Computers & Art: Digital Sculpture, Digital Music

Lecture I.
Sculpture in Postdigital Age – Helena Lukášová

The conceptual art of seventies freed the art expression form the burden of physical materiality. Computers offered new means of interaction, information transformed into electric impulses was immaterialized completely. New forms of artistic expression were established while the sculpture as a discipline had been stuck in the tactile realm of physicality.With the means of digital fabrication, which became more available after the turn of millennium, the digital file of 3d object could be materialized with 3d printing, CNC or robotic milling. Sculpture became the material object freed from the digital medium. Yet its very nature is digital. This open vast possibilities for artists to think about an object in new context.

Lecture II.
Music as Painting, Sculpture or Architecture – Martin Flašar

Until 1900, music was considered a time-based art. With the advent of new media and the theory of relativity this concept has proved unsustainable. The immediate task of the avant-garde became to colonize the missing dimension, in the case of music the spatial dimension. Kandinsky in his famous treatise Point and line to plane (1926) examined basic pictorial elements from zero- to two-dimensionsal. Similarly, music can be represented by notes (points) and melodies (lines) to harmonic structures (planes). Nevertheless, we still remain in the realm of musical notation. But what if music turned into painting, sculpture or architecture? The following lecture provides several examples of transcoding musical structure into famous artworks of the 20th century by František Kupka, Eila Hiltunen, Edgard Varèse and Iannis Xenakis.

Case study I.
Tactile Object – Helena Lukášová

Digital fabrication had triggered the interest of artists who understood that this new approach opens new ways of thinking about sculpture. Now it could be data visualization, materialization of a movement, stealing forms from existing world via 3d scan and photogrammetry, programming trajectories of carving tool etc. All this new possibilities of sculpture are embedded in the New Aesthetics of the post-digital era and contemporary thoughs on object oriented onthology. Selected art works will be presented.

Case study II.
Multimedia Artist Tomáš Dvořák (aka Floex) and His Archifon (2011–) as a Sculptural and Architectural Musical Instrument – Martin Flašar

Digital fabrication had triggered the interest of artists who understood that this new approach opens new ways of thinking about sculpture. Now it could be data visualization, materialization of a movement, stealing forms from existing world via 3d scan and photogrammetry, programming trajectories of carving tool etc. All this new possibilities of sculpture are embedded in the New Aesthetics of the post-digital era and contemporary thoughs on object oriented onthology. Selected art works will be presented.

Lectures and case studies will be held in English. Full syllabus available here. Lessons take place every Thursday at 14.00 as a part of New Media and Entertainment (M_VIRTUAL) course held at TIM FF MU. In case of any questions, please contact us at virtual@phil.muni.cz.