Athena

FILE 2024 | Interator – Sound Synthetics
International Electronic Language Festival
Iskarioto Dystopian AI Films – Athena – Spain

Athena is a captivating animation that immerses you in a psychedelic and nostalgic journey, evoking the retro aesthetic of 80s anime with its vibrant visual style. A world full of bright colors, geometric shapes and surreal landscapes that explores the corners of the human mind, providing a unique visual experience.

Bio

Iskarioto Dystopian AI Films is an emerging Spanish artist, empowered with cutting-edge AI tools, a fusion of human creativity with machine potential. He is known as a visual alchemist, pixel manipulator, and graphic, dark, dystopian storyteller. Since its premiere in 2022, it has been shown in art galleries around the world, having won the Artistic Award at the AI ​​Film Festival Montpellier 2023.

Credits

Music: Athena by Karl Casey

An untethered isoperimetric soft robot
The simplest version of this squishy robot is an inflated tube that runs through three small machines that pinch it into a triangle shape. One machine holds the two ends of the tube together; the other two drive along the tube, changing the overall shape of the robot by moving its corners. The researchers call it an “isoperimetric robot” because, although the shape changes dramatically, the total length of the edges – and  the amount of air inside – remains the same.

Cutting Corners Creates More Sides
A spoken text …rummages through piles of surplus; boxed accouterments and that unaccounted for miscellanea… and the uneasiness of language itself as it grapples with the whereabouts of the necessary words. The narrative debris morphs through manifolds of optical glass with each utterance marking points along the way. On a long, black tableaux two cameras with little or no depth of field, sentence by sentence cut through a mysterious world of a seemingly inconsequential lineup of objects, tools, parts, bits and the unidentifiable forgotten –whatever might have been close at hand becomes enfolded in a richly colored crystalline doppelgänger image. For each sentence and “drilling” through the objects, the cameras’ parallaxes have been adjusted for a different cross section—the point where momentarily a continuous horizontal view is possible only to then quickly deconstruct as quickly as it formed. The object/installation itself is a self-contained self-reflexive mobile surface complete with positional projectors and screens and a narrow black “runway” of sorts reflecting the initial process of recording.

Bleu Remix
In his spectacle-installation Bleu Remix, Yann Marussich returns to a theme originally explored in Bleu Provisoire (2001), a spectacle in which a mysterious blue liquid oozes through the layers of his skin as though it were the final effect or by-product of his body’s inner processes. In Bleu Remix, the artist once more invites the viewer to experience an intimate journey through the corners of his body. Each time the spectacle is performed, a different (local) musician accompanies Marussich. This unique, singular confrontation establishes a new relationship between the sound and image. The meeting of the two artists brings an element of risk and uniqueness to the event, as if the music explores the spectacle repeatedly, resulting in new ways of perception.

yes there will be singing

From the beginning, I never wanted to work with just Bill Viola-style hidden projectors projecting on to screens. I wanted to work with architecture and with corners and doorways and windows. A lot of Robert Morris’ writing was important to me – still is. He talks about presence, about presence in the work of art and about being present, and that’s been really influential for me. — Diana Thater

video

Le Salon
dancing kings
This piece shows the mental, physical and financial decay of what was once a wealthy family. The aristocratic grandfather, a cornerstone of the family, unconsciously drags his children along with him as he tries to keep up appearances.Set in a once opulent drawing room – now a symbolic glory hole  – he slowly loses control of his house, his bladder and – ultimately – his mind. The househould he once led is now run by his offspring, who treat him as shabbily as they treat one another.

Roombot
Biorobotics Laboryator
The individual Roombots are about the size of fat grapefruits, but one day they could be much smaller. Vespignani and his fellow researchers are investigating ways for the bots to communicate among themselves, like bacteria. In a hundred years, maybe the individual units will be so small as to be microscopic–and instead of summoning 10 friendly robots from different corners of the room, a person could summon something as nebulous and numerous as an army of technological spores.

Kiesler’s longest-running project was Endless House, a single-family dwelling whose biomorphic form and lack of corners strongly contrasted with the hard geometric edges that defined most modern architecture of the time. He sought to design a structure responsive to the occupants’ functional and spiritual requirements. He developed his ideas for the house over several decades, creating numerous sketches and models. Although plans were made to build a to-scale model in MoMA’s Sculpture Garden in 1958, they did not materialize, and the project remains unrealized. Nonetheless, Kiesler’s Endless House concept was highly influential and stands as a strong expression of his bold statement: “Form does not follow function. Function follows vision. Vision follows reality.”

video

ダグエイケン
道格·艾特肯
sonic fountain
A large round hole—if it were a hot tub, it would be comfortably orgy-sized—has been gouged roughly out of the slick concrete floor of 303 Gallery and filled with milky gray water. Attached to the black duct-work and girders of the ceiling directly above it is a square of pipe surrounded by a speaker array. In the center of the square and at each of its corners is a computer-controlled spigot, dripping, spitting or jetting out, in a rhythmically complex 15-minute cycle, milky water pumped up from the pit in a closed circuit. This is Doug Aitken’s Sonic Fountain.

VETERANS OF THE WARS OF YOUGOSLAVIA, BOSNIA, KOSOVO, SERBIA & SOMALIA FACING THE CORNER
Santiago Sierra’s third solo exhibition at Team Gallery, Veterans, displays nine photographs of war veterans standing in corners. All that is visible are the backs of their bodies; their hands are clasped either behind or in front of them. Some are in uniform, and some are not. Some are accessorized, wearing for example, a watch or cowboy hat. One veteran in particular stands in plain clothes holding a cane, signifying a possible combat wound.