Theory of Interactive Media (BA, MA study program)
Curators: Jana Horáková and Jiří Mucha
Media art
New media art is a term denoting the critical, subversive, speculative, and creative strategies which have the potential to test the limits of programmed processes, expressions, and experiences mediated by the infrastructure of information and communication technologies. New media artifacts are a result of creative acts which resemble the work of curators rather than the work of creators, DJs rather than interpreters, and dancers rather than sculptors.
Media art theory
Both artists and theoreticians are trapped in the technologically enhanced network of distributed control. They are sentenced to wander in search of escape routes, survival kits, and red/blue pills. Critical distance, which has been regarded as insurance for objectivity and independence of academic theoretical reflection on culture and society, was revealed to be a mere illusion of the over-confident intellectual mind. There is nothing quite like objective truth behind the integrated spectacle of mediated, instant experiences, but there is only the more or less skillfully designed rhetoric of arguments knitted within fuzzy human-machine interactions. In other words, new media art and theory are situated within the same coded and programmed environment. Therefore, media art theory not only reflects on media art practices, but it progressively merges with them, and thus itself becomes speculative, subversive, and experimental.
Hands-on media art theory
The Theory of Interactive Media study program is influenced by the convergence of new media art and theory. Its curriculum includes several subjects which provide students with hands-on experiences of new media as tools of creativity. The goal is to acquaint them with the “logic, vocabulary, and grammar” of the media that artists deal with.
The exhibition shows selected outcomes of the media art hands-on lectures. Moreover, two examples of “out of the box” research projects, situated on the borderline between media art theory, practice, and curatorship, will be presented.
Project Credits:
- Students of Theory of Interactive Media study program
- Department of Musicology
- Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University
- TA ČR, Technological Agency of the Czech Republic
- The Brno House of Arts
- Vašulka Kitchen Brno – Center for New Media Art
- Moravia IT
- MUCHA
Biographies:
Jana Horáková (CZ) is an associate professor for New Media Art at the Department of Musicology, Masaryk University, Faculty of Arts, Czech Republic and head of the Theory of Interactive Media study program. She specializes in local new media art history, robotic art, and innovative methodologies of new media art research, preservation, and mediation. She has presented her research in Austria, Germany, Hungary, Russia, Finland, the USA, and Japan. She has published in MIT Press, Springer Germany, Springer Japan, and others. She is a member of Vašulka Kitchen Brno – Center for New Media Art in Brno. Since 2014 she works as a vice-dean for public relations and editorial work of Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University.
Jiří Mucha (CZ) gained a master’s degree in Theory of Interactive Media at the Department of Musicology, Masaryk University, Faculty of Arts, Czech Republic in 2018. He started working as a freelance artist during his studies. He is a director of the Redlooks company, which specializes in commercial and music videos. More: https://vimeo.com/redlooks
