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

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.

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.

ecce homo

The expressive capacity of the human body is infinite. A naked body, beyond any sexual connotation, is pure art. Conceptual photographs about the idea of the body is what Evelyn Bencicova brings us in her series Ecce Homo (Latin term that means “here is the man” and which is cited in terms of violence or war), in which we see a lot of bodies pile up and form strange sculptural forms. At no time do we see any faces, which helps to depersonify each of the participating actors. The result is somewhat disturbing: we do not know why those bodies are there, or what they are trying to do. It is a mix between choreography, aesthetics and a theatrical performance. Of great artistic sensitivity, there is something in these figures that evokes the feeling of a human collective. Feelings to the surface.

Nine Bats

The abstract and colorful patterns of Kølbæk Iversen suck our bodies and envelop us in total installations that deal with the body, corporeality and phenomena such as phantom pain. The works store poetic and existential narratives of what it means to be human.

Absent Engagement
Alexandra Zierle (DE) and Paul Carter’s (UK) collaborative work is interdisciplinary, multi-sensory and often site/context responsive, spanning performance, happenings and interventions, sound, video and installation. Through their collaborative practice, Zierle & Carter critically examine different modes of communication and what it means to be human, addressing notions of belonging, dynamics within relationships, and the transformation of limitations. Their work sites an embodied investigation into human interactions and encounters, acting as an invitation to venture into the spaces in-between the external and internal, permanent and transient, spoken and unheard. The work fundamentally explores society’s conventions, traditions, and rituals, often flipping them on their head, reversing orders, and disrupting the norm.

Ways of Water – A Love Potion for Nature
Alexandra Zierle and Paul Carter’s collaborative work is interdisciplinary, multi-sensory and site and context responsive spanning performance, happenings, interventions, sound, video and installation. Through their practice, Zierle & Carter critically examine different modes of communication and what it means to be human both as individuals and as a ‘collective entity’. Their work addresses notions of belonging, cultural identity, the dynamics within relationships, harmony through conflict and the transformation of limitations.

T4T LAB
RADICAL RAUMPLAN
The real but withdrawn qualities of the raumplan of the Muller House can be understood as the unknown excess of the object. This is the space of the architectural project that exists beyond the limits of human cognition. Although this space is finite, it is vast and abundant. Any attempt to enter into this space must be somehow framed. As a metaphor, or a vehicle to frame the unknown excess, we take in part the idea of viewing, which is epistemologically important to the raumplan. Using this framework, our project attempts to go beyond our cognitive limitations and enter into the unknown space of the architectural project. From here, we can extract new spatial phenomena that can be notated into the known layer, to be understood by the architectural audience. For us, this means using a series of metaphors to frame our exploration of the unknown and attempt to extract new phenomena that engage the raumplan independent of its relationship to a human subject. This allows us to operate in a jective framework, allowing for an understanding of the object autonomously.

Eunoia II
It is an interactive performance and installation that attempts to display invisible human emotion and physiological changes into auditory representations. The work uses a commercial brainwave sensor to visualize and musicalize biological signals as art. The real-time detected brain data was used as a means to self-monitor and to control. The installation is comprised of 48 speakers and aluminum dishes, each containing a pool of water. The layout of “Eunoia (Vr.2)” was inspired by an Asian Buddhist symbol meaning ‘balance.’ The motif of number 48 comes from Spinoza’s ‘Ethics’ (Chapter III), classifying 48 human emotions into three categories – desire, pleasure, and pain. In this performance, water becomes a mirror of the artist’s internal state. It aims to physically manifest the artist’s current states as ripples in pools of water.

Vanitas Machine

The installation VANITAS MACHINE addresses the desire for eternal life and the potential of life-prolonging measures. Based on a candle which – by means of technical intervention – burns down very slowly, vanitas machine creates a contemporary analogy to the endeavour of prolonging the human lifespan with the help of science and technology.Being one of the classical vanitas symbols, a burning candle recalls the futility of the moment, the transience of human life and the certainty of the end of all existence. But is this end really still inevitable?In the course of the last two centuries, average human life expectancy has increased significantly in the industrialised countries. Moreover, in the context of scientific research the biological causes of ageing are being explored. Numerous theories of aging have already been developed pointing both towards physiological as well as environmental factors.One of the first theories of ageing was the so-called »metabolism theory«, which claims that the lifespan of organisms is reciprocally related to energy turnover and therefore connected to calorie intake, oxygen consumption and heart rate: The higher the metabolic rate, the shorter the lifespan of the organism.

Chijikinkutsu
“Chijikinkutsu” is a coinage, specially created for the title of this work by mingling two Japanese words: “Chijiki” and “Suikinkutsu”.”Chijiki” means geomagnetism: terrestrial magnetic properties that cannot be sensed by the human body but that exists everywhere on earth. Since long before the Age of Discovery, people have traveled with navigation using compasses employing geomagnetism. In recent years, various devises that utilize geomagnetism have even been incorporated into smartphones[…] “Suikinkutsu” is a sound installation for a Japanese traditional garden, invented in the Edo period. The sounds of water drops falling into an earthenware pot buried under a stone wash basin resonate through hollow bamboo utensils. The concept of the work “Chijikinkutsu” does not derive from experimentalism of science and technology on which media arts rely, nor from architectural theory of western music upon which some sound arts lay their foundation. While utilizing the action of geomagnetism normally treated as a subject of science, this sound installation expands the subtle sounds of “Suikinkutsu” in the context of Japanese perspective on Nature.

바트 헤스
巴特·赫斯
בארט הס
БАРТА ХЕССА
SIlVERNanine Linning
Nothing has changed as radically in the last few decades as the technology we surround ourselves with on a daily basis. Modern means of communication let the world shrink to a pocket size Global Village. Medical technology promises life beyond its natural limits. Robotics, cybernetics and developments in the field of artificial intelligence put the equally fascinating as disquieting idea of artificial life within our grasp. Nanine Linning’s new production SILVER addresses the intimate – and increasingly intrusive – relationship between the human and the technological, showing the beauty of its aesthetics, but also questioning its promise of ever increasing progress and self-improvement.

On Shame
FILE BELO HORIZONTE 2018-DISRUPTIVA
foto: Luiza Ananias
On Shame is part of the series Psychosomatics which was initiated in 2010. In these works Franco makes it possible to tangibly experience such emotions as joy, fear, confusion, happiness or shame by means of digital technologies. Cameras and motion and tactile sensors serve as tools to facilitate the dialogue between humans and machines. more…

“O impossivel”

They touch. They bite. They get warm. They penetrate. They are made. They get rid of. They stick their tongues in. They put the body in. They get body. They split up. They exist.
They want to be one. It is impossible (“O impossivel”). Which means that a single body, as you would like, is impossible. It can not. For a moment yes, for a moment they can. But no, they can’t. Impossible. They cannot be one. Despite the bites. Their bodies are different. They were born and will die self-absorbed, in themselves. Between them there is an abyss, a discontinuity. But they want to be continuous, they want their bodies to be one body. Since they cannot, they celebrate the sacrifice of the meat. “Essentially,” says Georges Bataille, “the field of eroticism is the field of violence, the field of rape.” Isn’t it violent, perhaps, to want to break the discontinuity of the other closed in on itself? Isn’t it violent to force the discontinuity of the other to be a continuous whole with him? O impossível by the Brazilian Maria Martins (1894/1973) shows the excesses of sex (take note: excess, sex). Or impossível is the moment in which the organs swell with blood and gush sexuality. The moment when animality makes us gloriously human.

What a Loving and Beautiful World
file festival

In the current digital age, digital media is part of our everyday life. So this participatory installation inserts calligraphy by Sisyu into a digital media art work that gives people the chance to enjoy calligraphy in a new way. The calligraphy is projected onto a large wall and the sho (Japanese calligraphic characters) appear to be sucked into the shadow of the person participating. This action causes a series of enchantingly beautiful and vivid visual and sound effects. The floating sho characters on the wall react to one’s shadow and open up to reveal each character’s world. A new world is created by overlapping and combining the sho’s world with that of Sisyu, the calligrapher, one’s own thoughts, and the thoughts of humankind that are contained in the origins of the characters. This work uses a sensor that reads a participant’s action. If a viewer holds their hand against the character for “rainbow”, a rainbow’s image will be produced; if the character is “umi”, which means “ocean”, a wave’s image will be created. Each visual reacts with other visuals allowing for an infinite number of variations.

하우스-루커-코
是由豪斯拉克科
“Climate Capsules: Means of Surviving Disaster”

In view of the advancing climate change, the exhibition “Climate Capsules: Means of Surviving Disaster” at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg poses the question: “How do we want to live in the future?” and draws attention to the socio-political consequences of coexistence under new climatic conditions. In view of the fact that the politicians are hesitant to enforce strict measures for climate protection and the citizens very sluggish about changing their habits, the change appears inevitable. The world community is accordingly confronted with the challenge of investigating various possible means of adapting to the climate change. This exhibition is the first to bring together historical and current climate-related models, concepts, strategies, experiments and utopias from the areas of design, art, architecture and urban development – pursuing not the aim of stopping the climate change, but envisioning means of surviving after disaster has struck. More than twenty-five mobile, temporary and urban capsules intended to make human life possible independently of the surrounding climatic conditions will be on view – from floating cities and body capsules to concepts for fertilizing sea water or injecting the stratosphere with sulphur. A symposium, film programme, readings, performances and workshops will revolve around the interplay between design processes and political factors such as migration, border politics and resource conflicts, and investigate the consequences for social and cultural partitioning and exclusion.

CENTIPEDE SUN

Symbol of isolation, doubled by the sublime landscape and the complex spiritual background, the Altiplano region in Chile is the main character in the film. It represents a self-sufficient being, and the film is this being’s portrait. The illustrious landscape keeps traces of a dark past – hidden dangers and gloomy places add a layer of anxiety: the environment is injured. The human element appears briefly in the video: we see traces of human presence being erased by a devouring nature. By means of creating mental landscapes halfway between photographic research and experimental animation, this work depicts a dreamlike world, a vision hidden in a secret dimension of our reality.