Summit Introduction: The Pacific Rim New Media Summit

The political and economic space of the Pacific Rim represents a dynamic context for innovation and creativity. Experimentation in art, science, architecture, engineering, design, literature, theater and music is engendering new forms of cultural production and experience unique to the region. The complex relations and diversity of Pacific Rim nations are exemplified throughout the hybridized communities that make up Silicon Valley.

As the 10th-largest city in the United States, San Jose, California, is an important portal on the eastern edge of the Pacific region, which shares deep historical and cultural connections that range from Latin America and the South Pacific to Southeast Asia and Asia. ZeroOne San Jose: An International Festival of Art on the Edge (7-13 August 2006) highlights the Pacific Rim as a central theme by presenting the most significant achievements in art, theory and research from throughout the region.

The Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts (ISEA) is an international nonprofit organization fostering interdisciplinary academic discourse and exchange among culturally diverse organizations and individuals working with art, science and emerging technologies. The ISEA Symposium is an international conference on electronic art that is held every 2 years in different locations around the world and attracts attendees from over 50 countries. The Thirteenth International Symposium of Electronic Art (ISEA2006) is being held in San Jose, California, in conjunction with the inaugural biennial ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge.

As part of ISEA2006, the CADRE Laboratory for New Media at San Jose State University will host a 2-day pre-symposium entitled the Pacific Rim New Media Summit (7-8 August 2006), co-sponsored by Leonardo. The Summit is intended to explore and build interpretive bridges between institutional, corporate, social and cultural enterprises with an emphasis on the emergence of new media arts programs in seven areas represented by working groups: Distributed Curatorial; Education; Place, Ground and Practice; Urbanity and Locative Media; Latin America/Pacific-Asia New Media Initiatives; Piracy and the Pacific; and the Invisible Dynamics of the Pacific Rim and the Bay Area.

The Pacific Rim theme will be accentuated each evening of the Summit, with a reception for Summit attendees on Monday, 7 August, including a premier of Ryoji Ikeda's C43, and on Tuesday, 8 August, with Akira Hasegawa's immersive projection on the new San Jose City Hall rotunda. Tuesday evening is also the gala opening for ISEA2006/ZeroOne San Jose, including exhibitions and public artworks featured in venues throughout the city. The Pacific Rim theme then continues within the Symposium and Festival, with presentations of juried papers, an invited keynote presentation and exhibitions by artists selected through the ISEA2006 Calls for Participation process.

From the outset we thought of the Summit as a mechanism to encourage and facilitate international cooperation with an eye to sustainable relationships. Understandably this approach is not without difficulties and, as desired, it has been an emergent process rather than directorial. We view the Summit as a point along a trajectory of building interpretive bridges that broaden all of our capacities for creative and intellectual exchange. By focusing the Summit on sustainable outcomes, it is our objective to facilitate cooperative agendas that enable creative production, research and cultural/political practices that challenge current models of cooperation. The Summit is not an attempt to simply become comfortable with one another or to suggest that collaboration is not without controversy, dissent and disagreement. The Summit is about the collisions of ideology and manifesto. It is about trying to work through the problematics of diversity and difference.

On the pragmatic side, what is expected is that each working group will have a creative or research project or a program initiative to share. The working groups have been asked to identify, shape and pursue a common cause within each group. Documentation of the "outcomes" will serve as the basis for the Summit proceedings.

Pacific Rim New Media Summit Working Groups

• • Distributed Curatorial

• • Education

• • Place, Ground and Practice

• • Urbanity and Locative Media

• • Latin America/Pacific-Asia New Media Initiatives

• • Piracy and the Pacific

• • The Invisible Dynamics of the Pacific...