Ethico-onto-epistemologies of Media Art: A case study of the “Protocol for Interdisciplinary Research” project

Abstract

As all steps of Art’s value chain get transformed by the ever-challenging practices of Media Arts and other forms as Art and Science intersections, and while agents and Institutions are adapting to the on-going transformation of processes involved, the Historical study of Media Art practices and theories enable us to transform, or evolve, epistemologies and ontologies of Art itself. Closer to transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary research effects, creative research and in particular artistic research as a mode of knowledge (Borgdorff 2011) invents transforming and elucidating fundamental epistemological and ontological assumptions. This replaces results with processes making knowledge production relational to its circustances of production and going from matters of fact to matters of concern (Latour, 2004). In this paper we analyze and compare three interconnected theoretical and methodological approaches that are facing key challenges of Media Art Studes in a different manner but in some aspects presenting similar results: Media Archaeology, Actor Network Theory and New Materialism. Even with important differences between them, those approaches have also some key points in common. First of all, their battle against both technological and social determinism; then the redefinition of the agencies involved; also the resignification of the material aspects of media and its relation with discourses; and finally the redistribution of causalities and temporalities as well. We will reflect on this deep onto-epistemological questions in relation to the Protocol for Interdisciplinary Research, an on-going open document written as a result of a series of interdisciplinary workshops organized and hosted by Hangar, Centre for Artistic Research in Barcelona, under the auspices of the project Softcontrol (European Commission - Culture Programme 2007 – 2013).