Exploring the Future Arts: Graphic, Sonic, Kinetic

Art began as magic. In Western cultures, so-called “fine art” has for centuries been systematically dis-enchanted, and its practitioners classed as licensed professionals. But elsewhere the link between life and art, between everyday existence and extraordinary sensation, has remained much stronger. Thanks to the Internet and electronic media, a host of new possibilities, already at hand or just over the horizon, are about to transform traditional arts throughout the world. Even as artists long outside the Western tradition become more technologically savvy and more commercially focused, Western audiences are learning to accept and enjoy unconventional assemblages of sound, graphics, and patterned movement. In this session, small guided discussion groups will examine specific future possibilities, draw conclusions for themselves, discuss these collectively, and leave with new questions to explore independently after the conference ends.