CRYPTO, ART AND CLIMATE

Moderator: Vallejo GANTNER (US)

Presentations:
Nico ANGIULI (IT) & Katerina EL RAHEB (GR)
Carl Emil CARLSEN (DK).
Rosa MENKMAN (NL)
Sabrina DURLING-JONES [online from US]
Contributors to the Discussion:
Maria GRAZIA MATTEI (IT) / MEET Digital Art Center / Milan
Chloe Alexandra THOMPSON (CA) – [online from US/Canada]

Nico ANGIULI (IT) & Katerina EL RAHEB (GR).
Amazon Dance: exploring algorithms as human movement and computational thinking

Abstract

Amazon Dance is a video performance part of a research project that aims to study algorithms used in factories such as Amazon, for finding the minimum time and the most efficient way to arrange and deliver items in large warehouses, which is a costly and time consuming process. Although many of these tasks are performed by humans, their routes are perfectly predetermined based on algorithms and their movements are specific to achieve the goals of each shift: picking the maximum number of products.

This artistic research is looking into the hidden human “exhaustion” that lies behind an “add to cart” effortless click when we buy things from the web. Ironically the concept of exhaustion in algorithms and mathematics is part of the solution. In this process we explore the different ways the complex synchronicities and tensions between body, movement, human labor combined with robots, computational embodied thinking.  The project evolves and travels as a methodology that can have various artistic, exploratory and educational applications. To do this, find different languages, notations and scripts to code and decode a “choreography”.

Biographies

Katerina El Raheb  is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Performing and Digital Arts at the Fine Arts School – University of Peloponnese in Greece in “Informatics Applications in Performing Arts”. She has collaborated as a Human Computer Interaction researcher with the MADgIK lab at the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) and Athena Research and Innovation Center since 2009. She got a professional Dance Diploma from Niki Kontaxaki dance school in 2009, and has collaborated as a dance performance artist  with Yelp Dance Co., Periigites, Kinitiras Artistic Network, Flux Laboratory Athens, and Onassis Center as an EMAP resident.   With interest in human movement, embodiment, improvisation techniques, and the social and cultural contexts where dance comes from, her practice and research are focused on studying and creating movement vocabularies in physical and digital spaces.  She holds a PhD from the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications (NKUA) on “Conceptual and Experiential Dance Languages: Representation and Interaction”, and an MSc. in Advanced Information Systems, from the same department. She completed her BSc. in Chemical Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens. As a Human-Computer Interaction researcher she worked in several EU and national funded projects related to design and development of digital applications to culture such as BRIDGES, Aria, Transition to 8, DERC, WhoLoDancE, eCultValue, DL.org, e.nventory and published a number of articles in international journals and conferences.

Nico Angiuli is a visual artist, performer and film director. From 2017 now on, is external visiting professor of Performing Arts at the Fine Arts Academy of Bari in Italy. performance at Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan, produced by CareOf and curated by Martina Angelotti (60min, 2017). In 2019, he has been granted with the 3rd edition of the Italian Art Council Prize, for the realizing of The Human Tools (roundmovie installation, 74 min. 2019): a movie which relates ancient and modern forms of slavery to artificial intelligence and robots. He has been also granted by the Italian Ministry of Culture to realize Vacanze Intelligenti (video VR, 17min) where he brought a gondola in the industrial area of Venice. The project has been presented also at the IIC Italian Istitute of Culture in Hamburg, from Febraury to April 2022. Another project prized by the italian government in the 2022 is Part-Time Resistance: a performative research on the private forms of sabotage and resistance; that would continue in the 2023/ 2024 investigating the use of the seeds to protect communities and agricultural ancients practices. Trought 2023 has also develop the first step of Pfandstrasse at ZK/U Art Space in Berlin, the project aims to raise awareness among the bottle and cans collectors; the second phase consists of a docufilm to be realized during the 2024/2025. Has been in residency, among others, at ZK/U (Berlin, 2022); Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto (Biella, Italy 2019); BAU (Bozen, Italy 2018); Dena Foundation (Paris, 2016); ArtOMI (NYC 2015); Villa Ruffieux (Sierre, Swiss 2014); Centro Negra (Blanca, Spain 2012); Bevilacqua La Masa (Venice, 2011). His works and researches have been exhibited abroad, including: 16th Rome Quadriennale; 2nd Biennal of Kiev; 2nd Athens Biennale; MaRT Museum in Rovereto, Italy; Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, Turin; National Theatre of Tirana, Albania; BOZAR, Bruxelles; Manifesta 12, Palerm; Onassis STEGI Foundation, Athens; Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto; NOoSPHERE Arts, New York; Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation, Venice; Dena Foundation, Paris.
Lives and works in Berlin.

Carl Emil CARLSEN (DK).
Retrospect on SH4DOW – An XR theatre performance staring an AI as the protagonist.

Abstract

Carl Emil Carlsen, EMAP resident at RIXC, will discus some of the creative challenges and design decisions that went into the making of SH4DOW, a production that is currently touring and has just received an Honorary Mention from Ars Electronica in addition to the Danish Reumert Special Award.

Rosa MENKMAN (NL).
Refractions

Abstract

Deep in the Aegean sea, an island known for its mythological history and its deposits of iron and minerals, endures the flow of time as it washes over its rugged features. Superficially, it radiates immutability; it seems at first glance, the landscape only changes minimally. Last year’s fallen palm tree is still a noteworthy event. Only the inhabitant’s eye sees all the changes and stories that unfold on a minute basis. However, on the southwest tip of the Island, time carves and traces in a different, more peculiar way. This area, which protrudes into the sea, boasts three vertically aligned geological landmarks that offer unique perspectives on humans and their marking of time: At its top, a throne and the entrance to the cyclops’ cave invite the adventurer to enter the island’s deep mythological roots. Downward, human-inflicted scars open the landscape; shafts give entrance to abandoned caves cut by looted deposits the island’s geology had nurtured for thousands of years. And at its base, the baths give testament to human disregard: filled with a white grey soup of screeching polystyrene plastics trapped by the high tides, they now consist of a white carpet of timeless human detritus. As one ventures to explore this part of the island, a new perspective on time unfolds — a vertically layered conception of time, challenging conventional perceptions of how time is witnessed within the mountainous terrains. In her talk, Menkman will narrate how her exploration of the island inspired her to create Refractions in Light and Time, a work on display in the RIXC exhibition.

Biography

Rosa Menkman is a Dutch artist and researcher. Her work focuses on noise artifacts that result from accidents in both analogue and digital media. As a compendium to this research, she published the Glitch Moment/um (INC, 2011), a little book on the exploitation and popularization of glitch artifacts. Menkman developed and highlighted the politics of resolution setting further in a second book titled Beyond Resolution (i.R.D., 2020). In this book, she describes how the standardization of resolutions is not only a process that promotes efficiency, order and functionality, but also involves compromises and the obfuscation of alternative possibilities. In 2019 Menkman won the Collide, Arts at CERN Barcelona award, which inspired her recent research into what makes things im/possible. With a special focus on im/possible images. Through this research, Menkman aims to find new ways to understand, use and perceive through the use of, and interaction with, our technologies.

Sabrina DURLING-JONES (US).
Neuralpoiesis: Making a case for the importance of compiling and curating individual archives (data sets).

Abstract

Inspired by Maturana and Varela’s Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living (1980), the term neuralpoiesis describes the visual language generated from processes of collaboration between artist (human) and computer (artificial neural networks and convolutional neural networks), producing new aesthetic forms. Growing trends toward algorithmic-driven efficiency are changing our lives in large and small ways but ultimately contribute to ongoing cycles of displacement. How can we as artists utilize machine learning (AI) to re-imagine and re-shape the ways data-driven processes will affect society? Working from the premise that we will all experience some form of displacement in our lives, this talk discusses the importance of artists compiling and regularly curating an individual archive (data set) of our own creative production, explores the different ways we can interact with our archives, and considers why we might open, or limit, access to our own data.
Contributors to the Discussion: Maria Grazia Mattei

Founder and President of MEET, the Italian Center for Digital Culture (Milan). A journalist, an art critic and a digital evangelist, Maria Grazia Mattei has been investigated digital culture since 1982. In 1995 she founded Mattei Digital Communication, a center for research, creation and dissemination of new media and communications. In 2005 she launched Meet the Media Guru (MtMG), a platform to promote public dissemination on innovation and digital culture. In 2018, with the support of Fondazione Cariplo, one the largest charitable foundation in Europe, Mattei has founded MEET, the first Italian center for digital culture. Mattei has been the Italian curator for Pixar retrospectives, set up at PAC in Milan in 2011, at Palazzo del Te in Mantua in 2012 and at Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome in 2018. All long her career, Mattei has promoted numerous initiatives dedicated to the awareness and diffusion of digital culture in collaboration with international organizations including Venice Biennale (Italy), Siggraph (USA) and Imagina (France). Mattei is on the board of directors for Artemide, a major Italian lighting design company. For over twenty years Mattei has encouraged and promoted cultural and professional exchanges between Italian and North American creative industries.

Chloe Alexanda Thompson is a Cree, Canadian interdisciplinary artist and technologist. Thompson approaches sound as a mode of connection—embracing the kinesthetic agency of sound to compose abstract feats of spatialized audio recording and synthesis. Her work engages tactics of material minimalism to create site-specific installations that sculpt droning, maximalist experiences out of space and sound. Thompson views modes of distributed media as presenting opportunities to decentralize the performer, implicating a more active role to the ‘audience’. To Thompson, the poetic and abstracted allegories formed in these interactions, across any medium, allows for space to both practice and enact possibilities for change.