Smart Hans

FILE 2024 | Installations
International Electronic Language Festival
Max Haarich (Project Smart Hans) – Smart Hans – Germany

The Smart Hans project is a synthetic reincarnation of Clever Hans, a horse that became famous in the early 20th century for apparently answering mathematical questions by tapping its hoof. The interactive installation features an animated horse that can guess any number in its mind through posture recognition. At the same time a fun joke and an illustration of why we worry about artificial intelligence.

Bio

Max Haarich is an artistic researcher, ethicist and consultant focusing on artificial intelligence and web3. He studied communication science at RWTH Aachen and critical thinking at the University of the Underground. After his studies, he researched artificial superintelligence at RWTH Aachen and later worked as a communications manager at Europe’s leading startup hub.

Credits

Team: Anja Borowicz Richardson (UK), Bruce Gilchrist (UK), Akshita Gupta (IND), Max Haarich (Artistic Lead/DE), Martina Huynh (NL), Asad Imtiaz (PAK), Muhammad Qasim Khan (PAK), Adrian Ludwig (DE), Pekka Ollikainen (FI), Raphael Pickl (DE).

Subway Chase

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

Subway Chase is a high-speed underground race, a visual glitch that dissolves and transforms with the musical waves.

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: Subway Chase by Karl Casey

Underground Circuit
Underground Circuit is a collage of hundreds of video clips shot in the subway stations in New York. Station to station, the movement of the commuters in the outer rings suggests the repetitive cycle of life and urban theatricality and texture. The inner-most ring includes people sitting on the bench waiting; the central drummers act as the controller of the movement, inspired by the concept of the Four-faced Buddha in Chinese folk religion, the god who can fulfill and grant all wishes of its devotees. For the installation, the video is projected onto the gallery floor and mapped onto a cube with relief in the middle of the projection area. The installation invites audiences to sit on the central cube as Voyeur-gods, to observe the anonymous characters in the projected urban labyrinth.

Underground Circuit

تويو ايتو
伊东丰雄
טויו איטו
伊東豊雄
도요 이토
Tower of Winds
During the day the perforated metal panels that cover the Tower of Winds reflect the city image and make the design appear humble and simple. But during the night, it gets lit up in an ever-changing combination of light intensity and colors. Using computer software, the lighting follows the wind speed and noise levels changing the Tower’s appearance accordingly. The Tower of Winds features more than 1300 light bulbs and 42 flood lights and neon rings (on each floor). The small lights change their colors according to the wind’s noise level and the rings change their intensity according to its speed.
Basically, the Tower of the Winds by Toyo Ito is a wind indicator in a constant relationship with the city and the natural environment, a junction between the two. It is placed at the train station area, welcoming the passengers arriving in Yokohama and its functional role is accommodating another natural element. Surprisingly the Tower of Winds houses the water tanks for the air-conditioning system of the underground mall below. The Tower is not a new construction, but a re-designing of an old concrete tower that already existed there since the ‘60s.

HyperveloCity

HyperveloCITY is a fast forward connected cultural organism that grows on top of the subway stations in downtown Los Angeles. The movement time line of the users (pedestrians, students, cars and train) is used as the operational strategies of the buildings framework. Velocities and rhythms are used to generate a new perception of space. The distance of the institutions would generate a wider field of influence in a dense cityscape. The main three volumes are an urban art museum, educational institution and a new convention centre, all separated one kilometer from each other. The various components of HyperveloCITY are connected by way of a the underground train system. The project is structured to emphasize the use and efficiencies of the public transport system and create not-so-often-seen public spaces and realms in densest part of downtown Los Angeles.

CARBONIFEROUS table

Carboniferous is a table that cuts through space, definite and strong.Its many layers of black surface together create a shape, a crystallization of a quick movement, crushing, leading the eye towards the future.The honeycomb cardboard, covered with fiber glass and resin is finished off with layers of carbon fiber.The carbon fiber composes and traces the design, the movement into its unique strength.
In Carboniferous you get the feeling that the top surface does not necessarily represent the ideal landing platform.On another perspective the landing surface generates the powerful and matherical base.
Carboniferous is flowing and exploding, like an aggressive wind with a clear direction.As the earth below, coal is extracted into a new form, the result of sediment build-up of plants,
and also the secrecy and conspiracy of the Carbonari, from underground and from the depth of their hiding places,which emerges a few decades later into the tricolore (the three colours of the Italian flag).
Coal, a dense network of plant remains, and Italy, a mix of cultures and different latitudes.Italian amalgam of different origins, Italy particle edges, Italy multiform, Italy tangle of angles,Italy blunt, concave and convex, Italy Alpine wedge, Italy coal.Sediment of a combustion that melted and transfigured particles.

Schindler’s Paradox Box

The double helix ramps descend towards the new open auditorium and climb 15 meters until they reach an open roof garden that offers interesting views from below, from above and the border between them. Helical lines are connected on the north side of the house to reconnect on the roof and at the level of the underground auditorium. The interlocking ramps create a continuous common surface that flows between them, emphasizing views of the property, Kings Road and adjoining apartment buildings. The support surfaces of the ramps are independent of the Berlin walls that support them.

Animated Apertures

instead of windows, mouths with green “hair” that sway in the wind. This is the Animated Apertures Housing Tower, a project of the American architecture firm B + U. The fun building appears to have been attacked by carnivorous plants. The residential building will be built in Lima, Peru. Architects Herwig Baumgartner and Scott Uriu, known for the use of new materials, explain that they wanted to “show that architecture can exist between nature and technology”. Therefore, the designs and colors that imitate plants, in a building that looks more like a living organism. The “hairs” of the windows will be made of a special silicone and will move with the wind, giving the impression of being tentacles. The project is also innovative in its structure, because instead of several small windows, it proposes few and large openings. Thus, professionals avoided a regular facade. The building will have 20 floors and 90 car spaces in an underground car park. The coverage will also have a garden and swimming pool for residents.

Amelia

Edouard Locke

“Directed and choreographed by Locke in 2002, Amelia, is a beautiful piece of dance on film that won awards and critical acclaim at numerous festivals when it came out. Amelia features a hypnotic, original, minimalist score written by David Lang for violin, cello, piano and voice, and lyrics from five of Lou Reed’s most famous works that he created in the 60s for the Velvet Underground. It is beautifully shot from multiple angles, some dizzying and swooping, in a space that was tailor-made for the film itself. The shadows and lighting in tandem with the shots and the movement add layers of beauty to the stark visuals.” Sarah Elgart

Nature gives us a lot of examples of complex behavior emerging from the interaction of many individuals. The members of an ant colony are capable of a wide variety of complex behaviors: finding and transporting food, constructing elaborate underground complexes of tunnels and chambers, defending their territory from invaders.