Their creative works challenge the cultural assumptions that are embedded in our understandings of technology and its relationship to art and human life. The issues that performance artists raise are significant to examining how technology and art help us understand what it means to be human. As educators we believe that such questions are of relevance for they enable us to begin conversations about the ways in which our culture and our identities are shaped by the meanings that we give to the uses of art and technology. The symposium will be held at the Penn Stater from October 24-28, 2000. Recognizing that we live in a culture that is increasingly dependent on technology, this symposium will explore the varied ways that artists and cultural theorists expose, critique, and intervene in the ways that technology is conceived.
Technology simultaneously evokes both pleasure and terror.
It is the medium through which our lives and bodies are facilitated, mediated, and controlled. On the one hand, we enjoy the benefits of technology as we experience the ease of communication that email offers us. The diagnostic and life-saving technologies of modern medicine have extended the duration of human life. And, pleasure and enjoyment is delivered by the mass media through movies, television, and the Internet. These values are constructed through our understandings of technology and the contexts in which it is used.