When music group Kraftwerk needed a video to match its electronic music in back in 1984, they turned to American researcher and artist Rebecca Allen, a pioneer in the field of computer art. Allen is the creative genius of Kraftwerk’s 1986’s 

, one of the earliest examples of rendered 3D graphics in a music video.

 Creating the milestone video, which made Allen a major force behind the German band’s visual aesthetic in the 1980s, was a painstaking process that took nearly two years for Allen and her team at the New York Institute of Technology’s Computer Graphics Laboratory to complete.

In the abstract video, animated heads representing the faces of the group members flash across the screen. This work involved the development of state-of-the-art facial animation software in order to bring the virtual mannequins to life. Allen wanted to create a “visual digital aesthetic” that would capture the personalities of Kraftwerk members and essence of their image, and would complement their digital sound with a new form of art making using computers. Nowadays it might be pretty easy to digitize a 3D object, but at the time it was a very complex, crafted process. Allen would have to put little pieces of tape over the models and put it in a reference cube, to then digitize it point by point. It took hundreds of hours just to get the colors exactly the way Allen wanted them.

”There’s so much involved – not just the color, but then you had to get the lighting … and it’s on some crummy TV, ultimately,” Allen said in an interview. “But that’s the way I am. If you’re an animator, it’s already clear that you’re a fanatic – an obsessive. Anybody who wants to make frames for every second of movement is obviously pretty obsessive about things.”

 music video still looks prescient, even today and has not only shaped Kraftwerk’s iconic aesthetic, but also created a new visual approach equally in fine arts and pop-culture.

In 1982, Allen had already worked with choreographer Twyla Tharp on 

, a feature length dance film with music by David Byrne, in which a computer generated character plays the role of St. Catherine. It was produced by the BBC and was the first time the public had seen a 3D human model moving on TV. This model was also the world’s first 3D computer model of a woman’s body. It was created in 1972 by Ed Catmull (founder of the now world-reknown animation studio Pixar) but it wasn’t until 1981 when Allen started working with it and decided to try to get it to move that it started to come alive really.

In an extended interview from 2020 with Arts Technologies Curator at Serpentine Galleries Kay Watson, Allen explains the background of her career as both a researcher and an artist working with and challenging early computer and advanced technology. Allen’s approach of artistic expression through computer based technology and her vision of 3D animation as an artistic tool are deeply inspiring and seminally influential for animating technologies until this day.

“Artists are inventors too; coming up with new ideas and new forms of expression, so to be in a research lab and to be an artist inventing new things made a lot of sense to me.”

The full interview with Allen and Watson is linked below.

Interview with Kay Watson

Rebecca Allen

Musique Non Stop

35-mm film (digitized), color, sound, 84:54 min

 from 1997, Lynn Hershman Leeson creates a cinematic memorial dedicated to the historical figure Augusta Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace, daughter of romantic poet Lord Byron. The Duchess, better known as Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), was a British mathematician a century ahead of her time, who wrote the first algorithm for the Analytical Engine – a mechanical calculating machine designed by Charles Babbage – and thus laid the foundation for the concept of programming language. Therefore, she is today considered the originator of the first ever computer program, one hundred years before computers were even invented.

In Hershman Leeson’s film, Ada Lovelace’s story is channeled through Emmy, played by Francesca Faridan – a contemporary computer scientist researching artificial life. By using her own DNA genetic code, Emmy collapses time and is able to communicate directly with Ada, embodied by Tilda Swinton. Realizing how parallel their lives are, the protagonist embarks on the task of “saving” Ada and plans to bring her role model back to life through genetic engineering. In the process, the borders between past and present, virtual and real, blur and Ada and Emmy both recognize the implications their place in time.

 is the first film ever to use a virtual set. By digitizing and manipulating still photographs taken in various Victorian inns in the San Francisco Bay Area and then using them as the film’s “sets.” Actors performed against blue screens, and the whole movie was shot in six days, with backgrounds added during production.

Lynn Hershman Leeson’s Science-Fiction film is a deep dive on feminist technological ideas, innovative visual technique and a compelling, female-centred story from the 1990s and back to the 19th century. The historic figure of Countess of Lovelace, is portrayed as a visionary pioneer in the film, whose ideas are put in check by social circumstances and rigid role models.  Hershman Leeson addresses the discrimination of women and their marginalization in the sciences. At the same time, she creates a tribute to a historically significant woman and honors her in the form of this science fiction film.

Over the last five decades, artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson has been internationally acclaimed for her art and films. Cited as one of the most influential media artists, Hershman Leeson is widely recognized for her innovative work investigating issues that are now recognized as key to the workings of society: the relationship between humans and technology, identity, surveillance, and the use of media as a tool of empowerment against censorship and political repression. She has made pioneering contributions to the fields of photography, video, film, performance, artificial intelligence, bio art, installation and interactive as well as net-based media art.

Lynn Hershmann Leeson

Fembio Ada Lovelace

Conceiving Ada

At the beginning of the 20th century HELLERAU was founded as a joint project of industry, research, and art and as a response to industrialization and changes in working and living conditions. More than 100 years later, 

, a new international platform, a laboratory, an experimental and discursive space for the arts in the digital age in the wake of critical phases of global transformation processes, is being established at HELLERAU.


, a joint festival will be presented for the first time in cooperation with MUTEK: HYBRID – CUTTING EDGE CANADA. Originally this collaboration was set to take place in 2020. Due to the current state of the world this event can only take place in 2021 and almost exclusively online: 

For four days, from March 11 to 14, we will present performances on virtual stages, an interactive virtual gallery exhibiting innovative digital artworks, an auditorium showcasing talks and panels, and a listening room with a non-stop selection from the archives of the MUTEK network

In addition, in cooperation with PYLON, HYBRID<>BOX, a modular container gallery, will open in front of the Main Hall of HELLERAU, Dresden, which will showcase a variety of digital artworks throughout this year.

The focus of HYBRID – CUTTING EDGE CANADA is on artists who live in Canada, have worked there or are active in the MUTEK network. Beyond the performative program we will further present talks and panels of the NEW NATURE initiative in collaboration with the Goethe Institut Montreal: A project in which climate scientists, technology experts and artists respond to the need to rethink our relationship with nature. With the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Government of Canada, we hope to provide a great platform for all artists and an exciting experience for our audience. An experience that will bring like-minded people closer together – no matter where in the world.

The festival platform on virtual.mutek.org will be open between Thursday, March 11 and Sunday, March 14, 2021. The live program will be streamed each night from 20:00 German time (CET = GMT+1) with an additional replay scheduled for 20:00 Montreal time (EST = GMT-5). The virtual gallery, the auditorium, and the listening room will be available on-demand throughout the entire festival period.

After your free registration you will be granted access to the full virtual festival experience of HYBRID – CUTTING EDGE CANADA. Tickets are free – but with a donation you can help us support LISA, the network of the club scene in Saxony.

HYBRID

MUTEK Festival Platform

HYBRID Festival Podcast

HYBRID - Cutting Edge Canada

Zona Cero, Cenotafio Digital (Ground Zero, Digital Cenotaph)

 is an immersive and interactive installation by Yosi Negrín that projects the construction of an architecture facilitating the search and commemoration of the digital death of the image and the landscape. 

Where does the image die? Where do images go when they are forgotten? How much physical space does the digital image occupy?The construction of this 

 arises from the idea of commemorating the disappearance of virtual images, which are left behind, buried and forgotten in the e-archive. With this monument of death or digital cenotaph, the absence of the digital image is commemorated and honored. An absence generated by its own overproduction and abundance. A “cenotaph” is a symbolic architectural typology erected in honor of illustrious deceased, whose corpses are too far away to be buried or have been altogether lost. The word “cenotaph” derives from the Greek kenos, whose meaning is “empty”, and taphos, which means “grave”. Here the dead bodies become those images of landscapes that have been dematerialized on the internet and which have been physically stored in deserts or glaciers, under robotized, dark and refrigerated architectures.

The main structure of “Zona Cero” consists of a large postnatural sphere that rests on a scrapped car. Named as “chromatrope”, this architecture captures every subject that walks through the cenotaph, as an interactive panopticon that follows the visual morphology of a GoogleStreetView Car. During the exhibition, all these bodies and shadows are registered by this panopticon recorder, building collectively a moving image of reinterpreted abandoned landscapes. The bodies of the visitors become, then, stored as visual souls on the walls of this post-industrial building. Furthermore, the other main installation piece is a drone panoramic video projection which represents a journey through the human-shaped and eroded geologies of the Canary Islands, from stony and volcanic quarries to tanks or water reservoirs.

 Here, it appears in a post-apocalyptic landscape as an abandoned and dismembered figure. This symbol manifests the fundamental role of the individual vehicle as the creator of the collective territory. In a sense, Google StreetView has become the panopticon of the 21st century: since, thanks, precisely, to this infamous vehicle we can create the very images of the spaces where it moves through. Moreover, the exhibition is accompanied by a sound installation created by local artist Pedro D. Sáiz, which mixes ambient and glitchy records of abandoned industries, emphasizing the already unstable atmosphere of the whole installation. Adding another layer to the immersive character of the show, during the opening day three foreign and disoriented souls walked around the installation as bodies that were lost. Likewise, the exhibition is also broadcast via the artist’s Twitch (linked below), so the audience can follow the development of the immersive multi-channel video onto their own screens at home.

, dead and alive natures coexist with machineries, automobiles, screens, farming waste and artificially produced images, recreating the ruins of our future. By mixing these funerary and mythological architectures, the space of 

 becomes an interactive and immersive cemetery. One where devastating feelings come to us after being witnesses of this abandoned landscape from the future, of this digital and physical archive of death. This landscape of death is built through both naturalistic and technological elements, which resemble our future post apocalyptic ruins. 

 expands above the digital, for its images occupying space in the cloud. On one hand, this impact of the digital in the physical world becomes evident in the technological yet material skeletons spread across the exhibition: computers, keyboards, PC’s towers. On the other hand, the material presence on the e-archive is realized on the screen projection, since all images of physically-altered territories become part of the cloud.

 the idea of “cenotaph” opens a direct dialogue with the building that back in time was a crude oil refining deposit. Indeed, “El Tanque” is a trace of the industrial historical heritage of the city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, a surviving and reconverted skeleton of what was a striated and degraded panorama of the Canary coast. This scenographic installation offers the possibility of re-thinking the relationship between spaces currently dedicated to art and the memories we keep from our past. As well as our relation with the elements we choose (consciously or unconsciously) to keep for the near future, whether digital or physical. The museum, the place which in our desire to collect we consecrate to memory, has become a graveyard of accumulation. The pieces from the past are small gestures already dead that are preserved in the hope of obtaining a memory of what we thought was in the future.

Yosi Negrín (Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1994) is an artist, architect, curator and editor based in Madrid whose works revolve around the territory and its digital presence, raising questions about the relation between technological objects and how they modify human lives. More specifically, his pieces focus on the study of both the physical and the digital map, and on the meta-narratives created by them which, at the end, build our reality. Informed by his architectural vision of art, Negrín works across moving images, 3D representations, found objects and post-produced images (made and found) to create a series of installations that highlight the constructed nature of our relation to (and perception of) spaces. Currently he is interested in exploring how technology shapes not only our vision of reality in the present, but also what we believe possible in the future.

Yosi Negrín

Twitch

Zona Cero, Cenotafio Digital

You are going to take a bath in good luck.

, multi-media artists Tatjana Vall and Justin Urbach encounter transhuman realities with an equally artificial and vulnerable physicality.

Starting from the trend towards self-optimization of the human body in Western society, the artists develop a narrative centered on a sunbed in order to expose questionable values of an outdated consumer behavior.

„The change of values over the past few decades has shown, that the interests of the first world forward-thinking population is shifted towards the ‚nonmaterial‘ and ‚original’. Following this, transhumanistic tendencies that could become more relevant and real in near future could be a sort of isolation due to self optimization, driven by the curiosity to overcome biological and physical barriers.“ Vall explains.

The joint project is a hybrid of a physical exhibition taking place at Digital Art Space in Munich and its digital extension online at the space’s website and the artists’ instagram channels. The physical exhibition on site at the Digital Art Space is composed of an actual open sunbed, flooding the exhibition space with cold blue light, a printout version of the UV map of Tatjana Vall’s animated goat in with textures and three screens presenting each artist’s video works. The works project artifactual components of the theme: Abstract motion sequences, surreal scenes and trans medial translations expand the retro-technofetishist view, crossing it with current transhumanistic currents. Both artists respond to each other in positions that are brought together in a two-channel video which have been available exclusively on view on the art space’s website. 

The artists constantly expand the exhibition through short videos and animations on their instagram accounts, that are also linked below. 

You are going to take a bath in good luck. 

as a positive affirmation is only one part of Vall’s and Urbach’s titles for the multi-layered project: „Because of the broadness and layered exhibition platforms, we don’t use only this one title. The social media videos are all ’subtitled’ with different fortune cookie quotes. The inspiration for it came because of the odd formulation. For us, this had a soft and relaxing effect somehow. This mood should reflect the solarium light, which is equally strange: neither cold nor warm but very relaxing.“ as Vall clarifies.

Vall and Urbach both study at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich and have collaborated before: Their trans media performance 

, which also has been a hybrid of on- and offline presentation, took place in October 2020. The performance with six actors dealt with the expectations of our current first world society and its self reflection and translated the the poem 

C’mon pigs of western civilizations Eat more grease

 by Allen Ginsberg from the late 1990s into contemporary context.

„Apart from creating art, new media reflects our expectations and behavior towards the objects and surfaces we interact with.“ Vall explains her approach to new media, continuing that „there will always be the necessity for a translator between new media itself and a human audience.“.

Tatjana Vall

@tat.vall

Justin Urbach

@justin_urbach

 is the first solo online exhibition of digital artist Theo Triantafyllidis that was hosted by Meredith Rosen Gallery. 

An undisclosed location. Dry land under a scorching sun. Something abominable has happened here in recent memory. Now a ritual is taking place. The remains of what was once human are flickering in darkness. Nature is reclaiming what is hers. She is savage and unforgiving. She is laughing at us. Her sinister laughter echoes in the emptiness.  Ritual re-imagines the notion of site-specificity within the mediated landscape. The digital and physical work for this exhibition sit in a forgotten mining town somewhere in the California desert. 

The viewer was invited to interact with Triantafyllidis’ live simulation, sculptures and custom electronics blurring the line between the real life and online experience. The exhibition, which exists solely in the virtual sphere, had been live 24 hours a day for its duration, and is inaccessible thereafter.

The physical location of the works has transformed from desert, to iron mine, to prison, to film shoot location for hire, to apocalyptic concept art, to game engine demo, and to downloadable 3D environment. In each step of the transformation the artifacts of the process become inscribed as deep marks in the landscape. Triantafyllidis intervenes into this environment with a series of gestures that span all scales, from land-art to miniature sculpture, in order to propose an alternate reality.

Triantafyllidis’ most ambitious live simulation to date, Ritual, contains an ecosystem of new inhabitants, including a couple of mean hyenas, racing crows on Bird™ scooters and an ant colony. Triantafyllidis assigns each character its own primitive Artificial Intelligence and then places them to roam free and respond to the fabricated landscape sourced from a Game Engine demo. Like a mysterious ritual, sometimes humorous, other times ominous and ruthless, this ecosystem is continuously producing unexpected connections and results.

Similar to fragments from a mysterious narrative, Triantafyllidis’ new sculptural works are extending the world of Ritual, the live simulation, back into the physical location, pushing the boundaries between reality and fiction. The work Effigy, consists of a mix of 3D printed parts, motocross apparel, LA palm trees and zip ties. Conceptually built by crows from scavenged robot parts, this anthropomorphic effigy works both as a religious symbol and a deterrent for other bird clans. Like all of the works in the exhibition, this piece is an artifact from the animals in the live simulation. Another sculpture, 

, is a stand alone immersive experience and consists of a VR headset figuratively bitten by a hyena.  Inside the hollowed out headset are two miniature sculpted figures with custom lighting made for a solo viewing experience.

When Triantafylldis places the physical and digital work back into the desert for the online documentation, he is most interested in the disassociation of time.  Are the videos live or is this documentation of an apocalyptic past? The strange sense of place immerses the viewer in the location, unlike any other online viewing experience, through its time-based programming and field audio recording. A set of static cameras surveil this mysterious location and question the viewer’s position within the artist’s fictional reality. During the current situation of the pandemic and environmental concerns of global warming, we relate to this eerie apocalyptic world devoid of humans and take a peek at what life might be like on the other side.

Theo Triantafyllidis is an artist who builds virtual spaces and interfaces for the human body to inhabit them. He creates expansive worlds and complex systems where the virtual and the physical merge in uncanny, absurd and poetic ways. These are often manifested as performances, virtual and augmented reality experiences, games and interactive installations. He uses awkward interactions and precarious physics, to invite the audience to embody, engage with and challenge these other realities. Through the lens of monster theory, he investigates themes of isolation, sexuality, and violence in their visceral extremities. He offers computational humor and AI improvisation as a response to the tech industry’s agenda. He tries to give back to the online and gaming communities that he considers both the inspiration and one of the contexts for his work by remaining an active participant and contributor.

Theo Triantafyllidis (b. 1988, Athens, GR) holds an MFA from UCLA, Design Media Arts and a Diploma of Architecture from the National Technical University of Athens. He has shown work in museums, including the Hammer Museum in LA and NRW Forum in Dusseldorf, DE. He was part of Hyper Pavilion in the 2017 Venice Biennale and the 2018 Athens Biennale: ANTI-.  His work was exhibited at the Rubell Family Collection in 2019 in Still Human. A mixed reality performance commissioned by the Onassis Foundation was presented at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2020. Theo Triantafyllidis lives and works in Los Angeles and is represented by Meredith Rosen Gallery New York.

Theo Triantafyllidis

Ritual

The wind as a decisive spatial element in an exhibition in which the visitor can become aware of a silent force of nature that surrounds us almost constantly but is still almost invisible.


 (lat. path) by the Berlin-based artist collective Das Numen combines a locally well-defined indoor space with an ephemeral element resulting from a subtle inclusion of the outside world. Not all elements of the artwork can be perceived visually.  The aesthetically pleasing structure of the installation attracts the visitor as the first eye-catcher into the room. Recalling an abstract organ, the installation already promises a link beyond what is visible via its optical attributes. Six labial pipes and a tongue whistle are used to produce sounds that reach into the room; moving air currents fulfill the room and generate a Presence transcending the physical construction.

 The striking design of stainless steel bodies, rubber hoses and cables looks like a hybrid of engine and religious instrumental structure. With their air-indexed sounds, the pipes, which are between 4.20 and 4.80 meters long and horizontally suspended in the space, create a recreation of a natural force that ranges from silence to deafening lawns, or gentle caresses to brutal destruction.

These pipes do in fact not play a composed piece of music or reproduce an algorithmically generated sequence of tones, instead the tones are directly related to moving air (wind) – and are free of human intention. Twenty weather stations, collecting and processing weather data live at various locations, are used by Das Numen to monitor wind speeds, transfer them into the exhibition and translate them into stimuli using special software. The rushing of the wind passing trees, the majestic lawn of a storm, is now perceptible detached from its point of origin manifesting itself as a spatial experience. A duality of places in direct communication with each other creates a transcendent moment.

The impressive pipes are controlled by valves allowing previously compressed air to flow through the cavities, the air column inside begins to vibrate and at the labium or tongue to transform itself into an audible sound. In an organ-like construction, the energy flow of compressed air is called wind and refers directly to its natural relatives. Winds as an elusive entity become a sculptural force and the generated sounds a reference of space.

In his static, bound context, the visitor simultaneously experiences measurement data from places not only far away from himself, rather from various places on earth that occur simultaneously. This creates an aesthetic and philosophical experience of one’s own localization and relativity that extends beyond human dimensionality. The surrounding space becomes a resonant sphere of experience as well as the catalyst for sounds which only become perceptible through it.

Scientific data, which are recorded, processed and stored in indescribable quantities at any time, are also given a physical form and an acoustic expression with 

. There is an allegorical moment on the connections between climate and life. Atmosphere influences resonance space, resonance space influences sound, sound influences air. No air, no wind, no sound, no climate, and no life unless there is wind.  All of them are in cyclical processes and in direct connection.

The artists collaborate with specialists and scientists whose collaboration condenses the complex processes – often reminiscent of futuristic experiments -, into works of art that are alienated from their original content and placed in a context where they can be experienced and enable discourses far removed from scientific analysis.

 has been presented first in 2017 at Dittrich & Schlechtriem Gallery in Berlin.

Das Numen are Julian Charrière, Andreas Greiner, Markus Hoffmann and Felix Kiessling. The four artists work together both alone and temporarily as Das Numen. With their work, the collective connects issues of environment, society, nature and the correlative processes between them.

DAS NUMEN

Meatus

PLASMA 5 is finally out! 224 sharp looking pages full of science and the science fiction that inspired it! Bravo!

The latest issue of the infamous magazine recounts not just the exciting science that is being done from Berlin to LA, but also the incredible personalities behind it all. A testament to living and breathing the unimaginable. To making the impossible, possible. A thrilling journey through the work and minds of all kindred nerds, whether they be artists, scientists, or both. PLASMA 5 is the platform for creatives to speak the fierceness of their work and express the boldness of their personas.

The latest innovations in space exploration, science, and technology have launched us into a new age. One that has shifted our perception of the world through significant scientific breakthroughs and interplanetary discoveries. We now find ourselves living in a realm of knowledge hitherto unfathomed. A reality that almost sounds like science fiction and one where possibilities keep opening up. Exciting times for sure! 

Having spoken to many different scientists for this issue, PLASMA Magazine has noted time and time again the deep impact that science fiction has had on their research. From the engineers who built the largest space telescope to date (James Webb Space Telescope – JWST) to the biologists who study the strange properties of spider threads, science fiction has been one of the motivating factors that got them into their fields of study. But why? Because of our innate ability to put ourselves in scenarios where we live and breathe the unimaginable. To dream big no matter the odds. Science fiction is the potential of what we can build. What we can discover. It is a spark. For this, it is no wonder that we find it to be a key element of scientific discovery and technological development.

The new issue of PLASMA comes with 224 pages, jam-packed with interviews, stories, behind the scene sneak peaks, photo series, posters, and nerd guides that speak to this. Scientists from different fields, from Berlin to LA, all talking about their personal motivations and passions. A Berlin special introduces us to the diverse research areas this city is host to. Everything from the exploration of Mars to the creation of humanoid robots, Berlin is most certainly becoming a scientific point of reference in Europe. From there we jump across the Atlantic to explore all the latest nerd hot spots in NYC, learn about the latest JWST advancements, and so much more before our final jump over to the West Coast, where more scientific tales await!

The PLASMA Magazine’s team has yet again met and interviewed many people who have followed their vision and unusual ideas with a fearless determination to see them through, regardless of what others might think.

 „This, we know, is the only way. It’s not about ego, it’s about seeing the bigger picture and, in doing so, seeking kindred visionaries that will contribute to it. If there’s one thing we can learn from all these scientists, artists, and sci-fi characters, is that we are stronger as a team. No one achieves anything alone, not even Iron Man.“ 

 Diana Wehmeier (CEO + creative director of PLASMA Magazine)

Clemens Fantur, an editorial photographer from Vienna, has created the photographic concept for the issue. London-based Editor in Chief Judit Agui, specializing in science communication, and Co-Editor Azul Pinochet Barros, PhD Candidate at Cornell University (Ithaca, NY), have both worked through the interviews and texts for the issue. Creative Director and PLASMA Founder, Diana Wehmeier, developed the nerdy creative concept seen from cover to cover. She also carried out most of the interviews and provided the raw content for the magazine. The design and artistic language of the entire edition was created by the avant-garde visions of Berlin-based designer and art director David Benski.

The 5th edition is available in 250 shops worldwide (London, NYC, LA, and more) and will also be available at PYLON-Lab. 

PLASMA Magazine

PLASMA Magazine #5

 is a video essay, which as a large-sized projection, forms center of the eponymous exhibition by New York based artists Eva Mattes and Franco Mattes (installation views from its presentation at 

has been realised in collaboration with data analyst Vladan Joler, to whom the artists have voluntarily delivered all emails exchanged in the last 13 years (over 70,000 personal emails sent and received) and several months of browsing history. The video collects and analyzes the enormous wealth of information that often reveals intimate details of the private lives of the two artists, such as political or culinary preferences, work processes, places visited, or places where they lived, in order to create a portrait of them by extracting and examining those personal data and metadata.

„This is the point of view from the Panopticon tower, where a centralized hub of information maintains records of our every move. Like the famous portal in Spike Jonze’s movie led to John Malkovich’s head, this video is a portal into our minds.“

Likewise, the work reflects how all of our data is constantly reviewed, extracted, organized and sold by social media, government agencies, banks and smartphone applications, with the aim of influencing our behavior, generating profit and political consensus.

 (2019), a large installation consisting of a network of cable trays that unfolds throughout the exhibition space. These usually invisible industrial infrastructures are visibly present here. Suspended from the ceiling, they descend to up to waist height, limiting the movements of visitors. Interacting with existing structures, they reflect the assimilation of the Internet into everyday life.

The installation becomes a reflection on the insoluble link between public and private life, on the concept of privacy, on the invisible traces that we unknowingly disseminate on the net every time we connect. Inside the cables circulate, in constant flow, dozens of private photos taken by the artists, hidden from the human eye. Invisible images, yet always present, thus contribute to the formulation of what Byung-Chul Han defines as “the society of digital surveillance, which has access to the collective unconscious”.

Eva and Franco Mattes (originally from Brescia, Italy) form a duo, also known as 0100101110101101.org, as which they have been collaborating since 1995. Their works are the result of a strong ability to understand and use new media. For more than 20 years they have constantly produced works that respond to and examine our hyper-connected condition of life, exposing – often with notions of black humor -, its deepest ethical and political implications.

Their work has been exhibited at SFMoMA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; 20th Biennale of Sydney; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Performa, New York; MoMA PS1, New York; New Museum, New York; Manifesta, Frankfurt and the Venice Biennale.

Eva Mattes + Franco Mattes

My Big Little Data @ Careof

What Has Been Seen @ Fondation Phi

My Little Big Data

Paaulo Arraiano presented his recent video work 

 as part of the eponymous solo-show which has been on view until September 4th 2019 at Milan-based art space 

The paradoxical act of creation comes from a place of restlessness. The body, the mind, and the spirit inhabiting the conflict of time and space. Paulo Arraiano’s work embodies some of the most uneasy questions of what it means to be a citizen in the 21st century.

Through an ecological and minimal aesthetic, Arraiano shows a mediation between paradoxes, that at a first glance wouldn’t coexist. The artist’s clean and precise work shows an apparent peace and order, which hides the dichotomy of the savageness and what is highly polished. The choice of digital found imagery, captured with advanced technological tools (such as satellites and NASA devices), emerges as a base of the free access to information online. However, the lingering content of the images is nature, scaling from micro to macro. What is intrinsically human and how far can the technological humanity survive? Is there any degree of consciousness in the machine? The natural fluidity of life has been extensively explored by Paulo Arraiano, under the visual austerity of technological media. At this time the artist observes a shift on the paradigm of the emotional, sexual and spiritual human nature, which is being suppressed by a remote and mobile intellectualization. We are bound by the unknown eyes of God that records our digital life on a cloud. If on the one hand, our bodies are now remote mediators of control (monitored and also monitors), on the other, we are still made of the purest essence of the universe. On ​Sensorial Divinities,​ Arraiano explores exactly that – our existence and our source as water. Could it be that we are reaching a point of non-presence in which our hyperconnected life may soon depend on gluten-free, lactose-free, sugar-free, animal-free tube saline feeding? When thinking about the Anthropocene effects – extinction, possible humanity relocation to never before habitable areas of the world – one must wonder how does change affect the environment and how does the environment affect human essence.

The artist plays on the field between reality and the digital as a means to archive what once was and may not be, resulting in a dystopian view of post-humanism or trans-humanism. Moreover, Arraiano questions what is sensorial today and how are our senses activated, as we must assume that how we communicate has shifted into a visual paradigm, hence our connection to nature is being mediated by images. In ​Carbon Footprint Paulo Arraiano, shapes the flowy, almost etheric record of a spiritual machine, bird’s eye view, of bare land, which once was modeled by a life force. Fossilized memories of humanity are engulfed by sensory and watery appealing shapes, which may be containers of the aforementioned serum of life. The liquid is in a state of flow that feeds the shown ecosystem of possibilities.

The work that gives the title to this exhibition ​

,​ functions as an apparatus for a new spirituality. During five minutes images of nature and technology are merging, while a voice recites what unconsciously resembles a pre-paradigm change mass – “Transforming society and reality as we know it in the present moment, we are spectators of a precise moment where fiction… magic are becoming science facts. The arrival of the internet of things…”

Should we say ‘Amen’? Or perhaps… Are we creating digital immortality or could we become digitally immortal in a Google cloud of souls?

Paulo Arraiano

Sensorial Divinities @ Dimora Artica

Sensorial Divinities

Kuka industrial robot, stainless steel, rubber, cellulose ether in colored water, lighting grid with Cognex visual-recognition sensors, acrylic wall with aluminium frame

 is a kinetic installation by the Chinese artist duo Sun Yuan and Peng Yu.

The work was originally produced for the exhibition „Tales of Our Time“ at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York in 2016, where it has been on view until 2017. The installation is currently on view at the 58th International Art Exhibition, the Biennale in Venice, Italy, as part of the main exhibition, curated by Ralph Rugoff, currently director of the Hayward Gallery in London. Interestingly enough, the title of this year’s Biennale is titled „May You Live In Interesting Times“, which refers to a phrase of English invention that has long been mistakenly cited as an ancient Chinese curse that invokes periods of uncertainty, crises and turmoil, which becomes immanent, watching Yuan’s and Yu’s installation at it’s Sisyphean work.

, the artist duo has placed a gigantic mechanical construction with a robotic arm, one often seen on production lines such as those in car manufacturing, inside a hermetic glass cabinet ranging between display case and cage-like observation room in a laboratory, separating the splashing robot from the viewer. The predator-prey relationship between the two and the power structure between them oscillates from states of protection to voyeurism, creating an alternating state of mutual interest and indifference.

The robot is trained by the artists (in collaboration with two robotics engineers), to perform thirty-two different movements, gestures and dance-like poses, which let’s the machine turn, flex and „booty-shake“ as part of it’s choreography. Simultaneously, the robot is tasked with ensuing a thick, deep red liquid stays within predetermined area. The blood-like fluid naturally oozes away constantly from the designated area, triggering the visual-recognition sensors and engaging the machine to shovel it back into place with it’s rubber brush end, leaving smudges on the ground and splashes on the surrounding walls. The splashed and smeared molasses-like liquid enhances the overall contrast between organic and artificial, clinically sterile and excessive mess of the installation.

As the installation is a constant interplay between the robot and the fluid, it evokes questions about the relationship and the interrelated vulnerabilities between the organic and the mechanical. With 

, Sun Yuan and Peng Yu examine an increasingly automated global reality, one in which territories are controlled mechanically and the relationship between people and machines is rapidly changing. However, the bloodstain-like marks that accumulate around the installation also evoke subtle awareness of the violence that results from surveilling and guarding border zones as a consequence of an increasing use of technology to monitor our environment as part of different political agendas in the past, present and possible future.

The artist duo’s large installations often incorporate technological components that often instigate powerful physical and psychological reactions in the viewer. Sun Yuan & Peng Yu’s works often challenge systems of political and social authority, as they exemplify critical comments on the modern understanding and exercise of political constructs like the nation-state, sovereign territory, freedom, and democracy.

Sun Yuan + Peng Yu @ Biennale Arte 2019

Can't Help Myself

In his practice, London-based artist Steve Bishop focuses on creating complex, surreal spatial environments that conjure subtle emotional states through the evocation of abstract, biographically informed, dream-like parallel worlds. His objects, films, and sculptures address questions of remembrance and how architectural spaces can reflect interior states.

 at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, Bishop builds upon a body of research that focuses specifically on the fragility of memory and the potential for its preservation, defying the gradual breakdown of matter through the effects of time.

A | Lion’s mane mycelium (Hericium erinaceus) on supplemented saw-dust blocks, shelving, polyethylene-enclosed environment, humidity and temperature controllers, ultrasonic humidifiers, ventilation fans and ducting, water tanks, PVC crash doors, PVC flooring, lighting and lighting gels

B | SD video (1min 39sec, 480p, 4:3, color)

C | Six framed oil and acrylic paintings on canvas

D | Lion’s mane mycelium (Hericium erinaceus) on supplemented saw-dust blocks, fridge

E | HD video (24min, 1080p, colour, 16:9, sound)

The exhibition is based on two distinct but interrelated pillars: one of which is a deserted town in northern Canada that was built in 1981 to house the workers of a nearby mine and then abandoned in 1983, captured in a video work as part of the exhibition. Its remarkably intact state is due to the constant struggle to prevent the surrounding forest from reclaiming the town and is a testament to the live-in caretaker, who ensures that the lawns are mowed and the buildings are heated. The other point of departure is the unique restorative qualities of the lion’s mane mushroom: an edible, bulbous-looking mushroom native to the forests of North America, Europe and Asia that has shown a remarkable ability to stimulate the synthesis of nerve growth factor in the brain. Lion’s mane is sold as a dietary supplement for memory enhancement and is being researched as a potential medicine for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.

A large structural frame covered in a semi-opaque polyethylene tarp retains the specific air conditions needed for growing the mushrooms within the exhibition space. The tarp is both a practical element and a conceptual membrane, setting apart the two realms that frame the exhibition; the world where the mushrooms grow and that of the town. Paintings reproduced from the town are displayed behind the tarp, suggesting a fuzziness or out-of-reach quality. In the context of the exhibition, the preservation of the town, the uses of the mushroom, and the growing of the mushrooms in the gallery are brought together as interrelated symbols of “caretaking” and “maintenance,” summoning a feeling of something suspended in the oblique feeling of half-remembering.

The work displays a certain sense of aliveness, a charge that highlights a vulnerability in the process of continual growing and in turn deliquescing in a cyclical progression. Bishop strikes a delicate balance between a social blankness and a familiar—if not personal—specificity that both stimulate sensations of a shared consciousness.

Steve Bishop

KW Institute for Contemporary Art

Deliquescing

Christopher Meerdo

Channeling

New media artist Tabita Rezaire uses her “digital healing activism” to challenge existing colonial power structures through the world wide web. Rezaire’s cross-dimensional works, video-installations and exhibitions are expressions of an urge to heal an overall present disconnect as a modern phenomenon. Her work and healing strategies aim to reconnect body, uterus-mind and spirit in order to rehabilitate the repressive colonial hierarchies of the knowledge systems that define the dominant narratives of our present. Rezaire as a self-proclaimed “infinity incarnated into an agent of healing” strives to activate healing processes as a domino-effect of regenerating oneself. 

In her artistic practice, Rezaire investigates anti-colonial self-healing through the power of technology. Her work navigates through the structures of power and addresses the ubiquitous matrix of coloniality and its impact on knowledge, technology, sexuality and spirituality. Abstaining from any formative boundaries, Rezaire dissects the hidden paradigms and forces a critical engagement with her own artistic means.

 is its extension as a virtual reality experience, that takes the viewer to a rendered version of Google Earth’s underwater surface. Some web users claimed to have located Atlantis on the virtual map: Strange structures that appeared to be visible from above through the surface of the water off the coast of Morocco in the online map’s visuals fueled the wildest speculations. The shapes had features of an ordered architectural structure underwater, therefore rumors were literally afloat that it in fact could be the lost Atlantis that had been located. There are five portals in the middle of Rezaire’s virtual reality, allowing the visitor to enter this African spiritual landscape between information, communication, technology and the wisdom of fortune telling.

 is an exploration of the layers between ICT (Information and Communication Technologies), African divination systems, the mushroom underworld, communication per se and quantum physical laws in order to deduce and rethink our information lines. 

 follows the idea that ICT acts as a reflection of the organic world, which can heal or intoxicate in accordance to the consumer’s and user’s behaviour, and examines the cybernetic spaces in which the organic, technological and spiritual worlds are connected. How about using these biological or esoteric systems to accelerate and strengthen the technological system of modern information processing and the necessary control? 

overcomes the dichotomies between organism, spirit, device and investigates the spiritual connections as a network of communication and the potential of anti-colonial technologies. Rezaire implicates how – contrary to Eurocentric thinking – our information highway might have its roots in African spirituality. Actual scientific investigations relate the birth of computer science to African divination systems, such as the Ifa system of the Yoruba in East Africa, which seems to be the origin of binary mathematics, which is the basic functional principle of computer science. But how and why did this origin and knowledge disappear into oblivion, and how did it become obsolete in favour of Western achievements? Tabita Rezaire explores these questions and demonstrates the discrepancy of modern times.

 Overcoming the learnt thinking patterns and prejudices, her work proposes a new kind of connectivity and lots of new potentials. The often emphasised human potential for complex communication is refuted by the observation of underground mushroom networks and their function as communication and information transmitters. This dense mesh of tiny plant structures creates a communication network and is used to share informations. In addition, a form of spatial intelligence develops. Ancient traditional cultures have known for a long time how to communicate with nature and how to transfer this knowledge. Western culture prefers to celebrate modern technologies rather than these given information databases and therefore not only praises the result of institutional violence, but continues to reproduce it to this day without considering its possible replacement by nature.

In Rezaire’s research on dynamic networks of artificial, spiritual, and biological environments, a mystic techno-consciousness entrenches itself in the politics of possibilities where it could promote a symbiosis of mind and body, and mind and technology. As an artist, Rezaire does not link her work to the viewer’s expectations, instead she simply accesses different perspectives on these themes and tries to counteract the extinction of knowledge. Conspiracies, secrecy and conscious misinformation have been a known tactic of manipulation and conditioning for centuries, affecting the welfare of our societies. While digging into healing technologies and strategies to regenerate ourselves and to understand ourselves better, the observer senses that energetic and spiritual work is fundamental to the process. Her artwork faces itself to the dominant narratives of the misconception that everything of value has originated in the West, while at the same time actually reveal a wide field of different sources and stories to the viewer. As a consequence, a level of awareness is created about how what we consider legitimate has been purposefully developed to distance us from our power and our actions. 

 is Rezaire’s contribution to a non-Western written history and dogma of its knowledge. It can be perceived as a practice of repositioning within the narratives of the past, determined to actively creating an alternative future, where the big disconnect will be healed.

 was commissioned for UNREAL by NRW- Forum Düsseldorf Museum, Germany, while the video work 

 has been commissioned by Impakt @EMARE, Netherlands.

Rezaire is a founding member of the South African based creative collective NTU, half of the duo Malaxa and refers to herself as the mother of the energy house SENEB. Rezaire has shown her work internationally at the Berlin Biennale, Tate Modern London, the Museum of Modern Art Paris, MoCADA NY, The Broad, Los Angeles and at many other institutions, exhibitions and festivals. She currently lives and works in Cayenne, French Guiana.

Tabita Rezaire

Malaxa

PREMIUM CONNECT / PREMIUM CONNECT (Real Deal)

 is a collection of videos by multimedia artist Stine Deja, reimagining the human form.

 online exhibition ‘Flow my tears’ – curated by Bob Bicknell-Knight / Isthisit? (see link below).

3D hybrid beings, constructed of biological organs and technological prosthetics stand in a literal ‘grey area’ making familiar sounds and subtle movements. There is an undeniable bizarreness to imagining the inner-workings of our biological bodies, but when cleaned up and stripped of the ‘mess’ a digestive tract earns the same elegance as a single unoccupied contact lens. 

investigates the complexity of the human physique and exemplifies an idea of how technology offers a way of maximizing it’s physical potential. The videos include stylised, moving body parts and unique sound pieces, intensifying the particular motion.

For it’s recent installation at Schimmel Projects Art Center, Stine Deja created a site-specific environment around the video pieces. Six tons of gravel had been installed to extract the grey zone narrative into the physical space. Deja created a unique ecosystem inside the exhibition space: the natural floor makes the environment feel both inside and outside, underlining the contrast between natural and artificial, while the smoke instates an unconscious mystery in the space by drawing on recurring sci-fi tropes. 

The viewer is forced to feel they have slipped into another reality, where even the view from the windows to the ‘outside world’ is no longer as expected. This futuristic re-imagining of bodies draws on one of Deja’s key questions: what does it mean to be human in the age of artificial intelligence and the technological takeover?

Stine Deja (1986, Denmark) received her MA from the Royal College of Art in London in 2015 and has since shown her work in various places, most recently: Annka Kultys Gallery (London), UNIT 110 (New York) and SixtyEight Art Institute (Copenhagen). In January she will begin her three-month residency for ‘Future human’ at SPACE, London.

Stine Deja

daata editions

Hard Core, Soft Bodies

 is the title of a film and sound installation by Marianna Simnett. 

Simnett creates fable-like film, performance, sound and light installations that examine the sense of intimacy yet anxious unfamiliarity we experience with our own bodies. She particularly focuses on the means we deploy to control these bodies, both technological and cultural. Her works show her interest in how gender is constructed and in its relationship to mechanisms of desire and capitalist consumption. They also reflect the impact of new technologies – robotics, virtual reality, bio-medical – on both the built environment and subjectivity.

As a trained musician, the influence of theatre and classical music on Simnett’s work endured as she turned to film, installation and performance during her BA at Nottingham Trent University in 2007 and her MA at the Slade School of Art in 2013.

 is a survey of her filmic universe and a continuation of her ongoing investigation of anxieties around the body and the self. Experienced as a single storyline unfolding across five screens, this project chronicles Simnett’s exploration of organs, body parts, and infection through the lens of medical treatment and procedures. 

 has first been presented at Zabludowicz Collection in London in the summer of this year, where three of her films 

 (2016) had been installed as a trilogy for the first time. 

For Simnett’s current exhibitions at the New Museum in New York and the MMK in Frankfurt am Main, she presents BLOOD IN MY MILK as a five-channel video installation, including her films mentioned above, together with her latest film project “Worst Gift” (2017), and summarizes their work of the last five years as a composition of their new edits.

constitutes Simnett’s first encompassing visual epic, bringing her many characters in dialogue with one another across time and space—medical experts and scientists perform routine injections and operations alongside children’s games of hide-and-seek, farmers carry out disinfection rituals and cockroaches turn into biobots— to construct paranoid tales of sickness and transformation, often with Simnett herself as the protagonist. Simnett is consistently working with non-actresses and non-actors. Many of the individuals Simnett meets through her research become collaborators, performing heightened versions of themselves within the films of the multi-channel installation.

 conveys a sense of discomfort with sterile environments and the invisible alien substances in our bodies that medical and industrial procedures aim to conceal. The songs, written by Simnett and performed by the cast, lend an air of innocence and lightness to her densely layered storytelling, are serving as a pre-linguistic tool for communication. Simnett’s films unfold from multiple, occasionally impossible perspectives (from within dreams or personifying internal organs), reflecting the fluidity of our identities as they are embodied and performed. The films have the potential to provoke a visceral reaction, featuring unflinching depictions of many commonplace phobias such as needles, cockroaches, blood, and of medical procedures which the artist has herself undergone. They present the body as both monstrous and clinical, combining scientific description with the cathartic fantasy of musicals and horror genres. 

The drastic nature of the images still does not lead into the splatter genre whatsoever, but into theory, back to the question of economic and social power relations, as Simnett’s works seek to create in-between states that defy and threaten easy categorisation by the patriarchal social structures that govern our bodies and identities. It’s an approach that throws into doubt binary categories such as innocence and cruelty, purity and contamination, desire and revulsion, and even life and death.

Marianna Simnett

New Exhibitions Museum New York

MMK Frankfurt

Blood In My Milk

If there is a tendency towards technological enlightenment in media-based art, then Ralf Bæcker is one of its first activists and most interesting representatives. He combines science, technology and art par excellence into an exciting overall concept that combines artistic aspects with the theoretical knowledge of cognition and process theory.

Ralf Bæcker combines the various aspects of his view of things into a media-archaeological perspective and generates technology-related works that transcend the production-technical aspects of the instruments and transform them into an instrument for a higher level of knowledge. His machines and constructions not only question the invisible processes behind the technological procedures, they also bridge the gap to contemporary visual language.   Bæecker is definitely an aesthete who knows how to design generated products in a visually attractive way and to integrate the visual characteristics of the work.

The complex apparatuses combine the current „look“ of up-to-date technology with a more substantial view, i.e. the reflections on the genesis of modern functional principles, providing a basis for new functions. Through the newly conceived apparatuses, these thoughts become transferred into a physical shape and the prior thinking process will be translated into a visual product.

The interdisciplinary artist develops his own view from a phenomenal analytical perspective and cultivates a multidimensional character with his machines, whereby the work corresponds to the visual and analytical aspects. When the analytical thought corresponds to a system-inherent focus on the process and the result, the visual is connected to the optical appearance. Bæecker also creates hybrids that mediate between contemporary and old technology as well as art and science

 from 2016 is a full digital memory, which can be called in a row with SSD, hard drives or USB sticks. Like its commercially used counterparts, information can be stored, processed and read from this device. The first difference can already be noticed with an experienced look, RAM does not use semiconducting components and the step-by-step process is visually exactly noticeable. The semiconductors used in hard disks and modern information technology are an ecological and humanitarian disaster, followed by massive geological and human exploitation, due to the rigorous usage of rare earths and cheap labour. The mathematical algorithm underlying RAM uses a digital form that describes and computes the relations of the binary states 0 (zero) or 1 (one). These binary states are represented by grains of sand, which exemplify the storage states by their physical position. The sand grains are read, placed or removed on a rotating disc by a three-dimensional pick and place mechanism connected to a microscope camera. The position of each individual grain of sand can be tracked, assigned and processed by RAM. Accuracy-conscious theorists may argue that the storage mechanism is quite susceptible to mis-reading because a physical object is used and can move uncontrollably in space.

The algorithm acting on the grains of sand is a so-called „Turmit“, a two-dimensional Turing machine. The machine processes the location of the grains of sand as binary code and computes them in its memory, whose purpose is to write as many 1’s (stones) as possible into the memory and to avoid an abort according to a rigorous internal mathematical code. During the process, a complex and iterative pattern is created on the wafer.

RAM is a simple representation of an exact mathematical algorithm and its physically impure implementation, reflecting the interaction of idea and matter and their encounter in contemporary ITC. A look back in history reveals that the science of sand, geomancy or „Ilm Al-raml“, which involves the calculation and reading of constellations of geological materials and/or grains of sand, has been a field of science for centuries. Probably from the Arabian, this science immigrated to Europe in the 12th century and is still in practice today. Stones are “spilled” on a surface and interpreted according to a strict set of rules which are applied recursively to the grains. Often used in rituals and ceremonies, this is a method to obtain insights about the future. 

, Bæecker uses a complex mathematical background and its accurate process to translate it into a visual capturable experience. Materials: aluminium profiles, stepper motors, quartz sand, customized mounting mechanism, customized electronics, microscope camera, customized software.

The work was produced in 2016 with the support of the Graduate School of the University of the Arts, Berlin and with the support of the Einstein Foundation