RIXC FESTIVAL 2019, THE 4TH OPEN FIELDS CONFERENCE ON ART-SCIENCE RESEARCH AND UN/GREEN EXHIBITION
Agnes MEYER-BRANDIS. Walking Trees (25 min + 5 min)
The presentation will focus on my artistic research taking place at various climate and forest research stations in europe over the course of the past couple of years. It will focus on migratory trees and other wandering green species due to climate change. Trees are `rooted`. Though long term observations have shown, that forests actually do move throughout the landscape and regions, just very, very slow and over decades. Climate change appears to happen faster than the trees can escape to more suitable areas in order to survive. Scientists are discussing “assisted migration” in order to help speeding up the process of tree adaption. However, trying to save the trees (and our species on the way) we first need to gain a better understanding what a forest is and does. But the things to observe are either too tiny or too large to simply be looked at, they are as very very slow as well as severely volatile to be easily recognizable. The paper looks at the methods that are invented to do so, along with some new ones invented by the “FFUR Institute for Art an subjective Science” in the fields of climate research, environmental studies, meteorology synthetic and artistic biology, and those who work on it.
Agnes Meyer-Brandis studied mineralogy for a year, then transferred to the Art Academy in Maastricht, the Düsseldorf Art Academy and the Cologne Media Art Academy. She comes from a background of both sculpture and new media art. Her work, exhibited worldwide and awarded, is exploring the zone between fact and fiction – an artistic research on the quest for a degree of reality within constructions. For a more detailed description of her work, please go to her homepage: www.ffur.de
AnneMarie MAES. Intelligent Beehives (25 min + 5 min) Sensorial Skin for an Intelligent Guerrilla Beehive
In her talk, AnneMarie Maes will give a quick introduction of the current state of the art of bioart and biodesign in an international context. Following, she will give an overview of the research and development of her long-term biotech project: ‘Sensorial Skin for an Intelligent Guerrilla Beehive’. Her research navigates between experimental urban horticulture, scientific research, and metabolic sculptures. In her experiments she connects living systems and biotechnology with artistic and technological prototyping and experimentation. Her toolset includes microbial life and material science, as well as various measurement and information technologies such as scanning electron microscopes (SEM), sensors, Big Data cloud storage, signal processing, and Artificial Intelligence. Her artworks follow a complex work-methodology combining first-hand observation in research gardens and rooftop apiaries, laboratory probes and digital monitoring combined with a research into new, organic and smart materials. She will highlight past and future collaborations with scientists at universities in Barcelona, Brussels and Amsterdam, with fablabs and Open BioLabs.
AnneMarie Maes is an artist who has been studying the close interactions and co-evolutions within urban ecosystems. Her research practice combines art and science, with a keen interest in DIY technologies and biotechnology. On the rooftop of her studio in Brussels she has created an open-air lab and experimental garden where she studies the processes that nature employs to create form. The Bee Agency as well as the Laboratory for Form and Matter -in which she experiments with bacteria and living textiles – provide a framework that has inspired a wide range of installations, sculptures, photography works, objects and books – all at the intersection of art, science and technology.
Peter ZORN. EMAP – European Media Art Residency programme /
Taavi SUISALU – Waiting for the Light
EMAP / EMARE is European Media Art Residency Network programme that enables European artists to collaborate on projects and consequently to create closer bonds between European media organisations. EMAP platform is organized by Werkleitz Gesellschaft (Halle); the members include Ars Electronica (Linz), Bandits-Mages (Bourges), FACT (Liverpool), Impakt (Utrecht), Kontejner (Zagreb), LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial (Gijón), m-cult (Helsinki), Onassis Cultural Centre (OCC) (Athens), RIXC (Riga), WRO Center for Media Art Foundation (Wrocław). The outcomes of EMAP / EMARE production residencies are contemporary media art installations and performances that are shown in various places and festivals throughout Europe. The Un/Green exhibition at RIXC Festival is organized by RIXC Center and it features several artworks that are newly produced during EMAP residencies (2018-2019).
The annual call for submissions is launched in September – http://emare.eu
Waiting for the Light (2018) installation, by Taavi Suisalu (EE) is one of the outcomes of EMAP residency. The artwork introduces baits into the networks and lures in threads of light from different parts of the globe. The Wardian cases function as miniature closed ecosystems and also as islands in this vast network between things. Any object connected to it becomes a target for automated processes – bots – whose motives are mostly unknown. Each plant then becomes an object of interest to these robots whose communicative acts, streams of light, once passed across the floors of oceans, are lit back into our environment as bursts of growth light, giving them an agenda they are unaware of.
Peter Zorn has studied free art in the film class of the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig with Prof. Birgit Hein. Co-founder and since then Chairman of the Board of Werkleitz Gesellschaft, on the Board of the Werkleitz Biennale / Werkleitz Festival, since 1995 initiator and manager of the European Media Artists in Residence Exchange (EMARE) Programme of the European Media Art Platform (EMAP) and since 2011 Head of the Werkleitz Professional Media Master Class. He lives and works as a freelance producer, curator and media scientist (e. g. consultant for media art for the Goethe Institute) in Werkleitz and Halle (Saale).
Taavi Suisalu works in the contexts of technology, sound and performance, mixing traditional and contemporary sensibilities and activating peripheral spaces for imaginative encounters. His practice is informed by the phenomena of contemporary society and its relations to and use of technologies. He applies subjective research methods to study socio-cultural phenomena, being interested in the behaviour, perception and thinking of social beings.
http://taavisuisalu.ee