The Megastructure Compendium
Science & Futurism
In the future humanity may build enormous structures, feats of mega-engineering that may rival planets or even be of greater scope. This episode catalogs roughly 100 major types of Megastructure, from those that are cities in space to those that rival galaxies.

Biomimicry
For the ‘Biomimicry’ film, Iris van Herpen and Dutch National Ballet explore the symbiotic relationship between the metamorphic force in which fashion and dance interlace. The film, directed by Ryan McDaniels, sees the mesmeric dancer JingJing Mao undulating into liquescent shapes and transcending into graceful figures that reflect her myriad of movements. The concept of the creation stems from the notion of biomimicry — the design and production of materials and systems that are modelled on biological processes. In line with Iris van Herpen’s continuous pursuit to materialise the invisible forces that structure the world, the film focusses on the bond between humanity and nature.

Prometheus Bound
In Greek Mythology, Prometheus stole fire (technology) from Zeus and gave it to humans, and for this, he got crucified on a mountaintop, and had to endure the eternal pain as a punishment. Since the beginning of our civilization, technology has been the source of prosperity and development. But also it has been the cause of great tragedies such as war sand nuclear accidents. Setting the Aeschylus Greek tragedy “Prometheus Bound” as a starting point, Koizumi created VR (Virtual Reality) theater which deals with this age-old tension between humanity and technology, through collaboration with a person who is desperately longing for the technological advancement – a person who is suffering from ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis- the deadly neurological disease that make a person paralyzed). Through the dialogues with the man about his personal life and his visions of the future, they created a sci-fi vision in which past and future, self and others, humans and machines are all merged into one sequence of abstract VR theatrical experience.

Quantum Memories: Nature Studies
Technological and digital advancements of the past century could as well be defined by the humanity’s eagerness to make machines go to places that humans could not go, including the spaces inside our minds and the non-spaces of our un- or sub-conscious acts. These unique pieces of the “Quantum Memories” series exhibit arresting visuals and colors that speculate the probability of reaching invisible spaces. They are composed in collaboration with a generative algorithm enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing, a new form of computing that exploits the unusual physics of the subatomic world. It turns the visual data that flows around us into an artwork that represents our collective and digitized memories of nature and encourages the viewer to imagine the potential of this computing technology for the future of art, design, and architecture.

DEPART
The Entropy Gardens
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The Entropy Gardens is an artistic VR experience that explores one of humanity’s most archetypical artforms – garden making. It challenges its myths, aesthetics and modes of perception. Like a garden, The Entropy Gardens attempts to become a spatiotemporal poem — a poetic organism. In the form of a sprawling journey it constructs a hermetic, virtual garden as a poetic ecosystem — a psychic landscape that is foremost a complex audiovisual experience. It admits the visitor into a place that is equally challenging and contemplative (and of course profoundly weird).

The Raft
The Raft depicts at life-sized scale a group of ordinary people casually standing together. Suddenly, they are struck by strong blasts of water that rush in, overtake them, and then, just as unexpectedly, recede. In the aftermath of the deluge, the victims huddle together, seek protection, and help those who have fallen. The viewer experiences this event in an immersive setting, standing in a darkened room and surrounded by the roaring sounds of the water. Meticulously captured in slow-motion, The Raft arouses a visceral experience of human calamity and shared humanity, provoking a consideration of the range of responses to crisis.

Quantum memories
Quantum Memories is Refik Anadol Studio’s epic scale investigation of the intersection between Google AI Quantum Supremacy experiments, machine learning, and aesthetics of probability. Technological and digital advancements of the past century could as well be defined by the humanity’s eagerness to make machines go to places that humans could not go, including the spaces inside our minds and the non-spaces of our un- or sub-conscious acts. Quantum Memories utilizes the most cutting-edge, Google AI’s publicly available quantum computation research data and algorithms to explore the possibility of a parallel world by processing approximately 200 million nature and landscape images through artificial intelligence. These algorithms allow us to speculate alternative modalities inside the most sophisticated computer available, and create new quantum noise-generated datasets as building blocks of these modalities. The 3D visual piece is accompanied by an audio experience that is also based on quantum noise–generated data, offering an immersive experience that further challenges the notion of mutual exclusivity. The project is both inspired by and a speculation of the Many-Worlds Interpretation in quantum physics – a theory that holds that there are many parallel worlds that exist at the same space and time as our own.

Pasionaria

Pasionaria represents the consequences of our current way of life, as conceived by choreographer Marcos Morau. A future where human beings would have lost their vitality through individualism and transhumanism. The gloomy universe of the spectacle thus seems sanitized of all affect, all passion, and consequently, humanity. All that remains is the labor force that is tirelessly busy vacuuming or handling packages of products. Ringing phones, doors or other objects constantly capture the attention of the protagonists who have become puppets. Manipulated by outside forces, instead of being driven by their deep desires, the humans of this dystopia merge into simple working robots.

Animistic Imagery
The exhibit introduces visitors to Duffy, the AI Artist, with an invitation to collaborate inside her Symbiotic Studio. This immersive space, made possible through projection mapping and interactive technology, invites guests to become the AI’s muse. As Duffy captures movements generated by visitors through real-time tracking, she draws links and connections, consulting a vast collection of colors and archetypal images of life on Earth. The result is an infinite series of surprising works of art—an artificial interpretation of humanity and the natural world.

Expanded Holiday
Expanded Holiday demonstrated the enormous potential of AR technology, which provides virtual perspectives on real-world environments, and conveys KAWS’s mischievous humour through the juxtaposition of physical and virtual worlds. These virtual sculptures were accessible via the Acute Art app and could be experienced in conjunction with the NGV’s exclusive exhibition KAWS: Companionship in the Age of Loneliness, a comprehensive survey of 25 years of KAWS’s oeuvre and his largest solo survey to date. Full of humour, hope and humanity, the exhibition featured more than 100 works including iconic paintings reappropriating pop-culture figures to more recent largescale, layered works, and an impressive collection of KAWS’s celebrated sculptural figures.

山海塾

butoh

TOBARI

“Over the 90 minute performance, I feel no less than transported. There are eight male performers, including Ushio Amagatsu himself. The dancers often move slowly, with incredible muscular control, fluidity and elegance. And suddenly the spell will be broken and they’ll run across the stage, their painted bodies leaving clouds of white powder hanging in the air like a shadow or ghost. Slow sustained movements are countered with tiny, minute gestures of the fingers. Hands are often gnarled, the joints contorted with incredible tension. It is mysterious, hypnotic and strange. The countenance of the performers is most arresting – behind the white paint, their faces reveal the fragility, humility, vulnerability and truth of their humanity.”Day Helesic

META-SELF : Redefine humanity through the gaze of AI
岸裕真 1993年栃木県生まれ。2019年に東京大学大学院工学科電気系光学専攻修了。以降東京を拠点に活動開始。多次元空間の眼差しをシミュレートし平行世界における”幽霊”の姿を見つめることで、次元を超えるエネルギーとしての”愛”について思考する作品を制作。他にもMVや広告など多領域で活動中。

reawaken
Reawaken is a kinetic sculpture with 55 robotic arms, powered by 55 servo motors. The lowering of the arms causes an abstract print on paper. Technology mirrors humanity, and vice versa. In addition to creating beauty, technology is there to meet our needs. We, and our needs, have evolved to a point where we are so integrated that we consume technology on autopilot. We live in a time of mass production in which our daily devices increasingly mimick each other. A smartphone is a small tablet, a tablet a small computer and a computer a small television. The question of what this does with our imagination, together with the increasingly invisible technological progress such as algorithms and artificial intelligence, have been my starting point for Reawaken.

أندريه تاركوفسكي
塔可夫斯基
アンドレイ·タルコフスキー
Андрей Тарковский
Solaris
In Solaris (1972), Andrei Tarkovsky presents a vision of contemporary society as one that has become cut off from nature, and provides a narrative that illustrates the possibility of remaining human in the inhuman world that is the result. The film contrasts a life-affirming natural landscape to an urban, constructed landscape where the natural world is submerged and invisible. The Solaris space station is both a projection of this second, inhuman, landscape and an allegory for Tarkovsky’s view of urban life. The narrative of the film concerns the journey by the central character, Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis), from emotional deadness to a rediscovery of his humanity as he charts a course between these two worlds, and the role that art, whether painting, music or film, plays in this.
cinema full

Self-Reflected

Dr. Greg Dunn (artist and neuroscientist) and Dr. Brian Edwards (artist and applied physicist) created Self Reflected to elucidate the nature of human consciousness, bridging the connection between the mysterious three pound macroscopic brain and the microscopic behavior of neurons. Self Reflected offers an unprecedented insight of the brain into itself, revealing through a technique called reflective microetching the enormous scope of beautiful and delicately balanced neural choreographies designed to reflect what is occurring in our own minds as we observe this work of art. Self Reflected was created to remind us that the most marvelous machine in the known universe is at the core of our being and is the root of our shared humanity.

Chiron
Les machines de Jonathan Sitthiphonh pourraient rappeler l’univers S.F. – les robots exosquelettes dans les films de James Cameron, notamment. Par leur archaïsme, elles pourraient aussi rappeler l’ingénierie léonardienne. Coincées entre le mythe d’Icare et le post-humain, elles matérialisent un rêve de dépassement des limites humaines. Mais sans l’exaucer… L’entreprise de l’artiste est ambitieuse, motivée.

加勒斯·普
غاريث بوغ
가레스 퓨
גארת פיו
ガレス・ピュー
spring 2018
‘This is not a show.’ Nick Knight and Gareth Pugh offer an exclusive visual insight into Pugh’s S/S 18 collection presented here as fashion film. In collaboration with philosophical artist Olivier de Sagazan, Pugh explores the extremities offered by the elements and the raw physicality of humanity.

Paradise

serpent mouthpiece

Paradise is the term used to describe a place or state of timeless harmony and beauty. Whether connected to religion or not, the term Paradise echoes Utopian realms of humanity living at one with nature, sharing their tope with every exotic and fantastical creature imaginable.

(ego hiperrealista) + (juguete del viento) =
Custic combines models, costumes and various other objects that inspire him, using them to give form to abstract concepts surrounding humanity and its evolution. Spirituality, religion, relationships and sexuality are all explored through a lens preoccupied with fragmentation, pataphysics, optical balance effects and technological art.

Melita
FILE FESTIVAL 2019
A 20’ (minutes) animated real-time VR (Virtual Reality) short film about Anaaya, a brilliant scientist working to find a new planet for humanity while the world that we know dies slowly due to extreme climate change; and Melita, an AI designed to help her on her herculean task. This is the first part of a much bigger tale, that will take us into Melita’s journey to find Aurora, the next cradle for humanity.

The Weather War
Bigert & Bergström is an artist duo living and working in Stockholm, Sweden. They met while at the art academy in Stockholm in 1986 and have collaborated ever since. Through their career B&B have produced and created art ranging from large-scale installations to public works, sculptures and film projects. Often with a conceptual edge, the core of their work is placed right in the junction between humanity, nature and technology. With energetic curiosity their art investigate scientific and social topics discussed in contemporary society.

劳丽西蒙斯
ローリー·シモンズ
로리 시몬스
ЛОРИ СИММОНС
DOLL
SIMMONS HAS LONG INVESTIGATED HUMAN PERFORMANCE AS IT RELATES TO SPECIFIC ENVIRONMENTS THROUGH A DEEP DOCUMENTATION AND PROFOUND CHOREOGRAPHY OF DOLLS AND OBJECTS IN AND ON A STAGE. THE BOUNDARIES BETWEEN FICTION AND REALITY ARE OFTEN BLURRED, AND THE ARTIST’S TABLEAUS ARE EVOCATIVE OF A SINCERE HUMANITY, EMOTION AND CHARACTER.

MIST
The Prayer
MIST envisions a world in which mass extinction has accelerated to a point of no return; where non-human beings have become spiritual, capable of self-transcendence and mystical experience, because they have no other choice. It is as if promethean punishment (the trauma of reason) were visited on them for humanity’s crimes in the pursuit of planetary mastery.”

Museum Motus Mori
German choreographer Katja Heitmann and ten dancers will create a museum for physical movements that face the threat of extinction. Museums are meant to preserve human culture and history. It nearly goes without saying that they do so through objects, installations, and occasionally, stories. But humanity itself is missing in this solidified version of our lives. For six weeks, five hours a day, the dancers and the choreographer will take on the remarkable challenge of creating a new museum precisely for that purpose. Museum Motus Mori will sensitize visitors to the deep humanness hidden within the body.

The Coppelia Project
via highlike submit
The Coppelia Project is inspired by the story about a clockwork girl from the 1870 ballet ‘Coppelia’ by Saint-Léon, Nuitter, and Delibes, based on a story by Hoffmann. It also draws the commonplace metaphor of clockwork music boxes, with the little ballerinas that pop up and rotate in front of a mirror when you open the lid. Coppelia is part of the traditional classical ballet repertoire and is performed frequently by ballet companies around the world. It belongs to a small group of enduring stories in Western Culture that directly address the limits of humanity when confronted by our creations. The Coppelia story is unusual in approaching this theme through love and attraction, rather than horror and revulsion, as emphasised by Mary Shelly in ‘Frankenstein’. The Coppelia story deals with some of the issues at the edge of humanity; machines interchangeable with persons, love and attraction confused at this boundary.

Drawers
Nikki Pressley’s work is concerned with examining and disrupting the narratives associated with personal and collective history, language, belief and memory. She is interested in interpretations of time and space that are malleable and destabilising in relation to humanity and self. The work consists of drawings, sculpture, projection, design and organic materials that function as contemplations on these various ideas, often creating broad relationships from project to project.

Forced Landscape
Rachael Champion’s site-specific sculptures and installations are engaged in a discourse surrounding the dependant yet unclear relationship between industry, technology and nature. Her works consist of large scale constructions and dramatic architectural interventions that question the shifting interactions humanity has with the natural world and considers their boundaries, separations and progressive implications. Through manipulating information from diverse influences that include brutalist architecture, agriculture, raw materials, municipal infrastructure, public space and ecology, Champion questions the layered and dynamic complexities of our shifting physical environment.

קמינר תכשיטים
ossomateria
The name of the project is derived from Italian, meaning ‘bone-matter’, the material of essence. The very base of humanity, our body and its unique structure, inspired me to explore the inner architecture of our physical vessel, the shapes and meaning of the internal organs and led me to create pieces in their image.