TWO LOCATIONS – URBAN AND RURAL / RESIDENCY PROGRAMS – EUROPEAN MEDIA ART, NORDIC-BALTIC, INTERNATIONAL / RIXC OPEN AiR – APPLY ALL YEAR ROUND
Violeta Vojvodic BALAZ. AI and Virtual Well-being
Profit driven legitimacy of the effectiveness of technological efficiency, set up the virtual world as real in its consequences. Couplings between human and machine, internalized machine-based attributes into people and externalized human-based features into machines, which is perplexing the boundaries of the Self, decision-making and creativity. The whole new social structure of conventions, roles, relations, organization, would be needed for co-evolution of human system and artificial intelligence tool system. Thus techno-cultural aspects of change relate to augmentation of our collective ability required to regulate complex AI systems for cultivation in accordance to Human Sustainability: “The ability to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Today software tracks productivity at work, leisure time, influence users behavior and decision-making with aggressive advertising algorithms (e.g. the latest case of Facebook and Cambridge Analytica). This paper will focus on the prospects of AI ethical design for Virtual Well-being, as sophisticated network of checks and balances. Whether “machine” can be intelligent without sense of responsibility, empathy, social consciousness of oneself as an agent, awareness of the boundaries of freedom, and the future consequences that its actions may have on the environment?
Violeta Vojvodic Balaz started to work in the field of network-based art because of the utopian belief in libertarian online society of the future, based on non-hierarchical structures, merit-based assessment, and personal freedom. She received MA at Faculty of Fine Art Belgrade for postgraduate work CD-ROM Urtica Medicamentum est (2000). She specialized European Diploma in Cultural Management, Brussels, her research focused on strategic planing and virtual organization (2006). Violeta studied at the University of Belgrade at the Faculty of Fine Art for her art PhD (2017), with a doctoral thesis The Case Of Art-Adventurers Operating Into Global Margin—Art, Money, and Value in The Age of Artificial Intelligence. Together with Eduard Balaz, she co-founded Urtica media art group in 1999. She was one of the co-founders of New Media Center_kuda.org (Novi Sad). 2005-07 She worked as an editor (New Media Expert) at www.labforculture.org. Within Urtica, she won UNESCO Digital Arts Award at Institute for Advance Media Art and Science in Japan. She exhibited at numerous international festivals and exhibitions such as Ars Electronica (Linz), FILE (Sao Paolo), Festival The HTMlles (Montreal), DystoRpia Project Queens Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary art Belgrade, among others.
Kathryn BLAIR. Logical Conclusion: Analog Methods for Exploring Algocracy
This session will detail the results of Kathryn Blair’s Master of Fine Arts thesis research at the University of Calgary, Logical Conclusion, which presents a way for visitors to take on the role of algorithms that have social impacts by completing logic puzzles based on how algorithms operate – including the Facebook News Feed Algorithm and China’s Social Credit Score. The puzzles are presented on magnetic blackboards. Visitors manipulate magnetic pieces representing the elements of each premise to solve the puzzles, taking on the role of young computer programs who are students in an algorithmic school of logic. Each puzzle is illustrated, with characters represented as anthropomorphized animals, as though it were in a school primer, providing additional context and offsetting the serious content of the puzzles. The presentation will detail the development process of the exhibition, which explores a physical, analog way for visitors to engage with the type of mathematical logic behind algorithms that, with the advent of big data and high computing power, now make so many decisions about our lives. The work aims to provide a space where visitors can reflect on the impact of the algorithms, and whether they reach logical conclusions.
Kathryn Blair is a PhD student in Computational Media Design at the University of Calgary. Her work focuses on the ways humans interact with technology and how technology mediates human experiences, using wearable technology, physical computing, games and printmaking to explore these themes. She has been involved in the Calgary-based tech couture fashion show Make Fashion since 2013, and has shown her wearable technology work in British Columbia, the United States and Ireland.
Waiwai/Hiuwai CHAN, John BRUMLEY. Crafting Images for Electoral Campaign with Artificial Intelligence
The author is developing a system to generate and optimize the image of a ‘perfect’ leader with artificial intelligence. By using the generative adversarial network, the author trains the algorithm with images mined from electoral campaigns and popular culture to generate hybrid candidates, for who users can ‘vote’ as their ideal leaders during exhibitions. The voting data will be collected and analysed to optimize the models. Such pipeline mimics the current architecture of digital politics, providing a means for discussing and speculating the future landscape of electoral politics and interface culture.
Waiwai. Currently based in the Interface Culture Lab(Linz), Waiwai(Hiu-wai Chan) has educations and work experiences in electoral campaign, media art, fine art and data-driving programming. She is also the co-founder of Poetics of Politics, a symposium program on techno-geopolitics. Her work has been featured internationally, such as Ars Electronica, Mongolian Biennial and Lisbon Architecture Triennale. http://www.wai-wai.xyz
John Brumley. Currently living in Japan and pursuing a PhD. in Empowerment Informatics, Brumley’s research focuses on using mixed reality systems to promote collaboration in physical space. Brumley received an MFA in Design Media Arts from UCLA and a BA in music composition from UC Davis. His works gather contemporary skill sets and distractions into messy, disparate clumps of media. New virtuosities, outsourced memory, and the eminence of “weird trick” solutions have prompted further investigation into the memetics of the mediated physical world. Plotting moments where contemporary activities become irrevocably trapped in networks of subterranean fibre. http://www.johnbrumley.info
Niels BONDE. Facial Recognition
From 1992 I have addressed surveillance in installations and objects, but as the use of computers and cameras have become ubiquitous today, data collection is neither science fiction nor paranoid delusion. A recent project is about surveillance based on very small amounts of data, like metadata and face recognition. In order to get a 95% sure recognition from publicly accessible image databases only 6×7 pixels are required. For comparison Facebook profile images are 960×960 pixels, which is 21,000 times more than necessary for this 95% secure recognition.
A center piece is a approximately two by three meter custom made screen of only 11×17 pixels showing Mark Zuckerberg answering Senator (D) Dick Durbins question: ”Mr. Zuckerberg, would you be comfortable sharing with us the name of the hotel you stayed on last night?” with an embarrassed ”Ahhhmm … hehe… ehhhmmmm … no” and a headshake. Even though the video of Zuckerberg is extremely pixellated, it is possible to make it an almost certain recognition. Also on show are tin foil helmets on piedestals named after NSA surveillance programs. Quantum Theory, Treasure Map, Packaged Goods, Cult Weave, Traffic Thief, Fallout, Boundless Informant, Egotistical Giraffe are only some of the fantastic names.
Niels Bonde is a pioneer of digital art in Denmark, working with new media – video, installation and digital media, as well as old media – drawing, painting, sculpture and rugs. His works explore the spheres of memory and the registration of people and objects. And what electronic and in particular digital media means to our culture and shapes us and our behavior. Especially in regards to control, surveillance, voyeurism, exhibitionism and paranoia, and how these topics have become core elements in our society rather than kinky fringe phenomenas.
Through the 1990’s, he has distinguished himself as an installation artist in museums and galleries counting Statens Museum for Kunst [DK], MIT List Visual Arts Center, ZKM Karlsruhe, Stedelijk Museum, PS1 MoMa New York, Pinacoteca do Estato de Sao Paolo, Heart [DK], ARoS [DK], Academy of Fine Arts Hanoi Vietnam, Contemporary Art Centre Vilnius Lithuania, Malmö Kunstmuseum and Deutsche Hygiene Museum Dresden. Studied at The Royal Academy of Fine Arts Copenhagen and at Institut für Neue Medien at Städelschule Frankfurt. He has taught at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts [DK], Malmö Art Academy Sweden and at Kunsthøjskolen in Holbæk Denmark. Niels Bonde lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark and Borrby, Sweden.
http://nielsbonde.com/
Daniela MITTERBERGER, Tiziano DERME. The Savage Mind
The Savage mind is an art piece which translates the emotional data (movement, carvings, and environment) of a ritual into the digital realm of a movie. The movie explores the emerging intersections of art, architecture, culture, technology and society. The film investigates notions of the reality of past events, debating on identity and alterity using Digital Architecture and Virtual Reality. The Savage Mind is an art project which examines the relation between intangible cultural heritage, technology and the production of a speculative architecture. More specifically it focuses on the traditional Klaubauf ritual performed in alpine villages in eastern Tyrol / Austria. Klaubauf / Krampus is a ritualistic event taking place in Austria between 04.12 and the 06.12 accompanying the appearance of St. Nikolaus. The act of “Klaubaufgehen” derives from a pagan culture of matchmaking and the commencement of a marriage. It is highlighting the dark side of pre-christmas activities transforming a whole village into a zone of danger and seduction without specific zones of concentration till the peak of the ritual.
A diverse range of data capturing technologies such as motion capture processes, photogrammetry, Faro 3D scanning and CGI were used to capture the emotional data of the ritual and translate it into the medium of a movie. The concept discusses the importance to capture with modern technology not just data but emotions and create art-pieces which stand with one foot in the virtual realm and with one foot in the physical space. The piece enters a new technodigital landscaped, mirrored on top and entangled with its wondrous physical alter ego, a dialogue of multiple writings, The Savage mind is an art piece showing two diacritical sides of a coin, created through scissiparity, framing the scene of a sacrifice.
Daniela Mitterberger is an architect with multi-disciplinary interests ranging from digital experiments to analog production, combining the fields of media culture, philosophy and narration with architecture. She is currently external lecturer at the Leopold-Franzens University Innsbruck and visiting lecturer at MSD Melbourne School of Design.
Tiziano Derme is an architect, computational designer and researcher, currently based in Vienna, interested on the application of contemporary technologies and novel material systems in architectural production. He is currently lecturer at the University of Innsbruck and visiting lecturer at the University of Melbourne.
Both Daniela Mitterberger and Tiziano Derme are Directors and Co-Founders of the multidisciplinary architecture practice FutureRetrospectiveNarrative based in Vienna, with an emphasis on digital production, pluri-media exhibitions, material science and robotic fabrication.
Budhaditya CHATTOPADHYAY. Post-immersion: Towards a Discursive Situation in AR/VR
Immersion is a much-loved word in the domain of contemporary media art, such as AR/VR. It is through immersion that the audiences often are made to engage with the media environment, especially those involving multi-channel sound, video, and spatial practices. In these works, immersion operates as a context for realizing the production of presence as an illusion of non-mediation (Reiter, Grimshaw et al). The main concern of the proposed paper, however, is whether the audience tends to become a passive and non-acting guest within the immersive space often constructed by an authoritarian and technocratic consumer-corporate culture. In this mode of non-activity the audience may lose the motivation to question the content and context of the work by falling into a sensual and indulgent mode of experience, therefore rendering the consumerist-corporate powers to take over the free will of the audience (Lukas et al). From the position of a media artist myself, in this paper, I will argue for producing a more discursive environment rather than an immersive one. I will examine the possibility to create AR/VR and other media artworks where the individuality of the audience is carefully considered and taken into account as a parameter for a fruitful dissemination of the work. I will discuss and present a few recent artworks to develop and substantiate my argument.