Symposium | Blur Analysis: Research, visual culture, and the digital, University of Sydney

How are new digital technologies changing research in art and visual culture? How might these changes productively blur ossified patterns of thought, or disciplinary limits? And how might we use these technologies to analyse the blur itself?

These questions are central to the Power Institute’s new digital publishing initiative, and its two new digital publications, The Womanifesto Way and Site and Space in Southeast Asia. To launch this new initiative, the Power Institute has assembled a group of scholars to investigate these questions from a range of perspectives–from the history of digital art to new practices of data analysis, and from studies of architectural history to logistics and infrastructures.

This symposium ask its participants (and audience) to grapple with the opposing forces of the digital world: on the one hand it offers exciting and creative new ways to do research and find audiences and, on the other, there is a rising anxiety about the invasion of slop, marketing hype, and the destructive practices of the neoliberal tech sector.

Beginning with a provocation from visiting scholar Professor Paul B. Jaskot, speakers will discuss practice-led and creative methods for digital research such as mapping, hacking, experimenting, and prototyping. They will address how we can better sustain, conserve and manage born-digital art and research projects. And, also consider how we can use these tools and creative practices to turn a critical eye on the digital world itself.

All Welcome. Free to attend. Full program and registration via this link https://www.powerinstitute.org.au/events/blur-analysis-research-visual-culture-and-digital