éc/artS #3: Art Practices and New Technologies

The third issue of the journal éc/artS, founded by artist and theorist Éric Sadin, explores the intersection of artistic practices and new technologies through a multidisciplinary lens encompassing contemporary art, music, architecture, dance, poetry, graphic design, haute couture, theater, and net art. Sadin argues that hypertext, operating beyond the paradigm of writing, constitutes a new logos that shifts the aesthetic center of gravity across all spheres of reality. The issue is anchored by the symposium "Textualités & nouvelles technologies" organized by Sadin at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal in October 2001, which analyzed technical mutations from digital to nanotechnology and their impact on urban and textual relationships. Eighty participants—including net artists Reynald Drouhin and Gregory Chatonsky, philosopher-advertiser Dominique Quessada, artist-philosopher Hervé Fischer, Knowbotic Research, philosopher Pierre Lévy, and architect Rem Koolhaas—discussed the interaction between textual "nomadism" and urban consciousness, resulting in a specific "circulational fluidity." Beyond the symposium, the issue includes a dossier on Montreal's art scene, an offshore section, and a poetry notebook. The journal consistently highlights the polyphonic interplay between iconic and textual elements, leading to an "iconization of the verbal" as diverse modes of production dissolve into aesthetic discourse.