Conference Themes

The aim of this conference is to explore some developments in recent practice that raise new and interesting questions for the philosophy of art. As we all know, artists, or at least Avant Garde artists, produce art as a response to, and commentary on, contemporary life and the contemporary world. Avant Garde art is also characterised by trying to change the world to what the artists believe will be a better future. There is a set of artists, working independently in different parts of the world, who are creating new forms of technological interfaces and experimenting with the biological, the nano and the digital. At the heart of all their works is a deep ethos of balancing the aesthetic and the ethical in how we relate with others and our environment, whether in the same physical space or as distributed bodies. The spheres of the arts, sciences, and (in particular) technology overlap both to explore and to attempt to change the way in which we live in the world. These artistic practices raise questions about the interaction between aesthetics and ethics that go beyond those familiar to us in discussions over the past decade or so. Indeed, the whole area is largely unexplored by Analytic Aesthetics (at least in the UK). The aim of this conference is to bring together artists and theorists to explore the issues raised.