Conference Papers


Three papers

  • on technology

Ture Sjölander

Ture Sjölander,

The Inpact of New Technology on the Development of Culture

 

1. MULTI-CULTURAL COMMUNICATIONS BY SATELLITE - AN ELECTRONIC GOLD MINE

a. An annual 3-week internation satelliteTV high-tech art festivaL

b. Commercialise peace via satellite

c. An international lobby group: to connect all TV-systems of the world

- SATELLITE is the medium

- COMMUNICATIONS is the means

- PEACE is the message

 

2. MULTI-INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS IS THE OUTCOME

 

The text above was written 1985 as a topic for a number of lectures by Mr Sjolander.

The following text was written in 1973. It will be used as a basis for Mr Sjölanders comments today, 25 years later.

 

ARTISTS' MEDIA

 

For the creation of paintings, works of graphic art, free-standing sculptures and reliefs there is a fairly limited number of materials and techniques; these have changed relatively little during the last 300 years.

 

Even though new materials and methods have developed, the artistic techniques in the areas of painting, graphic arts and sculpture have kept their traditional character. A painting on canvas today has a technical structure largely similar to that of a seventeenth century painting.

 

The possibility of giving pictorial expression to the artist's message is however not tied to traditional methods. For the majority of people in the industrial countries, television, video newspapers and advertising have become the dominant transmitters of pictures and visual images. Television and video in particular have come to extend more and more widely through the global development of distribution systems, and are frequently used as a medium for other art forms, such as film, theatre and pictorial arts.

 

In this context it should be emphasised that it is journalists, above all, who have been recruited to these areas and who have therefore had an opportunity of exploiting the particular and specialised resources which television and video have at their disposal. The fact that pictorial artists occupy a subordinate position would seem partly to be connected with the fact that art schools still limit their educational role to the traditional creation of static images.

 

2. THE CREATION OF ELECTRONIC IMAGES

 

The work of artistic/technical development presupposes that artists have access to specialised technical studio equipment.

 

Television has been in existence now for almost 50 years. During this period a significant number of cultural programmes have been made by artists. Very rarely, however, have these artists produced works directly intended/designed for this medium. Although television per se is a pictorial medium, it has primarily been used to transmit words. The stress has been laid on 'tele' or the transporting/transmitting aspects of the medium, and comparatively little attention has been paid to the conceptual element of 'vision'; that is to say those aspects having to do with the language of the images themselves.

 

If one looks back on the history of art and makes comparisons with the visual aesthetics used in television today, one is struck be the fact that the greater proportion of all television production today uses visual aesthetics dating back to the 16th century. As an example we may mention the aesthetics of Cubism: this implied a visualisation of several different points of view being given simultaneous expression and coinciding with the discoveries by modern physics of Time and Space being only relative and not absolutely fixed structures.

 

Cubism dates back more than 50 years, and yet, in a television programme a few years ago it would be unthinkable to use Cubist visual aesthetics.

 

 

MEDIA DEVELOPMENT AND COMPUTER COMMUNICATION

 

This situation is however changing rapidly at the present moment. During the last decades or so, a series of international artists have initiated the construction of elctronic image laboratories, where they pursue the development of new art forms through experimental techniques.

 

Those internatinal artists who have access to modern electronic technology have been given the opportunity of realising, by a creative process, their ideas concerning a truly visually-oriented language. Artists with many different points of view and modes of expression have begun working with computer/electronics/video, taking their point of departure in their previous knowledge and training. Painters, sculptors, musicians, photographers, composers, choreographers and others have approached this medium with their own particular talents and creative methodology and all have contributed to media development in the area of television film and video and to a visual language characterised by greater awareness and creativity.

 

International electronic music studios have conducted its work of development in music for nearly 30 years, those artists who have been engaged in similar work within the visual arts field are mostly still obliged to manage completely without any corresponding access to electronic equipment.

 

In a number of countries considerable sums have been invested, for many years, in facilities for practical experimentation in both the visual and audio areas.

 

 

 

THE ARTIST AS DESIGN SCIENTIST

 

The creation of electronic images (sometimes called 'video art'), is an artistic development of visual language. Modern 'electronics' can convert sound vibrations into visual structures, and image components into patterns of sound, thereby giving visual expression to basic processes such as growth and change. The essential definition of 'video art' is based on the manipulation of video signals. Apart from the use of video to realise a series of images in a temporal sequence, artists can also exploit television as a physical, sculptural, object. At galleries they make 'installations' or 'environments' by placing one or more monitors or giant screen projections in specific, related positions. Video cameras, too, 'incorporate' the spectator into the work. In this way, it is possible to explore perceptions of what is seen, as well as the psychology of seeing, in a living context.

 

An electronic image laboratory, however, should not be limited to video. Another related area is the so-called computer animation (computer-assisted and/or computer-generated images). This technique is based on advanced forms of programming and opens up hiterto unimagined possibilities of free-image composition.

 

With the aid of electronics and laser the static image, too, will have an interesting development in the fields of painting and graphic arts. Attempts in this direction have been demonstrated in the form of 'video paintings', or more precisely, electronic painting and computer art.

 

 

 

WORD PICTURES

 

Those who claim that we live today in a visually oriented culture are probably word-blind. Today's visual art and visual media, with the possible exception of painting, still bear a master-slave relationship to elite literature and popular journalism - in the beginning was the Word. The word is power. People who can express themselves well and forcefully in speech and writing, more or less automatically achieve positions of power... while people who express themselves well in pictures, must often support themselves through stipends and other grants.

 

The producers of words dominate the cultural columns of newspapers, control official cultural policy and the most important visual media. And generally exert a damnably important influence on society. The arts in Sweden are infested by the speech chorus and the clatter of typewriters. Authors write screenplays and become film directors. Journalists become television producers (or programme directors) and make TV-films. Our entire culture is beset by word-producers. Authors, journalists, investigators, letter-writers, polemicists and critics. Who, in fact, knows anything about pictures? And why do we understand so little about visual semantics? Photography and motion pictures have existed for 100 years, television for 50. Despite this, pictures have not attained more than a purely illustrative function. Why? Probably, because most of our pictures are created by Word-people. In fact, roughly half the items on TV today could just as well be broadcast on radio instead.

 

Ture Sjölander 1973

 

 

 

 

 

 

INDIGENOUS PEOPLES - THE ROLE OF OF CULTURE IN AREAS OF CONFLICT

 

THE FUTURE OF OUR WORLD HANGING IN THE BALANCE

 

Every mother is in fact a 'single-mother', raising the children alone 0-7 of age. Raising the boys to believe that they can not 'take care' of babies/children. Raising the girls to believe that they can, alone.....

 

Within every mother raised boy (or girl too for that matter) in the world, there will be a dormant Saddam Hussein and Bill Clinton (mother raised 100%.).

 

Within every mother raised baby girl in the world, there will be another mother; 'single mother'....

 

The children's (babies') very basic human rights, the rights of the child, to be, in time counted, equally exposed to both parents, father and mother, from birth, are none. The childrens' right, to have that equal access, from birth is none. A crime against the whole humanity. All kids are 'kidnapped ' from birth, and that's why the males are killing each other (in wars e.g.) and women do not.

 

Legislation seems to be the only solution if not 'power of culture' can solve this traditional 'gender-war', the world will continue to suffer, the next millennium too.

 

Stolen children means forever stolen adults.

 

Ture Sjölander


Voice your opinion in our online conference > Hässelby Online

E-mail to KLYS: council@klys.se
                            


Our Creative Diversity


World Commission on Culture and Development


International debate


Calendar of Events


Stockholm -98


Culture and Development


STOCKHOLM -98

 

.

Intergovernmental Conference on Cultural and Media Policies for Development

Stockholm
30 March - 2 April 1998

You will find here information on the Intergovernmental Conference on Cultural and Media Policies for Development which, hosted by the Government of Sweden, will be held in Stockholm between 30 March and 2 April 1998, as part of the follow-up to the report of the World Commission on Culture and Development.

Goals
The purpose of the Conference is twofold:
  • to contribute to the integration of cultural policies in human development strategies at international and national level
  • to help strengthen UNESCO's contributions to cultural policy formulation and international cultural co-operation. The Conference is therefore being designed to attain practical outcomes.

    Outcomes of Stockholm -98

  • For governments, outcomes would include principles for governmental policy-making and action.
  • For UNESCO, the outcomes should consist of guidelines to renew its cultural programmes.

    Hence the Conference agenda does not include the discussion of broad conceptual issues. Basic concepts in the cultural policy area were discussed at length in earlier conferences of this nature and further progress has been achieved during the World Decade for Cultural Development. In addition, there are the new theoretical frameworks provided in Öur Creative Diversity".Hence both the broad, anthropological concept of culture as well as the narrower notion that focuses on the arts and the cultural heritage will be used in parallel, as they have been in the report of the World Commission on Culture and Development. Integrating cultural policies in human development strategies means recasting cultural policies themselves. This objective should therefore permeate the debates, as the framework within which all the conference topics will be tackled. Similarly with the gender perspective, i.e. women would be treated as a separate topic in relation to the arts, but gender-related questions would need to be raised under all the topics discussed.

    Main Themes: cultural diversity and cultural policies

    There would be two main themes for the conference and a number of sub-themes under each. The two main themes would be: I. the challenges of cultural diversity and II. the challenges of recasting cultural policies. The emphasis under main theme I would be on key objectives and guidelines. On theme II discussions would focus on methodologies and mechanisms that would help the international community attain those objectives and follow those guidelines. The need to redefine cultural policies within a human development context would be the main cross-cutting theme of the conference.

    I. The challenge of cultural diversity
  • A commitment to pluralism
  • Cultural rights
  • Cultural heritage and cultural creativity
  • Culture for children and young people
  • Cultural pluralism in the media: Pluralism and concentration of the media and Public service broadcasting and new media II. The challenge of recasting cultural policies
  • Improving research and international co-operation for cultural policy
  • Mobilising resources for cultural activities
  • Culture and the new media technologies

    Why media?

    In this age of information society, to tackle cultural policy issues without exploring the profound impacts and implications of the media would be hardly possible. Pluralism in the media is a prerequisite to democracy. As public service radio and television play an important role in the promotion of cultural diversity, it is essential to discuss how public service broadcasters may offer varied programme-content which satisfies different needs and interests and to reafirm their educational and cultural mission. Furthermore, the rapid emergence of new technology and new media gives rise to many questions on the distribution of access to communications an media technology, on the shifts of economic and cultural power and on the consequences for the cultural landscape as a whole.

    An innovative conference structure

    Stockholm -98 will include parallel sessions and seminars, involving thinkers, artists, cultural workers, journalists and representatives of non-governmental organizations. The latter would be able to interact with the official representatives of Member States, who would be free to take part in parallel sessions of their choice. The non-governmental represenatitives in turn will be able to to attend the debates that are carried out by ministers and senior officials.


  • UNESCO-logo Culture and Development Co-ordination Office UNESCO
    7 Place de Fontenoy 75007 Paris France

    Tel: + 33 1 45 68 14 07 - Fax: + 33 1 45 68 57 07
    e-mail: wccd@unesco.org

    UN-logo