Artmedia

Artmedia was one of the first scientific projects concerning the relationship between art, technology, philosophy and aesthetics. It was founded in 1985 at the University of Salerno. For over two decades, until 2009, dozens of projects, studies, exhibitions and conferences on new technologies made Artmedia a reference point for many internationally renowned scholars and artists, and contributed to the growing cultural interest in the aesthetics of media, the aesthetics of networks, and their ethical and anthropological implications. Since the late 1970s, a permanent Seminar of the Aesthetics of Media and Communication has been directed by its founder Mario Costa at the University of Salerno. The basic principles of the aesthetics of technological communication were identified and conceptualized in 1983. A conference on "Technological Imaginary", held in 1984 at the Museo del Sannio in Benevento, discussed the issue of the new relationship between art and technology and the consequent need to re-evaluate aesthetics, warning that "all our future existence will be played at the crossroads between technology and imagination". The comprehensive relationship between art and technoscience, technology, and philosophy has also been the theoretical subject of the ten international "Artmedia" conferences which were held in Salerno and Paris between 1985 and 2008. Particularly relevant were conferences held in Paris between 2002 and 2008, which took place at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France (BNF) and the Institut National d'Histoire de l 'Art (INHA), with the partnership of the Société Française d'Esthétique, the Université du Québec à Montréal, the University of Toronto, the Universidade de São Paulo, the Université de Paris 1 Sorbonne, and the U.S. magazine Leonardo. Artmedia wanted to gather theorists and artists from all over the world and encourage both joint and complementary work, beginning with the need to give attention to theoretical and artistic practices and developing both together.