**ALMAT - Algorithms that Matter** **Symposium on Algorithmic Agency in Artistic Practice**
6--7 July 2020, Graz Austria
https://almat.iem.at/symposium.html
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**Submission deadline: 31 January 2020**
Artists and scientists have worked with digital computers for over seventy years, and algorithmic practices exist for a lot longer. But in recent years, increased computing power and decreased costs and miniaturisation of machines have created a new quantity and quality of everyday exposure, economic and political criticality, and with it a wave of public attention and discourse. As artists-researchers, how do we incorporate this new situation into our practices, and more importantly, how does this changed situation retroact on our understanding of the role of digital art, sound art and artistic practice itself?
Rather than understanding algorithms as existing and transparent tools, the ALMAT Symposium is interested in their genealogical, processual aspects 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.
The foundation for the symposium is given by the eponymous project ALMAT
- Algorithms that Matter. ALMAT is an artistic research project by Hanns
Holger Rutz and David Pirrò funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF AR 403-GBL) and hosted by the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM) at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz.
ALMAT 2020 will 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. xCoAx has issued a separate call for participation – http://www.xcoax.org – and reduced combi-tickets are available for xCoAx
- ALMAT.
**Call for Contributions**
The ALMAT Symposium calls for artistic research contributions in the following two categories:
Contributions exploring the symposium's theme and the questions arising from it. This may include:
- What are the material qualities specific of algorithms and algorithmic practices? How does the algorithmic become malleable as material?
- Are there particular affordances of the algorithmic?
- How does algorithmic agency unfold, how can it be observed, formulated, or communicated? Which alternatives to traditional concepts such as control/controller could be formulated?
- How does the reconfigurative "intrinsic" or "speculative" movement of algorithms extend to or retroact on the artist or recipient, how does it shape their interactions?
- How can artistic experimentation with algorithms be communicated to an audience, how may it help sensitise and empower people to take ownership of the algorithmic?
- Which are the thresholds of heteronomy/autonomy, what makes an algorithmic practice become generative?
- What are philosophical, technological, aesthetic or artistic consequences of acknowledging the agency of algorithms?
Contributions that explicitly refer to the research, the experiences and the case studies of the ALMAT research project. Contributions may be commentary, continuation, critique or, more in general, a response to one or more aesthetic and theoretic manifestations and artefacts reflected in the project's documentation. The project's (ongoing) documentation is an online hypertext starting at the Continuous Exposition: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/381565/381566. In particular, we identified a number of works that are good candidates for responses, as they will be visible or audible during the symposium (see submission page).
For more information and details of contribution formats and application process, please refer to: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/381565/698006
Contact: For any questions, please write to almat@iem.at.
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