SOFT CONTROL » Artworks

Andrew Gracie

samo — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 11:12:48 +0000

Deep Data prototype_1 forms the first stage of the long term Deep Data project, which uses data from deep space probes to recreate elements of solar system environments within cultures of organisms currently used in astrobiology research. The piece uses magnetometer data from the Pioneer and Voyager probes to recreate magnetic field experiments on cultures of polyextremophile tardigrades, an organism which has already proven it can survive the harsh space environment.

Louis-Philippe Demers

samo — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 13:58:06 +0000

Louis-Philip Demers’s project explores the phenomenon of unconscious bodily matter. Whether it makes up complex figures at stadiums and during military parades, or demonstrates cohesion in corporate labor – its programs are executed with the same mechanical precision. The precursor was the famous early 20th century dance troupe “Tiller Girls”, in which human performers are ‘called upon to exercise their technical skills but not their interpretive skills’.

Demers’s performance is a group of 12 small autonomous robots. These robots were developed in Artificial Intelligence for the study of gaits given minimal freedom of movements. The rationale behind the Tiller Girls is to explore the dichotomy of the man-machine. The robots can only balance their torsos and shoulders but they can yet achieve a large variety of expressions and behaviours.

Bill Vorn

samo — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 12:14:24 +0000

DSM-VI is a robotic art installation that stages creatures expressing symptoms of “abnormal” psychological behaviors and stuck with some serious “mental health” problems, such as neurosis, psychosis, personality disorders, paranoia, schizophrenia, delirium, and other forms of behavior and mental disorders. The project title is inspired by the famous reference manual published by the American Psychiatric Association, the DSM-IV. The robots are abstract structures made of aluminum, plastic and silicone it is mainly their behaviors that give them an organic and living aspect.

Produced with the help of Le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.

Polona Tratnik et al.

samo — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 12:11:14 +0000

Production: Horizonti, co-production: Biobanka, d. o. o., Educell, d. o. o.

Initiation conducts regeneration of a functional human heart muscle developing the capacity of autonomous pulsation. Regeneration involves implantation of a resorbable organic matrix, i.e. decellularized heart organ, with cardio-myocytes differentiated from human adipose derived stem cells. Initiation accelerates the maturation of the tissue and aims to achieve muscle response – it performs the initiation of the cells into functional i.e. contractive tissue and initiates the pulsation of an “in vitro” engineered organ.

Concept: Polona Tratnik (project leader), tissue engineering: Biobanka, d. o. o., Educell, d. o. o. (Ajda Marič, Miomir Knežević and his team), electrical engineering: University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Electrical Engineering (Damijan Miklavčič and his team). Support: The Slovenian Ministry of Culture, European Capital of Culture Maribor 2012.

Credits: Tehnooptika Smolnikar d.o.o. and Iskra Pio d.o.o.

The Tissue Culture & Art Project:Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr

samo — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 12:06:52 +0000

Crude Matter is an artistic meditation into the notion of the substrate as the main context for life. Loosely based on the story of the Golem we explore the “alchemical” transformation of materials into substrates that support and act on life. The piece destabilises the engineering logic of the transformation of life into raw material; to question the logic that seems to privilege the information embedded in DNA over the context in which life operates. Crude Matter is touching upon the creation of life from crude matter and human knowledge; when human hubris and life should not mixed.

The Tissue Culture & Art Project is hosted in SymbioticA, The Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts, School of Anatomy and Human Biology at the University of Western Australia.

Credits: Laboratory center of the University of Maribor and KZ Rače

Neurotica

samo — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 12:03:37 +0000

Robots move vertically along various columns, leaving traces that are actually the representation of the firings of neurons cultivated in a glass dish located thousands of kilometers away. Parallel to this, sensors located around the installation capture the movements of the public, which stimulate back the neurons.

Neurotica is made up of artists Guy Ben-Ary and Philip Gamblen and Peter Gee, as well as Dr Steve Potter and Riley Zeller-Townson, neuroscientists from the laboratory of neuro-engineering at Georgia Tech, Atlanta, United States.

Silent Barrage is hosted in SymbioticA, The Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts, School of Anatomy and Human Biology at the University of Western Australia.

Stelarc

samo — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 12:00:12 +0000

The Prosthetic Head is an embodied conversational agent – an automated, animated, informed and reasonably intelligent head that speaks to the person who interrogates it. The 3D model is a 3000 polygon mesh, skinned with the artist’s face. The eyeball, tongue and teeth are separate moving elements. It has a data-base and a conversational strategy that when coupled to a human head is capable of appropriate verbal exchanges. Facial expressions and emotions can be scripted. It can compose and recite its own poetry-like verse and song-like sounds, which are different each time it is asked.

Credits:

Original software: Karen Marcelo, Sam Trychin, Barrett Fox. New version: Martin Luerssen, Trent Lewis with Associate Professor David Powers, Flinders University. From Talking Heads to Thinking Heads: (ARC/NH&MRC Thinking Systems). Leader: Prof. Denis Burnham, MARCS Labs, University of Western Sydney.

Maja Smrekar

samo — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 11:55:28 +0000

In this project the question is posed if there is a possibility, considering the consequences of potential global food deficit and drastic reduction of the value of material goods, that human molecular production capacity in the DNA, as one of the few uncolonized biotechnological materials, could become a trade tool (based on a system of genetic credit), which could become one of the next stages of evolution. By setting up the intersections of science, art and civil society, we therefore wonder who bears responsibility for our body? Are we the owners or just inhabitants of our bodies?

Credits: In collaboration with dr. Špela Petrič, Marko Žavbi. With special thanks to the Institute of Biochemistry, Medical Faculty, University of Ljubljana. Production: Kapelica Gallery – Zavod K6/4. The project has been executed within the financial support of the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport of the Republic of Slovenia and Culture Department of the Municipality of Ljubljana.

Credits: Domel Tehtnica d.o.o. and Laboratory Center of the University of Maribor.

Leo Peschta

samo — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 11:51:52 +0000

Der Zermesser is a physical object whose purpose is to feel its way around and to articulate the relation between its own shape and its surroundings. By changing the length of its sides, this object breaks its own perfect symmetry and can feel the surrounding room with sensors attached to each of its corners. The knowledge of the position and the extension of the individual modules and of the interrelationship among their respective positions enables the entire object to move freely within the space by shifting its center of gravity.

Seiko Mikami

samo — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 11:33:44 +0000

Based on the ideas of “observing the act of observation” and “consciously and unconsciously established lines of vision”, this installation generates traces of two participants’ respective lines of sight. The participants experience an almost “haptic” kind of communication based on their own visualized lines of sight in a three-dimensional virtual space. In this process, their respective lines of vision enact a complex, organic architectural construct that could be considered as “bioarchitecture”. The first version of eye-tracking project (Molecular Informatics) was realised by Seiko Mikami in 1996.

Credits: Takayuki Ito and Richi Owaki (YCAM InterLab), evala (sound), Norimichi Hirakawa (programming), Kazunao Abe (YCAM), “The EyeWriter ver.2.0”, photo: Ryuichi Maruo

EU-Japan Fest Committee