporáneo a través de las tres exposiciones que este autor comisarió junto a Peter Weibel en el ZKM, atendiendo a la necesidad de una teoría estética acorde con los conceptos propuestos por el colectivo de pensadores ensamblados en estas exposiciones.
Isabelle Stengers describes our time as catastrophic: the result of convergent crises affecting the global economy, the environment, and social cohesion. Facing these crises asks for the proposal of a new relationship between humans and their environment. Cosmopolitics – the made up of a heterogeneous space where decisions can be taken in the presence of those who will bear the consequences- is Stengers’ proposal towards this new relation beyond the human exceptionalism of the Anthropocene. Accordingly, surmounting the current devastation requires engaging pragmatically in the events and activating collective creation towards alternative ways of life. This text characterizes present-day ecological art projects from the standpoint of eco-aesthetics or the understanding of artistic production as an experimental endeavour, the assemblage of the environment, humans, technologies, humanistic and scientific knowledge into experienceable settings to make feel and act in the complex interaction between systems that sustain life on our planet. Furthermore, it addresses eco-aesthetics contribution to shifting from biopolitics to cosmopolitics.
Alvaro, S. (2022). Practiced, Conceived and Lived space in the Postdigital City. Estoa. Revista De La Facultad De Arquitectura Y Urbanismo De La Universidad De Cuenca, 11(22). Recuperado a partir de https://publicaciones.ucuenca.edu.ec/ojs/index.php/estoa/article/view/3950
Abstract:
The pandemic has highlighted the fast transmission of needs, goods and ideas that sustain the functionality of our globalised, networked world. At the same time, it has highlighted the resilience and unbreakability of this network when transporting undesirable events such as fake news or a virus. Henceforth, this situation has forced us to rethink how we plan our inhabited space. Since the inception of ubiquitous computing, the city has mutated under a new technologically mediated functionalism, overlaid by the platforms of a global and highly relational system that is submitting space to the logic of computing. Fruit of previous doctoral research, this article reviews the transformations leading to the constitution of this technologically mediated urban space and analyses them by applying Lefebvre’s Unitarian Theory of Space. The objective is to unveil the challenges of the postdigital urban space and present projects that point towards alternative possibilities for urban planning.
Keywords: postdigital; new urbanism; ubiquitous computing; Lefebvre; digital art.
Resumen: La pandemia provocada por el covid-19 ha puesto de manifiesto cómo la funcionalidad del mundo globalizado se sustenta en la rápida transmisión de bienes, necesidades e ideas a través de una densa red de conexiones, así como la resiliencia e inquebrantabilidad de esta red cuando transporta eventos indeseables, como pueden ser las noticias falsas o un virus. Esta situación nos fuerza a replantearnos cómo hemos planificado el espacio urbano. Desde la aparición de la computación ubicua, la ciudad se ha visto transformada por un funcionalismo tecnológicamente mediado, que sobreimpuesto por las plataformas de un sistema global y altamente relacional, está sometiendo el espacio a la lógica de la computación. Fruto de una investigación doctoral previa, este texto revisa las transformaciones que han llevado a la constitución de este espacio urbano global y tecnológicamente mediado y las analiza aplicando la Teoría Unitaria del Espacio de Lefebvre. El objetivo de este análisis es desvelar los múltiples problemas que conlleva este espacio Postdigital y al mismo tiempo exponer proyectos que apuntan a posibilidades alternativas para el planeamiento urbano. Palabras clave: postdigital; nuevo urbanismo; computación ubicua; Lefebvre; arte digital.
El Seminario Internacional Ruinas y Descampados se centrará en los paisajes olvidados y arruinados por la furia del progreso. Al respecto, se debatirá sobre fábricas y minas abandonadas, puertos en decadencia, pueblos sumergidos por las presas, urbanizaciones nunca habitadas o bosques plantados y luego olvidados. A pesar de todo, el objetivo del evento no es el de recrearse en los yermos, sino el de mostrar esa vida y ese arte que crecen en los márgenes del sueño del capitalismo. Además de reunir a algunos de los mayores pensadores y especialistas europeos en Teoría y Práctica del Paisaje, las conferencias se acompañarán de actividades complementarias, como mesas de debate o un ciclo de cortometrajes, entre otras.
Se debatirán los primeros resultados del proyectoPaisajes y arquitecturas del error. Contra-historia delpaisaje en la Europa latina (1945-2020). PID2020-112921GB-I00
Deparq es un proyecto de investigación centrado en el estudio de los paisajes marginales y arruinados del capitalismo industrial y postindustrial en el Sur de Europa. Hasta hace unos años, el grueso de las intervenciones en el ámbito de la arquitectura y el urbanismo contemporáneos tenía que ver con cierta espiral de demoliciones y construcciones basada en un modelo económico de desarrollo infinito. El contexto del Antropoceno y la insistencia en el cambio climático están dando al traste con la lógica intervencionista y de construcción basada en el crecimiento y la humanización desatados. Ahora de lo que se trata es de denunciar los peligros de ese crecimiento imparable y de vislumbrar otros modelos.
Short intro “Interactive Art and Posthuman thought” is a theoretical workshop aimed to introduce the students to the development of this current of thought and the entanglements between art science, computation and politics that accompanied its evolution. The workshop consists of two sessions, one introductory theoretical and a second practice-based in which students will discuss previously facilitated texts and propose their art examples. Participation and open discussion are welcomed in both sessions.
“The System must not only be in perpetual heterogeneity, it must also be an heterogènesis”
Deleuze,Two regimes of madness : texts and interviews, 1975-1995
Abstract The Anthropocene, the role information technologies play in society and culture, and eurocentrism conforms the subjects at the core of contemporary humanistic research and art practice, which addresses them in a rising number of developing projects, grouped under labels as eco-aesthetics, techno-ecology, art and science, speculative fiction, post-anthropocentrism, Postdigital, critical making, post-colonialism, and so on. These works share concepts, references, and a new relation of the human with its environment that denounces human exceptionalism and the traditional distinctions -between nature-culture, body-mind, time-space, sciences-humanities- that characterized Modern thought. The same critic and concepts are developing in the work of contemporary thinkers that under the influence of post-structuralist thinkers -notably Foucault and Deleuze – surpasses the traditional division of disciplines and consider the participation of complex entanglements between science, technology, humanities, art and politics in the production of the contemporaneous subjects and its environment. The work by Haraway, Stengers, and Latour departed from science studies to encounter with a rising number of authors in the production of a philosophical thought in which science intersects with feminism ( Donna Haraway, Isabelle Stengers, Elizabeth Grosz, Elizabeth Povinelli), digital humanities (Katherine Hayles), anthropology (Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing) Sociology (Myra J Hird), economics (Jason W. Moore ), politics (Jane Bennett), post-colonialism (Simone Bignall) and Philosophy (Claire Colebrook, Rosi Braidotti). Inside this schema of thought, art appears as a transversal, postmedial and material-based research engaged in the process of worlding and with a political and ethical function. This workshop consists of three parts: First, the introduction to the evolution of posthuman thought focusing on the influence of science (systems theory, ecology and the theory of evolution) and interactive art. Here, we will address the bibliography and main concepts of some of the already mentioned theorists. Second, the analysis and discussion of posthumanist texts related to interactive artworks. Here, we will highlight the concepts and functions attributed to art and its relationship with Deleuze’s art definition. Third, we will comment and discuss texts – from other fields than philosophy -, which had contributed to the development of the concepts and practices previously analyzed.
Teaching program (Schedule)
Workshop 1 (Friday, 11 March, from 11:00 to 16:00h) 11:00– 13:00 h. Posthuman thought: • Systems Theory, radical theory of evolution, poststructuralism and the assemblage of humans and non-humans • Geopower, the Inhuman and the possibility of a post-anthropocentric future (introduction to posthumanism’s authors and concepts) 13:00 – 13:30h. (lunch break) 13:30 – 16:00 Reviewing interactive art through the comments and references of posthumanist thinkers (Deleuze’s definition of art and its posthumanist interpretation)
• Workshop 2 (Saturday, 12 March, from 11:00 to 16:00h) 11:00 – 13:00 Open discussion of previously proposed texts relating to science-fiction, aesthetics, ethics, radical epistemologies, postcolonialism, postcapitalism and the Anthropocene. (The students will relate the proposed texts with concepts and art practices previously discussed) 13:00 -13:30h (lunch break) 13:30 – 16:00h -Open discussion continuation
PostSensorium festival aims to provide a platform for artistic interventions and critical discussions on the 21st-century’s virtual sensing technologies, science, and aesthetics, reconsidering the relations between the actual and virtual, organic and artificial, natural and techno-social, human and “more-than-human”…
Panel 4A. (AI/ECO) INTELLIGENT ECOSYSTEMS AND MORE-THAN-HUMAN CONDITIONS – 25th September
Lecture – Aesthetics of Perception, a historical approximation to inhuman vision and its ecological meaning
Aesthetics
is derived from the Greek term aisthetikos, meaning “aesthetics, sensitive,
sentient, about sense perception”. First considered as the critic of taste
[Baumgarten, 1750] aesthetics was enmeshed in a historical narrative that
imposes a distinction between the cognitive-semantic and the affective-stimulant.
This paper will sketch a different narrative in which perception is linked to
knowledge. In this history, art is an experimental endeavour in which media are
resurfaced as constitutive of our experience and always linked to situated
histories and politics. Media digital or analogue links the viewer in networks
of transindivituation that go beyond their organic limits [Stiegler, 2009,
Colebrook, 2014].
This history starts in Modernity with Goethe’s experiments on the perception of colour that led into the avant-garde, this introduction will link with contemporary art and New Media. The possibility of interpretation and action always relies on a complex relationship between digital and analogue, or the capacity to reduce differential complexity to already established units of recognition [Bergson, 1912]. Artworks that process data implementing interfaces and ‘intelligent’ systems whit purposes other than efficiency, control or organic live maintenance engage us in complex ecologies that go beyond our organic limits and our milieu as a given system. This creative process opens our perception to a posthuman world, Gaia evolving indifferent to us [Margulis] and into the possibility of other futures.
