Advanced Course

 

Course Description

The BA course in Technoetic Arts is a groundbreaking initiative between the world-class international artist, educator, and theorist Roy Ascott with the DeTao Group and the Shanghai Institute of Visual Art (SIVA). The course offers a range of master classes, workshops, seminars, online projects, exhibitions, screenings for both students, researchers, and working professionals in all aspects of the field of new media arts, with the purpose of developing a transdisciplinary forum that promotes speculative research, critical thinking, and advancement of social and cultural attitudes that will inform and effect practical work and professional practice in the emergent planetary culture. Technoetic Arts consist of a four-year full time program designed by the Professor of Technoetic Arts, co-ordination by DeTao, and taught by DeTao in conjunction with SIVA faculty.

 

Mission

The BA Technoetic Arts is designed to prepare students for a career in the field of new media arts. Technoetic Arts however is not only concerned with the new, but also in anticipating the future, as well as utilizing whatever has proven useful in the past. The program aims to enable students to develop a predictive intelligence to tools and software, making technoetic art practice anticipatory whilst grounded in the contemporary moment. Students will want to apply for this, and their parents will be keen to support their choice, once they have a proper understanding of the scope of possibilities – financial, professional, and artistic – that this degree program can enable their children to achieve. This is a relatively new development in China, which will increasingly have important outcomes in the arts professions, in museums, and markets. It will be to the great advantage to students to be in this field as it emerges into the future; it offers an opportunity to make a unique contribution to modern China, a worthwhile contribution to its rich artistic heritage. Given that this message is effectively shared across China, in its school and colleges, online and in print, we can anticipate a good enrolment in the program. The SIVA/DeTao initiative needs to be widely publicized, if we are to compete with programs in Hong Kong, and other parts of China, Korea, Japan, and the West.

 

Definition

Technoetics is a convergent field of practice that seeks to explore consciousness and connectivity (mind and networks) through digital, telematic, chemical or spiritual means, embracing both interactive and psychoactive technologies, and the creative use of moistmedia. Arts refers to professional practice in a variety of creative modes that may be both analogue and digital, private and public, expressive and speculative, performative and intimate, theoretical and curatorial.

Ref: www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-journal,id=142/

Technoetic art students face the challenge of creating a syncretic art that explores telematics (planetary connectivity), nanotechnology (bottom up construction), quantum computing (augmented cyberception), cognitive science and pharmacology (field consciousness), and esoterica (psychic instrumentality). Students may work in a wide range of artistic practices, including digital telecommunications, Internet connectivity, screen-based hypermedia, digital film, multi-media installations, intelligent architecture, smart products, robotics, telepresence systems, computer modelling of behaviour, remote sensing devices, cyberspace and virtual reality, artificial life, popular culture, contemporary music, sonic art, video art and performance.

 

Aims & Objectives

To develop, at a high international level, the field of technoetic art practice in China, through progressive teaching, learning and research, that will involve cybernetic, telematic, technoetic, and syncretic methodologies, actions, and outputs.

 

Curriculum Structure

Lattice

The curriculum aims to enable individual creative development in relation to art, technology and consciousness research, and it is built on the generative principle of the lattice, an open network, consisting of:

 

Poles

• Information (knowing)
• Structure (building)
• Concept (thinking)

 

Orientations

• Analysis (materials, software, tools, systems)
• Theory (historical and emergent)
• Social application (real world problems)
• Speculation (anticipatory, propositional, expressive)
• Interaction (transformative instrumental)

 

Threads

• Telematic Narrative (time-based, interactive)
• Moistmedia (bio, neuro, nano )
• Syncretic environment (variable reality, modeling, prototyping, Internet of Things)
• Behavioural studies (performance, identity, collaboration)
• Communications (language, semiotic systems, cyberception)

 

Skill training

Skills are taught and acquired incrementally, at the point of need in the development of the student’s work. The process is assisted by scheduled access to the skill station.

 

Main Modules of the Course

The identification of specific course subjects is accomplished by a collaborative process employing the lattice model of poles, orientations, and threads. Based on these principles, the curriculum must be seen as stable but emergent, subject to collaborative development involving faculty, administrative, and student representation.

 

• Cultivation of Ethical Thinking
• Physical Education
• Communication (Chinese | English)
• Paradigms of Art
• Comparative Culture
• Tools, Software and Systems
• Cybernetics
• Moistmedia
• Narrative
• Cyberception
• Behaviour-Identity-Environment
• Personal Development
• Critical Integration/Methodology

 

Career Opportunities

Students may work in a wide range of artistic practices, including digital telecommunications, Internet connectivity, screen-based hypermedia, digital film, multi-media installations, intelligent architecture, smart products, robotics, telepresence systems, computer modeling of behavior, remote sensing devices, cyberspace and virtual reality, artificial life, popular culture, contemporary music, sonic art, video art and performance.

 

Admissions

Admissions for the BA Technoetic Arts have started for year 2014-2015. If you are interested in our program, please send us an email in English with your contact details and will let you know of what further is needed from you in order to be accepted into our program.

 

Timing

4 Years, 2 Semesters/Year, September to January and February-June