The “AI—The other I” symposium considers theoretical implications of the increasing integration of neural networks and machine learning in advanced as well as everyday technology. Art and science are heavily influenced by the impact of new exploration methods that these recent technologies provide.
Ramifications of an automated society force us to rethink concepts of work, education and income. Never before has the idea of a basic income and the importance of public safety nets been discussed so intensely. In the end, the primary objective might even be the analysis of what constitutes us as human beings: What makes anyone good, worthy, morally right or wrong?
This event is realized in the framework of the European Digital Art and Science Network and co-funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union.
Even if artificial intelligence seems to be a long way away, many aspects of our lives are already being influenced by autonomous machines and systems. But what constitutes neural networks and machine learning processes, and at what point in its development are we right now? This panel aims to give a deeper insight at the applications of AI and at the promises, fears and potentials of these evolving technologies.
| 10:00 AM | Gerfried Stocker (AT), Welcome Address |
| 10:15 AM | Robert Trappl (AT), AI: Past, Presence, Future |
| 10:40 AM | Joanna Zylinska (UK), Man 2.0: AI in the Anthropocene |
| 11:05 AM | Q&A |
Chair: Martina Mara (AT)
In mirroring our human strategies for learning and recognition in the designs of artificial intelligence we are forced to reflect on our own thinking processes: How is human thinking constituted? When transferring thinking and learning processes to neural networks it becomes almost impossible to trace how these machines actually function.
| 11:35 AM | Beatrice de Gelder (BE), AI & BI: Can Deep Mind Meet Deep Body? |
| 12:00 noon | Memo Akten (TR/UK), Intelligent Machines That Learn: What Do They Know? Do They Know Things?? Let’s Find Out! |
| 12:25 PM | Q&A |
Chair: Martina Mara (AT)
Art has been considered as a distinct human expression of creativity. This understanding is being questioned by the novelty effect of artworks created with the help of intelligent machines. Can autonomous systems understand and invoke emotions, which are an essential part of creating and perceiving artwork? How sensual is music composed by machines? How original are paintings created by neural networks, and can they provoke a contemplative experience within us? The definition of art and creativity finds itself in a state of transformation, which in turn challenges the function of the artist.
| 12:55 PM | Kenric McDowell (US), Art and High Dimensional Life |
| 1:20 PM | Rebecca Fiebrink (US), Machine Learning as Creative, Collaborative Design Tool |
| 1:45 PM | Q&A |
Chair: Martina Mara (AT)
What are the sociocultural, philosophical and ethical implications of intensifying our reliance on digital technology? The contemporary discourse on and around AI developments extends well beyond the technological and economic horizon.
| 3 PM | Joanna J. Bryson (US), There Is No AI Ethics: Five Reasons Not to Other AI |
| 3:25 PM | Dr. Sandra Wachter (AT), The Algorithmic Society—Legal and Ethical Questions of AI, Robotics, and Autonomous Systems |
| 3:50 PM | Zenbo Hidaka (JP), Spirituality and AI |
| 4:15 PM | Mark Coeckelbergh (BE/AT), Romantic Cyborgs |
| 4:40 PM | Manthia Diawara (ML/US), Culture and Politics in the Age of AI |
| 5:05 PM | Q&A |
Chair: Jurij Krpan (SI)
We usually focus our considerations on the impact that the introduction of new technologies makes on culture and society. But technology has always been a central part of culture, and not only in its applications.
Perhaps even more strongly, in its development, in the visions and intentions that human beings thereby pursue, it is a direct expression of the cultures and the times from which it emerged. How different cultures form technological developments and applications is the question at the opening symposium of the 2017 Ars Electronica Festival.
Panelists:
Maria Yablonina (RU), Mark Coeckelbergh (BE/AT), Zenbo Hidaka (JP), Shunji Yamanaka (JP)
Chair: Gerfried Stocker (AT)
Characters are a means of visual communication and recording a language. Civilizations throughout the world have created various characters that convey their culture and history. This project focuses purely on the form of the characters rather than their meaning.
A(.I.) Messianic Window is a project addressing AI’s oversimplification of complex human concepts. The stained-glass window depicts an artificial-intelligence interpretation of the term Messiah. The context of A(.I.) Messianic Window is the current trend of applying humanistic, cultural and non-universally defined concepts to artificial intelligence.
The importance of sound and rhythm is manifested in events such as military marches, protests, manifestations of celebration or spiritual rituals. Interested in the relationship between power and amplification or multiplication of sound, this machine was designed and built as a vehicle to explore and discover such subjects.
A medical machine for pulmonary ventilation plays a musical chord on a few organ pipes, a fragment of music (in reference to Johannes Brahms’ German Requiem) frozen to the constant rhythm of the automatic breath. The action of this artificial organ raises ethical questions about the will and responsibility involved in this mechanical requiem, a metaphor for a limit that people delegate to technology.
The project unifies Tobias Gremmler’s most recent video works. The comprehensive topic concerns the digital virtualization of the human, culture and mind.
In our audible/profitable economy/exhibition financial microtransactions are transformed into extra tonal sound structures. The exhibition consists of several coin-operated machines, each dedicated to a specific sonic event.
The large-scale project Until I Die is a hybrid installation that uses the artist’s blood, extracted and accumulated over a long period of time. The blood is used to generate electricity for a small sound synthesizer.
In the wake of Google’s AI Go victory, filmmaker Oscar Sharp turned to his technologist collaborator Ross Goodwin to build a machine that could write screenplays. They created “Jetson” who later renamed himself “Benjamin”, and fuelled him with hundreds of sci-fi TV and movie scripts.
The center elements of the work are a red glass crystal and a flexible Fresnel lens. The project includes many reworked electronic devices – a CD-ROM, an old scanner, reused electric motors. Multiple moving elements provide a wide variability for rather primitive optical elements.
A technological singularity: the point where artificial intelligence surpasses that of humans and continues to accelerate. A gravitational singularity: a theoretical point in space-time of infinite density. The emergence of a thought is imagined here in parallel to extreme gravitational phenomena.
Hybrid Sensorium explores the way we sense our body within physical space and the sensory distortions caused both by mediating technology and direct contact. The artwork is placed in immediate physical contact with the visitor, both thus becoming vulnerable to emotional contamination.
Inner Telescope is centered on a visionary artwork conceived by Eduardo Kac and realized in space in collaboration with the French astronaut Thomas Pesquet.
Chains is an interactive installation dealing with the bitcoin cryptocurrency. Based on experiments with automatic trading systems, the artists developed a system to visualize and thereby study the principle of block chains.
Synapse and Bodyscape are both examples of fashion items which integrate the latest digital fabrication techniques with robotic and sensor technologies in order to explore how our wearables can become an interface with the world around us.
Data Stratification evolved from ideas of the tools and technologies that colonizers use to inhabit and disrupt the colonized in Australia, and to fragment these people and their culture. The artist sees text as one of these colonizing technologies.
Wind of Linz: Data Paintings is a site-specific work commissioned by Ars Electronica that turns the invisible patterns of wind in and around the city of Linz into a series of poetic data paintings within a 6ʹ x 12ʺ digital canvas.
As the beat drops and the stage lights strobe, pop stars dripping with bling flash their jeweled gold teeth. A world away, in a hole in the ground in the wild-west mining town of Ilakaka, Madagascar, another ensemble of bodies move in rhythm, to dig dirt by hand out of the bottom of a precious gem mine.
Domas Schwarz’s installation Wachstropf showcases the beauty of natural processes and the transience of the environmental states that we have naturally grown accustomed to, and constitutes a metaphor for the works created in this world by nature and humankind.
Field is a light installation combining fluorescent tubes and Tesla coils. It utilizes the coils’ high-voltage fields to illuminate surrounding tubes without the use of physical power connections.
All of Us explores the aesthetics of scars to highlight their visual aspects and exhibit something that is usually not on display. Apart from the visible wound, scars are also constant reminders of injuries and events.
Sculpture of Time is several works developed from the toki- series. Their creation started with the question of what it means to “move.” These works realize time, something that cannot be seen, by connecting two-dimensional movement to the third dimension through 3D printing.
Reading Plan is an interactive artwork with 23 automatic page-turning machines. When audiences enter the exhibition room, the machines start to turn the pages automatically and read their contents in the voice of elementary school students. The machines are a metaphor for a Taiwanese classroom.
Leveraging the intelligence of human stem cells, Amy Karle created Regenerative Reliquary a bioprinted scaffold in the shape of a human hand 3D-printed in a biodegradable PEGDA-hydrogel that disintegrates over time.
Pool of Fingerprints consists of a large display surface and a fingerprint scanner. The display surface is populated with fingerprints swimming like a school of fish. The visitor can release his or her own fingerprint and watch it swim with others.
Nyloïd is an impressive sound sculpture, a huge tripod consisting of three six-meter-long nylon limbs animated by sophisticated mechanical and sound devices. Sensual, animal and threatening, this mobile draws its dramatic power from the reactivity of its plastic and sound material to diverse mechanical constraints.
MoRFES_02 (Mobile Robotic Fabrication Eco-System 02) is an iteration of a series of experiments and demonstrators conducted by Maria Yablonina as part of her ongoing research on collaborative mobile robots for architectural fabrication.
The adjective “fidgety” describes a nervous and jumpy feeling. Normally people see this as a bad feeling. However, the artist treats it as a musical idea.
Deltu is a delta robot with a strong personality that interacts with humans through two iPads. Depending on its mood it plays with the recipients.
Making use of current image-recognition software, Deep Learning Kubrick explores the idea of AI trying to make sense of stories and fictions; in this case snippets from classics by the film director Stanley Kubrick.
Commissioned to work with SALT Research collections, the artist Refik Anadol employed machine-learning algorithms to search and sort relations among 1.7 million documents. Interactions of the multidimensional data found in the archives are, in turn, translated into an immersive media installation.
The “CSIA” is a creative research project that partially replicates an open-source intelligence (OSINT) system, including an interface that allows users to experience how intelligence agents surveil social media posts and two machine-learning classifiers for predictive policing.
They say any two people in the world can be connected through friends of friends, just in a few steps. How about artworks? Using machine-learning techniques that analyze the visual features of artworks, X Degrees of Separation finds pathways between any two artifacts, connecting the two through a chain of artworks.
White Collar Crime Risk Zones uses machine learning to predict where financial crimes will happen across the US. The system was trained on incidents of financial malfeasance from 1964 to the present day, collected from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), a non-governmental organization that regulates financial companies.
Given audio of President Barack Obama, the scientists synthesize a high-quality video of him speaking with accurate lip sync, composited into a target video clip.
Over the past few years, machine-learning research has rapidly overtaken the field of computer vision with advanced techniques for real-time image processing, enabling many promising new applications.
Can a machine make us look at art through the lens of today’s world? Inspired by the paradoxes of bringing AI to a museum applying rational and objective thinking to a subjective field like art, Recognition uses artificial intelligence algorithms to compare photographs from current events as they unfold.
Portraits of Imaginary People explores the latent space of human faces by training an artificial neural network to imagine and generate portraits of non-existent people.
The artist and designer Daniel de Bruin is driven by the desire to become part of the things he creates. Neurotransmitter 3000 is such a thing: a seven-meter-high attraction in which he lets himself swing around.
Fall of the House of Usher, based on the short story by Edgar Allan Poe, is a twelve-minute animation in which each still is generated by artificial intelligence. This is done by using a neural net (pix2pix) trained on the artist’s ink drawings from stills from the 1929 version of the film.
Kitty AI is a twelve-minute first-person narrative with post-Internet graphics that provides the audience with a snapshot of the history of affective computing.
Based on AI models currently used, among other things, in content moderation and surveillance, the artworks explore the “latent space” of the AI as it processes and imagines the world for itself, dreaming in the areas between and beyond what it has learnt from us.
Blade Runner—Autoencoded is a film made by training an autoencoder—a type of generative neural network—to recreate frames from the 1982 film Blade Runner. The Autoencoder learns to model all frames by trying to copy them through a very narrow information bottleneck, being optimized to create images that are as similar as possible to the original images.
This is a story of discovery, technology and one that calls into question the humanity of creativity. The film tells the story of technologist Ross Goodwin and his literary artificial-intelligent robot as they set out to write the longest novel in the English language.
Zo: Tangible AI is a tangible interface that enhances physical engagement in digital communication between the audiences and a social chatbot.
The pet robot AIBO was born at Sony in 1999 as the world’s first home-entertainment robot. About 150,000 robots were built but production and sales ended in 2006 and technical support was also discontinued in 2014. Today former Sony engineers provide unofficial maintenance services for owners who remain firmly attached to their AIBO robots.
Robot, Doing Nothing accuses our modern society of being incessantly busy even beyond the confines of everyday life in the workplace. Emanuel Gollob has created a fictitious scenario: the results of studies demonstrate that the efficiency of our society is enhanced by doing nothing.
Landmarks consists of a series of 3D lenticular images. Corporeal constructions in the form of meshes of lines and flat shapes seem to rise from the image’s surface and float in space in front of the actual image plane. These fluctuating structures take shape on the basis of virtual wire-mesh models.
A deep neural network opening its eyes for the first time, and trying to understand what it sees. Learning to See is an ongoing series of works that use state-of-the-art machine-learning algorithms as a means of reflecting on ourselves and how we make sense of the world.
This installation creates a situation where the fate of a colony of living houseflies is determined by the accuracy of artificial-intelligence software.
F.o.G.—Face on Globe is a concept used to study interactions between humans and artifacts. Most interactive robots are designed to have human likeness in order to make their interactions with people more natural.
al-dente is a prototype to control an object’s stiffness using a complex structure realized by additive manufacturing (AM) technology. AM, used in 3D printing, permits the fabrication of complex shapes and can be used to produce physical properties that have previously been hard to control.
Ad Infinitum: a parasite that lives off human energy is a parasitic entity that lives off human energy. This parasite reverses humankind’s dominant role with respect to technologies: the parasite shifts humans from “users” to “used”.
A living piece of architecture is a conceptual utopian design for housing beyond smart homes, intended to overcome existing dualisms such as digital and material, artificial and natural.
Through author(rise), the artists investigate how this relationship evolves, when the substitution leaks out of the mental domain and into our physical body
The Dermal Abyss creates a direct access to the compartments in the body and reflects inner metabolic processes in the shape of a tattoo. Traditional tattoo inks are replaced with biosensors whose color changes.
Perpetuum Mobile is a composition for a twelve-channel sound installation. Twelve loudspeakers stand in a circle. Every second a note moves from one speaker to the next, clockwise.
Light as a reference to the soul and consciousness glows in a gelatin cube, thus at the same time serving as a source of information.
Delivery Graphic is a drawing machine that creates graphics generated by being transported between two places.
Exploring the future of the interface, we predict a future where objects can be controlled subconsciously. As technology evolves and the boundaries between the physical and digital begin to blur, new interfaces are needed.
This work illustrates a future scenario in which an artificial intelligence creates new life forms and controls its development. This project is a techno-biological installation consisting of hardware, software and wetware.
Ready to Crawl is a project of 3D-printed organic-like robots. By printing everything except the motor as one unit, the robots are born with a completed shape like real creatures. After the robots have been printed by a selective laser sintering machine, excess nylon powder is removed, a motor is inserted, and then they start crawling.
Papilion is an environmentally responsive experimental architecture making use of soft robotics technology. The surface covering the dome can change shape by the wing-like units using actuators driven by temperature conditions. It seems that the building itself is breathing.
When he came to the alphabet, Theuth said: “This art, O king, will make the Egyptians wiser and richer in memory.” This is the myth of the invention of writing according to Plato’s Phaidros, which Myth of Theuth takes as base for a playful examination of media theories.
The latest AI research makes it possible to teach computers the names of things by showing them many examples. The key is a large amount of training data and deep learning software. By leveraging this, the artists have developed an AI capable of classifying 406 kinds of flower by using over 300,000 flower pictures.
Just in time for the festival, Deep Space 8K—the ultimate attraction at the Ars Electronica Center—is premiering a series of new and fascinating visualizations. Thanks to 16×9-meter projection surfaces on the space’s front wall and floor, 8K resolution and sophisticated technical features like laser tracking, festivalgoers are in for breathtaking worlds of imagery and mind-blowing experiences over the five-day festival run.
In the Pogrom Night in November 1938, a mob acting on orders of the Nazi regime broke into the Linz Synagogue—like so many other Jewish houses of worship that night—ransacked it and set it ablaze. All that remained of the synagogue was a burnt-out ruin. In conjunction with the work on his master’s thesis at the Technical University of Vienna, René Mathe created a virtual reconstruction of the Linz Synagogue.
The Memories of Borderline is a unique merger of theater and virtual reality. Schauspiel Dortmund and CyberRäuber have cooperated to create a new virtual, immersive and interactive space based on the stage and performance of the acclaimed play Die Borderline Prozession.
Paint and animate live: Tagtool transforms your tablet into a live instrument for spontaneous visual expression. Paint with light, create animated graffiti or tell improvised stories. Tagtool can be used for jams and performances.
This series of scientific experiments conducted by Dr. Manuela Macedonia and her staff at Johannes Kepler University Linz in cooperation with the Ars Electronica Center and the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan, investigates learning a language in a virtual setting.
This program impressively demonstrates new and innovative approaches in current digital filmmaking at the interface of art and science—e.g. nature and bio-tech studies, morphogenesis, experiments with architecture, and perception.
Help us clean up Deep Space! Having fun with space junk? Eurogym Space Debris, a game developed by high school students at Europagymnasium Baumgartenberg, makes collecting cosmic garbage a competitive challenge.
In an artificial-intelligence society, a code is hidden from people. Even without understanding the meaning of the code we perceive it as a form of magic, which produces new results by using enormous quantities of data and broad parameters.
The Deep Space 8K program of PAC-MAN comes from the team thinking about new experiences and new language.
Linz’s Johannes Kepler University’s faculty includes outstanding research scientists whose work is quoted in some of the most highly respected scientific journals worldwide. So who are these brilliant young Upper Austrian scientists and what exactly are they doing research on?
Fibres, tissue, bodies de/materialize between real and virtual space. New surfaces and materialities evolve from bioplastics or desert plants; are welded, etched or boiled.
Abstract-animation artist Max Hattler presents a cross-section of his work in special versions created for Deep Space 8K at the Ars Electronica Center.
ARTUR: Autonomous Robot Playspace is an interactive environment featuring a full-scale, three-dimensional virtual robot. Developed specifically for Deep Space 8K in the Ars Electronica Center
This presentation invites the audience to experience the archaeological site Hisn al-Bab. It is little known but nevertheless played a significant role in Egyptian history, both with respect to its geography and its chronology. In historical terms, it was active at the very end of Roman rule and the Early Medieval Period, long after the pharaohs.
The very best of the regular Deep Space 8K program at the Ars Electronica Center in German and English language.
Capillaries Capillaries is an audiovisual composition based on a non-hierarchical and bi-directional relationship between sound and image in real-time. The piece does not represent a visualization of music or sonification of an image but rather a tangle of audiovisual interactions.
Bird Song Diamond is a site- and habitat-specific interactive installation based on long-term research (2011-present), involving multifaceted, interdisciplinary perspectives—uniquely connecting the nodes of evolutionary biology, artificial intelligence and life, spatial sound, mathematics and mechatronics.
The VH Award’s purpose is to discover promising but relatively unknown Korean artists creating media art. It seeks to support the art-making process of these young, talented media artists but to also help them gain international recognition.
Austrian astronaut Franz Viehböck’s lift-off to the MIR space station on October 1st, 1991, was accompanied by a euphoric celebration of this country’s giant leap into the cosmos. 25 years later, Florian Voggeneder boldly goes on a photographic mission to document the implications of this miniature Space Age.
Perception is the procedure of acquiring, interpreting, selecting and organizing sensory information. Perception presumes sensing. In people, perception is aided by sensory organs. In the area of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), the perception mechanism puts the data acquired by sensors together in a meaningful manner.
Sanbaso is an 8K documentary featuring a novel performing art by renowned Japanese artists. The stage is based on an ancient divine dance, the Sanbaso, praying to nature.
Four artists, three countries, two art fields, one topic. Reality vs. fantasy—these opposites have always been dividing people. But does one’s personal reality correspond to the mass understanding of it? What in fact influences the individual or mass definition of reality and imagination?
Pitoti Prometheus is a first in VR: ancient rock art that literally comes alive at 360 degrees. It is the film with the longest production time in history.
Interludium A was created in 1982, two years after the democracy movement in Gwangju was crushed. This was a matter of profound concern to Isang Yun, who in the late 1960s, had himself been victimized by the political despotism of the military regime in power at the time.
Yoichiro Kawaguchi proposes high-quality computer graphics with approximately 8K resolution as an artistic expressionistic method and media for presenting artworks.
NOIZE Etudes is a live multimedia performance focusing on micro-sounds caused by binary operations in multiple layers of music coding.
Can machines totally replace humans, or is there a need for just the right combination of human and artificial intelligence—hybrid intelligence? We will turn our real-time onstage performance into a human vs. machine battle.
Will we all, at some point, have virtual friends, enjoy sex with robots more than making love to a real person, and hack our own body? Homo Digitalis is a Web series about the ultimate future question: What is the digital revolution doing with us human beings?
This project is presented in the framework of STARTS Prize 2017. STARTS Prize has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 732019.
After the groundbreaking exhibition of Rock Print at the first Chicago Architecture Biennial 2015 “Rock Print: a Manistone” demonstrates the significant advances of the ongoing research in jammed architectural structures at ETH Zurich.
The project “l’m Humanity” is based on the concept of “post-humanity music” and explores how new music will be transmitted, recorded, mutated, and diffused whether sung or played via word of mouth, as scores, through radio, records and CDs, or cloud computing.
Religion projects the design thoughts and creation laws of a super being, a creator able to demonstrate super-complex structures. The human fear of the unknown and of the inexplicable around us welcomes a super being, a common accepted way of reasoning.
“Make Do and Mend: Controlled Commodity” references the 75th anniversary of the first use of penicillin in a human patient in 1941 and takes the form of an altered wartime woman’s dress marked with the British Board of Trade’s utility logo CC41, which stands for “Controlled Commodity 1941”.
Modern algal biotechnology is largely motivated by technocracy in response to food and energy crises. This biotechnological work seeks the utilization of microalgae not for technocratic ends but for a reconstruction of social practice at an ‘ecosophical’ intersection.
The work aims to speculate on sartorial appearances of the future through blending fashion design and wearable technology.
We humans are creating an enormous invisible network on top of our existing biosphere–the infosphere. The infosphere consists of networks and radio waves. lt’s our new, ever-expanding environment that is growing at a staggering rate.
DuoSkin is a fabrication process that enables anyone to create customized functional devices that can be attached directly on their skin.
Mimus is a giant industrial robot that’s curious about the world around her. Unlike in traditional industrial robots, Mimus has no pre-planned movements–she is programmed with the autonomy to roam about her enclosure.
Long ago in history was the belief that the four elements–fire, wind, water, and earth–could combine together as one to birth a never before known substance. Today, this is an unrealistic fantasy, however, by incorporating the latest in technology, the designer imagined the future of clothing in this collection.
Sentient Veil is a jewel-like canopy containing multiple miniature sound processors interwoven with hundreds of digitally controlled lights installed within the historic galleries of the lsabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
Autonomous vehicles create the opportunity to redefine the relationship between pedestrians and vehicles in the city of the future.
The goal of our artistic-scientific research project trees: Rendering Ecophysiological Processes Audible, was to connect sounds that occur in trees with ecophysiological processes and thus investigate and render perceptible processes in plants that are not noticeable to humans.
Production in the 21st century works with distributed authorship and identities-artists present their processes “coded” in the fragmentations of global networks. Contemporary artistic output is developed out of collective inquiries, research processes are results of distributed agency between humans, machines, and programs.
Experience digital arts! CyberArts presents the most outstanding entries from the Prix Ars Electronica, the international competition of computer art, this year for the 20th time at the OK Center of Contemporary Art. This year’s exhibition shows award-winners and distinguished works from the categories Computer Animation/Film/VFX, Hybrid Art and Digital Musics & Sound Art. The intelligent and entertaining presentation impressively depicts the developments in digital art, the current discourse, and the associated issues. A variety of the latest computer animations, impressive film productions and visual effects will be shown at the five-day Ars Electronica Animation Festival at Movie 1. A special highlight is the legendary OK Night on Saturday September 9 th with the Electronic Theatre at the open- air-cinema, Live DJs, concerts and performances on the roof and in the OK Deck.
CyberArts 2017 Flyer
(PDF file, 0,5 MB)
What are we? Where do we come from and where are we going? Maja Smrekar’s artistic work revolves around these eternal questions of humanity. The work series K-9_topology, winner of the Golden Nica, consists of the four consecutive projects shown here, which each focus from different perspectives on the essence and the role of human beings and especially the role of a woman in increasingly tough bio political conditions of the present times.
Not Your World Music is one of the few publications about contemporary noise* and industrial, electroacoustic and experimental music and sound art in South East Asia (Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar/Burma, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam), and it is, by far, the most comprehensive published resource on noise music in South East Asia.
Everything is a “sandbox narrative computer game”: the course of the game is free, allowing players to explore the game universe on their own, and no game is like another. Everything you see here, you can be, so you can transform yourself into a ladybug, a plant, a microbe, or even an entire galaxy.
The artists Ruben Pater and the composer Gonçalo Freiria Cardoso are interested in the auditive dimension of military drones. In their project they emphasize the destructive aspects of this technology, calling attention to the negative psychological effects that inhabitants in areas of conflict are exposed to.
The vital chemical element of iron, which is also found in human blood, is the same element used to make weapons, shields, and tools, which have assured human survival and progress for thousands of years.
There is a surprising similarity in the way neural networks and analogue synthesizers work: both receive signals and process them through components to generate data or sound. cellF combines these two systems.
The Intelligent Guerilla Beehive is intended to offer refuge and protection to swarming bee colonies in urban areas.
The interdisciplinary project Open Source Estrogen combines biohacking and “speculative design”* to show the public the dominance and biological power of the hormone estrogen.
Lisa Buttinger uses the physical phenomenon of light refraction as her pictorial tool here. Two polarizing filters and cellophane foils arranged in different layers and angles transform the apparent nothingness into vivid colors, and the result is a unique spatial visual experience.
In a field of fog and sound, Light Barrier generates animated, magical, spatial images in the air. These are created by hundreds of light rays refracted by mirrors. The six-minute sequence is a journey through the cycle of birth, death and rebirth, and the human idea of space and time.
Out of Exile is an impressive virtual reality experience that deals with society’s negative attitude toward LGBTQ* youth. A boy named Daniel Ashley Pierce ends up in a heated conflict with his family due to his sexual orientation. Authentic audio recordings were used for the project, which Daniel recorded unnoticed during the actual argument.
The Microbial Design Studio (MDS) was designed by researchers from the Design Class and the Biology Institute of the University of Pennsylvania with experts from industry. It is intended to allow laypeople to inform themselves about genetically modified organisms and the practices of transgenic design.
In his installation Wellenwald mit Bunker, David Ebner reflects on the digital age and the influence of new media. The installation consists of a spruce trunk that leans on an object made of concrete. The surface of the trunk is completely covered with aluminum foil. Antennae are mounted on this, which pick up waves from their surrounding.
The idea behind volnovod is based on the principle of conventional iPod earbuds and the special rubber that encases the earbud cables. This material prevents the wires inside from bending or breaking when the earbud cables become twisted or knotted.
The hospital Omar Bin Abdul Aziz in Aleppo, also known as M2, was the target of fourteen bombings between June and December 2016. To be able to analyze the attacks, video and photo material taken in and around the M2 was collected and evaluated.
Somatic Echo is a sound installation that turns the human body into an acoustic medium. With transducer loudspeakers and sensors fixed to the head, an eight-channel composition is transmitted directly into the body.
In the dystopian or seemingly post-apocalyptic setting of Rekion Voice, we are surrounded by robots that are essentially slaves. They are completely under human control: an infrared camera allows them to react directly to their masters, the audience, and follow them with blind loyalty.
The live installation Luminiferous Drift simulates the view from outer space of a hypothetical planet and ist weather phenomena. The experimental arrangement uses macroscopic protocells to physically simulate the movements of phytoplankton in a biosphere.
The Acoustic Additive Synthesizer (AAS) is an interactive object and instrument, which is based on the principles of a pipe organ. Pitch and volume, however, are controlled here by a computer. Each of the seven pipes has a motorized piston, which changes the pitch of the sound continuously, and a dedicated motorized air valve, which changes the volume of the sound.
imaginary rhetoric is the final part of the series “blank projects,” in which the artists deals with the effects of extreme situations such as natural disasters and disasters caused by humans. The fourth work, shown here, was inspired by the artist’s excursions to Fukushima and other sites where nuclear disasters have occurred.
The Glaciator robot helps glaciers to grow again by compacting and crystallizing the snow into firn (the intermediate state between snow and glacier ice), thus accelerating the ice formation process. This means the glaciers can grow the ice mass again, which they have lost due to climate change.
Dust Blooms juxtaposes the beauty and function of urban flora using a synthesis of artistic and scientific methods. With her project the artist seeks to call attention to the relevance of the urban ecosystem.
There are 24 million dogs in Mexico, of which 16.8 million (70%) are stray dogs. With this project Berenice Olmedo Peña critically questions our relationship to the canine species: on the one hand the cultivated domestic animal, “man’s best friend,” on the other hand the little appreciated, disrespectfully treated stray dog.
Since the nuclear disaster in Fukushima in 2011, the actual extent of the release of radioactive particles has been hotly debated. Over a period of five years photographer Masamichi Kagaya in cooperation with Satoshi Mori, scientist and professor, collected many different samples in the affected area – from daily necessities to flora and fauna – and developed a 3D autoradiograph.
The America Project is a biotechnological art installation that produces a “collective genetic portrait.” For decades, DNA has been regarded as the sign of our individuality and identity. The artist applies the process of DNA gel electrophoresis to show that the DNA of humans is actually nearly identical.
What does intimacy mean in the age of technology? Of sensors, cognitive computing and robots? How will the technological innovations evolving rapidly all around us affect and also change some of the most intimate of human behaviors? How will future generations discover and live out their sexuality? Is intimacy without humanity even possible?
Roles that were exclusively reserved for humans are already being filled by our technological creations. Concepts that allow us to be “lonely together.” The implications of this are staggering. As we speak, technology is enhancing interhuman relationships by acting not only as a sexual educator, but also by bridging physical divides between people. And this is just the beginning. While intimacy has today been digitized to a certain degree, in the not-so-distant future advances in machine learning will give rise to AI-powered avatar and humanoid robots, opening the door for potential human-machine relationships and intimacy.
Artificial Intimacy delves into the topic presenting products that are readily available on the market, providing insight into the companies developing artificial-intelligence companions and artistic works responding to the technology.
When you see her up close, you can’t help but stare. At $6.000, she’s certainly not a cheap date. For creator, Matt McMullen, she’s a work of art. For everyone else, she’s a Realdoll.
End of Life Care Machine is an interactive installation consisting of an empty room, a seating area and a reception desk. Signs, medical bracelets, health information forms and other related medical products are used to transform the space into a hospital-like environment, where people go for their final rite of passage.
Almost there. was constructed using sonically controlled vibrators and some very trusting contributors. Over the last two years, these contributors recorded their voices while masturbating with the vibrators. The artist composed the audio they used specifically for this project.
Barcelona-based engineer Sergi Santos has created a robot sex doll that seems to enjoy sex as much as the humans and responds differently according to how she is treated.
Amsterdam-based Kiiroo is an award-winning tech company that has been a leader in the teledildonics industry since 2013. Working at the intersection of technology and human interest, Kiiroo developed a unique technology that enables users to be intimate from a distance.
OMGYES is a sexual pleasure research website. After conducting research with more than 2,000 women aged 18 to 95, we created a website where real-life women—not actors—share their stories and demonstrate their techniques. Then users get the chance to practice through touchable simulations.
In her show Slutever, VICE’s resident sexpert Karley Sciortino explores the mysterious labyrinth of human sexuality and checks out the various ways that people around the world like to get off.
In Machine Learning Porn a neural network has been trained using an explicit content model for finding pornography in search engines. The network is then reverse engineered to generate new “pornography” from scratch: an AI daydreaming of sex.
Kissenger is a haptic device for mobile phones designed for people to better express intimacy and emotion over the Internet through kissing. It aims to fill in the missing dimension of touch in traditional digital communication, which largely focuses on verbal and audio information.
The Ars Electronica Gallery Spaces were coined in response to growing mutual interest on the part of media artists, collectors and galleries as a setting for protagonists to compare experiences and to discuss, among other topics, such core issues as the long-term maintenance and conservation of media-art projects and the many new formats and business models manifesting themselves on the growing online art market.
