In 2010 ANAT formed an Organising Committee to bid for ISEA 2013. The Organising Committee comprised representatives from ANAT, UTS, UNSW (COFA), Sydney University, NSW Events, Business Events Sydney, Experimenta, d/Lux/Media Arts and the Australia Council for the Arts. Throughout 2010 many national stakeholders where invited to participate and give advice on the form of the bid with Ross Harley making the formal presentation at ISEA 2010 Ruhr/Germany.
In 1992 TISA changed how Australians viewed the creative use of technology. It was a landmark moment that affected culture, but also digital media and what is now commonly known as the creative industries. The bleeding edge of digital art has moved from the margins to become the fabric in which we live. At once ubiquitous and unnoticed resistance to electronic art has proven futile, it has become our cultural system.
ISEA 2013 will bleed through Sydney, from the margin to the core, not simply a series of exhibitions (although that will be part of it), but instead an infection that is drawn into the city’s social, digital and physical infrastructure. A living fluid body of thought, culture, community, industry, science and technology, with no edges, no end.
Electronic Art: resistance is futile is what happens when this inevitable flow towards the invisibility of computing power brings us to the point where its impacts are expanding and pervasive, but its visibility is shrinking; the point where we are living at the end of electronic art; the point where digital media is no longer a thing, but is in everything.
Artists play an important role in this “bleeding edge.” By creatively investigating the possibilities and pushing the limits of new technologies, artists help us imaginatively experience and critically reflect on their implications for life in the 21st century. Digital electronic art is our source of innovation, the new norm in everything from publishing to TV, to radio, games, film, fashion, applications and gadgets. Ubiquity and pervasiveness of digital media mutates into pervasiveness of creativity in everyday life and the city. The urban surrounds become the scene for thinking through the consequences of having no escape from ubiquitous computing, networks, digital life, creative industries, and contemporary electronic art practice. 2013 will be an opportunity to redefine the role of creativity in society, as both source and leader.
