Please wait a few moments while we process your request
Please wait...

Souillac II

Laboratoire de Langage Électronique à l'École d'art de Cergy

Rencontre internationale sur les arts, la science et l'industrie

Souillac II's beginnings can be traced to 1997, when a group of artists and academics involved in new media art met in Souillac, France, for the first time to discuss the relationships between art, industry and innovation. The result of this seminar was the first Souillac Charter for Art and Industry. In this charter, participants outlined a "framework for dialogue and mutual recognition for artists working with communications technologies and the private sector creating the technologies, and an interface with governmental and international bodies directly concerned with telecommunications". (1)

This first seminar was organized by the Laboratoire de langage électronique at the École d'art de Cergy in Paris and the Information Society Observatory of the London School of Economics and Political Science, along with the Centre international de Création Vidéo (CICV), the Ocean of Know, the International Telecommunication Union, the Council of Europe and NYNEX-Bell Atlantic.

Partly funded by the Daniel Langlois Foundation Souillac II (2) a sequel to the first Souillac conference in 1997, was held in July 1998 in Souillac, France. Many new international participants that were not present at Souillac I joined the strategy-planning sessions in 1998, and mapped out practical projects that could explore and implement the strategies proposed at both conferences.

Attending the second conference were The Daniel Langlois Foundation (Montreal, Canada), V2_Organisation, Institute for the Unstable Media (Rotterdam, Pays-Bas), C3 (Budapest, Hungary), the Visual Institute of the ZKM (Karlsruhe, Germany), the McLuhan Centre, University of Ontario (Toronto, Canada), Young McDonald's Farm (Dover Plains, New York), the Music Technology Area, Music Faculty, McGill University (Montreal, Canada), the Société des arts technologiques IRCAM (Paris, France), the Society for Old and New Media (Amsterdam, the Netherlands), the Centre national de création musicale (Nice, France), and the International Center for Art and New Technologies (Prague, Czech Republic).

One project to arise out of Souillac II is Instrument Makers, an exhibition of instruments and tools invented by 20th-century artists, some of which are now used in very different social circumstances than the realm of contemporary art. Proposed by Jean Gagnon and Don Foresta, this exhibition is currently under development.

Angela Plohman © 2000 FDL

(1) "The Souillac Charter for Art and Industry : A Framework for Collaboration," Centre International de Création Vidéo de Montbéliard, 1997.

(2) Don Foresta et al., "Souillac II Conference on Art, Industry and Innovation: Final Report" Leonardo Vol. 32, No. 3 (1999): 199-207.