PostDigital Art 3d Computer Art Congress (CAC.3) Proceedings

Abstract

The third Computer Art Congress (CAC.3) is dedicated to PostDigital Art. It is a making
in many senses and invites artists, intellectuals, scientists and technologists to share
their imaginations, creations, inventions and visions of the post digital art.
CAC.3 observes that the world has never appropriated any technology in the same manner
than the digital. This technology has penetrated and dominated almost all facets of
our everyday life. It has had, obviously, important impacts on our culture, economy,
society, . . .and cognition.
We believe that our ways of perception, interpretation and reasoning have not been
same before and after having dealt with the digital world. Whats more digital technology
has become more than part of our life, it has nearly become transparent. Nicholas
Negroponte declared the digital revolution over in 19981: “like air and drinking water,”
digital would be noticed only by its absence, not its presence. Simon Jenkins recalled
this point2 “Don’t tell me you are still putting e- and i- in front of your product or talking
‘platforms’, like some naughtiest nerd. That is so yesterday”, and he persisted that
“Post-digital is not anti-digital. It extends digital into the beyond. The web becomes
not a destination in itself but a route map to somewhere real”.
The termPost Digital has recently come into use in the discourse of digital artistic practice3.
The term aims to call attention to “an attitude that is more concerned with being
human, than with being digital”3. Roy Ascott considers distinction between digital and
”postdigital” is part of the economy of reality3. For Mel Alexenberg4, postdigital as adjective,
addresses the “humanization of digital technologies”.
About PostDigital Art, Adam Tinworth5 points out tow important facts :
- “Theres a rule of thumb in the real estate business that if you want to know which part
of a city is going to go up-market next, look at where the artists go to work.”
- “Everything we do is influenced by digital technology. Just as air and water, the property
of being digital is only noticed when it is not there, not when it is there.”
For all those reasons, and in order to preserve the artistic (and humanistic) part of the
computer art, the advisory board of CAC retained, during the last congress in Mexico
(in 2008), the Post Digital Art as the main topic for CAC.3.
PostDigital Art experience has to be considered as intellectual therapy that challenge
actors of the society to rethink their innovation approaches and the way they perceive
the world, to explore new dimensions of our space, to go forward, to trace their own
path, to be followed CAC.3 count on the abilities of artists to explore digital and extra
digital spaces in order to anticipate new technological issues that can influence our post
digital world.