Professor Roy Ascott is the DeTao Master of Technoetic Arts. He established Roy Ascott Technoetic Arts Studio, in DeTao Masters College, Songjiang, Shanghai, 2013. The Studio is responsible for a broad range of activities in the domain of art education, research, and public and professional outreach. The studio is principally responsible for the advanced four-year BA Technoetic Arts degree program, provided by the DeTao Masters Academy in conjunction with SIVA, and designed to prepare students for a career in the field of new media arts, contributing to developments in the cultural life of China, and addressing the contemporary, international world of art. The Studio also houses the DeTao Node of the Planetary Collegium’s doctoral research network. Short courses for gallery and museum curators, directors and critics are also offered, from time to time. The work of the Studio, its students and staff, is frequently represented in significant exhibitions and conferences in China and abroad.
The Technoetic Arts BA
Course Description
The Technoetic Arts degree programme is an advanced art course based on a research-creation paradigm, involving the student in both theoretical and practical work, through the convergent field of art , technology and consciousness studies. Over the four years of the course, students are immersed in a dynamic framework of understanding, knowing, creating and exposing that evolves and manifests through all aspects of artistic expression, and applications of science and technology.
Mission
The BA Technoetic Arts programme is designed to prepare students for a career in the field of new media arts and to contribute to the parameters of social and cultural life. It aims to enable students to develop a predictive intelligence to tools and software, making technoetic art practice anticipatory, whilst grounded in the contemporary moment. Students choose to apply for this programme, and find the support of family and friends for their choice, once they become aware of the scope of possibilities - financial, professional, and artistic - that this degree program can enable its graduates to achieve. This is a relatively new development in China, which will increasingly have important results in the art and design professions, in curating and the direction of public museums and commercial galleries, in university teaching and research, and in the cultural marketplace. It will be to the great advantage of students to be in this field as it emerges into the future; it offers an opportunity to make a unique contribution to modern China, and to its rich heritage. The motto of the Studio is The Future is Now!
With good publicity, frequent exhibitions, and ubiquitous online presence, the Ascott Technoetic Arts initiative successfully competes for world attention with programs throughout China, and in Korea, Japan, and the West. The programme expects to continue to enjoy consistently good enrolments.
Definition
'Technoetics is a convergent field of practice that seeks to explore consciousness and connectivity through digital, telematic, chemical and spiritual means, embracing both interactive and psychoactive technologies, and the creative use of moistmedia.' (Roy Ascott 2008)
Ref: www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-journal,id=142/
As we move into the future, Technoetic Artsstudents face the challenge of creating a syncretic art that explores telematics (planetary connectivity), nanotechnology (bottom up construction), quantum computing (augmented cyberception), cognitive science and pharmacology (field consciousness), and esoterica (psychic instrumentality).
Students may work in a wide range of artistic practices, including digital telecommunications, Internet connectivity, screen-based hypermedia, digital film, multi-media installations, intelligent architecture, smart products, robotics, telepresence systems, computer modelling of behaviour, remote sensing devices, cyberspace and virtual reality, artificial life, popular culture, contemporary music, sonic art, video art and performance.
Aims & Objectives
To develop, at the highest international level, the field of technoetic art practice in China, through progressive teaching, learning and research, that will fully explore and exploit cybernetic, telematic, technoetic, and syncretic methodologies, actions, and outputs.
Curriculum Structure
In aiming to enable individual creative development in relation to art, technology and consciousness research, the curriculum it is built on the generative principle of the lattice, an open network, consisting of:
Poles
• Information (knowing)
• Structure (building)
• Concept (thinking)
Orientations
• Analysis (materials, software, tools, systems)
• Theory (historical and emergent)
• Social application (real world problems)
• Speculation (anticipatory, propositional, expressive)
• Interaction (transformative instrumental)
Threads
• Telematic Narrative (time-based, interactive)
• Moistmedia (bio, neuro, nano )
• Syncretic environment (variable reality, modeling, prototyping, Internet of Things)
• Behavioural studies (performance, identity, collaboration)
• Communications (language, semiotic systems, cyberception)
Skills
Skills are taught and acquired incrementally, at the point of need in the development of the student’s work. The process is assisted by scheduled access to the skill station.
Course Modules
The identification of specific course subjects is accomplished by a collaborative process employing the lattice model of poles, orientations, and threads. Based on these principles, the curriculum must be seen as emergent but stable, subject to collaborative development involving faculty, administrative, and student representation.
• Cultivation of Ethical Thinking
• Physical Education
• Communication (Chinese | English)
• Paradigms of Art
• Comparative Culture
• Tools, Software and Systems
• Cybernetics
• Moistmedia
• Narrative
• Cyberception
• Behaviour-Identity-Environment
• Personal Development
• Critical Integration/Methodology
Career Opportunities
Students may work in a wide range of artistic practices, including digital telecommunications, Internet connectivity, screen-based hypermedia, digital film, multi-media installations, intelligent architecture, smart products, robotics, telepresence systems, computer modeling of behavior, remote sensing devices, cyberspace and virtual reality, artificial life, popular culture, contemporary music, sonic art, video art and performance, new media, mixed techniques events (Galleries, Exhibitions, Residencies, etc.)
New media management activities (Planning, Organization, Curation, Communication)
Art Direction: Traditional Applied (online, games, film) or below the line media driven events (new media-oriented communications etc.)
Further Education and Research (2nd Degree, MFA, PhD)
Innovation, Business applications in all new media creative domains.
Admissions
Those interested in the program, should email (in English) royascottstudio@detaoma.com, giving full contact details, to receive comprehensive application details.
Duration of the Technoeic Arts Advanced Degree Programme
4 Years: 2 Semesters per Year, September to January and February-June
Roy Ascott, recipient of the first Ars Electronica Golden Nica award for Visionary Pioneers of Media Art, focuses on the impact of digital and telecommunications networks on consciousness. His work has been shown at the Shanghai Biennale, Venice Biennale, Milan Triennale, Biennale do Mercosul Brazil, European Media Festival, INDAF 2010 Korea, and the Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris. His work is in the permanent collection of the Tate Gallery, London and other notable collections. He has advised universities, arts councils, media centers, and festivals in Europe, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Japan, Korea, USA and UNESCO. He is the founding President of the Planetary Collegium, an international network for doctoral research. In 2012, Roy Ascott became DeTao Master of Technoetic Arts at the DeTao Masters Academy, to promote the development of teaching and research in art, science, technology and consciousness in China. Since 2017, he has also been the Chief Specialist of the Visual Art Innovation Institute at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.
More about Roy Ascott's artworks
A Tribute to the Messenger Shaman: Roy Ascott. Journal of Cybernetics and Human Knowing,issue 2-3 2018. https://www.chkjournal.com/sites/default/files/_13_ap11_149-163.pdf
Faculty Members
Junkai Chen
Senior Lecturer & Course Coordinator
Junkai Chen is an artist who lives and works in Shanghai. He holds a Master degree from Villa Arson National School of Fine Arts,Nice, France. With his background in audio research and practice in Le Fresnoy-Studio, he became involved in audiovisual and interactive installations, leading spectators to be part of performance through their interaction with his artworks. He has developed audiovisual creation as a tool to achieve performance, and explored new musical instruments and audiovisual installation to tell stories with his own experiences. His artwork and performance were exhibited in China and abroad: Panorama of the studio of Le Fresnoy,2016; La nuit Blanche in Paris,2017; Re-Model the World of Pearl Art museum in Shanghai,2018. 2^6 Technoetic Arts Events - Bagua installation in West Bund Museum,2021. His artwork was awarded in 2017 Audi Talent in Paris, 2017 Talents Contemporains of Fondation François Schneider.
John Bardakos
Senior Lecturer
John (Ioannis) Bardakos is an artist and researcher born in Athens, Greece in 1976. He studied Mathematics, Digital, and Traditional Media focused in Applied and Fine Arts. During his career he got involved in a variety of hybrid media projects, animated films and other artistic productions as an artist, director, and producer.Besides his practical and meta-practical art skills,he has a deep and broad knowledge of the theoretical aesthetic, narrative and technical elements of artistic research.He expanded his mathematical and artistic education with postgraduate studies in philosophy, aesthetics in the domain of Fine Arts using a variety, of Traditional, Analog, Digital, Algorithmic, Virtual, and Interaction methodologies. He taught in a variety of seminars, workshops and departments in Athens, Paris, and Shanghai.
Pete Townshend Senior Lecturer in Performative Cybernetics
Architect, media artist and researcher, Ph.D. (Doctor in Fine Arts, University of Sao Paulo and CAiiA hub of The Planetary Collegium), Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholarship awardee (UCLA, Art|Sci Center/James Gimzewski Lab), M.Arch. (Master of Architecture Theory and History, University of Sao Paulo), member of the UCLA Art|Sci Collective, she is the chair of the first Leonardo/ISAST LASER talks to be hosted in Brazil/Latin America (2017-present). She was part of the founding team of the Roy Ascott Studio in Shanghai and has been serving as a reviewer for the Leonardo Abstracts Service (Leonardo LABS), the Leonardo Journal and the Intellect Books’ Technoetic Arts Journal. Having performative technoetics and digital humanities as compass, she is interested in cross-scale information and communication dynamics that impacts human-nonhuman behavior and other macro-scale emergent phenomena. Exploring in her more recent projects the metaphysics of information-visualization in subversive morphogenetic strategies, she welcomes the animistic to navigate ecologies-as-cosmologies. Clarissa has exhibited and presented her work internationally in collective exhibitions and solo shows, artist talks, paper and panel sessions, and workshops in several edition of FILE Sao Paulo, ISEA, Ars Electronica, SIGGRAPH, SIGGRAPH Asia, China VIS, POM, Consciousness Reframed, CAA, IEEE VIS ART program. She is a Professor at the University of Fortaleza where she directs the LIP – Lab for Innovation and Prototyping.
Chen Yufei
Lecturer
Chen Yufei is a sound artist and engaged in the research of analytical philosophy for many years.During his master's degree, his main research focuses on skepticism and strategies. During his doctor's degree, he mainly studies free will ( determinism, randomness over uncertainty, and discussion on the relationship between order, logic and freedom). Chen Yufei has been engaged in live music performance and sound creation for many years, and has rich experience in cooperation with different artists and studios, such as low-tech laboratory, UFO studio, SLATE Contemporary Dance Troupe, etc.
Huang Wei
Lecturer
Huang Wei is an artist based in Shanghai. His research focuses on equipment feeding, data reproduction, media breeding, information hybridization and audio-visual elements generated from shooting, sampling, misappropriation, field recording, photogrammetry, CG production and parameterization. he has a deep and broad knowledge of the theoretical aesthetic, narrative and technical elements of artistic research. His works mainly reflect on the chaotic situation of information overload, landscape worship, consumerism, algorithm management and intelligent hegemony,etc.
Nolan | Xuanyang Huang
Part-time Lecturer
Xuanyang Huang graduated from School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. After pursuing his double master degree in digital art and media culture, he worked as a research assistant and technical instructor in Harvestworks Digital Media Centre, New York. With his academic background in media theory and art history, he involves theoretical concepts into creative practice, in order to reflect on philosophical or cultural approach in production. Ranging from computer graphics, photography, media installation and multimedia performance, his research-oriented practices explore the new artistic approach of time-based media and the hybrid forms of cinematic art. Huang’s works have been showcased and exhibit in New York, Zurich, London, Hong Kong, and other countries and regions. Recently, his research interest focus on the exploration of mixed reality landscape.
Wang Jiaming
Part-time Lecturer
Wang Jiaming is an artist, theater director and the founder of Yi media studio and CRAC Art Center. He graduated from CNR de Nantes, France, and then engaged in the research of modern dance choreography at Conservatory National Superieur Musique et Danse de Lyon. He has continued to create theatrical and cross media performances. His artworks focuses on exploring the performance in the abnormal space, and combined with new media art to build a new way of performance and presentation.
Zhang Hong
Part-time Lecturer
Zhang Hong graduated in new media art from China Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, and in digital art and design from the Shanghai Theatre Academy.
Zhang Hong has won the Silver award of Lin Fengmian, participated in the 2012 Shanghai interactive ink painting exhibition, in the 2013 Himalayan art gallery opening exhibition "Image", and in the 2014 Shanghai cultural administration exhibition of radio, film and television science progress. She was nominated for Fashion art creation of Fashion influence ceremony in 2016, and the.2017 International Computer Music Association.
Yuan Keru
Part-time Lecturer
Yuan Keru is a visual artist and filmmaker. Her artistic creation focuses on exploring the painting sense, spatial rhythm and narration, combining events, emotions and history, myths, dreams, etc. She was shortlisted for the 2014 Huayu Youth Art Award, participated in the "Diamond Generation" ,2013 Hong Kong Art Basel Salon, and the 2016 Hong Kong Basel "Lighting Scene" unit. Her artworks have been exhibited in Shanghai 21st Century Minsheng Art Museum, Ming Contemporary Art Museum, Today Art Museum, International Art Exhibition in Northern Germany Art District, Helsinki Art Festival in Finland, "I SEE International Video Art Festival", Photo Shanghai, Xiamen "Jimei X Arles" International Photography Festival, Beijing Loud Exhibition, Beijing Independent Video Exhibition and other art museum and festivals.
Eleanor | Zhang Tingting
Personal Assistant to DeTao Master Roy Ascott, and Technoetic Arts Studio Assistant
Eleanor graduated from Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics. Since 2016, she is responsible for assisting all programmes, events and activities in the Studio, including teaching, exhibitions, workshops, fieldtrips, and publications.
Environment
The Roy Ascott Technoetic Arts Studio
The main studio of Roy Ascott is located in the DeTao building at SIVA, Songjiang, Shanghai. Here, lecturers and administrative personnel offices are also located, including the office of the Planetary Collegium in China. A conference room in this main studio complex provides for seminars and presentations by visiting artists and researchers, and from other Masters of the DeTao Masters Academy.
Computer Lab (Virtual Studio)
The Computer Lab (Virtual Studio) is the main space for experimentation and exposure in virtual/digital applications, creative coding, Interactivity, projection mapping techniques, and the broader spectrum of digital tools, methodologies, and techniques. Using Apple, Windows, Raspberry Pi, Arduino, HTC Vive, and 3D Printing hardware, students are able to explore the digital realm. In terms of software a wide variety of tools are available, from 2d (Adobe suite, Open Source 2d motion/image editing), 3d (Rhinoceros, Blender, Maya, Houdini), coding (HTML, Java, Processing, Python (Raspberry Pi), Max MSP, TouchDesigner, Ableton) and more.
Physical Computing- Physical Construction Lab (Physical Studio)
In the Physical Computing/Construction Studio, students learn how to deal with sensors, micro controllers, electronics, building, laser cutting, assembly and installation.
Bio - art Lab (Moistmedia Studio)
The Bio -art Lab allows experimentation with biological organisms, fungi, plants, bacteria, microscopes, and everything related to the broad moist-media spectrum.
Shanghai Institution of Visual Art
Technoetic Arts Studio at Detao Masters Academy in SIVA
DTMA Roy Ascott Technoetic Arts studio & Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts
DeTao at SIVA 2200 Wenxiang Road, Songjiang Shanghai, China 201620