With its courses Bachelor Autonomous Visual Art, Teacher Visual Art and Design, Pop Culture, Design and FMI Masters, Studium Minerva sails under the flag of the Centre of applied research and innovation Art & Society. To maintain this imagery, jetties are offered by the various courses of the Minerva Art Academy in the form of unusual and inspiring activities such as lectures, debates, workshops and/or master classes, the aim being to discover the space for artistic contributions to society.
By means of this quest, Studium Minerva makes manifest the different positions of artists, designers and educators in the professional field and society alike, at the same time stimulating the creation of space for new contributions from an artistic angle.
In this context, the artistic autonomy of artists and their artistic and/or critical way of thinking is the point of departure. This offers opportunities to make unexpected connections with various disciplines and topical social and scientific issues.
The fact of the matter is that the Centre of applied research and innovation Art & Society is the ‘inter’ of two forms of knowledge: that of the artistic or intuitive knowledge of the subjective world and that of the scientific or rational knowledge of the objective world. The convergence of these worlds in a virtual and public space has caused the number of publication platforms to increase rapidly, which opens up new vistas in terms of the free dissemination and exchange of knowledge, experiences and useful ideas. In this way enterprising and scrutinous artists, designers and educators can develop the public awareness and committed autonomy and relate to their environment.
In order to crystallize innovatory trains of thought, they have to leave their subjective world and step outside, broadening their horizon and adding to their artistic vision and opportunities. Carrying out research at the interface of the subjective and the objective world, the Centre of applied research and innovation Art & Society distinguishes itself from other knowledge institutions in this country and abroad.
Studium Minerva takes place when dusk is falling and Minerva’s owl flies out. On several evenings, dialogues and other activities will be organized on the subject of art and technology. Especially on such dusky evenings, the fear of the dark may be enhanced by the existing romantic and distorted dread of technology.
Art and technology? Are we going to have an archetypal battle of good and evil, a true titanic struggle with energy bombs and exploding visions? Do we really have to personify our anxiety syndromes by means of archetypes like Frankenstein’s monster, a cybernetic organism like Schwarzenegger in The Terminator or the policeman Smith in The Matrix?
Is a deeply rooted view of art and technology not out-of-date and is a technocracy by definition as bleak and evil as we like to think? Isn’t it more realistic and appropriate to ask ourselves how technology gives shape to our world and will continue to do so? How innovative and sustainable are we when it comes to dealing with technology, and what could art contribute in this context – or, for that matter, what could technology contribute to the innovatory and recycling force of art?
To the Minerva Art Academy, answers to these questions are eminently relevant with a view to realizing a ‘Hightech Art Centre’ or ‘Digital Arts Lab’, in conjunction with the lecturers involved in the Knowledge Centre, the Hanze Institute of Technology (HIT) in Assen, the professional field and the business community.
Technology plays a prominent role in the work of artists and scientists and as such forms the connecting link between the two disciplines in varying and different ways (in the early 19th century the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge introduced the notion of intermedia for these cross-overs). The idea of art coping entirely without technology would in fact be unimaginable. To artists as well as scientists, technology offers ways to leave the beaten tracks. But even if art is dominated by technology, technical or technological matters do not necessarily have to dominate its subject matter.
The dialogues about art and technology are conducted by prominent and high-profile artists, scientists, specialists and/or other experts. They will offer us some understanding of the role technology plays in their work and as they go along provide us with an update of current technological developments. It follows that the dialogues deal with the role we allow technology to play in our lives, with the traditional and new role of technology for art and society, with the frightening role of technology for our current body culture and the resulting body cult in mass media, art and pop culture, and with concrete products created with the help of high-tech applications of natural materials and processes.
Studium Minerva seeks to reach a wide audience of students, lecturers, alumni, enthusiasts and others interested in the subject. On this occasion, the so-called Hap van Klaas * (Klaas’s snacks) will be available to students, which means that on payment of a small amount they will be offered the opportunity to have dinner prior to the lectures.