Rethinking Interaction in the Post-Digital: A Roundtable Discussion
5th June 2017, 10.30–18.30, Mayday Rooms, London
6 discussion starters, from Diann Bauer, Alessandro Ludovico, Luke Pendrell, Nick Thoburn, Nick Thurston, and Inigo Wilkins, preceded by a summary and reading materials sent out to all in advance. The sessions were introduced by Emmanuelle Waeckerle & James Trafford. We are aiming for some sort of post event publication around a “reflexive report” of the day by Michael Hampton.
The format emphasises discussion, cross fertilisation, collaboration, and significant engagement with the central issues being developed around the topics:
- post digital publication, participatory & collaborative models, the role of artist, modes of engagement and art-production;
- dissemination, power, digital & post-digital forms of political engagement, algorithmic norms.
A delicious vegetarian lunch was provided by Ela Circieska in the Mayday rooms kitchen. We finished the day with a drink on the roof.
Other participants were Danny Aldred, Ami Clarke, Peter Fifield, Lynda Fitzwater, Lee Holden, Mark Hudson, Matt Johnston, Adam Knight, Kaja Marczewska, Mason Terrill, and Manuel Vason.
The notion of interaction has become commonplace in our everyday, as well as extensively experimented with in contemporary art and theorized in the arts and humanities. However, we think it is a concept that is in serious need of questioning and renegotiation given our increasing imbrication within post-digital systems, and complex social and political environments. Rather than decomposing interaction into “us-them”, “human-machine”, or “I-we” relationships, we are interested in the (a)symmetric interactions between different entities, and how these give rise to reflexive transformation through the production of the new.