Computer Culture Emerged in Canada Through Convergence of Unique History and Governmental Policies

June 20, 2022

Transformative minute in art and science explored from Canadian standpoint in new e book

By Jeanne Hedden Gallagher

“There is a normal story about how computers formulated that is centralized all around Silicon Valley this development myth of the personal computer as a uniquely American cultural and social phenomenon,” reported Michael Century, a professor in the Department of Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. “That tale is not mistaken, but it really is not the total story.”

In his new guide, Northern Sparks: Innovation, Engineering Policy, and the Arts in Canada from Expo 67 to the Internet Age, Professor Century facts insights and observations acquired as a producer and creator of new media art and as a electronic policy adviser to the Canadian govt. He provides a exclusive viewpoint to the emergence of the digital age set in a precisely Canadian narrative, 1 that revolves close to the social, technological, and political history of Canada in the late ’60s by way of the early ’90s.

“I experienced this privileged posture to glance deeply into the interconnections concerning the arts and engineering,” Prof. Century claimed. “I started to see that the laptop would grow to be a common software to make interdisciplinary work in the arts achievable in unparalleled means.”

He spots the starting of his narrative of Canadian electronic tradition at Expo 67, the transformative world’s good in Montreal when “the country was experiencing a palpable political reinvention alongside its centennial celebration, and artists ended up taking on the slippery obstacle of defining what it may imply to discuss of a distinctly Canadian tradition.”

The artistic sparks from this preliminary impetus established the stage for what he phone calls a uniquely Canadian “technological ethos,” whereby emerging technologies have been collaboratively formed and co-invented by experimental artists. Prof. Century further argues that the innovations produced by artists resonated with the political consciousness of the era and had been nurtured by government insurance policies responding to a time of countrywide modernization.

In Northern Sparks, Prof. Century takes advantage of scenario scientific studies in animation, virtual fact, and program apps, between other individuals, to illustrate how art, technology, and policy intersected in Canada in a way that is distinct to this specific era and this distinct country.

He ends his evaluation in the early 1990s, when the Globe Huge Net created the internet ubiquitous and Canadian cultural politics shifted to regulate to new globalizing pressures.

“This ebook offers you an in-depth expertise of one of all those imaginative moments in record when the artist, the technologist, the scholar, and the policymaker all arrived collectively close to a spirit of innovation that coincided with a interval of nationwide reinvention,” Prof. Century said. “The Canadian tale serves as an instructive object lesson currently and for the potential, across the array of its broad scope and manifold solutions for mobilizing the arts, plan, and innovation.”

Northern Sparks, the very first reserve from Prof. Century, will be released by MIT Push in June 2022.