THIS TALK TAKES PLACE ON 27TH OF OCTOBER 19.00 ON LIVE NOW.
“Swipe” has become the established term to speak about the set of operations on digital devices involving sliding a finger across the surface of a touch screen. But it also refers to the gestural text entry method for screen keyboards, allowing to write by sliding a finger from the first to the last letter of a word. The gestural thus meets the digital, resulting in an original approach to writing. In particular, swiping is endowed with powerful properties when regarded as a writing system in its own right. The artwork Swipe, by Bérénice Serra, proposes to think about this relationship between tactile qualities and the digital means of communication in both a constructive and poetic way. In this talk, together with the philosopher and co-author Gianni Gastaldi, the artist will reflect on some of the reasons that positions such a system as the material writing of a digital culture.
BY Bérénice Serra Gianni Gastaldi (FR/CH)
Bérénice Serra
Bérénice Serra (b.1990) is a media artist and researcher based in Caen (FR) and Zürich (CH). She develops both artistic and theoretical projects that question the modes of conception, production and exchange of cultural forms in the digital age. By collecting user-generated images, designing hybrid books with the languages of the web and curating wild exhibitions with smartphones, she is essentially interested in the problem of publication — how contents go public. By considering digital devices and technical infrastructures (smartphones, servers, platforms, etc.) as reticular means of publication and edition, giving individuals new forces for emancipation, Bérénice Serra’s research focuses on the aesthetic and sociopolitical issues of the contemporary experience of public space.
Her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions, in France and abroad (Ars Electronica, CCA Kitakyushu, Cité du design of Saint-Etienne, Mucem, Mirage festival, Interstice festival, etc.).
She lectures regularly on digital arts and media (University of Paris-Nanterre, University of Sfax in Tunisia, ESAD Orléans, ENSAD Paris, etc.).
Gianni Gastaldi
Gianni Gastaldi is a philosopher and historian of science, specialized in the philosophy and history of formal knowledge (mathematics, logic, computer science) from the early 19th century to the present. He is a researcher at ETH (Zurich) and executive director of the Turing Centre Zurich.
