Learn to be a Machine | DistantObject #1 is an abstract system of obedience and manipulation. The video installation features a representation of the artist himself, who has provided a means for the audience to interact with the system. By scrolling a trackball, the audience can manipulate the direction of the artist’s eyes. Blinking and facial expressions are generated randomly.The work explores the power relation between humans and machines.

How can humankind arrive at an eminently livable future? Which pioneers are already blazing trails in that direction and can make it accessible to all? These questions are being posed by the 2014 Ars Electronica Festival, and there’ll be no shortage of potential answers to them either!

Delivering Energy

Thus, the C in the festival theme also stands for catalysts, the agents necessary to provide energy and trigger a reaction that gets change underway—not only in chemistry experiments; in processes of social renewal too. Since time immemorial, art has been a superb catalyst. It can impart energy to an idea without exhausting itself.

Making the World a Better Place

Artists as catalysts of change: the 2014 Ars Electronica Festival will address this fascinating concept as well. How art can be applied will be showcased in the Change Gallery arrayed in and around the Arkade shopping center. These best-practice examples of how technical and social innovations can make life better have been designed to impart the courage to get started with some much-needed change. The mix also includes an interesting assortment of media art from around the world.

JohnHathway (JP)
THU September 4 - MON September 8, 2014, 9:30 AM-7 PM
Arkade, Porzellanmanufaktur Augarten

A Delta-Figure is a sculpture that employs complex and minute movements, placing it within the continuum between “robot” and “still sculpture.” The difference between a “still sculpture” and a “still human” is whether the subject is standing completely still or whether it moves in minute yet complex ways. A human being is unable to become completely still since the nervous system and circulatory organs will always cause minute movements. 


Minute variations


Those minute variations reify a living thing and provide it with its presence; even though the movements are minute, they are still highly complex. Robots that perform or do work, plus other kinetic artistic expression, would simplify or ignore entirely those minute variations. Delta-Figures are unique sculptures that utilize artificial muscles and standalone control circuits to express both the “complexity of movements” and “minute variations” at the same time.

Akademisches Gymnasium, Neubau, Future Innovators Summit Exhibition

The featured artists at the 2014 Ars Electronica Festival are a duo from the Republic of Korea. Since 2012, computer specialist Shin Seung Back and artist Kim Yong Hun have been working together under the dual portmanteau Shinseungback Kimyonghun. 10 works representative of their oeuvre are on display at Ars Electronica.

Understanding Digital Life

The driving force behind their artistic-technological partnership is the wish to comprehend what digital life truly is. For these two, that presupposes grasping the essence of technology and humankind. Both men bring a wealth of experience to this task.

The Computer as Being …

Shin Seung Back’s previous work as a programmer of virtual network environments and interactive real-time systems for computer games and the consumer electronics industry enabled him to gain profound understanding of the computer. For him, it’s not merely a computational device but rather a creature whose traits are attributable above all to its relationship to its environment and to other computers.

… and as Seeing Machine

Kim Yong Hun considers the computer as, first and foremost, a seeing apparatus for humans, one that determines how people visualize the world. Just as the automobile has weaned humankind from walking, the computer will, sooner or later, get people to give up first seeing and then thinking, and leave both to the machine. Kim Yong Hun is absolutely convinced of this.

What Will Be Human?

His collaboration with Shin Seung Back has brought him face-to-face with a big question: What will humankind’s humanity consist of under these circumstances? Coming up with an answer is part of Shinseungback Kimyonghun’s mission.

Works

Cloud Face

Ars Electronica Center, Foyer

Face-detection algorithms sometimes find faces that are not. Cloud Face is a collection of cloud images that are recognized as human face by a face-detection algorithm. This work attempts to examine the relation between computer vision and human vision.

CAPTCHA Tweet

Ars Electronica Center, Out of Control Exhibition

CAPTCHA has originally been developed to distinguish computers from humans. It asks the user to type text from a distorted image. CAPTCHA Tweet is an application that users can post tweets as CAPTCHA. Since computers can hardly read it, humans can communicate behind their sight.

FADTCHA

Ars Electronica Center, Out of Control Exhibition

(FAce Detection Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) presumes a reverse situation. It requires a user to find a face in an image, which is visible only to computers. This test can pick out non-computers.

The God’s Script

Ars Electronica Center, Out of Control Exhibition

This work displays a sequence of words in the novel The Writing of the God by Jorge Luis Borges followed by each word’s first google image search result updated in real-time.

A Million Seasons

Ars Electronica Center, Out of Control Exhibition

White cherry blossoms in the street, a lady in pink skirts, yellow leaves on sprouts…  What is the ‘image of Spring’? This project is an attempt to describe images of four seasons with a million photos each. A million Flickr photos tagged ‘spring’ are collected, and each photo is turned into one pixel with an average color. The one million pixels from one million photos compose an image of Spring. The images of the rest of the seasons are created the same way.

Click

Ars Electronica Center, Out of Control Exhibition

How do we record the computer mediated lives of ours? Mouse click symbolizes a special moment in time we spend with computers. A day of our computer mediated life has been recorded by capturing a screen shot of my desktop every time we clicked.

Cat or Human

Arkade, Barschneiderei

Human faces recognized as a cat face by a cat face-detection algorithm. Cat faces recognized as a human face by a human face-detection algorithm.

Portrait

Arkade, Barschneiderei

Portrait is a series of portraits representing an identity of a movie. A custom software detects faces from every frame of a movie, and creates an average face of all found faces. The composite image reflects the centric figure(s) and the visual mood of the movie.

Memory

Arkade, Barschneiderei

The frame recognizes human faces, and superimposes them endlessly. The face in the frame is an average face of all the faces it has seen. This is a history of the frame itself and of the people who have viewed the frame.

Nonfacial Mirror

Akademisches Gymnasium, Neubau, Future Innovators Summit Exhibition

The mirror avoids faces. One can look at his/her face in the mirror only when it’s a nonface.

Read more about this on our Ars Electronica Blog!

The wall installation In Search of Lost Time consists of 42 flip-flap displays arranged in a square grid. Instead of alphanumeric text, the modules are reduced to colour and movement. By detecting activity in the room, the units randomly start to move until they reach a synchronized rhythm. When the visitor leaves the room, the motors decelerate and return to their initial position, except one additional module which keeps a revised position thereby creating a dynamic autopoietic image.

Live performance: THU September 4, SAT September 6, SUN September 7, MON September 8, 2014, 5 PM
Arkade