RIXC FESTIVAL 2019, THE 4TH OPEN FIELDS CONFERENCE ON ART-SCIENCE RESEARCH AND UN/GREEN EXHIBITION
Petja IVANOVA, Anton PEITERSEN. Styroworm and other hybrids
The feedback of the Anthropocene – is an artistic research project in acoustic ecology – analysing effects of human traces in the 3 ecologies: the mental, social and environmental juxtaposing the idea of a ‘bulgarian green’ lifestyle with its socio-techno-economic realities. Tracing human mimicry of the environmental sounds and how this practice has shaped pagan, rural and contemporary artefacts, artist Petja Ivanova and Anton Peitersen looked at the Bulgarian bagpipe Kaba Gaida as being inspired by the wind as a medium for long distance communication, an ancient ‘natural’ technology. Informed by deep time insights into media practice in combination with fieldwork accompanying shepherds and people living in remote countrysides, Peitersen and Ivanova took their learnings onto the not so ‘natural’ fields of our times and prototyped devices and installations that mix social ecologies, environments and technological ecologies to result in instruments and sound practices that are representative of the un/greening of lives and habitats: A sound piece of a youtube song, a poem about the shepherd and his companions, the sheep – whose amplitude depends on the wind flowing by. Or multiple radio stations bobby-pinned to sheep on the fields, streaming into the nearby cities and empty bus stops along the country roads. An acoustic tracing of the un/greening of the rural soundscape.
Petja Ivanova is born in Shumen, Bulgaria and based between Berlin and Sofia, Petja graduated from the University of Arts Berlin in the class for Computational Art/Generative Art in 2015. In her
trans-disciplinary practice she combines archeology, biology, speculation, computation
and the poetic in order to promote the ‘poetic method’ as a counterweight to the socially dominating ‘scientific method’, understanding this practice in non-linear relation with Fluxus & Avantgarde. She runs ‘studio for poetic futures and speculative ecologies’ out of a little caravan in Berlin.
Riccardo TORRESI, Maxime LETHELIER, Asako FUJIMOTO. Sensing Gravity – audiovisual installations based on gravitational phenomenons
Balancing between artistic autonomy and the necessary scientific accuracy, the media art collective Ephemeral Tomorrow will present two audio-visual works reflecting on the physical phenomenon of Gravitation. Sensing gravity was the common challenge that the two pieces aimed to face and the topic of a wider research in terms of scientific coherence and creative matter. The collective ́s work represent an aesthetic and intuitive experiment, revealing a new layer of human consciousness about gravity and its subtle manifestations. The outcomes are immersive environments trying to speculate on astrophysical detections and real time monitoring through combinations of light and sound.
Within their conceptional approach, the members of artist collective Ephemeral Tomorrow combine technical knowledge with clean, minimalistic aesthetics and present both in their installations. Established in 2016, Riccardo Torresi, Maxime Lethelier, Asako Fujimoto participated in several group shows and workshops in Europe and abroad. for further information: https://ephemeraltomorrow.com/ https://riccardotorresi.com/
Nadja Gabriela PLEIN. Non-Dualism and its Implications on Art-Making
Western thought has been in thrall of a dualistic, anthropocentric worldview since Descartes. We see the rational human being as profoundly different from the material world. Is it possible to imagine a non-dualistic, post-anthropocentric worldview, one where human and world are not fundamentally other but fundamentally the same? There is a strong mind over matter bias in contemporary art-making. ‘Anything goes’ – the current maxim – provided it is framed rationally. How can we rethink authorship from a post-dualist, post-anthropocentric position? Referring to the writing of philosopher Wolfgang Welsch on the evolution of cognition, and early Buddhist philosophy on conditionality and the non-self, I go on to develop a sketch of a non-dualistic worldview, exploring both the human and the world as non-essential and perpetually changing states of being that are deeply relational and fundamentally same, proposing a radical rethinking of what we mean with human and its relationship with the world. Art-making as a consciously reflective interaction of human and world becomes the locus of a rethinking of the human/world relationship. Can art-making become a blueprint for a more ethical, greener, mode of being in the world?
Nadja Gabriela Plein is a painter and writer. She regularly exhibits paintings in the UK and internationally. Recent solo show: ‘flux’ with The Stables in Exile Gallery, London. Winner of the 2019 Jacksons Open Painting Prize Abstract Category. She has recently presented papers at: Philosophical Society Oxford Symposium on ‘Value’ and the ‘Abstract Painting Now Symposium’ with University of Gloucestershire and RWA. Nadja was a composer first, gaining a doctorate in music composition from the Royal College of Music, London, in 2009, before her practice turned to painting. Nadja is a graduate of the Turps Art School Studio Painting Programme.
Eva SJUVE. Tuning into the Un/Greening
This paper explores my recent artistic research in the context of information space, the ecosystem and the process of perceiving the un/greening process of polluted atmospheres, through the use of models of machine learning in a feedback loop of the human and nonhuman agency. In this project, cognitive glitches have been investigated; how they can be vehicles for sensing the un/greening processes. Through artistic practice, combining sonic arts and embodied and exploratory listening modes using synthetic interfaces with machine learning models, investigating gaps as rhythmic patterns of being in-between, behavioral changes, and anthropocentric in/decisions.
Eva Sjuve is a sound and media artist and researcher. She works with interactive media technologies to reveal hidden structures between data space and the physical world, addressing contemporary issues. Her work has been included in exhibits, including the Australian Center of Contemporary Art, Melbourne, Australia; Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland; CAEIT Experiments in Art, Information and Technology, California Institute of the Arts, USA; The Museum of Contemporary Arts, Chicago, USA, and the City Exhibition Hall, Sydney. Her research has been presented at conferences, including the Internet of Things: The Philosophy 14, Hybrid City 13, MediaCity 10, Creativity & Cognition 09, ISEA 08/14/15/16, and NIME 08. She is at the University of Huddersfield, UK.
Nina CZEGLEDY. Beyond Green
Nature may be considered as the world of living organisms and their environment. In the holistic vision of Indigenous Peoples separating identity from the environment is an alien concept. My curatorial interest of these concepts was enforced by scientific publications from David Bohm, Edward T. Hall and Gary Witherspoon. Bohm, a noted physicist, originator of the casual interpretation of quantum theory, challenged established notions concerning the nature of reality and the order of the universe. In contrast to firmly entrenched views, he saw the infinite universe as an undivided wholeness: a world of interconnection and interdependence. Witherspoon wrote how in the Navajo Universe each element moves continuously in an interrelated mode. The underlying assumption is that nothing is totally inactive in the universe, the cosmos is composed of interconnected process and events as opposed to a cosmos composed of facts and things. These concepts are distinctly illustrated in the art of Dana Claxton, Alathea Arnaquq- Baril, Shelley Niro,Lisa Jackson indigenous women artists from Canada, whose work we present next year at a Canadian exhibition of international and local women media artists working environmental changes. It remains important to provoke established conference programs with something unexpected such as presenting indigenous concepts.
Nina Czegledy, artist, curator, and researcher with international and national academic affiliations is based in Toronto, Canada. She collaborates on art & science & technology projects and is deeply involved in ecological issues. Czegledy has produced and curated collaborative international cross-disciplinary art projects, exhibitions, and conferences focused on environmental change. Relevant examples are the upcoming Digital Dynamics 2020 exhibition featuring women media artists focusing on the environment at THEMUSEUM in Kitchener Canada, SPLICE Re-examining Nature (2017), curated for the Oulu Museum of Arts, Finland presented 21 artists. Galactic Wind audio/visual installation utilizing cosmic ray data exhibited in New Zealand (2015). River Speaks (with Ian Clothier) concerning the Waiwhakaiho River, New Zealand (2015), What will you do to help us cool the earth interactive installation commissioned by the City of Toronto (2007) toured to New Zealand (2009). She presented by invitation on eco art activism at international conferences including Art*Science, Cervia, Italy (2018), Balance Unbalance, Manizales Colombia (2017), University of Sao Paulo, Brazil (2016), Owheo Rising, Dunedin, New Zealand, (2016), Subtle Technologies Toronto (2015), ISEA2013 Sydney, Australia, Time Inventors Kabinet, Brussels, Belgium (2012), Green Art, Prague, Czech Republic (2011).