German conceptual artist Hanne Darboven is best known for her impenetrable, large-scale grids, equations, and number games. These are subjective equations for navigating her world, making no claim to universality—an approach her mathematical counterparts might balk at. Our investigations in GOOD MEASURE align with Darboven’s interest in using numerical data to express a world-view, highlighting that even in a realm where black and white seem to be the only options, the infinitude of language persists.

For our next quarterly theme, KAPSULA Magazine will look at art practices that generate work from calculative process. Perhaps not commonly associated with art-making, the business of computation nonetheless has a long history with artists. From Leonardo’s Vitruvian man to Roman Opalka’s number paintings, low-tech number-crunching to complex algorithms, the sublime has always belonged to two fields: aesthetics and mathematics. Of course, sublimity is the stuff of mass sensation, a tasteful excess—and by no coincidence, so is GOOD MEASURE.

KAPSULA is seeking papers that teeter on the edge between exactitude and infinity, experimenting with the way that raw, numerical information acts as process and translation in contemporary art practice.

Possible topics might include:

The evolution of computational art in the “information age”
Number as an ontological gesture (Alain Badiou)
Algorithmic art and software art (systems-driven art-making)
Information, excess, and a digital or net aesthetic
Locating subjectivity in art that’s made through pre-determined calculation
Mathematics as a tool for defining ‘taste’ in art (remainders of the Renaissance)
The sensory or bodily impacts of data; the body-as-data
Communicating empathy through numbers, variables, and equations

Submit finished texts or abstracts to submissions@kapsula.ca
by midnight on Friday December 15th, 2015.

Before sending, we encourage you review our submission guidelines at http://kapsula.ca/submit

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