Art Events Data Table

Pachinko Machine is a self-learning algorithmic drawing constructed as a pinball machine. The Machine plays the game a game of pinball itself in an automated setup. During the period of the exhibition the Machine’s algorithm optimizes its own performance through machine learning and becomes increasingly good at trying to win the game of pinball. The only barrier to success is beyond the algorithm’s control: there is a second intelligence embedded within the machine that aims to obstruct and obfuscate. The work is a battle of algorithms.
The visual part of the work is created in a computer drawing process that uses only cycles and triangles to create complex visual appearances. The drawing process is developed in a systematic manner from the top to the bottom without the artist’s comprehension what the final image may look like. The creation of the drawing takes months of drawing, erasing, recreating and fine-tuning. The machine comes full to life when kinetic attributes are assigned to each element.
Pachinko Machine reflects on the current discourses around artificial intelligence and self-thinking system. Machine learning algorithms are poor in simulating human decision-making; they are however rather successful at understanding and playing games created by humans (for example Deep Mind’s recently developed algorithms). Pachinko Machine takes one step further and humanizes the machine learning process by introducing chance into the game. The battle of these algorithms that aspire to disparate goals aestheticises the process driven by machine learning. Viewers are welcome to make sense of this battle whilst observing the mesmerising patterns of the Pachinko’s drawings.
The work aims to represent the walk of life and although we may be able to control some part it, there is always an element of chance that may destruct and encourages us to stray from our original path. Pachinko Machine was developed in Unity.

Palinopsia / seeing again is a laser projection work on a Glow-in-the-Dark (GITD) surface made in collaboration with Jill Richards & BushveldLabs. The 1st try out and première of this digital artwork was shown the ‘Alight block party’ on 1 Sept 2016 in Johannesburg as part of the Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival. With a purplish-blue UV laser as a projection source and using fully covered painted phosphorescent canvas as the projection surface, I project after-glowing images that appear line by line (much like a fax or inkjet printer). In this way the projection canvas records the image. The projected image/text elements will diminish in luminosity over time. New elements will be projected as the older ones fade. The way temporality and perseverance leave a finite mark or trace of the projected image positions glow-in-the-dark laser projection between cinema and photography.

‘Parragirls Past, Present’ is a deeply moving immersive 360-degree virtual reality project that presents former residents’ visions of Parramatta Girls Home, a punitive Australian child welfare institution closed in 1974. This project develops new digital media approaches to testimony and memory arising from otherwise marginalised institutional experiences.  Unlocking contested memories of institutional ‘care’, this collaboration between a team of UNSW Sydney media artists and former Parragirls rewrites the history of Parramatta Girls Home. Over a century, children held at this site were subjected to unwarranted punishment and abuse. Returning after 40 years, Parragirls seek out traces to substantiate what really happened here, moving through fear and futile confinement to resistance and solidarity.

“The Particle” is a kinetic sculpture that experiments with color, sound, and movement. Continuous rotation, speed, and light create visual points of view, effects that define the spatial structure of the object.
Given that the regulatory mechanism of the entire design is based on random decision-making, the new models naturally emerge from the previous ones. The vibration of sound, color, and visual patterns evolve into chaos or order according to the evolutionary algorithms that govern it. The structures generated in this process cannot be anticipated and evolve through continuous iterations that involve alterations to the programs and explore the changes through the interaction with the visitor and the software. The object, at the same time, is a space of sensory and kinesthetic experience, a body with its own internal resonance. The result is the creation of shapes and patterns of light in three dimensions. These shapes can stop, rotate and move faster or slower creating beautiful kinesthetic effects. The technique used is the perception of apparent movement, that is, the one obtained from the observation of sequences of still images projected successively on a movie screen or on television, or on a computer monitor. This visual effect, also called persistence of vision (POV), is the theoretical ability of the eye (or retina) to retain the last image that reaches it, causing an object to be perceived even when it is no longer there.
Around the space occupied by the sculpture, a surround-sound space is perceived, which reacts and merges with movement and light, creating an immersive audiovisual experience of great beauty.
The piece uses RGB LED technology controlled wirelessly from a computer. Custom software manages all information and movement in real-time by continuously sending data to the sculpture to change its state.

PAUSE.II is an experimental video work that explores the embodied experience of returning to one’s country (Gamilaraay), and the haunting sensorial effects that linger from its colonial past.

Is a hybrid machine in which various multimedia elements are revealed, a sound object that works through a system of artificial vision through which a process is tracked of the surface of Latin American textiles generating a sound abstraction of the textile patterns designing various sound pieces in real time. The incessant search of the human being for generating identity and belonging, there is a process of construction where the individual defines himself in close relationship with his environment, in this context is where we can define the use and importance of the Textile activity in the history of the human being, thus configuring their collective practice, their identity and also their heritage. media arts establish a relation with the tradition to understand the socio-cultural transformations, establishing a conceptual apparatus through the textiles and the cultural identity. Textiles and their ritual and ceremonial connotation emphasizing their use in symbolic form of representation, through the geometry and weaving technique.

Peau d’Âne is a series of three weather-networked dresses based on the Charles Perrault fairy tale in which a princess asks for dresses made of the sun, moon and sky.

Temperature, UV, solar radiation, wind speed & velocity, humidity and rain fall data is collected and sent to the dresses wirelessly, where micro-controllers relay info to internal circuitry. The sun dress has 128 LEDs which can light up depending on sun data, while the moon dress has 14 colour-modulating flowers to represent each phase of the moon cycle. The sky dress is imbued with 14 vibrating air pockets.

xhibition. Le Cube Garges, April 27 – May 18

2018
Screen printing, artificial intelligence (GAN)

Machines and algorithms have a perception of the world that differs from ours. Tom White decided to question this mechanical gaze, increasingly present in our daily lives. Thanks to an algorithmic drawing technique he has developed, he allows an artificial intelligence to produce images that are abstract for humans but have meaning for machines, notably the moderation algorithms of large platforms, in addition to the cold and austere images that we commonly attribute to the mechanical gaze, the abstract and colorful forms produced by this type of artificial intelligence developed by Tom White allow us to rethink our relationship with machines and better understand the way they perceive the world.

Personal Accounts is part of the Fracture Zone exhibition. Fracture Zone conjures artists from Brazil and South Africa to dialogue as duos over shares subjects. Post-colonial displacements, enlaced hidden histories, decolonial imaginaries, the friction between human and natural processes through abusive resource exploitation, representations of symbolic cultural expressions, urban dynamics of exclusion, political and social reflections are some of the themes present at the exhibition.

Petting Zoo: Noble Orphans is about the sly, the absurd, and the abject.

Exhibition. ISEA2023 selected artwork 

Artificial experience inspired by nature
Multimedia digital project, that immerses the spectator into a profound exploration of the transition to the digital era, interweaving it with the intrinsic value of nature and the collective experience of the past civilizations for creation of symbiotic coexistence of technology and ecosystem in the future. In this artwork the author demonstrates an authentic vision of the concept of visual art in contemporary aesthetics, capturing the process of change of the paradigm and creating an elegant form of transition from classical art to the art of future, concentrating attention on the delicate balance between technological advancement and our fundamental connection to the natural world.

Throughout the course of the history of civilization, nature has been a deep source of inspiration for humanity. Ancient motifs, floristic ornaments, animalistic totems and sacred geometries are skillfully interwoven into this project, serving as metaphors for our connection to nature. In this series the author offers an unexpected look at the primary natural forms, transformed by artistic vision. Human mind transforms elegant and sophisticated baroque floral ornaments into bizarre associative symbols and alive animalistic images. These symbiotic patterns endowed with ancient biological and, at the same time, futuristic high-tech features: from images of the spirits of nature and totems to images of technogenic mechanisms, biorobots, consisting of the petals of living plants.

Aesthetics of the project covers both natural and artificial sources of aesthetic experience. The image creates a dynamic effect, awakening images at a subconscious level, creating a connection of time between the aesthetics of the past and the future. The symbiosis of these artworks is a synthesis of the archaic and the futuristic, the natural and the technogenic. Looking to the civilizations of the past, the artist finds inspiration in the profound connection that our ancestors had with nature. Exploring and rethinking this experience, the author offers a way to reestablish that connection in our modern context. Leveraging technology, he strives to evoke the same emotions experienced by civilizations of the past, reminding us of the profound impact nature has had on our collective consciousness.

This is a research project, and an entire photo studio was involved in its implementation. Hundreds of photographs were taken before a way was found to achieve the desired result. Each image is not a collage of many photos. Each image is made from one photograph of one plant. It is a research of plants as the protagonists of this series of portraits, a reflection on the theme of post-humanity, a rethinking of an anthropology that does not place the human being at the center of attention, but which favors relational and interdependent relationships between organisms and the ecosystems, and the blurring of traditional boundaries between human and non-human. The viewer can see here different heroes with different characters and at different moments of life. All of them have a different age: from young plants in spring and summer to adult inflorescences in autumn.
ecosystem

Today, humanity is at the moment of transition to the digital era, therefore, in this project the artist strives to preserve the aesthetics of the idea of beauty and harmony. At this moment of transition has brought to the forefront a host of ecological challenges that demand our attention. Climate change, deforestation, biodiversity loss, ocean and atmosphere pollution are just a few of the urgent issues we face. As we marvel at the infinite possibilities of technology, we are confronted with the disconcerting reality of ecological degradation and its implications for our collective future. Author responds to these concerns by incorporating ecological narratives into the work, causing reflection, serving as catalysts for awareness and action.

These artworks provide opportunities for individuals to engage with nature on a visceral level. By fostering inspiration and understanding, these experiences can awaken a renewed appreciation for the beauty and complexity of the natural world, and in turn, motivate us to become active participants in preservation of the balance of ecosystems. The piece calls us to explore, and appreciate the profound beauty that lies within the intersection of the digital and the natural, offering us a glimpse into a future where technology and nature harmoniously coexist. One of the main goals of this artwork is to express the idea of the spiritualization of nature, which is directly related to the idea of the unity of all living things. The botanical hyperrealism of the “Photosynthesis Symbiosis” pushes the spectator to rethink the social and spiritual relations between man and nature. By blurring the lines between the organic and the synthetic, artwork serves as a reminder that technology should not estrange us from our ecological roots but, rather, propel us towards a symbiotic coexistence of civilization and ecosystem.

This project is an Arduino light sensitive video installation, celebrating interactivity, color, and light. It is a collaboration between Sarah Lahti and Christian Kantner.

Selected commercials from Pixar using computer graphics.

Fusion of the Possible, Topographie de l’art, April 15 – June 15

2020
Laser engraving on DuraBlack aluminum
Dry mounting on gatorboard, 100 x 60 cm.
Courtesy of gallery Charlot.

This project is a projection or video artwork that demonstrates new techniques and a new artistic approach to creating animated metamorphosis using digital sculpture.

Southern Winter Exhibitions 2023 at Hangars Numériques, May 16 – 21  then August 1 – 15 

Video Installation. Tools: Custom algorthm for Maching Learning-based image creation, Blender

“Plastic Landscape – The Reversible World” is an AI-generated 3D animated video design that shows the apocalyptic and surreal world surrounded by artificial plastic mixtures and objects in the ocean, urban city, Antarctica, and forest. Four different scenes are animated, with the camera panning slowly from left to right. Viewers can observe how the plastics are decomposed at a slower speed by looking at particle animations. Sound is created by the data of the decomposition of plastics. Different types of plastics and speed of decomposition determines the frequency, amplitude, and parameters of audio synthesis. This scene animation is inspired by Ilwalobongbyeong (a folding screen) behind the king’s throne of the Joseon Dynasty. This animation depicts the twist of the landscape. Surreal objects/buildings in this animation made out of plastic look beautiful and mesmerizing at first glance. However, the viewers can notice that they are the decayed objects and destroyed nature impacted by human beings. This new multi-sensory artwork addresses the awareness of plastic pollution through the apocalyptic lens.

Concept Design, Visual Development, User Experience Design: Yoon Chung Han
3D Animation and 3D object design: Hung-Hsuan Tsai
Music and Sound: Soo Jung Kwak
Machine Learning-based image creation Prof. Sung Lyun Kim, Myeong Hun Seong, Changmin Lee

Play Connected is a project by Cym in which she creates a computer game together with the input of local children. In several workshop sessions she explores the local surroundings together with children.

The artists developed a three-level game in a box where you see every wire and connection.

“The concept was inspired by Moholy-Nagy’s Light-Space Modulator, Gysin and Burrough’s Dreamachine and 1970s analog generative art systems; with close inspection into the sonic components by expanding upon the early work of Reed Ghazala and David Tudor. Sonic Arts Union, 1970’s artists Alvin Lucier and Gordon Mumma are also a point of reference. Jon Rose and Alan Lamb notably have influenced the direction of this project scope and direction.”

Pluroma is a fulldome visual journey inside the fractal paintings of Dustyn Lucas. His works (combining classical realism and mathematical fractals) are driven to form a repeating loop which penetrates deeper into itself.

Zayed University Students Only. Level: Foundation. Opportunitiy for students of Zayed University to learn from international electronic artists and thinkers.

An intensive workshop for women who are new to and/or interested in combining gaming and poetry as a medium for expression. Participants will create games or gamified experiences to elicit simple poetic expressions, personal narratives and kinetic textual poems through the game platform. This workshop is geared towards those who are new to programming and art games. The focus would be  on creating poetry that is interactive in some way, using the platforms’ inherent qualities.

Presented by the College of Fine Arts and ISEA2013, this exhibition explores the boundaries between real and virtual space and the relationship between observer and observed. It utilises electronic media to investigate the limitations that traditional ocular optics put on our perception of mediated imagery, while also exploring and exploding the boundaries of the cinematic image. Point of View questions our understanding of place, representation and perspective.
An exhibition of work by Josh Harle, Chris Henschke and Volker Kuchelmeister.

A virtual camera gravitates around a 3D point cloud of Plateau Mont-Royal in Montreal which translates environmental conditions recorded over a one year period.

An exploration of how big data can show us new ways to see our world, and a look at the often surprising places that this exploration can take us.

Point of View is an interactive documentary based on footage shot by Palestinians working with B’Tselem’s Camera Distribution Project.

Durban is the busiest port in Africa. Although the harbour is somewhat removed from the consciousness of the residents, it is well-positioned to become a driving force to propel Durban into a Smart City Eco-Port with linkages to the Esplanade that curve around the bay. The ‘Green Heart’ title can be anchored by constructing a giant green heart sculpture at the entrance to the harbour (North Pier) that links into the Esplanade. The sculpture will impact the sky-line and serve as a prominent symbol for Durban. Apps, QR codes and electronic signage featured in the KulturWalk and ‘Heart2Heart’ Route guide people into the harbour area. The theoretical framework builds on place-identity and place-making that foreground the branding of Durban as Green Heart City and include the residents in taking custody and care of the harbour. Renewable elements of the Green Heart include wave power technology and solar film energy. An accessible Durban Harbour will foster an invigorated identity for the Eco-Port and endear the public with a sense of place attachment. As Durban firms its position on tourist maps, people will identify Durban through branding created by the Green Heart and the spectacular harbour.

The interactive installation consists of a monitor that shows a swarm of a few thousand flies. When a person positions himself in front of the monitor, the insects builds up the contour of the person. They begin to arrange and rearange themselves continously, thereby creating a recognizable likeness of the individual..

Posing in front of the monitor attracts the flies. Within seconds they invade the face, but even the slightest movement of the head or of parts of the face drives them off. The portraits are thus in constant flux, they construct and deconstruct. Portrait on the Fly is a commentary on our love for making pictures of ourselves (Selfie-Culture), it has to do with change, transience and impermanence.

Fusion of the Possible, Topographie de l’art, April 15 – June 15

1969
Installation with projector and self-adhesive letters.
Courtesy of ZKM, Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe.

An 8mm or 16mm projector projects light onto the wall with the word ‘possible’ appearing on it. The projector is set up in such a way that the audience should/have to walk between the wall and the projector. The following happens: just by looking at it, it seems as if the word ‘possible’ (in red or black color) is being projected onto the wall.But as they walk through it, the viewer realizes that the word must have been written directly on the wall, because despite the interruption of the projection beam and the viewer’s shadow, the word is still on the wall. What seemed a projected sign, an image, is in reality an object. The real seemed (projected) illusion, the illusion became real – everything seems possible. This open modality of being, this constant latency of the category of possibility in the world, comes in the chosen one
(Peter Weibel, Mediendichtung, Vienna 1982, S. 95) [Translated from Germanb by Google Translate] 

Exhibition. Centre Culturel Canadien, May 16 – 20
The Earth’s ecosystems are undergoing irremediable changes as a result of human development, the source of a number of crises whose consequences can be measured on the scale of the planet. Rethinking our way of coexisting with our environment requires us to reevaluate the continuous growth of our energy footprints. These prototypes of critical games ‘Post Growth Toolkit’ are invitations to reprogram ourselves out of the economic growth orthodoxy. The series highlights the material conditions necessary to maintain our current standard of living in order to better understand how we may reproduce these differently.

At the intersection of science and speculative fiction, the ‘Post Growth Toolkit’ game proposes to literally reshuffle our world-views and to share stories, concepts and objects to re-examine how we are programmed and to stimulate new modes of understanding. It takes the form of a tactical card game: where small groups of players are invited to explore a number of key notions. The game becomes a means of transmission and collective debate intended to help participants find their bearings in a period of radical change.

Leverage sunlight at given locations, this research presented augmented experiences pushing the boundaries across the artificial and natural, the virtual and physical, as well as the local and the remote. [see also the presentation]

Utilizing a bespoke Tesla coil, POWEr is a performance based on the sonics and striking imagery that offshoots from the machine’s high voltage emissions. Used as source materials, electrical ingredients are generated, captured, transformed and diffused live on stage through digital processing and manipulation of sound and video. Building on a context that sets it halfway  between a musical presentation and a media arts installation, POWEr demarks the continuation of artificiel’s development. Having charted a singular path investigating composition and electrical impulses with previous projects such as bulbes (2003) and beyond6281 (2004), as well as cultivating a performative dimension with such later works as cubing (2006) and artificiel.process (2008), POWEr takes its place among this oeuvre by raising the stakes of spontaneity and working with evermore complex musical structures and visual dramaturgy. Originally commissioned by MUTEK for its 10th edition, this project was made possible by funding from the Media Arts section of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et Lettres du Québec and has continued to tour the world since.

Prey is an exploration in digital storytelling through the infusion of the old with the new, a hybrid grafting of the organic with the inorganic to create an entirely new form of codex. While the design is driven by an earthy handcrafted aesthetic, each novel hosts a unique system of interactive technologies. Upon first glance, they appear as a trilogy of standard vintage volumes. Once opened, readers will find their characters carefully embodied and thoroughly embedded within their pages.

By placing automation within this simulated i̶d̶l̶e̶ garden it arises the complexity of what being human is in this electronic age. Learning, leisure and work share the same interchangeable framework in this post-truth dynamic where operations are engineered in an ambiguous way to praise & glorify the strenuous path of c̶o̶n̶t̶e̶m̶p̶o̶r̶a̶r̶y̶ labour system. Hybrid emulation that deals with prediction & feeds on its own coding as the backbone structure of a semiotic < container > / .

Prosperity (stand-alone system)
Prosperity is an autonomous device that manipulates grains of rice. A clamp moves from one surface to another, picking up randomly placed grains and then depositing them in an orderly manner on a second surface. This process aligns them while preserving their initial orientation. The work highlights the exchanges between the machine and the material, which imposes its constraints on the machine, which must continually repeat the sequences of analysis and movement.

An installation of five acoustic physics robots. Using sound focusing and Anti Doppler shifts it affects the auditory perceptual engine to create an environment not possible to hear in nature

Samson Young is performing ‘Pulse Radio II – Hommage to Nicolas Collins (Debussy’s Arabesque No. 1) at the HKICC Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity, Hong Kong. The composition begins with a wireless heart rate sensor transmitting Young’s own pulses, which are then turned into “play-head triggers” of a recording of French composer Claude Debussy’s Arabesque No.1. The deconstructed piano classic and heart rate in real time are then overlaid and re-arranged into a sound composition.

Pwned concerns artistic research based on the notion of bodies of data to question how our technified memory (everything that is stored and registered in databases) participates in constructing desire and projecting the future. From the creation of trained artificial intelligence, primarily with private data such as the history of the artist’s movements over the past few years, Santamaría will ask the machine about his future movements. Its response will devise a series of routes and behaviours to be reproduced by a human body. This offers us the possibility of observing how reality is transformed when the physical body is traversed by its doubles and virtualities.

Quadra Minerale – Rare Earths (Tierras Raras) 2017-2019
On the basis of the war, deeply linked to mineral colonization, Rare Earth Elements, has sought to expand the geopolitical reading on the subject and the problems  derived from it – technology, economy and society – from a publication, an installation of the creative process, a pictorial polyptych and various works.

On the basis of the war, deeply linked to mineral colonization, Rare Earth Elements, has sought to expand the geopolitical reading on the subject and the problems derived from it technology, economy and society – from a publication, an installation of the creative process, a pictorial polyptych and various works in drawing, printmaking, video and photography.

• In 2010, the press began to talk about the so-called “war of the rare earths”.
• Rare Earths and lanthanides, have been extracted from the end of the 19th century.
• They belong to a large group of the periodic table of elements, which celebrates 150 years of history in 2019.
• In the 1960’s, they started being used for high technology China, United States, India and Brazil, are major producers of rare earths.
• China is now a key country in the production of the Rare Earths and its tight control has generated profound disagreements and conflicts – affection and disaffection – worldwide.

The development of the proposal concludes in the Vademécum: Quadra Minerale. Rare earths, other minerals and mining concepts. An approach to the elements and their technological uses in contemporaneity.

• Delves into the contemporary processes of technological production, regarding affection and disaffection they generate Makes visible the economic, political and military problems of the elements of the table and concepts derived from it.
• Historically focuses on past processes as conclusions of the present: colonization, post-colonization, decolonization.
• Makes these problems visible from the field of visual arts at a theoretical-practical level;each element is related to objects from my studio, works by other artists and myself.
• Builds international relations between Latin America, Europe, USA, Russia, the Asia-Pacific axis and some countries in the Middle East.

What we do understand is that it is fundamental to existence. Thomas’s current research questions quantum and nanotechnologies that are utilised as part of his concepts of capturing reality in the act of happening. New emergent technologies and traditional materials are explored in his work in relationship to how he visually expresses an alternative comprehension of the invisible, inaudible and intangible phenomena studied in physics.

An electron is seen as being analogous to the movement of a spinning top. When a spinning top goes out of its spin cycle, it falls into chaos in the same way an electron in a quantum position is governed by its spin. The set draws from the analogy of the axis of a spinning top that creates a cloud of points that disappear and reappear based on the probability data from Professor Andrea Morello’s lab at University of New South Wales, developed by PhD students Serwan Asaad and Vincent Mourik. In Thomas’s digital artwork, a sorting algorithm developed in collaboration with artist Jan Andruszkiewicz in 2019, utilises speculative quantum data to transform a photographic image. In the artwork, data affects the materiality of photographic images of felt fibres, referencing Gilles Deleuze’s and Felix Guattari’s concept of smooth and striated space. The smooth space of felt is not woven, knitted, knotted, intertwined or laced. It is not a striated space where the woven fabric measures the boundary of the body’s movement in space. It has its own integrity; its tensile strength is born of chaos.  The material becomes a second skin between the body and the world.

This fibrous character becomes reconfigured by the speculative quantum chaos data using a sorting algorithm to reposition every pixel in the photograph of felt fibres. The program when executed randomly selects one of ten images and Husimi quasi-probability distribution data a text file from 223,966 samples—transforming by rearranging in real-time the digital photographic images’ fibrous character of felt. An accretion of animated motion evolves over time as the fibrous image is sorted from its classical chaos to one born out of quantum chaos. Each sort of the data weaves a series of linear transformations of the felt fibres to reveal new patterns that correspond to a probability of meaning: chaos begetting chaos as an ongoing, entangled real-time process visualising a liminal space between worlds.

Exhibition. Le Cube Garges, April 27 – May 18

2020
Interactive light installation

Composed of more than 1000 tactile metal springs, Quantum Jungle is an interactive artistic installation which allows to apprehend and to visualize in an extremely playful way certain concepts of quantum physics. By calculating the Schrödinger equation to model the motion of a quantum particle, it demonstrates concepts such as superposition, interference, wave-particle duality and quantum waveform collapse. By maintaining a playful approach that attracts children and adults alike, the device arouses curiosity and wonder and allows us to understand the invisible physical laws that govern our universe.

Realized by Berlin-based game artist Robin Baumgarten in collaboration with a team of quantum physicists headed by Prof. Sabrina Maniscalco (Aalto University and University of Turku), and Prof. Marilu Chiofalo (University of Pisa), the piece is an interactive light installation which was installed at Palazzo Blu in Pisa until April 2022.

The Scientific team:
Sabrina Maniscalco
Marilù Chiofalo
Caterina Foti
Guillermo García-Pérez
Matteo Rossi
Boris Sokolov
Jorge Yago Malo

Partners:
University of Helsinki
University of Aalto
University of Pisa
Institute Q
QPlayLearn
Algorithmiq
Palazzo Blu
Fondazione di Pisa

Music in video: Sonor by Eugenio Mininni

Focus Québec Exhibition. Forum des Images, May 16 – 21

Radiances IV (2018) Impression

Two Prints installation
Radiances is a formal research aimed at creating a parallel between the aesthetics of the digital image and that of traditional painting. A combination of various techniques was used, such as 3D animation, video synthesis and digital manipulations, to bring out textures which evoke, without imitating, layers of paint, brush strokes, reliefs. These paintings in motion suggest a contemplative state where landscapes evolve slowly over time, freeing the observer from a narrative and linear montage, while maintaining the temporal aspect of the video.
Radiances IV (2018) Impression – 56x100cm
Radiances V (2018) Impression – 56x100cm
Prints installations are on loan from Galerie Charlot

Focus Québec Exhibition. Forum des Images, May 16 – 21

Radiances V (2018) Impression – 56x100cm

Two Prints installation
Radiances is a formal research aimed at creating a parallel between the aesthetics of the digital image and that of traditional painting. A combination of various techniques was used, such as 3D animation, video synthesis and digital manipulations, to bring out textures which evoke, without imitating, layers of paint, brush strokes, reliefs. These paintings in motion suggest a contemplative state where landscapes evolve slowly over time, freeing the observer from a narrative and linear montage, while maintaining the temporal aspect of the video.
Radiances IV (2018) Impression – 56x100cm
Radiances V (2018) Impression – 56x100cm
Prints installations are on loan from Galerie Charlot

The work employs an individual-based evolutionary social simulation. In the simulation, virtual people are born, grow up, fall in love, bear babies, age, become separated, and die over the course of multiple generations. Each simulated individual is mortal but its genetic information that is passed on to its offspring can potentially exist eternally. Nevertheless, most hereditary traits are fragile and quickly change through mutation and selection. The evolutionary process running in the simulation often leads to the emergence of multiple geographically separated races. This phenomena can remind us of the fragility of our racial identity.
The simulation is rendered perceivable through dynamically created visuals and sounds. The acoustic content consists of short sentences that are spoken by the computer in accordance with certain events taking place in the live of the simulated individuals or that recapitulate the biographic histories of recently deceased individuals. These spoken texts are combined with a mixture of sounds consisting of whispered proposals, sighs of disappointment, baby cries, and funeral bells. All together, these sounds express the collective atmosphere of the population. The atmosphere might sound like noise but is also represents the harmony of the society.
The computational model of each individual in the simulation is very simple and less intelligent than most contemporary AI systems. Nevertheless, this model is sufficient to evoke in us the impression that the simulated individuals possess intelligence and emotions. As such, it is mainly through our imagination that the simulated behaviors become elements for fictional stories of dramatic life experiences. Therefore, it is also through us, that even the simplest computational entities can achieve enlightenment.
The installation includes two tablet computers that allow visitors to explore the simulation through two types of browsing interfaces. The first interface displays the individual stories of one of the agents that is currently shown on the main installation screen. The full name and the birth and death dates of six agents are listed in a column on the left. By selecting one of these rows, the detailed life events are shown in a column on the right. The second interface allows to exhaustively explore a database containing all the life events of a previously finished simulation run. This database collects approximately 210000 individual live stories over a duration of 3000 simulated years. The interface offers two different views. The first view displays an individual and its parents and lovers. The second view displays a couple and their children. The visitor can touch a graphical depiction of an individual agent to switch to the first mode or he/she can touch a line connecting two agents to switch to the second mode.
Since 2003, Tatsuo and Daniel have worked together on new-media art projects. They received several awards: Honorary Mention by Vida 9.0 in 2006 for “Flocking Messengers”, Excellence Award by 10th Japan Media Art Festival in 2006 for “MediaFlies”, Audience Prize by WRO 2011 for “Cycles”, the Best Artwork Award by ALIFE 2016 for “Visual Liquidizer”, and Excellence Award by 21st Japan Media Art Festival for the first version of “Rapid Biography”. They designed interactive stage effects for four contemporary dance projects choreographed by Jirí Kylián in 2008 and 2009.

Ray traced image by David Lister at Computer Graphics Research Group of the Ohio State University.

A responsive sound installation comprised of 30 objects containing speakers, sensors and microphones. The installation is attentive to its environment and responds through light fluctuations and an evolving sound composition.

One challenging issue of cultural institutions such as museums and libraries is offering their audiences access to their often extensive materials in engaging ways. This is specifically the case with time-based media such as audio recordings. The Re-volution Sampler installation aims to mitigate the challenge. It is an open, participatory, multilayered assemblage of personal memories, associations, and performances of political revolutionary sonic texts. The installation integrates playback and recording of revolutionary sonic texts such as protest songs, political speeches or poems and personal stories. Visitors are not only able to listen and receive but also to add, extend and comment. The installation builds an archive of sonic documents and audience responses to it, thereby creating a network of meaningful relations accumulating during the time of the installation period. Re-volution Sampler becomes a lively, meaningful, ongoing collection of the multiple personal and collective experiences of revolution people have and share across countries and cultures.

Founded on its earlier installation, “Read For Us” The Readers Project presents the work of a software entity that generates digital video montage, with visual content sourced through live image search. The Montage Reader – developed initially for English – analyses its text and first establishes a overall visual grammar based on closed-class words that underlie linguistic structure. The reader then searches for images corresponding to phrases  – ‘longest common phrases’ whenever possible – finally composing a sequence of images that corresponds with the written language of the text both structurally and also semantically – at least in so far as contemporary image search proposes a correspondence that is meaningful for the human user-readers of network services and their aggregation of crowdsourced indexing. Texts read by the Montage Reader may include parts of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), and Some Thing We Are, a short story by Daniel C. Howe.

Hacnum Exhibition, Various locations, May 16 – 21

ReCollection is an interactive AI art installation that assembles synthetic collective visual memories based on language input, blurring the boundaries between remembrance and imagination through AI system design and interactive experimental visualization.

According to Dr. Mary Steedly, memories are a “densely layered, sometimes conflictual negotiation with the passage of time.” As a result of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, at least 50 million people suffer memory regression and cognitive difficulties. Meanwhile, text-to-image artificial intelligence (AI) systems have gained a great deal of attention in 2022 as exciting forms of AI that generate visuals based on language input, which creates new possibilities for reassembling fragmented memories.

-​When we coexist with machines, will we accumulate synthetic recollections of symbiotic imagination?
-Is language capable of triggering and synthesizing memories?
-How does our collective memory inspire new visual forms and alternative narratives?

Recollection is an assemblage of human-machine artifacts that emphasizes the contributions from three sides: artists, machines, and participants. This customized AI application facilitates multiple AI techniques, like speech recognition, text auto-completion, and text-to-image, to convert language input into image sequences of new memories. As an interactive experience, participants will describe their memories with fragmented sentences, and our system will automatically fill in details, creating new visual memories.

We developed our customized AI system by fine-tuning a pre-trained transformer-based AI model to learn the documentaries of Alzheimer patients’ visual memories and their descriptions. The system imagines new memories by interpreting real-time narratives from participants in the installation. We did not employ the generative visual output from our AI system as our final delivery in the installation. Instead, we draw inspiration from Monotype, a printmaking technique with a history that dates back to the 1640s, which produces unique visualizations on paper through printing and reprinting. Therefore, we program our system to automatically transform the machine-generated visuals algorithmically into an evolving real-time visualization with a unique aesthetic through image processing and experimental data visualization. We collaborate with our AI system to design this art experience and intentionally bridge fine art-making techniques with generative AI art to emphasize the symbiotic relationships between past and future, as well as machinic vision and human perception towards a new aesthetic and visual language.

By providing a conceptual framework for non-linear narratives, which constitute symbiotic imaginations, and future scenarios of memories, culture production, and reproductions. It may inspire the cure for memory regression by providing a future scenario, a thought experiment, and an intimate recollection of symbiosis between beings and apparatus. It raises people’s awareness of future memory preservation and their empathy for the dementia community through a personalized aesthetic experience. It offers an artistic approach and future prototype for cultural heritage reproduction and re-imagination and explores the tensions that exist in the co-relations between visual representations, language, and narratives.​

Reconstructions is an infinite computer-generated poem whose output conforms to the literary figure of chiasmus. The program samples a sequence of text from a variational autoencoder neural network trained on millions of lines of English poetry, and pairs that line with a reconstruction of the sequence in reverse order. The lines of poetry thereby produced are semantic and syntactic mirror images of one another, exhibiting a classic chiastic X structure: ABBA. At regular intervals, the system produces a new pair of lines, which are then displayed between the lines of the previous step, creating a chiastic structure in the arrangement not just of words within lines but among the lines themselves. As the program progresses, lines continue to appear in the middle of each pair, leading to an endlessly nested chiastic structure (ABCCBA, ABCDDCBA, ABCDEEDCBA, etc.). Older lines fade as they move away from the center but are never fully erased from the screen.

To photograph myself as a responder to both urban and rural lansdcapes within the UAE. This work develops work I showed as part of Sikka 2013.

Life as the sole sale item in the clearance corner of Eben’s Bikes can get lonely. So Red, a unicycle, dreams up a clown owner and his own juggling act that steals the show. But all too soon, the applause turns into the sound of rainfall as reality rushes back. Red must resign himself to sitting in the corner and await his fate.

Don’t let Red’s sale tag fool you. He’s really a priceless unicycle with a big heart who could help out juggling performers like Lumpy the Clown—if only someone would see him resting against the back wall and give him a chance.

May 27-July 23, Centre d’Art Cal Massó de Reus, Beep Collection: Origins. Public event.

In “Redundant Assembly” an arrangement of several cameras composes a live-portrait of the visitor from six perspectives simultaneously, aligned using face detection. The resulting image is uncanny, detached from the laws of symmetry and the depth perception of binocular vision. If several visitors are standing in front of the work, a composite portrait of their different facial features develops in real time, creating a mongrel “selfie”.

A version of the work for public space includes a time-component that allows the face blending to take place mixing present and the past. Face recognition is a technique often used by police, military, and corporate entities to search for and find suspicious or target people. Here the same technology is used to confuse portraits and emphasize the artificiality and arbitrariness of identification.
http://www.lozano-hemmer.com/videos/artwork/redundant_assembly_basel_2016_rlh_001.mp4
[Source https://www.beepcollection.art/rafael-lozano-hemmer]

An installation and workshop that fuses geophysical and cultural mapping to create a multi-level locative vision of an expansive present.

Original work of art: Peacock Spreading Its Tail Feathers by Giuseppe Castiglione

This installation takes Castiglione’s painting of two peacocks and separates its iconographic elements into layers that are then individually printed onto a succession of large glass panes. This spatial and optical re-formulation of the painting illuminates the unique fusion of Western single-point perspective and Chinese painterly aesthetics that Castiglione achieved in his work.

The work consists of several marble tiles, assembled on a platform. The experience for the audience can be summarized by an overwhelming sensation. The culmination of the machines, the sounds, and the reflecting pool is designed to be all encompassing.

Our digital footprints in the vast data universe are duplicatable, transferrable and mutable.  Deletion has become much harder than throwing a piece of paper into a shredder, which was first invented over a hundred years ago. Photos, videos, geographical tag or just simple texts living on social media platforms as the virtual presence of digitized human memories strengthen the power of machine computation and analysis while underlying the control from us.

When we try to preserve or delete our own stories in the digital landscape, do we still have the authorship of them? Are they in a constant shift of meaning and representation?

Repository is a virtual reality experience created around the issue and question of data authorship and data oblivion.  It builds a world of data in motion merging the structure of a server farm (A place physically stores data) with a  paper shredder (A machine deconstructing data). Repository gradually transforms from a surreal bank safely stores memories into a space filled with floating shreds of letters and characters through assembling and fragmenting various conversations borrowed from Twitter posts in 2019. Its non-linear narrativity, interactive experimental sound, and surreal aesthetic provide a conceptualization of an alternative model of human-machine interaction, and question whether we have the right to be forgotten, at the same time as the right to be remembered?

Resounding Walls takes its conceptual starting point from the interdisciplinary field of Acoustic Ecology and the practice of Sound Design. Acoustic Ecology highlights the importance of creating an awareness of the role that sounds plays in shaping our experience with our respective environment and habitat. These experiences affect us physiologically, psychologically, cognitively and behaviourally. Parallel to this field, the practice of Sound Design has the potential to activate our awareness of our acoustic surrounding. The project will be actualised as an immersive sound installation which intersects with the context of the exhibition space. This will be composed of a Sound Design artwork based on field recordings taken in and around the city of Durban.

Exhibition. Centre Culturel Canadien, May 16 – 20

Set in a fictional Andes in the year 2222 Retornar narrates the story of the nine last living humans on Earth, and their journey towards a big «reset». Narratively structured as a video game, Retornar takes place in an eco-pessimistic world, where Latin America has nothing else to give: its soil has dried up and the atmosphere has become increasingly dangerous. After a big war driven by an extreme exploitation of natural resources, the surviving characters wander around a dystopian Andean landscape, aimlessly and alone, with no other purpose but to spend their day going through different “puzzles” and “loading screens”, until they are summoned by a mysterious blue orb that will transport them into a digital celestial world where – after a big celebratory “last dance” – they will become the seeds for a new generation.

Retornar was made through a multilayered process. The world itself was designed from scenes created in The Sims 4, SketchUp, Photoshop, as well as real footage shot in front of a green screen. The scenarios were built using an isometric perspective to mimic early 8 bit video games, as well as early life simulation games, and videochat universes.

Created as part of the PHI Montreal 2021 Residency.

Return of the Amersfoort is the result of the collaboration between Haroon Gunn-Salie and Aline Xavier formulated during a research residency at Thami Mnyele Foundation in Amsterdam. Staging a symbolic repatriation, the project presents a reoriented perspective on the historic and contemporary connections shared between South Africa, the Netherlands and Brazil. Anchoring the ghost of the East India Company (VOC) merchant ship Amersfoort in the historic city it honours. In January 1658, Amersfoort, pirated a Portuguese slaving vessel off the coast of Baía de Todos os Santos. In its hold, 500 male and female Angolan slaves, destined to be sold in the slave markets of Brazil. 250 slaves were taken aboard Amersfoort, which docked in Table Bay on 28 March 1658, marking the day the Cape became a slave trading colony. The installation conceptualized as a chain of experiences, invoking ancestral elements evoking the presence of the ghost vessel, flagging its remains to dismantle and contest eurocentric historical-fact.

The performance is in honor of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Nine Evening performances in 1966 where prominent artists and Bell Labs engineers performed in public in New York. The performance used both the data and the software developed for a data stethoscope project that is associated with ongoing research with a team of Neuroscientists at the Center for Vital Longevity Studies at UTDallas. The project data was fMRI data on age cohorts of healthy individuals from 20 to 80. The research involved adding sonification to visualisation tools as a strategy for data exploration. The performing artist is Scot Gresham Lancaster in collaboration with astrophysicist Roger Malina. The artist developed an interface and performance strategies with a chess board and various midi controllers. Using various data sets from the research a soundscape and real time interventions based on the “Reunion” electro-acoustically enhanced chess match between Cage and Marcel Duchamp from 1968. In this case the two collaborating scientists play chess on an electronically enhanced chess board. The moves they make drive the soundscape and interaction of both the video and audio of the performance. The interactions are enhanced by actions and reactions during the performance.

Hacnum Exhibition, Various Locations, May 16 – 21

A Parallel Natural History Museum
Art-Science trans-media installation
12 devices within a scenographic route

Passionate about the living, Golnaz Behrouznia and I imagined the concept of the exhibition together Reverse phylogenesis. This is a journey featuring twelve of our works, from which we create a logic between fiction and natural science. A trans-media and literary work, from our imagination.

Very recently, biologists discovered a species of jellyfish capable of performing a true reversal of its life cycle, allowing it to return to a previous cellular state. Could it be that certain living species can go through a process of rejuvenation over time, and thus move up the phylogenetic tree? A process of de-evolution that scientists might call “reverse phylogenesis”.

The discoveries of organic molecules in space, in particular on comet Tchouri, update the question of the emergence of life from inert matter in a prebiotic world. Over time, evolution has made it possible to explore an extraordinary diversity of systems, an incredible fauna whose traces persist in fossil form in the Burgess Shale. Only the most robust forms of which we know the current descendants have survived. Life experiments are now much less diversified.

“Reverse phylogenesis” envisages a de-evolution that would allow to explore again, with extreme freedom, varied, extravagant forms of life, with strange anatomy and enigmatic functioning. The mini-museum presented here reappropriates the unknowns of the living. He questions the forms emerging from our contemporary imagination, mixing the living, artifice and human technologies. A face to face with the fundamental questions that are the nature of life or the fate of biological evolution on earth.

“Inverse phylogenesis”, between plastic, digital, audiovisual and textual forms, is a proposal that aims to be offbeat and poetic, but which is characterized at the same time, in a roundabout way, by a strong anchoring in reality. Because it is through sensitive forms that we will be able to constitute new imaginaries of the living, richer, more complete, more open too. “Reverse phylogenesis” leads the viewer to re-examine what “the living” and “life” can be.

Signed by Rémi Boulnois, the scenographic route as well as the design of the lights, are proposed in such a way as to recreate the atmosphere of a scientific museum. The scenography is accompanied by a sound creation by Florent Colautti, which ensures the coherence of the whole.

The artists lead us there, over time taken backwards. To re-imagine a living thing that comes from almost the same constraints, the same laws as current organisms, but which escapes classification. Forms of life that try out different means of breathing, nutrition, setting in motion, metamorphoses, interacting with their environment… The exhibition ends at time zero, this suspended moment when inert matter first became alive. The point of origin of the thread of life.

Rejuvenation according to the biologist Braun can be either individual with a return to a previous form (we are always subject to the force of rejuvenation which continues to sculpt our body), or more global, with the rejuvenation of the species through the succession of individuals. The living is not a stable state: it is maintained in its state by the continuous management of flows of growth and destruction, absorption and rejection. Of rejuvenation and aging. Youth and old age are organic and spiritual forces constantly at work and constantly opposing each other. If rejuvenation takes precedence, why not imagine the possibility of des-evolution, and the return to freedom of an “inverse phylogenesis”.

Creation Golnaz Behrouznia & Dominique Peysson
Scenographic creation Remi Boulnois
Sound design Florent Colautti
Photos ​Golnaz Behrouznia & Dominique Peysson

Paulo Nimer Pjota’s work is developed based on the nature of collectively originated phenomena. His research and practice concentrate on a profound study of a kind of popular iconography which can only be developed through complex processes conducted by countless sets of hands. We can thus think of his body of work as the representation of a dialogue that is pluralist and unsettled, whose understandings are in constant transformation, spanning multiple streams of consciousness. A conference of many voices with open channels of research in a time and space that is not homogenous, nor linear.

In the award-winning Human Study #1 series of performative installations, a human is drawn live by several robots during a 20-minute session, Both audiences and participants often mention the robot’s attention as a striking element. It is conceived as such, a camera mounted on the pan and tilt system enables the robot to observe the sitter with tiny saccades, occasionally comparing with the drawing, and most of the time following the pen’s movements. Although these movements are theatrical, they effectively convey a character and give the impression of the system paying attention to the human in an animal mammal-like way. Furthermore, the robot’s eye following the pen’s movement gives the impression that it is looking at what it is doing.

I have been researching a forthcoming series of installations for the past three years, including developing a new robot (RNR). Instead of being strongly influenced by human behaviour that is perceived as familiar like the human study #1 robots, I am exploring ways to make it [RNR] perceived as alien, unfamiliar, and foreign.

The RNR is an intermediary work, where I will specifically explore how having a robot looking at us with a different unfamiliar perceptual system affects our perception of it. As an animal, if attention is directed toward us, it needs to be evaluated instantly: can we eat it? Is it going to eat us? As humans, the way we are observed triggers a wealth of emotions. What if we can’t decode the intention of the observer? And what will the robot draw if it sees differently?

The aim for the final installation would be for the emotions in the human being drawn during ten-minute performances to progressively move from unsettled to intrigued, reassured, captivated, and charmed.

Every 15 minutes, a robotic percussion instrument performs a new generated composition that is the result of an ongoing negotiation between virtual agents. Each composition lasts between 3-5 minutes.

Role Model performances pose the question: What can Dubai teach the world?, while the installation shows answers from shows done in Russia and Brazil.

What does clean water bring us and why should we tell the story of its loss? Functionally, without water, we cannot drink, bathe, cook or clean. Essentially, it is indispensable for empowerment, health, dignity and economic security. Water is a human right, yet 10% of the world’s population, mostly living in rural areas, lives without safe water. While globally we use 70% of our water resources for agriculture and 10% for domestic use, catastrophic droughts are devastating parts of North and South America, Africa, China and Southeast Asia, worsening universal access to water.

Run Dry is a film project told through personal stories, investigates the significance of water and reveals the systems of power that govern water distribution. The project addresses how water is accessed and resourced, what systems govern water resources, how they have developed over decades, and how they impact human well-being today. Audiences will learn specifically about the water crisis in Central California as a model for understanding how race, class, migration, water policy, hydrology and agricultural history combine to create this crisis.

Collectively harvested data and an interactive AR presentation of the History of the Electronic Arts over the period of last four decades.

During her residency at Eawag, Zahrah Alghamdi has accompanied the Stream Ecology research group on three excursions to the Roseg Valley in the Engadine. Taking her inspiration from the activities of the scientists in the midst of the mountain terrain with its countless rivers and streams, she captured her impressions in the form of works that make use of found materials, directly intervening in the landscape. She created the pieces either by hand or using simple tools, and made use of materials that she mostly picked up in the Roseg Valley — such as sand from a river bank, or dried plants. This process enabled Alghamdi to tune in to an unfamiliar landscape and leave her own imprint on it while at the same time offering up these imprints to the effects of impermanence. Having been documented in a series of photographs, the works represent a moment in time, as do the scientific data collected in the Roseg Valley.

Same, Same, but Different is a transdisciplinary collaborative project between the Laboratory of Art and Science at Durban University of Technology (South Africa) and the Interdisciplinary Interactive Laboratory (LabInter) at the University of Santa Maria (Brazil). This project brings together people from Fine Arts, Engineering, Computer Science and Video to create an interactive electronic artwork that uses water as a conceptual metaphor for access to internet bandwidth and information as a human right and commodity which should be widely available without restriction, as essential to human life, and to which every person is entitled. This project seeks to bolster existing collaborative transdisciplinary initiatives along a South-South axis between South Africa and Brazil, in light of the two countries facing similar artistic, cultural and socio-economic challenges.

LabInter is composed by artists, teachers, researchers and students from visual arts, design, music, letters, architecture, cinema, computer engineering and computer science. The lab has developed research projects in game art, interactive applications, augmented reality, mixed reality, interactive installations, visual music, web art, telematic art, and, recently, a Fulldome proposal. LabInter is associated with the Graduate Program in Visual Arts at UFSM/Brazil. Andreia Oliveira, Cassio Lemos, Eduardo Custodio, Evaristo do Nascimento, Fabio Almeida and Indira Richter are members of the LabInter’s team.

The attention spans of users has become somewhat of a commodity to platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and others. Unfortunately, due to the constant bombardment of information and imagery from these sites, not only have the length of our attentions spans shortened, but many of us have become oversaturated with (and even addicted to) the easily digestible and almost comforting stream of distraction that our devices steadily provide us with. This project consists of a desktop PC running a fake YouTube browser. The browser leads participants to a single video made up of 10 overlaid videos playing simultaneous at various levels of opacity. This visual and audible bombard of faces and voices is a manifestation of the effect that this platform has on those who use it. In this way, it mirrors the effect that it has on others back onto itself. It creates a space in which nothing can be retained and focusing on any single aspect proves difficult. It is this state which I find myself in when I have overexposed myself to this sort of stimuli, and it is a state which I aim to not only portray, but hopefully also replicate in those who interact with the piece.

Coding: Simone Beneke-Graham

Anne Landa Award for Video and New Media Arts 2013.

James Newitt orchestrated a mock confrontation between two groups of demonstrators, although it is never clear what they are arguing about. [source: ttps://www.johnmcdonald.net.au)
Say it like you want it is a video of staged protest/demonstration which incorporates signs, slogans and ideologies taken from opposing political positions which have been decontextualised from their original sources. The work was filmed in Liverpool UK within a community theatre space and reveals an artificial social encounter that brings together a group of non-professional actors who were provided with pre-made banners, masks, flags and disguises. The performers were paid an hourly fee for their time. https://jnewitt.com/work/say-it.html

By participating in the ‘protest’ the performers were asked to try to temporarily erase their identity and personal ideologies and perform someone else’s words, which may or may not resonate with their own belief. The work explores the spaces between hearing something, saying something, understanding something and believing in something.

The video is exhibited alongside documentation of an Orange Order march which was filmed in Toxteth, Liverpool – the site of the infamous 1981 Toxteth riots.

SCAMP: Mont Royal is an interactive, non-linear, geolocalized sound walk composed for mobile application on android and iPhone OS. This is the 2nd site-specific version of SCAMP to be created by Heimbecker. The production is sponsored by Sporobole Centre en Art Actuel, who first commissioned SCAMP: lac des nations for Espace [IM] Média 2019, Sherbrooke, QC.

Heimbecker created the project interactivity concept along with the unique ambisonic audio track composed in a palindrome designed to play forward and backward, fast or slow. It is made from 40 layers of stereo field recordings of a forest similar to the forest of Parc Mont-Royal (Montreal, Canada). The composition uses sound filters and layers of harmonic processing that give a synthesized sense of both nature and abstraction together with the companionship of a family dog: her heartbeat and her voice.

Scamp was my dog.
She loved to run.
If I ran, she ran.
If I walked, she walked.
If I stopped, she stopped.
She was a good dog.
She loved to play.
She loved to be outdoors.
She loved to be at the lake.
She loved to be in the forest.
She loved the sounds of nature.
Would you like to go for a tour with Scamp at park Mont Royal?
She would like that too!

Walk or ride your bike… just take the path (with your mobile and headphones).

SCAMP “forward play” starts at the Cartier Monument on ave du Parc.“Reverse play” begins at Le Serpentin path on ave du Pine O. between Redpath Crescent and rue Peel.

Can we imagine how the science of today might shape the world of tomorrow? You are invited to help create the world of X, a woman born in 2045, and be a part of the first demonstration of ‘xquisiteFUTURE’, a custom video software by Ollie Bown inspired by the Surrealist drawing game ‘cadavre exquis’ (‘exquisite corpse’). A mobile FUTUREpod will bring xquisiteFUTURE to the University of Sydney campus (11th-14th June) and feature live storyboarding by visual artist Valentin Manz.

scienceFUTURE is a multi-year collaborative documentary experiment that will provide a dreamlike glimpse of the future in the present. By playing with both the good and bad potentials projected into our future, participants will explore the personal joys and dilemmas extrapoloated from our partly unconscious experience of accelerating change. The goal is not so much to predict the future, as to nurture deeper and more complex attitudes towards the eternal ‘becoming’ of the present. scienceFUTURE is in an early research and development phase.

In a search for the dark corners of lit cities we find ourselves searching the spaces between the rigidity of the organized systems and the city grids. We
look for the respite from the connected, surveilled and illuminated spaces in an attempt to find and celebrate darkness and silence. Part of this search is to
experience these found spaces, attempt to capture them in image and sound, acknowledge their juxtaposition to their surrounding activity, map them onto
the city grid and publish these findings.
This performative workshop and performance installation is in line with a trajectory of the artist’s 10 years of light interventions and community
engagement projects questioning the meaning of darkness and silence in the context of South Africa, across Africa and Europe. The play of darkness and light is one that is not only easily accessible to participants and audiences, but can be read as highly critical of social conditions and behavior, the power of politics and propaganda, and evidence of control and surveillance.

Searching for Substance is an indoor video installation that examines the ideas of consumerism, manicured spaces, and manufactured environments.

Secrets of the Dark manifests both audio and visual noise in harmony with each other. Participants can manipulate visual effects on a projected live video stream by using the custom dual joystick interface in this artwork. The system rewards large hand gestures with increased prismatic video distortion. At the same time, these tangible inputs also drive an FM synthesizer that compliments the visual noise with scrumbly audio. From a distance, the projections and sounds draw people in, often enticed by seeing abstract representations of themselves. At this range, many people can engage with the work simultaneously, while at a more intimate scale, one person can play the interface for the gathered audience. By combing these elements the installation allows people to transform the world around them into one of colorful kaleidoscopic light through expressive movement.
The interface is born of a hacked GameTrak controller embedded in a purple- heart wooden box. Exotic woods were used to mirror colors found at the extreme end of the digital video filters. The interface leverages craftsmanship, traditional methods, and warm materials not often found in digital projects. This materiality both invites people in and juxtaposes the high tech with tangible forms.
The projections stem from a live video feed of the surrounding area. In its neutral state, they are grayscale with a flame effect. Upon manipulation of the interface, the visuals spring to life. The left joystick controls video rotation along the XY plane and zoom on the Z-axis. The right joystick controls horizontal and vertical pixelation on the XY plane and downsampling on the Z-axis. The Z-axes automatically retract, which provides a nice haptic resistance to the user’s input gestures. Combined with FM synthesis, these elements provide the user with a multimodal embodied experience.

#See You at Home is an interactive and immersive installation about changing the role of the private space in a time of crisis. It is part of an ongoing participatory project that reflects on our everyday domestic life between private and public spheres, and thus on our relationship with living spaces in general. The project consists of a collection of hundreds of three-dimensional documents taken between 2020 and 2021 in over 40 different countries during the most intense periods of self-isolation and home confinement.

Following an open call, the collected videos were converted to 3D objects using the technique of photogrammetry. These imperfect objects (pointcloud images with gaps and unfinished endings) are the core content of the work’s archive, along with personal statements about the time of quarantine and the changing meaning of private spaces in the form of audio pieces and text.

#See You at Home (SYAH) is a physical installation that includes 3D-printed objects, plotter prints on the wall, and interactive objects with QR codes leading to 360 degree virtual spaces that visitors can view through the ‘magic window’ feature of their phone. Additionally, the work expands on, and includes within, a previous work: the VR installation The Smallest of Worlds. With it, #See You at Home offers a journey within a journey that explores the private spaces as its possible forms develop and change, in a back and forth between the real and the virtual that is both conceptual and experiential.

Seismik is a dazzling, tension charged performance that taps into seismic waves, frictional  resistance and the Earth’s tremor related phenomena in real time. True to Kolgen’s temporal/ spatial conceptual preoccupations and radiographic approach, he again renders the invisible  visible: he has developed sophisticated software that picks up on the Earth’s magnetic fields and seismic activity from São Paolo to Kyoto, in turn generating abstracted sound and dramatic visual motifs. Exploring the ambiguity of realism in post human landscapes, Kolgen creates three-dimensional simulations through the instability of dynamical systems and converts them into large scale cinematic visuals. A dramatic display of terrestrial activity, Seismik plays on notions of physical, cerebral and emotional tension, in this case using vibrational data and vertical through-lines to explore seismic strains and fractures of varying  intensities, planting the audience squarely on terra (not so) firma.

Self-Organized Landscapes are print collages composed of thousands of closeup photos that are taken using robotic or hand-held cameras that pan and tilt to examine a visual context.

This artwork is a visualization of the correlations of the data collected with 5 arduinos and 8 different sensors on a boat trip held by professors, university students and artists.

How would you feel if your shadow wandered off to talk to someone else’s?! This interactive Kinect project prompts participants and viewers to reflect on the complex and often hidden relationships between people, networks and communities on the internet. The on-screen shadows of participants/passers by in Darwin and Sydney are integrated into a composite virtual scene,  broadcast on large public screens in the two cities. Abstracted by anonymity and physical separation, the shadows engage in intimate and playful, yet literally distant encounters; thus strangers engage in virtual relationships across vast distances, provoking contemplation of the impact of anonymity and intimacy in our ever expanding, highly networked world.

Shadow Showdown is a multiplayer, whole-body installation that encourages interaction between people, creativity, and physical activity.

Shadows of aikia is a movement-based interactive audiovisual performance.

How does an Artificial Emotional (AE) kiss feel? Can AI/AE support an intimate kiss?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) increasingly shapes human empathic interaction. AI systems applied to Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) for mining and interpreting biofeedback data of social behavior, focus on automatization, categorization, patterns, and prediction. Design for sharing intimate, empathic relations, however, demands a new Artificially Emotional (AE) design approach. In interdisciplinary collaboration (art, design, technology, science, society), art-science duo Lancel/Maat fundamentally rethink AI/AE concepts and ethical design of mirroring empathy (Freedberg & Gallese 2007) in future neural networks. In live experiments and dialogue with public participants, biofeedback-data are interpreted in new ways, building on artistic and scientific insights, visual data-patterns, data-sonification, shared participants interaction – leading to video-works, prints, publications (Lancel et al. 2019).
The poetic ritual and performance-installation Kissing Data proposes an AE/ BCI mediated multi-sensory syntheses of intimate touch, essential to empathy, well-being, and social resilience. People are invited as Kissers or Spectators to experience a shared kiss. While kissing, Kissers’ brainwaves are measured with Multi-BCI E.E.G. headsets. Real-time, their streaming E.E.G.-data-visualizations encircle them in a floor projection. Simultaneously, the Spectators’ brainwaves are measured (their neurons mirroring the activity of intimate kissing movements, resonating in their imagination). Both Kissers’ and Spectators’ data co-create an immersive visual, reflexive data scape, translated to an algorithm for a soundscape: a Kissing Data Symphony. Printed data-visualizations are exhibited as Portraits of a Kiss.
Participants can share kissing or caressing each others’ faces. The artists thank Mondriaan Fund; Delft University of Technology; STEIM Amsterdam/ Tijs Ham (sound); Waag Society Amsterdam ‘Hack the Brain’ Horizon2020 European Union Programme; RIXC-Riga; TASML artists-residency Tsinghua University Beijing; TU Twente; Universities of Amsterdam, Vienna; TNO/NWO Netherlands Scientific Research; Baltan Laboratories, Fourtress, Holst Center and Phillips Eindhoven; Eagle Science Amsterdam; EMAP-EMARE Creative-Europe Programme.

Fusion of the Possible, Topographie de l’art, April 15 – June 15

2021
Inkjet print on Hahnemuhle Rag Baryta paper, 33 x 50 cm.
Courtesy of l’Adagp

[This text is a translation from Chinese by Google Translate, edited by Michelle Lin]

The Legend of Lin Shuiyuan series traces the young memory of the artist more than 30 years ago. By interviewing older families and villagers, trying to solve an exaggerated legend that is the story of oral history.

The story of history. The artist was raised by his grandparents when he was young. Very young and unable to speak from a low perspective, to watch the villagers fear Fear and admiration of Feng Shui master. And because I can’t speak or take notes, I can only use from the perspective of the children watching, try to use cartoon-like colorful colors to visually and Feel to reproduce the heroic deeds of my grandfather. And this kind of common people’s transmission Said that it was involved in the role of General Su Aguai of Yunlin County in the reign of Emperor Guangxu of the Qing Dynasty, The story of a generation of bandits in Lin Yupu (Zhushan), Nantou. exist outside of 硘磘庄

After the 36 officers in Fanzi were wiped out, the villagers took the entire army of General Su Tuan is buried in the tomb of Zhongyi. Later, Lin Shuiyuan, who was a farmer, passed by the general Tomb, whenever cows are moved past, the cows are always afraid to pass the general’s tomb and be late He didn’t want to go home for a long time, so Mr. Lin Shuiyuan faced the general’s tomb. Promise, if it goes smoothly in the future so that the cows are no longer afraid, they will enshrine the tomb of the generals Of the dead. But when things went well, Lin Shuiyuan forgot. Therefore, the woodcarver master in the village of Zhushan and Liaobao entrusted Lin Shuiyuan with the deity of the general’s tomb. Sheng, has carved the gods and sent them to the home for a fee, and the two understand each other after the origin, I was surprised, and promised and carried the technical care of Feng Shui master

The responsibility of the villagers has caused a series of local anecdotes in the future.

An article in the National Geographic titled, Water, The Age of Scarcity Begins, inspired Ammar Al Attar to do a project about water. Moved by the fact that our most basic necessity is a scarce and precious resource, the artist chose the UAE in which to explore the contradictory notion that water is often given away for free; remaining easily accessible and freely available to many.

A CCTV camera is filming a beach and we hear its voice, as if it were alive and thinking out loud. But the perfection of her intelligence has led it to doubt and burnout, and to not know what to do anymore: What is this? What should she look at? What is a suspicious behaviour? But above all, what is the point of all this? It compares itself to the click workers who feed artificial intelligences, questioning the meaning of its work with an anthropomorphism that raises its political stakes.

Sightseeing (Penser voir) was initially created by Thierry Fournier in 2018 at the invitation of Pierre Beloüin and the Acoustic Cameras project, which invites artists and composers to annex the real time streams of webcams located in different places around the world.

“With Sightseeing / Penser voir by Thierry Fournier, we quickly understand that we are not confronted with a real AI, but with an artifice, yet we fully adhere to the fiction of this awareness of an entity. Far from breaking our suspension of disbelief, the sound loop that reveals the deception, accentuates on the contrary our empathetic relationship to the AI that “goes off the rails”. It is literally in a loop on its machine condition, and thus on its condition of being (or rather of not being) in the world. While the landscape changes, it doesn’t come out of it, it can’t cope with it. Thus the sound loop is diegetized, appearing as a consequence of this state of burnout described by the artist.

Paradoxically, it is because it is highly efficient that this AI starts to doubt and to malfunction. The machine’s dysfunction thus becomes a metaphor for the dysfunction of a whole world that should be questioned. For how can one continue in such a world? “Fuck. I can’t make it,” the AI repeats tirelessly, while echoing the invisible click workers, the majority of whom are underpaid, who have contributed to shaping it by feeding it. By worrying about its usefulness, it also challenges the injunction to perform, characteristic of our society, which seems to consider man only in terms of becoming a machine. Thus, the fictional narrative deployed by Sightseeing around these issues of knowledge and doubt, performance and failure, meaning and non-sense, appears to be not only philosophical but also eminently political.”

Claire Châtelet, lecturer and researcher, University of Montpellier 3 (France), Les fictions de la machine sensible : l’œil, le faillible et la pensée [The fictions of the sensitive machine: the eye, the fallible and the thought], May 2021

Signal to Noise archives pixels extracted from images found on the hosting service imgur. com. Images of memes, ads, porn, landscapes, and cats all live together on imgur’s servers. Navigation to any image requires appending a random five, six, or seven character file path to the address imgur.com/. Signal to Noise navigates the site’s servers to find a random collection of images as quickly as possible. Pixels at specified locations are copied from their parent images and archived, contextualizing the site’s visual data not by web address, thematic content, or popularity but by time and space. An accompanying booklet of saturation-sorted pixel archives offers an alternative arrangement of the site’s content.

Signature Strokes consists of ultra-short performative interventions in which a remotely controlled drone paints ephemeral graffiti in public space. The title is a play on signature strikes – the drone killings based on suspicious behavioural patterns thought to constitute proof of terrorist activity. But when the drone engages with graffitti, the marks it creates can be understood as a kind of signature. During ISEA2015, the drone will appear as an expressive agent that will unexpectedly intervene and leave visual commentaries.

The artwork grounded on the region’s heritage, reacts inversely to the norms of interactive pieces. It begins as abstract shapes, only when one remains still does the image become tangible.

The wall installation examines the legacy of mining in Johannesburg and how this industry has had a geographical, social and economic influence on Johannesburg. The works engage with how historical ghosts of Johannesburg’s past still influence urban living today. It also deals with the anxieties of Joburg living, where one’s sense of equanimity is constantly being tested. Physical computing components such as servo and DC motors are attached to found objects and fictious characters of the artwork. These characters and objects move backwards and forwards, spin endlessly and shudder on the ledges they stand.

Exhibition Symbiosis, artport x ISEA. Forum des Images, May 16 – 21

Red blades spiral out in a circle over a black sky, with a yellow glow and more geometric shapes behind. In the center interlocking gold rings rotate over intricate and increasingly smaller details.

In SITE1, a fly-through of a three-dimensional space takes viewers on a journey into an intricate, machinic object resembling a spinning wheel, which gradually evolves into a cave-like environment.

The object is an abstracted star chart and computerized cosmology based on L.O.C.K., a previous work Harvey created as part of the artist duo Tale of Tales. The planetary constellations evoked by the spinning wheel—Mars, Mercury, and Earth itself—function as a chart that draws viewers into a cave. Embedded in it are elements of the characters depicted in Auriea Harvey’s sculpture Ox, which exists in physical form and as a virtual model. Among these characters are Fauna, based on a scan of Harvey’s head, and Minoriea, a futuristic goddess that is half woman, half bull and has been the artist’s avatar in virtual worlds since 2017. The virtual world of SITE1 represents an archaeological dig into the “origin site” of Harvey’s characters—an excavation of the universe that the artist is building from mythologies and personal stories. Just as Ox blends boundaries between virtual and tangible forms, SITE1 merges a virtual object and an environment. Viewers can navigate the work by scrolling, or hit the “enter” / “return” key for a continuous scroll.

Procedural animation of human figure moving on sloped surfaces. PhD work of 1984 at the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts & Design, Ohio State University, USA.

This video is based on original Dubai helicopter footage. Inspired by my interest in Islamic art, I used a custom geometric pattern-creating software to merge East and West.

Slipstream is a multichannel sound composition to be experienced in a unique embodied manner; underwater via submerged speakers. Sound materials collected from Durban and surrounds form a site-specific composition that considers the importance of water for a community living in a humid sub-tropical climate. Presented in public pools around Durban, Slipstream will bring art into the everyday ritual in playful and participatory ways.

This piece proposes a space to rethink some of the long-lasting effects, and formulates a visual exercise on the geological transformation and destruction of living ecosystems. We want to create a visual that reflects on the great acceleration of these changes (Anthropocene) and their repercussions on climate and biodiversity. A visual and living fresco that encapsulates the unstoppable disaster before our eyes, that devours and consumes nature in an exercise of terrible beauty and where we contemplate, in a very sensory and almost tactile way, the effects and changes produced on the earth’s surface.

Using techniques to photograph frequencies outside our visible light spectrum (ultraviolet and infrared) and time lapse explores ways of seeing complexities, forces, and natural phenomena that are not obvious to the human eye. We want to work on the technique to take an exploratory, deep and conscious look and make visible the invisible forces of nature (erosion, thawing, floods …), observing it through a different perspective.

Smallworld, a suite of interactive computer graphics programs was developed as part of a ten-year project initiated in 1984 to explore the potential of interactive works of art.

The first Smallworld programs were developed whilst Artist in Residence at the Computing Laboratory of the University of Kent at Canterbury, sponsored by The Arts Council and South East Arts. Smallworld was developed further as part of PhD studies at Loughborough University of Technology Computer-Human Interface Research Centre (LUTCHI)

The Smarter Home American Arts Incubator Workshop reimagines smart homes of the future. We all know the feeling of home, of belonging. But some people may not feel this sense of welcome belonging in all public spaces. What if smart architecture could create inclusive spaces for open conversation? In this one month workshop, we explore how art and technology can be used to address the issue of social inclusion. As a group, we make use of machine learning techniques and custom software to create an interactive installation as a prototype of a Smarter Home, trying to bring technology into personal space on our own terms. All together it offers a vision of a smarter home driven by human lived reality, rather than technological utopia.

Fusion of the Possible, Topographie de l’art, April 15 – June 15

2020, Robotic cable

How can the content of a signal make the cable that carries it move, as in the case of a video broadcasting device? How would what this video represents then influence, dynamically, the movement of the cable which moves, tortures, struggles, slowly or by jumping, like a snake caught in a trap?

A flat screen is hung facing a wall. It projects a halo of light and the cable feeding it with images is clearly visible: it comes out of the angle of this same wall, to twist and move according to the image thus diffused, that of a continuous news channel.

If the communication industries, as well as the thinkers of this field, still tend to separate the questions relative to the content from those concerning the devices that give access to it, here, it is definitely not the case.

Robotic realization: first version developed by Léo Quénéhervé with the advice of Kanty Rabenorosoa and the collaboration of Olivier Bienz and Didier Bouchon. The improvements of the current version were done by François Marionnet, Patrick Rougeot, Pierre Roux, Matthias Revol and Jérôme Saint-Clair. This project was based on a first robotic experiment developed by Yoann Dumas, Thomas Gaulier, David Kristanek and Léo Quénéhervé under the direction of Kanty Rabenorosoa.
Stage designer assistant: Corentin Loubet

Project developed in the framework of the Reflective Interaction Research Group of Ensadlab, laboratory of the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (EnsAD–Université Paris Sciences et Lettres) in partnership with the École nationale supérieure de mécanique et des microtechniques (ENSMM), S.MART Franche-Comté, AS2M department / Joint Service of Mechanics / FEMTO-ST Institute with the support of the Chaire Arts & Sciences of the École polytechnique, the EnsAD – PSL and the Fondation Daniel et Nina Carasso.
Thanks to Euroflex company, Pforzheim, Germany

Solar Pink Pong is a sun-powered street video game, in which a moving sunlight reflection becomes the target and the street’s surface the screen.

Sonic Organism is a generative audio composition: a living algorithm that exists in realtime entirely as a synthesized generative digital soundscape. It has a pulse, interconnected cellularstructure, and decision-making nerve-centre. The result is a set of unique musical compositions, with common threads running through, and repetitions within themes. The music-composing algorithm was installed in the aquarium, running on a laptop with a set of speakers, around a cylindrical fish tank as the visual focal point. The idea was to add a completely artificial being to the aquarium, to be observed as sound instead of, or complimenting, the visual creatures. Being generative, the piece consists of an artificial-intelligence algorithm calculating and playing synthesized sound, and is never truly repeated. Once the algorithm runs, the network functions as a synapse system, where adjacent cells are triggered over time and musical combinations and shapes emerge based on a balance of previous decisions and the synaptic layout.

Sono-lumínica-mano-morse: pulsating study for narrating hands is a sound installation that invites the public to interact and reflect with the world of non-hearing. I, Hugo Solís García, am going to exhibit this piece and present a short revision about the development process – since the idea conception until the making of- with the purpose of sharing my experience and reflections about the sense and machinic sensibility from the area of artistic production. Also, I want to expose my considerations about the relationship between the public and this type of creative works.

The project consists of calligraphic handwriting containing the spectral sound information of spoken words, which can be made audible by techniques of sonification. During a live performance, I draw calligraphic handwriting which is trans-formed into sound by means of a special scan-ner (camera and computer-software). I work at the interface between sound and fine art, exploring processes of transformation. In earlier works I focused on a special kind of sound visualization, on spectrographs (also called voiceprints): A spectrograph is a 2-dimensional time-frequency analysis of a sound. I am not only fascinated by the aesthetics of these images but also by their function as a medium — like a code, they contain a certain message as well as the in-formation about the original sound. With certain technology it is possible to convert them into sound again and recover their acoustic contents. In my work Sound Drawings (2010), I began to create hand-drawn spec-trograms: I reversed the process of sound-visualization and painted spectrographs of a human voice on the wall, which afterwards were made audible through an inverse Fast Fourier transformation.
My interest lies in the fact that the combination of manual drawing and digital technology is able to create an artificial voice and the perception of speech. Apart from the poetic performative aspect of drawing voices, human speech and its perception are part of the focus of my interest. My drawings are in fact only layers of frequencies that imitate a human voice. It is not much more than noise and a cluster of sine waves, and it is artificial. But at a certain point in time, we can start to recognize words, maybe a sentence; we start to hear human speech. Due to the constructive behavior of the brain, we search for meaningful messages within the noise that we hear.

SoundLabyrinth explores the relationship between sound and the body, and the sense of meaning or ‘sacredness’ that emerges from that relationship. The work uses ambisonic sound and immersive video projection, set within a 6m diameter geodesic dome. Visitors will be able to explore a number of different sound worlds located within the space of the dome, comprised of material contributed by Indian and Australian poets Nazid Kimmie (Australia/South Africa), Jameela Nishat (India) and Alice Melike Ülgezer (Australia/Turkey), as well as field recordings and sound designs by Mark Pedersen.
Utilising the immersive audio/visual infrastructure of SoundLabyrinth, Action A/V consists of three art objects, MOTION, SPEECH and VISION, which are designed to engage the perceiver both physically and mentally, and to represent that engagement through simultaneously showing the results of their physical and their mental interactions with it. The three objects overtly rely on the interaction and interpretation of the perceiver in order to become artworks. The work surrounds the perceiver, responding to subtle and intuitive interactions which entrance and fascinate.
SoundLabrinth & Action A/V are being shown as part of the workshop Gesture, sound and place: an immersive exploration of body-mapped sonic territories in two audio/visual works: SoundLabyrinth & Action A/V.

What is the South? How to build an identity when the mere act of searching is already a political act as the subject ceases to be an object of exotic study in order to define itself? This itinerant laboratory of epistemological decolonization uses scientific tools and methods for an artistic purpose. It is based on the idea that some disciplines regarded as neutral are tinged with a Western halo of tautological and epistemological construction. Technology understood not only as a device, but as a process, is perceived as a bridge to ancestral knowledge that evades the autocracy of Western aesthetics and narrative as it connects past and future.

This screening showcased the results of the corresponding workshop.

You encounter a feast of intense morphing light in a chamber structure. You feel ecstatic as you move inside the chamber through an aperture and experience bathing in transcending colour.

Radio controlled clocks, custom electronics 

With Space Time, Jeron presents a work that deals with digital synesthesia and space-time infrastructure. By making the time deviation audible, time can be experienced. Space Tme refers to several related phenomena where a clock does not run at the exact right speed compared to another clock. That is, aftersome time the clock “drifts apart” or gradually desynchronizes from the other clock. Everyday clocks such as wristwatches have finite precision. Eventually they require correction to remain accurate. The rate of drift depends onthe clock’s quality, sometimes the stability of the power source, the ambient temperature, and other subtle environmental variables. Thus the same clock can have different drift rates at different occasions. Atomic clocks are very precise and have nearly no clock drift. Even the Earth’s rotation rate has more drift and variation in drift than an atomicclock. The principle behind the atomic clock has enabled scientists to define time in terms of a fundamental physical constant, the rate at which a type of particle oscillates. Measuring these events discretely (withoutskipping an event) is what gives an atomic clock nearly zero drift.

SpaceTime Helix is an audiovisual performance with an optoacoustic instrument by Michela Pelusio, forming a large helicoid up to the ceiling. The helix surface is bright and transparent, with waves running over it, disappearing into the future, more and more distant in space-time. The translucent standing wave climbs and arcs towards the ceiling as minimal sounds harmonize with its flux. Quantum physics meets audiovisual experimentation in this performance, exploring helical symmetries and infinity, frequencies and geometry, sonic visions and perceptions. The hardware and software of the helix were developed and custom-designed by Michela, allowing for precise control and interaction with light, sound, and touch.

Focus Québec Exhibition. Forum des Images, May 16 – 21

Spaghetti (stand-alone system)
In Spaghetti, the viewer is confronted with a machine that compresses a strand of spaghetti with precision until it inevitably breaks. By watching this process, the viewer feels as though their own psychological and bodily tension is being transferred to the machine, experiencing the sensation of the body being subjected to pressure. Through this machine performance, the artist explores themes of technology, the body, and humanity’s relationship with machines in an increasingly automated world.

Performance, Conservatoire National Supérieur d’Art Dramatique, May 19

The research-creation project “ Rhythm(s) of spaces” was born from a meeting between Vivianna Chiotini and Rémi Sagot-Duvauroux within the framework of the SACRe doctoral program and the desire to create a synergy between live performance and virtual reality. Our research comes together on two essential notions: The fragmentation of the space of representation and its influence on the setting in motion of the body.

Three isolated bodies inhabit a rhythmed scenic space. The hybrid scenography consists of a physical triptych staircase, as its virtual version is gradually being revealed and radically transformed. Step by step, from loneliness to co-presence, the performers embody the expansion of their environments and the staircase symbolizes a movement towards a form of symbiosis. Their gestures and voices are augmented by a musician whilst their gazes become cinematographic images projected on a screen, allowing the spectators to perceive poetic relations between the real and the virtual.

Performance: Logann Antuofermo, Anneta Chrysidou, Lucie Gallo
Sound creation: Romain Blanc-Tailleur

Concert/Sound Event, La Station – Gare des Mines, May 21

SoundWays Paris x Toronto – audio AR on mobile phone

Outdoor presentation on SoundWays (geolocalized listening platform) of five immersive sound works by the duos Nova Materia (FR-CL), OttoannA, Parhelic Shell (FR), Laura Barrett X Slowpitchsound (CA) and Stefana Fratila (CA). Program proposed with the support of Toronto Transit Corporation, the City of Toronto, the French Institute and the City of Paris as part of an artistic exchange project conceived on the occasion of A More Beautiful Journey: a commission of 30 immersive sound creations for the city of Toronto.

Cooperation by:

1. Station – Gare des Mines
2. CNM
3. Région Île-de-France
4. Dark Euphoria
5. L’Institut Convergences Migrations (ICM)
6. La Plateforme MAS (Musique – Audio – Sons)
7. Radio france
8. Institut français
9. Ville de Paris
10. Canada Council for the Arts
11. Toronto Arts Council
12. City of Toronto
13. The Daniels Corporation

Concert/Sound Event, La Station – Gare des Mines, May 21

SoundWays Paris x Toronto – audio AR on mobile phone

Outdoor presentation on SoundWays (geolocalized listening platform) of five immersive sound works by the duos Nova Materia (FR-CL), OttoannA, Parhelic Shell (FR), Laura Barrett X Slowpitchsound (CA) and Stefana Fratila (CA). Program proposed with the support of Toronto Transit Corporation, the City of Toronto, the French Institute and the City of Paris as part of an artistic exchange project conceived on the occasion of A More Beautiful Journey: a commission of 30 immersive sound creations for the city of Toronto.

Cooperation by:

1. Station – Gare des Mines
2. CNM
3. Région Île-de-France
4. Dark Euphoria
5. L’Institut Convergences Migrations (ICM)
6. La Plateforme MAS (Musique – Audio – Sons)
7. Radio france
8. Institut français
9. Ville de Paris
10. Canada Council for the Arts
11. Toronto Arts Council
12. City of Toronto
13. The Daniels Corporation

Concert/Sound Event, La Station – Gare des Mines, May 21

SoundWays Paris x Toronto – audio AR on mobile phone

Outdoor presentation on SoundWays (geolocalized listening platform) of five immersive sound works by the duos Nova Materia (FR-CL), OttoannA, Parhelic Shell (FR), Laura Barrett X Slowpitchsound (CA) and Stefana Fratila (CA). Program proposed with the support of Toronto Transit Corporation, the City of Toronto, the French Institute and the City of Paris as part of an artistic exchange project conceived on the occasion of A More Beautiful Journey: a commission of 30 immersive sound creations for the city of Toronto.

Cooperation by:

1. Station – Gare des Mines
2. CNM
3. Région Île-de-France
4. Dark Euphoria
5. L’Institut Convergences Migrations (ICM)
6. La Plateforme MAS (Musique – Audio – Sons)
7. Radio france
8. Institut français
9. Ville de Paris
10. Canada Council for the Arts
11. Toronto Arts Council
12. City of Toronto
13. The Daniels Corporation

Concert/Sound Event, La Station – Gare des Mines, May 21

SoundWays Paris x Toronto – audio AR on mobile phone

Outdoor presentation on SoundWays (geolocalized listening platform) of five immersive sound works by the duos Nova Materia (FR-CL), OttoannA, Parhelic Shell (FR), Laura Barrett X Slowpitchsound (CA) and Stefana Fratila (CA). Program proposed with the support of Toronto Transit Corporation, the City of Toronto, the French Institute and the City of Paris as part of an artistic exchange project conceived on the occasion of A More Beautiful Journey: a commission of 30 immersive sound creations for the city of Toronto.

Cooperation by:

1. Station – Gare des Mines
2. CNM
3. Région Île-de-France
4. Dark Euphoria
5. L’Institut Convergences Migrations (ICM)
6. La Plateforme MAS (Musique – Audio – Sons)
7. Radio france
8. Institut français
9. Ville de Paris
10. Canada Council for the Arts
11. Toronto Arts Council
12. City of Toronto
13. The Daniels Corporation

Original works of art: Gathering of Auspicious Signs, Vase of Flowers

This interactive augmented reality installation re-creates Castiglione’s painted flowers as spectral 3D objects. On the screen of a hand held tablet, the flowers in vases appear like holograms standing on top of two designated plinths. On each plinth there is a circular printed image – a detail of the flowers – that is used by the tablet as a positional reference so the visitor can walk around the plinth and view the virtual vase of flowers from any angle. The exhibition visitor may also purchase these flower prints, and then, after downloading the ‘Castiglione’s Virtual Flowers’ app onto their mobile device, they can place and view this augmented reality artwork anywhere they wish.

My current artistic work takes place under the umbrella of Spectral Landscapes where I investigate radioactivity and the landscape. Since spring 2020 I conduct intense fieldwork in Finland. I am exploring sites with heightened natural radioactivity, originating from the decay of natural uranium and thorium mineralisations with some of those places being potential future sites of mining. There I collect data via custom-made sensors and software which allow me to portray the gamma radiation fields as bodies that protrude from the radioactive base-rock as intricate but intrinsic features of the landscape. Invisible but present, the constitution of these bodies is part of the innate processes of our planet in deep time. They conform with continental drift, the biogenic accumulation of oxygen in our atmosphere, the folding of mountain ranges, and their weathering and they follow the carvings of geophysical forms which produce the features of the landscapes we observe around us. I refer to these bodies as spectral because their presence is ghostly and can only be detected via extra-sensorial means, but then they are also spectral because they are fields of light, of photons, although located in a part of the spectrum not visible to the human eye. At the same time, Finland is building Onkalo, the first permanent deep geological spent nuclear fuel repository. It will be backfilled until 2120 and engineering claims that Onkalo can hold back the nuclear waste for the next one hundred thousand years, traveling into a deep future yet to become. Two stories connected by their materiality cover the full scale of planetary time. What can we learn from deep time for the present and a possible deep future, what about questions of intergenerational justice, is there a politic of scales, and what are possible artistic strategies to address such questions?

Juried artwork. Exhibition ‘AI, Kombucha, and Cyberfeminism’ at École des Arts Décoratifs, May 16 – 21

Spectral Plain is an interactive game-installation, exploring the capacity for AI and randomized technologies to foster forms of co-creation in- and between humans.

In collaboration with Isaac Clarke, Zach Furniss, Mārcis Lapiņš, Filip Setmanuk, and Jim Zweerts. Supported by the Creative Industries Fund NL, V2_Lab for the Unstable Media (NL) and Stimuleringsfonds and Cultuur Eindhoven (NL).

Recently, visual studies scholars have turned toward conflict studies and proposed an examination of conflict through vision, itself. This radical approach means asking questions of how we see a conflict, visually — in place of how media might have re-represented what “really happened.” Such scholarship is only the first step in understanding the role, implications, and conditions of newly weaponized cameras in conflict zones. Since 2013, Berdugo has been researching the use of cameras in Israel/Palestine, and has gained unprecedented access to a video archive in the region (note that a distinguishing feature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the freedom to record).

This work traces the emergence of direct camera face-offs between Palestinian cameras and Israeli cameras — a trend Berdugo calls “shooting back at shooting back,” and which she has collected into numerous video pieces. This talk also analyzes how conflicts produce an inequality of visual rights , including rights to see and rights to be seen; rights to look and to surveil; rights to be out of sight; and rights to have one’s image circulated, posted, and trusted.

This is the animated version of the performance art light painting series by Teddy Lo. Spectrum Manners series is an abstract expression and exploration of programmable LED fixtures and body motions of the artist and long exposure photography by the photographer. For ICC Open Sky project, the artist reverse engineered the still photography into a motion graphic sequence for the media façade projection on the building.

While absorbed in conversation you notice a stranger approaching. With a curious instrument affixed to their face the visitor leans in, and listens. The mouth opens, patterns of rhythm and sound emanate from within: voices recognizable as your own.

Spun out of focus, words reveal their ingrained subtleties as the collector of conversation captures the sentence but not the sentiment. Vocal exchanges are recalled and reflected. Voices are transformed by physical formant inflections, while acoustic hallucinations seem to reference what might have been said.

An étude on hearing lips and seeing voices, the performer’s mechanically augmented vocal tract reshapes and filters conversational spectra into new modes of mis-communication. Spiel physically unravels the tenuous synesthetic relationship between what is seen, heard and understood.

SPIRAL OF WORDS is a platform for creative writing in VR, based on an idea realized in 1998. Three authors from three locations (London, UK; The Hague, the Netherlands and Novi Sad, Serbia) sent texts at defined time intervals, starting from words to sentences over paragraphs to short stories, all this took place via e-mail/the internet, creating a common narrative in a defined location that built a spiral of words in a fictional space.

The VR project SPIRAL OF WORDS is a kind of ‘artistic recycling’ as well as an archive of the idea of a realized textual narrative performance.
The narratives in SPIRAL OF WORDS have been partially modified, they symbolize the original idea in different colors. The project is refreshed, enriched, and different in relation to the original performance, it is actually a reinterpretation of a creative collaborative idea, in a way that VR media allows. And that is the direct interaction of the users, where they freely communicate with the given words, choosing them, moving them, and creating their own meta-text, in any form they desire. Certain words in the spiral, when selected, activate short audio and visual effects that are symbolic to them. All selected words of the newly created narrative can be changed, rearranged, or rejected. SPIRAL OF WORDS is currently an unrepeatable experience, in which user’s meta-text only lasts for the duration of the session.

Ulf Langheinrich was commissioned to create a special project for the opening of ISEA2016 at the Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre Theatre of the School of Creative Media.

Audiovisual live-improvisation, duration circa 45 minutes
remoulding reforming matter,
changing extension, consistency, viscosity, transparency, temperature symphonic noise, pulsating fluid textures
fields of oscillations in interference, in phase, in sync, in one vibration, from surface to deep space,
a resonant matrix,
a deep glow
your body
you have lost everything and it will be silent around you.

“In the works of Ulf Langheinrich, contexts, social settings, gestures and meanings are of no interest. The external features have been removed from the apparatuses with which images and sounds are produced. These works are media, but without a concrete mission—nothing is visualized, nothing set to music. Interest is focused on the materiality of the media, on its physics” _Marc Ries

one/two … red/black … lost/locked … Looped sequences of similar short texts appear briefly on two screens mounted on monochrome boards (one red, one black) and are accompanied by two repeated sounds, with the asynchronous nature of playback causing slight rhythmic shifts. The work is a simple language play of lists; a meditation on the contemporary social fixation on acquisitive selfishness and ‘security’; a reminder of the inevitability of loss; and a poetic allusion to the romanticism of ‘lostness’; while the monochromes evince associative economic and political meanings built up around the colours red and black. Disassembled digital photoframe displays attached to the screens expose the technological complexity underpinning consumer culture, whilst also combining with the screens to present oddly anthropomorphic ‘torso and head’ figures.

Based at KZNSA Gallery this project by the New York City based artist Carl Skelton and member of M2C Institute Stephan Siegert related to the PS2 Subproject “Express Yourself/city.”. States of Public Mind / Wireless Birds proposed additions to the public language of road signs, in preparation for a time when the ubiquity of digital signage in “Smart” cities will make it possible not only to provide dynamic signage, but to do so based on the direct participation of local stakeholders in real time, about a much broader range of concepts relevant to safety and quality of life. ISEA2018 organizers, artists, visitors, neighbors, and everyone else could get into exchange with the artists and propose alert/ warning/ information/ command sign ideas to complement and extend not only the iconography, but also terms of engagement of the public realm at a hyper-local level. Participants could send a fnished graphic, a photo of a sketch, a description of an idea, or a single word. After one week over 20 new road signs were produced all picking up local particularities and nuisances in a humoristic way.

Rabotnik TV is a weekly video/art magazine on Amsterdam’s cable network. After SISEA they broadcasted this programme, consisting of video of Stelarc’s main SISEA performance, documention of his earlier work and an interview with Stelarc.

Floor cameras Fokke van der Veer & John Duncan. Interview by John Duncan.

sTem is the sensitive encounter between the precariousness of survival and the sustainability of the machine. The device traces an unlikely landscape, it roams around the area and heads for the encounter with the tree chimera. It questions the machine and its capacity for poetic correspondence. In a crossing that tends towards the absolute, passengers will never touch the ground; they slip through the landscape sensitive to the sound of the intertwining of the murmurs of the wind, the polyphonic sequences of choirs and the dark scraping of strings – all this the result of algorithmic calculations (Turing machine).

The works Still Life (Tornadoes) and Still Life (Swell) (2021) are a reformulation of the Neo-Barroc Still Life genre in several videos, allegorizing both the questions related to human existence and its relationship with Nature. Their pictorial tonality is very sophisticated, offering a fascinating hyper-reality approach that presents the viewer with specific details such as the movement of a piece of cloth or the spilling of liquid from a glass due to an inexplicable turbulence. Drama and beauty are intertwined in these works that explain this artist’s maturity.

An exploration of graphs and boundaries in paintings and video. The work questions how colours and forms are used to signify wealth.