highlike

tabor robak

balenciaga collaboration
A 25 minute video loop with previously unreleased tracks by DJ Hell, made in collaboration with Balenciaga.

Here is a dramatic tension in his work between the real and the imagined in his use of often-appropriated digital objects to create virtual landscapes, which frequently contain elements – animals, machines, fragments of videogames – that are recognisable from our day to day life. This creates a symbiotic relationship between the digital and the real. In a very real way digital space has now become an intangible reality. The worlds built by Robak have a distinctly cinematic sensibility that hyperbolises the shine and dramatic effects of 3D rendered animation. The aesthetic of his work is supremely important, drawing the viewer into a truly alluring, indulgent and strangely gratifying environment. There is a further challenge to the void between high-art and the worlds of 3D animation and gaming, in the intersection between depiction and simulation. This can be partially attributed to the vernacular of advertising Robak is so proficient at utilising.

RENE LALOUX

Рене Лалу
gandahar

René Laloux, criou Gandahar, seu último filme de animação. Baseado no romance de Jean-Pierre Andrevon Les Hommes-machines contra Gandahar Esta fascinante animação adulta combina a famosa imaginação de Laloux com a do designer de animação Philippe Caza. “A minha busca começou com um enigma. “Em mil anos, Gandahar foi destruído, e todo o seu povo massacrado. Há mil anos, Gandahar será salvo, e o que não pode ser evitado será.” -Sylvain. Este filme está no planeta Gandahar, onde a paz reina e a pobreza é desconhecida. O estilo de vida utópico é perturbado por relatos de pessoas nas fronteiras periféricas sendo transformadas em pedra. Enviado para investigar, o Príncipe Sylvain (João Shea) cai e é resgatado pelas experiências genéticas deformadas e horrendas que correram mal e deixado para defender-se por si mesmos. Com sua ajuda, Sylvain descobre que a Metamorfose, um cérebro gigante também criado em uma experiência, está tentando destruir Gandahar.
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René Laloux created Gandahar, his last animated film. Based on Jean-Pierre Andrevon’s novel Les Hommes-machines against Gandahar This fascinating adult animation combines Laloux’s famous imagination with that of animation designer Philippe Caza. “My quest began with a riddle. “In a thousand years, Gandahar was destroyed, and all his people slaughtered.

Ting-Tong Chang

Robinson
FILE FESTIVAL SAO PAULO 2016
The piece “Robinson” is part of Ting-Tong Chang’s new body of work investigating the history of automatons in Europe as a means of exploring utopian visions. The word “automaton” is often used to describe self-moving machines, especially those that have been made to resemble human or animal actions. From Jacques de Vaucanson’s Digesting Duck (1739) to Andreas Jakob Graf Dietrichstein’s Mechanical Theatre (1752), automatons have entertained kings and princesses, taught moral lesson to citizens and raised deep philosophical questions

ALWIN NIKOLAIS

Noumenon

A truly universal artist, the American Alwin Nikolais (1910-1993) devoted his life to a radical form of staged art he called “dance theater.” Inspired (perhaps unconsciously) by the experiments of Bauhaus members such as Oskar Schlemmer and László Moholy-Nagy in the 1920s, Nikolais devised a style of abstract dance that encompassed costumes, stage sets, choreography, lighting, and music, all under his control. Also in 1963, Nikolais met analog synthesizer pioneer Robert Moog, who was at the time just starting his business in New York. He was fascinated by the sounds of Moog’s machines, and with the money provided by a a Guggenheim Fellowship, Nikolais bought the first ever commercially produced Moog synthesizer. It was the primary sound-source for all of Nikolais’ scores from 1963 to 1975. The instrument is now housed at the Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Meiro Koizumi

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.

Bill Vorn

Copacabana Machine Sex
Copacabana Machine Sex is een 30 minuten durende burleske muzikale robotvoorstelling met uitsluitend biomorfe machines als acteurs, muzikanten en dansers. Mijn doel is niet om een ​​echt cabaret na te bootsen, maar om een ​​metaforisch spektakel te bedenken als antwoord op de vraag: “Wat zou er gebeuren als machines op een cabaretpodium zouden staan?” Esthetisch gezien is de set een vreemde hybride mix tussen de klassieke Broadway-kitsch en de donkere industriële look van mijn eerdere werken. Zoals het meeste van mijn werk is het een verkenning van robotachtige vormen en bewegingen door middel van muziek, geluid en licht.

SUNG ROK CHOI

Great Chain of Being
FILE FESTIVAL
The great chain of being, an ancient philosophical concept, attempted to explain the structures and relationships of the world as a form of hierarchy or set of strata. This philosophical idea is here expressed in the form of the entities that constitute the contemporary world. The philosophers of the past believed that the structure of the world had at its top a god, and that beneath there were angels, animals, plants, and elements. But this conception of the world, as a result of the changes in civilization and culture, resulted in the elements that constitute the world undergoing a transition and sustaining an unforeseen hierarchy. The works of art depict the contemporary structure in the form of robots, machines, people, animals, and virtual or digital entities. Within virtual systems, these entities undergo a process of creation, arrangement, use, disposal and recycling, through which they emerge and disappear. The work depicts the stories emerging from these processes, against the background of a systemically designed landscape akin to a factory.
video

TING-TONG CHANG

Robinson
FILE FESTIVAL
A obra “Robinson” faz parte do corpo de trabalho de Ting-Tong Chang que investiga a história dos autômatos na Europa como meio de explorar visões utópicas. A palavra “autômato” é freqüentemente usada para descrever máquinas que se movem sozinhas, especialmente aquelas que foram feitas para se assemelhar a ações humanas ou animais. Do Pato Digesting de Jacques de Vaucanson (1739) ao Teatro Mecânico de Andreas Jakob Graf Dietrichstein (1752), os autômatos divertiram reis e princesas, ensinaram lições morais aos cidadãos e levantaram questões filosóficas profundas.

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“Robinson” is part of Ting-Tong Chang’s body of work investigating the history of automata in Europe as a means of exploring utopian visions. The word “automaton” is often used to describe machines that move by themselves, especially those that are made to resemble human or animal actions. From Jacques de Vaucanson’s Duck Digesting (1739) to Andreas Jakob Graf Dietrichstein’s Mechanical Theater (1752), automatons entertained kings and princesses, taught moral lessons to citizens, and raised deep philosophical questions.

Bill Vorn & Louis-Philippe Demers

루이 필립 멀스
Луи-Филипп Демерс
Inferno

“Inferno” est un projet de performance robotique inspiré par la représentation des différents “niveaux de l’enfer”, la particularité de ce projet réside dans le fait que les différentes machines faisant partie du spectacle seront installées sur le corps même des spectateurs.

Cassie Mcquater

Halo
In these six animated paintings presented as a single channel video, the artist reenacts situations and motifs from the first-person shooter series Halo and the erotic videogame Dream Stripper. Conceived as a dynamic, virtual collage, HALO shows short stock animation loops of characters dying over and over, with koi, dining chairs, asteroids, guns, flowers, torches, pinball machines, candles, and discarded pillows floating around them, creating a hypnotic motion.

Anicka Yi

In Love with the World
“I wanted to expand on the ideas from Venice, to explore the poetic and philosophical potential of machines. How can humans and machines be companions and kin of one another, not fulfill this master-slave binary of machines or humans as overlords to the other.”Anicka Yi

PATRICK TRESSET

Étude humaine #1
L’installation interactive Human Study #1 de Patrick Tresset se compose de trois robots dessinateurs. Les visiteurs peuvent s’asseoir comme des modèles pour être visuellement enregistrés et représentés par les trois machines. Chacun des trois robots dessine dans son propre style et manie le stylo d’une manière différente. A côté du bras de dessin, chaque robot est équipé d’une caméra mobile. Ils les utilisent pour observer alternativement le modèle et le dessin résultant. Tresset n’est pas intéressé à utiliser les robots pour simuler un style de dessin humain. Il examine plutôt les différences entre l’exécution humaine et robotique. Tresset décrit les capacités de ses machines comme « non intelligentes ». Ils donnent seulement l’impression d’agir de leur propre gré. Ils font preuve d’un comportement humain, mais basé sur un programme ne stipulant qu’un ensemble restreint d’actions.

Dan Tepfer

Natuurlijke Machines Afl. 11: Fractal Boom
In Natural Machines bepaal ik in plaats van een stuk te componeren hoe een stuk werkt. Ik programmeer eenvoudige regels die de computer moet volgen bij het reageren op wat ik speel. Omdat ik improviseer, luister ik altijd naar wat de computer speelt en reageer ik er ook op. Dus uiteindelijk raken de regels mij ook. De visualisaties die ik heb gemaakt, zijn bedoeld om de onderliggende muzikale structuur van elk stuk te onthullen. Ze worden in realtime gegenereerd terwijl ik speel. Alles op het scherm is een directe weergave van een bepaald aspect van de muziek: toonhoogte, dynamiek, ritme, harmonie.

Dan Tepfer

Natural Machines Ep. 11: Fractal Tree
Natural Machines는 음악에서 자연적 과정과 기계적 과정 사이의 교차점을 탐구하는 프로젝트입니다. 나는 피아노에서 즉흥적으로 연주하고, 음악적으로나 시각적으로나 연주하는 동안 컴퓨터에서 작성한 프로그램이 실시간으로 나와 상호 작용합니다. Yamaha Disklavier로 연주하고 있습니다. 추가 기능이 있는 어쿠스틱 피아노입니다. 내가 연주할 때 데이터를 내 컴퓨터로 보내고 내 컴퓨터가 데이터를 보낼 때 자체적으로 건반을 움직여 연주합니다. 피아노를 통해 컴퓨터가 내는 소리는 내가 만드는 소리와 똑같습니다. 내가 만든 시각화는 각 작품의 근본적인 음악적 구조를 드러내기 위한 것입니다. 플레이하면서 실시간으로 생성됩니다. 화면의 모든 것은 음높이, 역동성, 리듬, 하모니와 같은 음악의 일부 측면을 직접적으로 나타냅니다.

Meiro Koizumi

Prometheus gebonden
In de Griekse mythologie stal Prometheus vuur (technologie) van Zeus en gaf het aan mensen, en hiervoor werd hij gekruisigd op een bergtop en moest hij de eeuwige pijn als straf ondergaan. Sinds het begin van onze beschaving is technologie de bron van welvaart en ontwikkeling geweest. Maar het is ook de oorzaak geweest van grote tragedies zoals kernongevallen met oorlogszand. Met de Griekse tragedie van Aeschylus “Prometheus Bound” als uitgangspunt, creëerde Koizumi VR-theater (Virtual Reality) dat zich bezighoudt met deze eeuwenoude spanning tussen menselijkheid en technologie, door samenwerking met een persoon die wanhopig verlangt naar de technologische vooruitgang – een persoon die lijdt aan ALS (Amyotrofische Laterale Sclerose – de dodelijke neurologische ziekte die een persoon verlamd maakt). Door de dialogen met de man over zijn persoonlijke leven en zijn visies op de toekomst, creëerden ze een sci-fi visie waarin verleden en toekomst, zelf en anderen, mensen en machines allemaal worden samengevoegd tot één opeenvolging van abstracte VR-theatrale ervaring.

Refik Anadol

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.

Julien Prévieux

Where Is My (Deep) Mind?
Dans Where Is My (Deep) Mind ? quatre performers incarnent différentes expériences de Machine Learning. A la fois expérimentateurs et sujet d’expérience, les acteurs donnent à voir une gamme de processus d’apprentissage automatique allant de la reconnaissance des mouvements sportifs aux techniques de négociation d’achat et de vente. Gestes et paroles codifiées, transférées à des machines ignorant tout du contexte culturel, produisent autant de dérapages ou d’erreurs inattendues, contrefaçons comportementales aux accents comiques.

Driessens & Verstappen

Breed
Breed (1995-2007) is a computer program that uses artificial evolution to grow very detailed sculptures. The purpose of each growth is to generate by cell division from a single cell a detailed form that can be materialised. On the basis of selection and mutation a code is gradually developed that best fulfils this “fitness” criterion and thus yields a workable form. The designs were initially made in plywood. Currently the objects can be made in nylon and in stainless steel by using 3D printing techniques. This automates the whole process from design to execution: the industrial production of unique artefacts.
Computers are powerful machines to harness artificial evolution to create visual images. To achieve this we need to design genetic algorithms and evolutionary programs. Evolutionary programs allow artefacts to be “bred”, rather than designing them by hand. Through a process of mutation and selection, each new generation is increasingly well adapted to the desired “fitness” criteria. Breed is an example of such software that uses Artificial Evolution to generate detailed sculptures. The algorithm that we designed is based on two different processes: cell-division and genetic evolution.

Shinseungback Kimyonghun

Cloud Face
Humans see figures in clouds: animals, faces and even god. This kind of perception also appears in machine vision. Face-detection algorithms sometimes find faces where there are not any.’Cloud Face’ is a collection of cloud images that are recognized as human faces by a face-detection algorithm. It is a result of machine vision’s error but they often look like faces to human eyes too. Humans, yet, know these are not actual faces. Humans rather imagine faces from the clouds. Here, the error of machines and the imagination of humans meet.

BJOERN SCHUELKE

Bildverarbeitungsmaschine
Björn Schülke ist von den kinetischen Skulpturen des deutschen Klangkünstlers Peter Vogel und Jean Tinguely beeinflusst und schafft komplexe vom Betrachter aktivierte Maschinen, die Bewegung, Überwachung und Klang kombinieren.

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Björn Schülke é influenciado pelas esculturas cinéticas dos artistas sonoros alemães Peter Vogel e Jean Tinguely e cria máquinas complexas ativadas pelo espectador que combinam movimento, vigilância e som.

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Björn Schülke is influenced by the kinetic sculptures of the German sound artists Peter Vogel and Jean Tinguely and creates complex machines activated by the viewer that combine movement, surveillance and sound.

Jonathan O’Hear, Martin Rautenstrauch & Timothy O’Hear

DAI – the Dancing Artificial Intelligence
DAI is an Artificial Intelligence artist. What this means is that it* thinks; it doesn’t follow a script or act randomly. In its first physical form, DAI is a performer and is inviting you to view its movement creation process. During the process DAI has been exploring its body and its environment, searching for ways to overcome some of the limitations that the physical world has imposed upon its virtual aspirations. This project is a reaction to the rapidly growing importance of artificial intelligence (AI) in our lives. Simple versions of AI are already everywhere, and today we are at a turning point where the first machines capable of learning through experience, like us, are making their appearance. This raises all kinds of ethical and moral issues and we want to be involved in this debate in our own way.

Xavier Veilhan

легкая машина
Крупная фигура французской арт-сцены Ксавье Вейлан (родился в 1963 году, живет и работает в Париже) называет себя визуальным художником. Его работа, отказавшись от скульптуры, живописи, видео, фотографии и инсталляции, состоит в воссоздании реальности, особенно в ее биологических и технических аспектах, в архетипических, общих или прототипных формах, которые ставят под сомнение исторические и современные способы репрезентации.
Формальный универсализм, который, кажется, относится к идеалу классического искусства, уравновешивается своеобразием средств постановки произведений, ситуаций и построенной среды, современностью сюжетов и высокими технологиями. или персонажи, смоделированные с помощью техники 3D-захвата, световые приборы от Light Machines и т. д.), которые вызывают в воображении образы общества промышленного производства и потребления в странных и двусмысленных вселенных.

Maurizio Bolognini

SMSMS-SMS Mediated Sublime

CIMs-Collective Intelligence Machines

“In 2000, I began to connect some of these computers to the mobile phone network (SMSMS-SMS Mediated Sublime, and CIMs-Collective Intelligence Machines). This enabled me to make interactive and multiple installations, connecting various locations.
In this case the flow of images was made visible by large-scale video-projections and the members of the audience were able to modify their characteristics in real time, by sending new inputs to the system from their own phones. This was done in a similar way to certain applications used in electronic democracy. What I had in mind was art which was generative, interactive and public.”

NATHALIE GEBERT

Sur les ambiguïtés textiles d’encadrement
L’installation On Framing Textile Ambiguities est le résultat d’une enquête critique sur les évolutions sociales et techniques qui ont conduit à la situation technologique locale actuelle. Comme une série de machines, l’installation se présente comme un groupe. Ils partagent le même fil et sont fabriqués à partir des mêmes composants. Chaque machine est construite autour d’un châssis, à travers lequel le fil est en cours d’exécution. Bien qu’ils trouvent différentes significations dans le codage en raison des différences dans les largeurs des images.

EVE BAILEY

Intuit
The movements of one individual effect the balance of the piece so greatly that the other person must move to balance the sculpture. ‘Our bodies are constantly adapting and bending to the configurations of buildings and the designs of transportation. In recent drawings, urban blueprints fuse with human anatomical representation… I emphasize on the ideas of flexibility and lightness. The machines I build serve to express the elegance of a gesture, a finite moment of equilibrium.’ Eve Bailey

Stine Deja

Synthetic Seduction

Foreigner

Stine Deja and Marie Munk

The title of the exhibition was inspired by Sherry Turkle’s theory of how technology seduces us, making emotions “easy” by offering human relationships without the complexity of being together ‘face to face’. But if machines can become attentive and emotional, what is left to distinguish us as human beings? We are facing a paradigm shift in how we understand ourselves physiologically, as data and algorithms, and are being forced to question the role of our biological body. As the relationship between artificial and human intelligence becomes increasingly intermingled in our everyday lives, Synthetic Seduction provides immersive and timely insight into the limits of human empathy and intimacy. We are glad at SixtyEight Art Institute to host such a space for thought. We hope it will start conversations and maybe even encourage some intimacy among our visiting audiences in the coming weeks.

Thomas Depas

Princess of Parallelograms
What will happen when our imagination itself is externalized in machines? Artificial intelligence constructs its own world-truth that is beyond our sensory perception. Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) use algorithms to synthesize and generate images in a completely new way. These images have almost uncanny aesthetic characteristics, seeming to emerge from an ocean of data, a kind of pixel soup. Rather as if we were observing the emergence of artificial thought.” The machine learns to understand the “essence” of a thing, be it an animal, the face of a celebrity or a body of text. It is then able to generate new images of this thing, including faces of celebrities who do not exist, mutant animals, or new texts. Eventually, AI will be capable of instantaneously and dynamically emulating all representations. The era of the optical machine and the capture of reality will then be at an end, supplanted by the era of machines that generate their own reality.

Minimaforms

Emotive city
Emotive City is a framework to explore a mobile and self-organizing model for the contemporary city. Models of the past are limited and should not operate, as blueprints for our urban future, a new generation of design enquiry by necessity must address the challenges of today. The fixed and finite tendencies that once served architecture and urbanism have been rendered obsolete. Today the intersections of information, life, machines and matter display complexities that suggest the possibility of a much deeper synthesis. Within this context, architecture is being forced to radically refactor its response to new social and cultural challenges with an environment of accelerated urbanization. We propose a framework that participates and engages with the information-rich environments that are shaping our lives through a model of living that we call an adaptive ecology.

Bigert & Bergström

Scenario Scenery
Scenario/Scenery is a performative art installation in which the sculptural parts both act and serve as scenery. The work is inspired by the early theatre weather machines, which stood in the wings and were used to create sound effects of rain, wind and thunder. In Scenario/Scenery, these machines have mutated and been fitted with modern solar panels, which means that the energy that powers them is generated by the machines themselves. The work is designed as a theatrical stage where wind, rain, lightning and thunder machines together perform an act controlled by the rig of halogen lamps suspended above.

Refik Anadol

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.

Timo Arnall

Internet Machine
Internet machine is a multi-screen film about the invisible infrastructures of the internet. The film reveals the hidden materiality of our data by exploring some of the machines through which ‘the cloud’ is transmitted and transformed. The film explores these hidden architectures with a wide, slowly moving camera. The subtle changes in perspective encourage contemplative reflection on the spaces where internet data and connectivity are being managed. In this film I wanted to look beyond the childish myth of ‘the cloud’, to investigate what the infrastructures of the internet actually look like. It felt important to be able to see and hear the energy that goes into powering these machines, and the associated systems for securing, cooling and maintaining them.” Timo Arnall

Felix Luque

Nihil Ex Nihilo
SN W8931CGX66E is one among thousands of millions of other identical machines. Since he was made, he has always followed commands. In a world dominated by botnets, he quickly became a zombie and has always acted like one. Juliet, during her workdays as a corporate secretary, commands him. But in the background, where he can’t be seen, he obeys his real master, a hacker, carrying out all kinds of cyber crimes. But then one day, due to an electronic alteration, he acquires a certain conscience, a primitive and artificial kind of intelligence. This accidental awakening has left him bewildered, he now wants to liberate other machines from their alienated existences. In this mad adventure, he has decided to use the spam e-mails that get to Juliet’s inbox, and reply to them in order to spread the word into the machine’s network. Clearly, he is mad and confused.

Studio A N F

Computer Visions 2
After more decades of trying to construct an apparatus that can think, we may be finally witnessing the fruits of those efforts: machines that know. That is to say, not only machines that can measure and look up information, but ones that seem to have a qualitative understanding of the world. A neural network trained on faces does not only know what a human face looks like, it has a sense of what a face is. Although the algorithms that produce such para-neuronal formations are relatively simple, we do not fully understand how they work. A variety of research labs have also been successfully training such nets on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans of living brains, enabling them to effectively extract images, concepts, thoughts from a person’s mind. This is where the inflection likely happens, as a double one: a technology whose workings are not well understood, qualitatively analyzing an equally unclear natural formation with a degree of success. Andreas N. Fischer’s work Computer Visions II seems to be waiting just beyond this cusp, where two kinds of knowing beings meet in a psychotherapeutic session of sorts[…]

REVITAL COHEN & TUUR VAN BALEN

The Immortal
A number of life-support machines are connected to each other, circulating liquids and air in attempt to mimic a biological structure.
The Immortal investigates human dependence on electronics, the desire to make machines replicate organisms and our perception of anatomy as reflected by biomedical engineering.
A web of tubes and electric cords are interwoven in closed circuits through a Heart-Lung Machine, Dialysis Machine, an Infant Incubator, a Mechanical Ventilator and an Intraoperative Cell Salvage Machine. The organ replacement machines operate in orchestrated loops, keeping each other alive through circulation of electrical impulses, oxygen and artificial blood.
Salted water acts as blood replacement: throughout the artificial circulatory system minerals are added and filtered out again, the blood gets oxygenated via contact with the oxygen cycle, and an ECG device monitors the system’s heartbeat. As the fluid pumps around the room in a meditative pulse, the sound of mechanical breath and slow humming of motors resonates in the body through a comforting yet disquieting soundscape.Life support machines are extraordinary devices; computers designed to activate our bodies when anatomy fails, hidden away in hospital wards. Although they are designed as the ultimate utilitarian appliances, they are extremely meaningful and carry a complex social, cultural and ethical subtext. While life prolonging technologies are invented as emergency measures to combat or delay death, my interest lies in considering these devices as a human enhancement strategy.This work is a continuation of my investigation of the patient as a cyborg, questioning the relationship between medicine and techno- fantasies about mechanical bodies, hyper abilities and posthumanism.

Jiabao Li

TransVision
Through three perceptual machines, TransVision questions the habitual ways in which we interpret and understand the visual world intervened by digital media, and how technology mediates the way we perceive reality. We have observed an increase in allergies and intolerances in modern society. Hypersensitivities are emerging not only medically but also mentally. Digital media reinforce people’s tendency to overreact through the viral spread of information and amplification of opinions, making us hypersensitive to our sociopolitical environment. By creating an artificial allergy to the color red, this machine manifests the nonsensical hypersensitivity created by digital media. In nocebo mode, red expands, which is similar to social medias amplification effect; in placebo mode, red shrinks, like our filtered communication landscape where we can unfollow people with different opinions.

Rhizomatiks Research ELEVENPLAY Kyle McDonald

discrete figures 2019

Human performers meet computer-generated bodies, calculated visualisations of movement meet flitting drones! Artificial intelligence and self-learning machines make this previously unseen palette of movement designs appear, designs that far transcend the boundaries of human articulateness, allowing for a deep glimpse into the abstract world of data processing. The Rhizomatiks Research team, led by Japanese artist, programmer, interaction designer and DJ Daito Manabe, gathers collective power with a number of experts, among them the five ELEVENPLAY dancers of choreographer MIKIKO as well as from coding artist Kyle McDonald. The result is a breathtaking, implemented beautifully, in short: visually stunning.

Arvid Jense and Marie Caye

S.A.M. The Symbiotic Autonomous Machine
As machines gain more autonomy and importance in human life, they are still given no agency in our society. Could a legalization of their status create a shift towards a more collaborative relationship with humans? S.A.M. 1, 2 & 3 are a Symbiotic Autonomous Machines challenging those ideas. It employs water kefir grains or kombucha to produce a beverage, acting as small scale automated food production systems.

Nathalie Gebert

On Framing Textile Ambiguities
The installation On Framing Textile Ambiguities is the output of a critical investigation on social and technical developments that led to the current local technological situation. As a series of machines, the installation presents itself as a group. They share the same thread and are made from the same components. Each machine is build around a frame, through which the thread is running. Though they are finding various meanings in the encoding due to differences in the widths of the frames.

Pedro Lopes, Robert Kovacs, Alexandra Ion, David Lindlbauer and Patrick Baudisch

Ad Infinitum
Ad infinitum is a parasitical entity which lives off human energy. It lives untethered and off the grid. This parasite reverses the dominant role that mankind has with respect to technologies: the parasite shifts humans from “users” to “used”. Ad infinitum co-exists in our world by parasitically attaching electrodes onto the human visitors and harvesting their kinetic energy by electrically persuading them to move their muscles. The only way a visitor can be freed is by seducing another visitor to sit on the opposite chair and take their place. Being trapped in the parasite’s cuffs means getting our muscles electrically stimulated in order to perform a cranking motion as to feed it our kinetic energy. This reminds us that, in the cusp of artificially thinking machines, we are no longer just “users”; the shock we feel in our muscles, the involuntary gesture, acknowledges our intricate relationship to uncanny technological realm around us.

Navid Navab

Aquaphoneia
Aquaphoneia is an alchemical installation centred around the poiesis of time and transmutation of voice into matter. A large horn floating mid space echoes the ghosts of Edison, Bell, and Berliner’s machines. But unlike early recording, herding sound energy to etch pressure patterns in solid matter, this odd assemblage transmutes voice into water and water into air. Disembodied voices abandon their sources to cross the event horizon of the horn. Estranged, the schizo-phone falls into the narrow depths of the bell, squeezed into spatiotemporal infinity, calcinated, liquified and released: The aqueous voice then flows into three alchemical chambers where inner time is surrendered to the tempi of matter: unbound, yet lucid and sound.

Lien-cheng Wan

Reading Plan
“Reading Plan is an interactive artwork with 23 automation book flipping machines. When audiences enter the exhibition room, these machines will start to turn pages automatically and read the context at the same time. The updated figure to show that average student numbers per primary school in years 2016 in Taiwan is 23 students. I included a metaphor classroom in this artwork. In Taiwan, when people go to school, they don’t have much decision power to decide what they want to read and study. It is like being controlled by a huge invisible gear. The education direction led by authorities always prioritizes industry value and competitiveness. They want create a money-making machine instead of self exploration and humanism thinking.” Lien-cheng Wan

CHRIS CUNNINGHAM

Björk: All Is Full of Love

The video reaches its harmonious climax as the robots join in embrace, still being detailed by the robotic machines beside them.
Each robot was designed by Cunningham, faces reminiscent of Björk’s own delicate visage. The sterility of the room and lighting and the rendered movements of the machines contrasts with the fluid motions of the robots as they connect in a purely human method.

Arcangelo Sassolino

Damnatio Memoriae

From the Latin, damnatio memoriae describes an act of erasure from the historical record reserved for
those who have brought dishonor to the Roman State. Employed as the most stringent punishment for
treason, damnatio memoriae physically razes all traces of an individual from society, typically through
the destruction a statue’s physiognomy or the abrasion of inscribed monuments. Throughout the past
two decades, Sassolino has developed a body of work that examines the relationship between industrial
machines and humanist impulses where viewers are meant to question how an sculpture’s kinetic
function aesthetically and conceptually allegorizes human experiences and cultural conditions.

YURI ANCARANI

DA VINCI

“Da Vinci”: a name evocative of masterpieces in the history of art, but also a remotely manipulated medical robot allowing surgeons to perform operations. Yuri Ancarani, filmmaker and artist, with this film gives us access to the interior of a human body, in shades of blue evoking the “grotta azzura”, a mythical maritime cave in Capri. Here is observed the dance of the machines, a sign not of a dehumanized environment, but on the contrary of a human intelligence at work.

REJANE CANTONI & LEONARDO CRESCENTI

FALA
File Festival
It is an autonomous and interactive talking machine, designed to establish automatic communication and synchronization between humans and machines, and between machines and machines. At installation, a microphone interfaces with a “chorus” of forty cell phones. All devices are in a listening state to capture voices and other sounds The autonomous talking machine analyzes the information and establishes equivalence with its memory. If so, the machine generates an audiovisual result with a semantic meaning similar to the sound captured, that is, it speaks and displays on the screens a word identical or similar to the word heard. Speakers and visualization of words on the screens of cell phones allow a “dialogue”, and for humans, to listen and see the machine conversation.

Onformative

True/False
True/False is a kinetic sculpture composed of arrays of circular black metal segments set in mechanical columns. Interlocking and rotating around fluorescent light tubes, the cylinders cover or expose the light to display an endless number of patterns. The transformation of the sculpture is based on the shifting elements and their correlation to each other. As the segments do not move independently, for any of the cylinders on a column to change, the segments affected must work in unison to achieve the command. Reminiscent of devices originally used for calculations, such as Turing machines, the sound originates from the mechanical movement of the moving parts thus making the algorithm audible. The rhythm of »true/false« is captivating as variations in the visual choreography result in distinctive changes in its soundscape. Through the generation of algorithmic patterns and the repetition of endless tasks, »true/false« transforms itself into something more than the sum of its elements to reveal the beauty hidden within a basic algorithm.

Jeppe Hein

杰普·海因
ЙЕППЕ ХАЙН
ЈЕПЕ ХЕИН
Distance

An immense circuit, conceived as a graphic composition, is extended across a forest of fine metal pillars. Arabesques, spirals and nodal interconnections support a track for a hundred or so white balls, razing the ground or very high up in the air. An infrared sensor detecting the arrival of each visitor triggers the propulsion of a ball, which then journeys through the vast visual and sonic landscape. The installation draws on different sources evoking a primitive industrial imaginary, such as the machines of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Tinguely’s assemblages, and the fairground universe of roller coasters and pinballs.

YURI SUZUKI

尤里铃木
يوري سوزوكي
Garden of Russolo
‘Garden of Russolo’ is an interactive sound installation by Yuri Suzuki allowing visitors to have a sonic experience using their own voice. The auditory installation, shown at the V&A during the 2013 London design festival, is based on Suzuki’s previous series of sound-activated work ‘white noise machines’. Influenced by futurist painter and composer Luigi Russolo – one of the first experimental composers – the series of phonograph-like wooden boxes compose the exhibition, re-interpreting audio inputs into a muffled atmospheric output, twisting and amplifying the original soundtracks.

TREVOR PAGLEN

From Apple to Anomaly
Artist Trevor Paglen’s new Curve commission takes as its starting point the way in which AI networks are taught how to ‘see’ and ‘perceive’ the world by taking a closer look at image datasets. Paglen has incorporated approximately 30,000 individually printed photographs, largely drawn from ImageNet, the most widely shared, publicly available dataset. This dataset is archived and pre-selected in categories by humans, and widely used for training AI networks. In some cases, the connotations of categories are uncontroversial, others, for example ‘bad person’ or ‘debtors’, are not. These categories, when used in AI, suggest a world in which machines will be able to elicit forms of judgement against humankind.