RIXC FESTIVAL 2019, THE 4TH OPEN FIELDS CONFERENCE ON ART-SCIENCE RESEARCH AND UN/GREEN EXHIBITION
Cammack LINDSEY. Airs for Algae (performative lecture)
Man transforms nature as he is frightened by it’s limitation’s and fragility; condemning it as the other that we must subdue and discipline. But we have failed in it’s domination, and as carbon dioxide atmospheric concentrations rise, our struggle to breathe intensifies along with our fear of the other. For our sustainability we look back to those who first introduced oxygen 2.4 billion years ago, the microalgae cyanobacteria. In this future space algae’s subjugation has cancelled our dreams of synthetic realities, as we must redistribute our fear and rely on them to produce our oxygen. After researching the effect of amplification and frequency on the microalgae, we have found the most efficient approach to initiate the production of our oxygen is with the user’s individual singing voice. Using a device we allow our bodies to connect with the algae, thus exchanging our voices and CO2 for oxygen and our continuity.
They begin at the transition of opera into musical theater, trading in lavish productions to concentrate on marginalized narratives. From embedded pasts and perspectives of ghosts, we examine this space to redistribute stolen futures and individual configurations. Experimenting with subtractions in color space, sound, narration and performance, we blur our reliance on visual systems. Our most recent research focus is ma n’s fear of the other and micro algae’s subjugation of our future synthetic realities.
Cammack Lindsey currently studies for their masters in Art + Media at Berlin University of the Arts (UdK).
Till BOVERMANN, Katharina HAUKE.
Friendly Organisms … and then we will see if we can be friends
In 2018, we set out for a month-long expedition to Eden Project, UK. Our original intention to invite (non-)human beings on site to create electronic sonic interventions was soon confronted with something much more than just a place to make music at: Eden Project presented itself as a giant, living, and pulsating organism; so complex, so lively, that most of its aspects continuously escaped our comprehension. As these impressions slowly settled in our thoughts and work, we deliberately extended our invitation to the organism called Eden Project itself. But how to make it aware of us? How to approach an organism consisting of structures as large and complex that we could stroll inside it without even noticing, lest comprehending, that those structures are part of, that we are are part of it? We developed and studied several methods, all of them based on, and most of them involving the act of listening.In our lecture performance, we will introduce these methods at hand of our gathered sonic and visual material and will put our experience of the organism called Eden Project into a broader context.
Material can be seen at http://friendly.organisms.de.
Katharina Hauke and Till Bovermann are audio and visual artists. Katharina studied at the University of Applied Sciences, Düsseldorf and UdK Berlin and worked as a cinematographer for various film productions. Till studied at Bielefeld University where he also received his doctor and worked as a PostDoc at the Media Lab of Aalto University, Helsinki, at UdK Berlin (3DMIN Project), and currently at the University for Applied Art, Vienna (Rotting Sounds project). Katharina and Till have backgrounds in (loose alphabetical order) Academia, Artificial intelligence, Cinematography, Communication, Computer sciences, Electronic musical instruments, Field recording, Interaction design, Livecoding, Neural networks, Photography, and Sound.
Catherine HARRIS. Posthuman spaces
“an increase in the vigilance, responsibility, and humility that accompany living in a world so newly, and differently, inhabited” Cary Wolfe, What is Posthumanism? 2013
“I am I because my little dog knows me…” Gertrude Stein, What are Masterpieces and Why Are There so Few of Them, 1936
What would landscapes look like if we designed and built with the idea that non-humans are sentient beings, deserving of a stakeholder position in landscape alterations? Post humanists, authors, activists, and psychologists describe experiences and studies (Procter, Carder, and Cornish, 2013, Dawkins, 2006) that show that non-human animals are not, as Descartes held, incapable of thinking and feeling, and that our infrastructure and building patterns have significant impact on species. Recent work by Scott R. Loss in three different longitudinal studies attributes a roughly 10% impact (death rate) on bird populations across the United States based on communications, electrical infrastructure, and buildings. Engaging with the concept that non-humans are resource sharing and tool using,(Chiariati, Canestari, et al 2013), emotionally capable (Bradshaw, 2010), what is our moral responsibility to our fellow sentient beings? Can landscapes mitigate these losses? How can art build landscapes that point towards such integration? How can installations accommodate non human species as equal partners? This presentation investigates the authors and other’s art works using frameworks from Wolfe (conditional responsibility) and Braidotti’s (intensive spaces of becoming).
Catherine Page Harris teaches Art & Ecology and Landscape Architecture at University of New Mexico. BA Harvard University, 1988, MLA UC Berkeley, 1997, MFA Stanford University, 2005. Recent projects include sharing a drink,analyzing video of animals drinking to print 3D vessels. Trans-species Repast–sharing meals with animals in North Jutland, Denmark and Vermont, US explores hierarchy, resources, and landscape, showed at the Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Fe, (2016), UNM Art Museum (2016), the Land Shape Festival (2015) in Hanstholm, DK, Marble House Project, VT (2015) and the Wignall Museum, CA, (2014).
Miguel ALMIRON. Dialogues in between real and unreal
Some contemporary arts and works discourses about posthumanity demystify fears expressed in most science fiction works. They lead us along a disturbing path between being and appearance, presence and absence, identity and ethics. Closely tied to science, contemporary artists question the future of this broadened humanity.
In this article I aim to analyze the intersection of art, science and technology the relation of the posthuman’s influence and the cultural consequences in the real life. A journey going from Bina-48, sitting face to face with its human alter ego “believes” She/it exists, to Geminoids that respond to the following desire « one day, robots will be able to trick us making us believe they’re humansS
Miguel Almiron, Ph.D. ‘Aesthetics, Sciences & Technologies of Art’, is a Media Artist and Assistant Professor at the University Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée (UPEM), France, Department of ‘Cinema, Music and Digital Art’. He is a member of research lab (LISAA, EA 4120) and is associated to the Labex Arts-H2H/Ens Louis-Lumière research program “Deceptive Arts. Machines, Magic, Media.” From 2008 until 2012 he was the director of Masters “Visual Studies, Multimedia and Digital Art”, today he co-leads the career in engineering IMAC (image, multimedia, audio-visual and communication) and is director of Master “Digital Art and Visual Culture” of UPEM. He has co-edited Stéréoscopie et Illusion with G. Pisano & E. Jacopin.
Raivo KELOMEES. Perception of Temporal and Cognitive Lag
in the Participatory Art
The object of discussion here is the “lag” between the feedback of the artwork and the viewer’s awareness of it, in particular the “temporal” and “cognitive” lag in those artworks which “see”, “perceive” the viewer. The “lag” is the gap between the feedback by the artwork and the viewer’s awareness as to why this has happened. During “lag” the viewer does not realise they are in the artwork or does not comprehend in what manner they are connected or influenced by the artwork.
In “temporal lag” the mutual relationship between viewer and artwork involves reaction time, which is a delay between an event initiated by the viewer—the stimulus—and its effect. Temporal lag could be illustrated by the net-based project by Nurit Bar-Shai entitled “Nothing Happens” (2006). The performance consists of three acts, which are centred around staged environments. The viewer/user clicks the objects which actuate engines resulting in movement of the objects which changes their location. Only afterwards does the viewer receive the feedback image—each click lasts some time due to limited net bandwidth, meaning the viewer must wait for a response: hence this is temporal lag. The situation where the viewer sees the response of the artwork but is unable to understand how it is happening, is what we can call “cognitive lag”. A good example is Perry Hoberman’s “Faraday’s Garden” (1990) where the viewer walks on mats fitted with electronics which switch various home appliances on and off. For some time the visitor does not realise what causes the machines to come on: only after noticing the relationship between walking and the functioning of the machines does the viewer become aware of the cause and effect. The cognitive lag is the time between the feedback of the artwork and the realisation of its cause by the viewer.
Understandably temporal and cognitive lag are frequently indistinguishable. What they have in common is a delay due either to the feedback of the artwork or the viewer’s understanding of the reason behind its effects.
Raivo Kelomees (b.1960) PhD (art history), artist, critic and new media researcher. Presently working as senior researcher at the Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn. He studied psychology, art history, and design at Tartu University and the Academy of Arts in Tallinn. He has published articles in the main Estonian cultural and art magazines and newspapers since 1985. His works include the book “Surrealism” (Kunst Publishers, 1993) and an article collection “Screen as a Membrane” (Tartu Art College proceedings, 2007), “Social Games in Art Space” (EAA, 2013). His Doctoral thesis was “Postmateriality in Art. Indeterministic Art Practices and Non-Material Art” (Dissertationes Academiae Artium Estoniae 3, 2009). In recent years he has been participating on conferences dedicated to new media, digital humanities, theatre and visual art in São Paulo, Manizales, Plymouth, Krems, Riga, Shanghai, Göteborg, Hong Kong, Dubai and other places.