Thursday, September 21, 2023
12.00 Opening of Augmented Reality (AR) Exhibition followed by a guided tour through Esplanade park of Riga city
SensUs. Augmented Nature-Cultures
The Latvian National Museum of Natural History, Kr. Barona iela 4
Admission free. Please register via rixc@rixc.org
SensUs artworks can be virtually experienced in urban environments via the SensUs Art platform, which can be downloaded to your smart device here: https://sensusart.rixc.org/
Exhibition video teaser produced by RIXC, video editing and sound by Lauris Daris Smits:
The SensUs AR exhibition features 8 virtual artworks created by artists from Riga (Latvia) and Karlsruhe – Jung Eun Lee, Isabella Münnich, Anna Manankina, Jurģis Peters, Sabīne Šnē, Rihards Vītols, Zane Zelmene.
The exhibition curators Daria Mille, Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits invited the artists to use augmented reality (AR) to make visible the invisible processes in urban nature, explore the symbiotic relationship between social and ecological systems, and trace the historical and contemporary trajectories of nature-culture sites in the city.
Isabella Münnich. mush/room: growing together, 2023
The German artist Isabella Münnich in her mush/room: growing together artwork performs a digital study of ‘interactional landscapes’, during her daily walks in the forests around Karlsruhe, the artist continuously observed mushrooms growing on fallen trees, their cycle of growth and decay. The artist captured these transformations of natural objects using digital scanning techniques (photogrammetry), creating digital sculptures that the visitor can experience by approaching them, walking around them, or even going inside to see in detail the striking structures of digitally transformed mushrooms.
Anna Manankina. Vegetable Kingdom, Vegetable Anarchy, 2023
One of the exhibition participants is also the Ukrainian artist Anna Manankina who currently lives in Karlsruhe and was a residency artist at the ZKM | Center for Art and Media in 2022. The speculative Vegetable kingdom, vegetable anarchy artwork by Anna Manankina is an AI-generated species of plants, created using images from the Museum of Natural History, which are in a continuous mutation, evolving to a stage after which humans aren’t needed anymore as any plant can take the shape of a human…
Jung Eun Lee. Pond Creatures: Becoming One, Being Plural, 2023
Jung Eun Lee (Karlsruhe based South Korean artist) in her work Pond Creatures: Becoming One, Being Plural draws associative parallels between the biological being and social existence of both – non-human (pond creatures) and human (observer); the artwork is based on the artist’s observations of “pond creatures” living in the artist’s own built aquariums (of the glass jars) and their unique way of symbiotic living…
Rihards Vītols. Mežs 2.0, 2023
The AI-generated 3D artwork Mežs 2.0 (Forest 2.0) by Latvian artist Rihards Vītols is a utopian, speculative vision of the new, more resistant tree species that simulates proposals and challenges for the future changes in nature and the environment. He uses AI algorithms to continue the evolution and mutation of the species launched in his Mežs 1.0 project, and creates a new collection of unimaginable tree species.
Jurģis Peters. Cultivation of Domestication, 2023
The Cultivation of Domestication artwork by the Latvian artist Jurģis Peters is based on contrarian hypothesis by the historian J.N. Harari’s, where he suggests the idea of the first “domesticated” cereals – wheat – which contributed to the agrarian revolution, actually domesticated us, not the other way around. An interactive 3D object is created using AI-generated images, addressing questions of plant-human relations in changing power positions.
Sabīne Šnē. Soil Mate, 2023
Soil Mate by Sabīne Šnē (Latvia) explores the relationship between art, mythology and science. Inspired by the aesthetics of Stone Age’s Venus figures, the virtual 3D sculpture represents the contemporary version of Gaia. It is covered with the texture generated using various soil samples found in the Esplanade Park in Riga.
Zane Zelmene. Omnisence, 2023
Omnisence by Zane Zelmene and Soil Mate by Sabine Šnē were first exhibited in Esplanade Park in Riga, Latvia as part of the previous RIXC curated exhibition on the Sensus Art platform in 2021. By researching historical materials and evidence, the Omnisence artwork by Zane Zelmene (Latvia) reconstructs the landscapes of Esplanade Park in Riga in different periods – from prehistory and the Middle Ages, when Mount Kube appears there, to the past century in the shape of 360-degree photo spheres.