An ""episode of light"" in Canada sparked by Expo 67 when new art forms, innovative technologies, and novel institutional and policy frameworks emerged together.
An ""episode of light"" in Canada sparked by Expo 67 when new art forms, innovative technologies, and novel institutional and policy frameworks emerged together.
Understanding how experimental art catalyzes technological innovation is often prized yet typically reduced to the magic formula of ""creativity."" In Northern Sparks, Michael Century emphasizes the role of policy and institutions by showing how novel art forms and media technologies in Canada emerged during a period of political and social reinvention, starting in the 1960s with the energies unleashed by Expo 67. Debunking conventional wisdom, Century reclaims innovation from both its present-day devotees and detractors by revealing how experimental artists critically challenge as well as discover and extend the capacities of new technologies.
Century offers a series of detailed cross-media case studies that illustrate the cross-fertilization of art, technology, and policy. These cases span animation, music, sound art and acoustic ecology, cybernetic cinema, interactive installation art, virtual reality, telecommunications art, software applications, and the emergent metadiscipline of human-computer interaction. They include Norman McLaren's ""proto-computational"" film animations; projects in which the computer itself became an agent, as in computer-aided musical composition and choreography; an ill-fated government foray into interactive networking, the videotext system Telidon; and the beginnings of virtual reality at the Banff Centre. Century shows how Canadian artists approached new media technologies as malleable creative materials, while Canada undertook a political reinvention alongside its centennial celebrations. Northern Sparks offers a uniquely nuanced account of innovation in art and technology illuminated by critical policy analysis.
By:
Michael Century
Imprint: MIT Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Weight: 369g
ISBN: 9780262045001
ISBN 10: 0262045001
Series: Leonardo
Pages: 280
Publication Date: 12 July 2022
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
"Series Foreword xi Preface xiii 1 An Episode of Light: Canada from 1967 to 1992 1 2 Norman McLaren and Proto-Computationality 25 3 Hunger/La Faim: When the American Computer Had an Eye, and the Canadian Computer a Hand 53 4 Calculated Motions: Gesture and Expression at the Interface 75 5 Tuning, Tundra, and Treasure: Canada's Expanded Musicality 103 6 Two Faces of Cultural Networking 131 7 Contesting a ""New Art Form"": Virtual Reality as Cultural Probe 159 8 Apres le Deluge: Periodizing Canada's Episode of Light 183 Appendix A: List of Interviews Conducted for This Book 195 Notes 197 Works Cited 225 Index 251"
Michael Century, a musician and media arts historian, is Professor of Music and New Media at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He founded the Media Arts program at the Banff Centre for the Arts.
