Almat 2020 - symposium on algorithmic agency in artistic practice by Hanns Holger Rutz

The ALMAT 2020 Symposium is interested in the genealogical, processual aspects of algorithms and their transformative potential. We seek critical approaches that avoid both mystification and commodification, that aim at opening the black box of "wonder" that is often presented to the public when utilising algorithms. We depart from the assumption that algorithms possess an inherent material agency that emerges from the intra-action between human and machine (K. Barad). In these exchange processes, we experience gaps, breaks and bends in the flow, the reconfigurative nature of the algorithmic which bounces back and reconfigures our thinking and approach to artistic work. When algorithms are inserted in the creative process, they actively shape this process and spread outside the boundaries of a particular medium or artefact. The symposium looks to rethink the relation between humans and algorithms (N.K. Hayles) in terms of an organic or ecological perspective (Y. Hui) in which actors are entangled and co-generative. The foundation for the symposium is given by the eponymous artistic research project ALMAT - Algorithms that Matter, funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF AR 403-GBL) and hosted at the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM) at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. ALMAT 2020 was originally planned to take place (06–07 July) adjoining the 8th Conference on Computation, Communication, Aesthetics & X – xCoAx (08–10 July). xCoAx is an exploration of the intersection where computational tools and media meet art and culture, in the form of a multi-disciplinary enquiry on aesthetics, computation, communication and the elusive X factor that connects them all. Due to the Coronavirus crisis, xCoAx is going into an online-only mode, and the ALMAT symposium has been replaced by an online assemblage of the submitted proposals only.

return to symposium homepage

How To and FAQ

What is an "exposition"?

The Research Catalogue is a widely used platform for documenting and conducting artistic research, run by the non-profit organisation Society of Artistic Research (SAR). The RC allows to create custom designed webpages called expositions. These expositions can contain many types of media including: text, video, images, and audio recordings, and the way in which these materials are presented is highly customisable.

About your personal page.

We created a dedicated RC exposition for the Almat 2020 symposium (the page you are reading is part of it), which is essentially composed of your contributions. When you click on the title of your contribution in the main page, you get access to your personal page that you can edit, compose and style to fit the content of your proposal, and the way you want to communicate it. We strongly encourage you to use the range of media options provided by RC: sounds, videos, images, slide-shows, shapes and arrows, non-linearly scattered text blocks and to experiment with non-standard formats.
We also ask you to create a five-minutes long presentation, in the form of a video (suggested) or spoken audio file, that describes in a nutshell the work you proposed, or functions as a contextualisation of what one finds on your RC sub-page. This is ideally carried out in an artist talk fashion, walking the viewer or listener through your contribution, if possible making reference to the elements of the RC page. This is also part of the materials you want to post in your page.

I cannot edit my personal page.

Although we strongly recommend that you create the account and do the editing yourself, in the case this is somehow not possible, you may also prepare your materials separately and send them to us via e-mail. This should then be in the form of

.odt for text content
.png and .jpg for image content

and links to downloadable sound files and videos in

.mp3 (192-256 kbps) or
.mp4 (h264, 5-10 Mb/s)

along with a description or mock-up of how these materials are supposed to be arranged on the RC page.

Suggested media formats.

When uploading media files to the RC you might want to consider using one of the suggested formats:

audio: .mp3 (192-256 kbps) or wav
video: .mp4 (h264, 5-10 Mb/s)

Symposium Registration.

Since the symposium no longer takes place physically in Graz, we are waiving any sort of registration fees. We can give you nevertheless a document that states your participation in the exposition, should you need this for any sort of bureaucratic purposes.

Dear Almat 2020 contributor, if this is your first time on the Research Catalogue you might want to have a look at:

RC registration

In order to edit your personal page, you need a "full account" on the RC. If you do not yet have such account, you can register here. Please read the section that describes how you upgrade to the full account. The RC is run by the non-profit academic organisation Society of Artistic Research (SAR), therefore by signing up you are ensured that your data is not exploited for any commercial purposes. RC is a widely used platform for documenting and conducting artistic research.

Get access to Almat 2020 exposition as contributor

Creating the full account may take a couple of days to get confirmed by SAR, so please do this as the first step immediately. Once you have your account, please mail us your account information, i.e. the link to your public profile, e.g.

You are then added as contributor and can start editing your page.

Contact

Shall you have any doubts or questions please get in touch: almat@iem.at.

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