Scientific conference organized by the Hungarian University of Fine Arts,
the Art History Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
and the C3 Centre for Culture and Communication Foundation

Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Main Auditorium
Hungarian Science Festival, 24 November 2006, Friday, 9.00 - 20.00

One of the fundamental novelties of twentieth century art is experimentalism, or the (re)introduction of experiment into art practice, which has made the relationship between science and art - as well as the exploration of the possible connections, similarities and dissimilarities between scientific and artistic learning, creating and practice - a recurring subject of discourse for decades.
In conjunction with the events of the past two decades, research, development and innovation in an art context have formed an important and emphatically re-emerging interdisciplinary area of study, which may provide a valid description for a major group of projects utilising electronic, digital, communicational, interactive tools and techniques. This may also warrant the more general question: what does art as research mean?
Are research and development exclusively scientific prerogatives, or are they also definable within the context of art? If yes, then what are their characteristics, how can they be approached from the vantage points of art practice, theory and history. Our conference - whose preliminaries include "Seeing - from the viewer's standpoint", a conference organised for the Day of Hungarian Science in 2002, as well as the 2005 Art/research international symposium - seeks to answer the above questions.

The presentations of the conference are grouped into three sections with regards to the central thematic of the events of 2006 ( Evolution - Progress - Revolution). Each segment is introduced by a longer (approx. 30-minute) talk, followed by a shorter interval (approx. 20 minutes) of comments in accordance with the possibilities afforded by an artistic, theoretical and historical approach.

Detailed Itinerary of the Conference

9.00-9.30
Registration

9.30 - 12.00
Ernő Marosi: Models of science in art history
Frigyes Kőnig: Science, visual representation, creating art
László Beke: Constructors and developers in art and science
Károly Hantos: Relations of research methodology in art and scientific activities
Zoltán Szegedy-Maszák: Experimentalism in media art

12.00-13.00
Lunch break

13.00 - 15.30
Mihály Szegedy-Maszák: Interdisciplinary research in art
Zoltán Kékesi: Art in the age of classified technological standards
Attila Horányi: Art and research - schemes and as ifs
Tünde Varga: Scientific? Fantastic? Representation of imagined monsters
Ferenc Csurgai: New aspirations with new materials

15.30-16.00
Coffee break

16.00 - 17.30
Zoltán Vidnyánszky: Artistic and scientific learning: experiments, results, interpretations
Miklós Peternák: Something is dawning
Balázs Kicsiny: In-between time - in-between space
Szabolcs KissPál: Techno-science and artistic imagination

17.30-18.00
Coffee break

18.00-20.00
Csaba Pléh: Psychological approaches to changes in art: natural and social evolution and art

Closing argument with the participation of conference presenters