Naturally Artificial Intelligence Art Association
Susanna HERTRICH. Sensory Augmentation for an Altered Environment
A significant part of my work investigates extensions of the human senses and the role of the physical body in technology-driven environments. In »Sensorium of Animals«, a collaborative artistic research, the sensory ecology of a small fish stood at the beginning of a long-term process that explores invisible technological infrastructures and speculates about possible future worlds through objects, installations, video and writing. In »Jacobson’s Fabulous Olfactometer«, a sensory prosthesis inspired by a specific animal sense organ probes an accelerated human evolution aiming to allow us to sense airborne chemicals while highlighting the toxic environmental conditions we have created.
All these and other projects share A) a practical approach, considering findings in psychology, behavioural biology, neuroscience and haptics, B) an exploration of their poetic qualities and C) an undeniable degree of »wild speculation«.
The artefacts and images resulting from these research projects have to be understood as carriers of narration about the cultural imaginaries in which these anticipated technologies have become a reality. In some cases, these explorations live two lives: as artworks, they appear in exhibitions, and as conference papers, they are presented to academic audiences.
Oksana CHEPELYK. TERRA-OCEAN. Between Local and Global: Inside of Environmental Сollisions
Inspired by the “Blue Humanities” turn (Mentz) the research works with interdisciplinary methodologies taking the ocean as a subject. This term by Steve Mentz reflects a progressive modification of the relationships that humans have with it, and has helped to highlight a potential oceanic turning point in the history of sensitivities (DeLoughrey). A place of fluidity, movement and migration, the ocean also catalyzes the human attraction for the unknown and the limits of our knowledge or our possibilities of physical access – visions of the underwater world being dependent on technical devices (Cohen). The underwater environment became the model of a different sensory experience, freed from terrestrial temporal and spatial markers.
In the context of the Anthropocene, ocean is increasingly understood from the angle of the biodiversity it hosts, its ecosystem uniqueness and its role as a climate regulator on the scale of our planet. What does it mean to work with underwater life in art and what does this say about the history of the human relationship with marine biodiversity?
The projects “Become an Ocean” and “TERRA-OCEAN. Between Local and Global: Inside of Environmental Сollisions” explore immersive environment as analytical tools for audio-visual translation of metabolomics, merging genotype and environment regarding climate changes, and bringing together perspectives common to environmental humanities – as blue humanities – through the arts. The art is researched as a platform for prospecting in the blue humanities, where the concept of “non-human agency” is considered as an imperative of the subjectivity of nature and symbiotic future.
Oksana Chepelyk is an APF Fellow, Imera/AMU, leading researcher, New Technologies Department, Modern Art Research Institute of Ukraine, author of book “The Interaction of Architectural Spaces, Contemporary Art and New Technologies”, curator of International Festival of Social Sculpture. Oksana studied art in Kyiv, followed PhD, Amsterdam University, Banff Centre, Canada, Bauhaus Dessau, Germany, Fulbright Research Program, UCLA, USA. Awards: ArtsLink1997/2007 USA), FilmVideo99 (Italy), EMAF2003 Werklietz- 2003 (Germany), Artraker-2013 (UK), Best Project2018 (Taiwan), Ars Electronica-2022. Exhibitions: MOMA, NY; MMA, Zagreb; German Historical Museum, Berlin Munich; Museum of the Arts History, Vienna; MCA, Skopje; MJT, LA; Art Arsenal Museum, Kyiv; “DIGITAL MEDIA Valencia”, Spain; MACZUL, Maracaibo, Venezuela, “The File”, Sao Paolo; LPM-2016/2017 Amsterdam; EDAF-2022, “Manifesta-14”, Prishtina, Ars Electronica-2022, Linz; OVNi-2022; MADATAC-2023, Madrid.
Yan SHAO. Notes on Oxygen and Cyanobacteria
Oxygen is the most abundant element in the atmosphere and, together with carbon dioxide, forms the foundation of metabolic processes for most life forms. The deep connection between geology and biology is illustrated by the Great Oxidation Event, which occurred around 2.4 billion years ago. This event, referred to by Lynn Margulis as “The Oxygen Holocaust” in her book Microcosmos, marked a significant shift in Earth’s environment, driven by the photosynthetic activity of cyanobacteria. James Lovelock, co-developer of the Gaia theory, described the planet as a self-regulating biosphere—a homeostatic living entity that integrates the atmosphere, water, and soil. Inspired by geohistory, endosymbiosis, and the Gaia theory, I create two art installations that explore the relationship between humans and photosynthetic species, particularly focusing on the role of cyanobacteria in the current nature-culture context. Autopoiesis is a video installation that simulates the dual nature of cyanobacteria blooms, emphasizing their contribution to both environmental hazards and oxygen production while questioning humanity’s dependence on Earth’s oxygen cycle. Algae Chorus is a sound installation that collaborates with living algae in real time, transforming their movement and photosynthetic processes into sounds, thus exploring the interdependent relationship between humans and photosynthetic organisms in the context of climate change.
Yan Shao is a terrestrial artist and creative technologist living in New York. Yan’s imaginative new media works explore the uncharted territories of perception, mediating the complex interrelations between humans and the earth. Yan’s artistic language draws inspiration from geopoetics, the transitory essence of nature, and the ecological humanity. Currently, Yan is an artist fellow at the Gallatin WetLab at New York University. She is a receipt of Judson-Morrissey Excellence in New Media Award and Tisch Initiative of Creative Research Fellowship. In 2023, she received her Master Degree from Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University.
Jozef Eduard MASARIK. Multisensory Embodied Experience as Autonomous Creator of Virtual Spaces
The interweaving of multisensory embodied cognition with virtual environments becomes a laboratory for the scrutiny of the mutual relations between bodies and the virtual. The research is based on experiments in cognitive neuroscience, where researchers design meticulously crafted visual and haptic speculative body-imagery, into which they transfer the subjects’ perceived embodiment. The experiments are designed to provide an insight into the relations between the self and embodiment. However, as a side effect, we can observe glitches and deformations within the virtual space.
These glitches are being studied through re-enactments of the originally neuroscientific experiments within artistic research. The measurements are adjusted so as to provide an insight into the way the subjects are able to scale, fold and bridge virtual space, independently from its digital code, through their perceived embodiment. Thus, the sensory embodied experience prevails over the digital. The embodiment informs the virtual space autonomously. Such findings enter the discussion on the virtual being a sensory realm co-defined by human perception and the digital code, similar to the theories of Peter Weibel and Mark B. N. Hansen.
Enrico DORIGATTI. Life, a Cellular Automata-Based Generative Multimedia Artwork
Life is a generative audiovisual artwork based on an adapted version of the homonymous algorithm developed by J. H. Conway. Such an adaptation includes a three-dimensional environment in place of the original bi-dimensional one and other mechanisms, such as ageing and illness, increasing the complexity of the network of interactions each cell enacts with the rest of the community. Whilst all these processes occur hidden from the audience, they manifest in the visuals and sounds. Both mediums primarily represent the data processed by the algorithm, such as the cells’ status and spatial distribution, health, and age. However, both mediums subsequently pass through and get manipulated by filters favouring the artistic and aesthetic experience over a faithful data representation.
Enrico Dorigatti is a sound artist and creative technologist working across different formats. He is especially interested in the artistic exploration of indeterminism, audio-visual interaction, generative systems, and shared agency between humans and algorithms. Formerly a conservatory graduate (BA and MA in electroacoustic music composition) and with an IT background, he is currently a PhD candidate in creative technologies at the University of Portsmouth (UK). His artistic and scholarly output has been presented internationally.
CompMonks. Stargazer: Two Columns From Neural Potentials
Stargazer is an extensive series of aggregates stemming from ongoing research on digital architectonics employing a mixed model of intelligence for architectural design. Through the development of a gaze-related brain-computer interface in a closed and synchronous loop, the research takes a particular view of how articulating parts from the mind can be approached by coupling human and machine bits of intelligence in an emulatory fashion. Borrowing simultaneously from connectionist and symbolist models of representation learning and the visual working memory, the developed mixed model involves a generalized use of human intelligence for discriminative capacities found in neural phenomena and artificial neural networks as a perpetual generator of new potential design solutions and aggregates to explore and index with abstract architectonic categories such as column, arch, dome, etc… By doing so, it challenges the syntactical tradition of the generative in architecture while reappraising information and communication theories and permuting the ideas of parts with tokens, grammars with beliefs, assemblies with aggregates. The two exhibited columns manifest two significant steps in this new modelling approach and can be seen as presenting, dialectically and complementarily, the potential of human intelligence to create meaning by indexing things in the world to categories and concepts, the potential of machine intelligence to decode latent and manifold structures.
CompMonks is a new media architect, educator, and researcher from France currently based in Zurich. His artistic work follows a series of design objects and mixed-media installations shedding light on the power of combining the human mind with computers. He has been supported by European institutions during research and production residencies, such as ZKM Karlsruhe and Kontejner Zagreb. Among his most recent appearances are the collective exhibitions at Centre Pompidou Paris, the Biennale for Arts and Technology Trondheim and ZKM Karlsruhe. In 2021, his work entered the permanent collection of 20th and 21st century digital art of ZKM Karlsruhe. In 2023, CompMonks was selected as laureate and runner-up of the prize for emerging architecture from the Beaux-Arts Academy Paris for his new work series on the materialization of dreams.