Northern Sparks
Innovation, Technology Policy, and the Arts in Canada from Expo 67 to the Internet Age
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Northern Sparks
Innovation, Technology Policy, and the Arts in Canada from Expo 67 to the Internet Age
About this book
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.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Series Page
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Table of Contents
- Series Foreword
- Preface
- 1. An Episode of Light: Canada from 1967 to 1992
- 2. Norman McLaren and Proto-Computationality
- 3. Hunger/La Faim: When the American Computer Had an Eye, and the Canadian Computer a Hand
- 4. Calculated Motions: Gesture and Expression at the Interface
- 5. Tuning, Tundra, and Treasure: Canada’s Expanded Musicality
- 6. Two Faces of Cultural Networking
- 7. Contesting a “New Art Form”: Virtual Reality as Cultural Probe
- 8. Après le Déluge: Periodizing Canada’s Episode of Light
- Appendix A: List of Interviews Conducted for This Book
- Works Cited
- Index