Art-tech research cluster iARTA launches Moebius Journal

The UNT-based research cluster Initiative for Advanced Research in Technology and the Arts (iARTA) has launched an online journal in partnership with the UNT Libraries. Moebius explores international art trends and issues at the intersection of theory and practice and is one of the critical scholarship activities that supports iARTA’s focus on hybrid research, technologies, and new media applications.

David Schwarz (pictured above), the journal’s editor-in-chief and professor of music theory at UNT, says the name Moebius derives from the möbius strip — a one surface, two dimensional mathematical phenomenon that is a “wonderful psychoanalytical metaphor for things that get transformed into their opposite.” The strip represents the intimate interplay between critical thinking and art, and the journal will address the ways in which each mutually informs and defines the other. Moebius is unique from other journals in this regard. “The quality of artworks that appears in other journals online and in print is very high but is not matched by the quality of criticism,” says Schwarz. “Moebius aims to fill this void.”

Submissions to the journal are accepted on an ongoing basis. Schwarz reviews and selects content in consultation with an international board of editors. Future issues will explore a variety of themes and hybrid art forms, with interest in evolving areas such as interactive media, embodied computing, robotics, and biomedia. Schwarz emphasizes, “We’re more interested in erasing boundaries between disciplines rather than creating them.”

This agenda underscores a philosophy of access as well as content; the subscription-free publication is an open source of information where users can download PDFs and other materials. Professor of music composition and iARTA coordinator David Stout (pictured below) says, “We’re in this transformative moment, and Moebius is right in there with everyone else redefining what the access to knowledge will be.”

David Stout, iARTA coordinator

Excerpted from an article by Julie West. Read the full article here.

Visit the Moebius Journal website to view the inaugural issue.