RIXC Art Science Festival 2021
Byron RICH, Kylie RIMES, Kai’lani WOODARD. The Suburbs of Accra
Maija DEMITERE. Lifestyle Trends and Deep Sustainability
Riad SALAMEH. Biopolitics of post-biological bodies on the web: Performance of the internet self as an agent of surveillance capitalism
Alla SEMENOVSKAYA, Eva LINDSAY, Dhruv Shah aka LODAYA. Microplot: genomic technologies as a potential tool of revelation for deliberate terraforming
Byron RICH, Kylie RIMES, Kai’lani WOODARD. The Suburbs of Accra
The Suburbs of Accra uses augmented reality to unveil the often hidden ramifications of technological obsolescence by using augmented reality to place family photos and information harvested from hard drives at e-waste sites in Accra, Ghana. The project is intended to demonstrate how neocolonialism manifests in the continued marginalization of people living in emerging economies and developing countries. Additionally, The Suburbs of Ghana calls attention to the environmental devastation levied on developing nations via e-waste sites.
Intended as a comment on the hidden, or more accurately, ignored human and environmental cost of our societal obsession with ‘newness’, The Suburbs of Accra is the first of a series of new works that will use AR to facilitate exploration of locales where neocolonialism is taking a devastating toll on the environment and its human and non-human inhabitants. As heavy metals become more difficult to mine, recycling obsolete technologies becomes increasingly important, however like ship breaking and plastics recycling (the subjects of two subsequent works in the series) emerging economies and developing nations bear the majority of the costs associated with enabling the cycle of unnecessary replacement perpetuated by a concerted effort between corporations and governments aimed at maximizing shareholder returns.
We would love to speak about the work and the complex, intertwining factors that underpin its development.
Byron Rich is an artist, professor and lecturer born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. His work exploring speculative design, biology futures and tactical media has been widely shown and spoken about internationally. He pursued a degree in New-Media at The University of Calgary before relocating to Buffalo, New York where he obtained an MFA in Emerging Practices at The University at Buffalo.He was the runner up for the 2016 BioArt & Design Award, and the recipient of an Honorary Mention at the 2017 Prix Ars Electronica. He now serves as Director of Academic Innovation Partnerships, and Associate Professor of Art at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania.
Kylie Rimes (she/they) is a research assistant at Allegheny College, coming from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and pursuing a major in Business and a double minor in Communications and Art, Science, and Innovation. They are in a Sorority, KKG, and the Rotaract Club, holding a board position as head PR.
Kai’lani Woodard is a student and research assistant from Kittanning, PA. She is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Art, Science and Innovation at Allegheny College. She is a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma Gamma Rho chapter and serves as the Public Relations Chairman.
________________
Maija DEMITERE. Lifestyle Trends and Deep Sustainability
Living a sustainable lifestyle is essentially very straightforward and very boring (consume less, consume local, eat less, eat local, eat vegan). The presentation will explore how unique and valid are ecological ideas and policies that are in the zeitgeist, popularised in the social media and mainstream journalism today – being ecological in the times of fitfluencers, vegan-moms and internet-assembled philosophies.
Maija Demitere is an artist, researcher and a doctoral student at Liepaja University. Her main fields of research are deep sustainability, slow media art, developing art research and presentation methods that could offer different lifestyles – promoting individual self-sustainability.
________________
Riad SALAMEH. Biopolitics of post-biological bodies on the web: Performance of the internet self as an agent of surveillance capitalism
This research examines the post-biological body’s entanglement with surveillance capitalism through a central research question: how does the internet’s infrastructure transform the nature of bodies in relation to biopower? To address it, I examine the transformative turn of using bodies as tools of material and immaterial labor into the extraction of bodies into a commodity for surveillance capitalism. Critical phenomenology provides a method for understanding how models of surveillance function, specifically concerning bodies that do not fit within the normative categories and universalizing assumptions that internet systems are predicated on. Feminist, queer thinking, and imaginative computation can be seen as models to reshape this infrastructure. I investigate why algorithmic systems are designed to erase a particular set of identities and question whether it is possible for the labor of artists/activists working on the internet to move beyond the binaries of algorithmic classifications. This research established a net-performance titled Economy of my body, as to provide a lived account of the experience of the economy and labor attached with being online. Auto-ethnography is part of the critically reflexive practice that allows one to experience the body more deeply as it is perceived, optimized, essentialized, and co-opted by neoliberal forms of power.
Riad Salameh is a researcher and art practitioner with a graphic design, art mediation and media arts cultures background. His work often follows a praxis method that uses micro-transformations as to respond to the urgency of collective socio-economic transformations. Looking into the ownership of bodies in cyberspaces, investigating internet capital and physiological needs of the everyday, he critically investigates economies and its interlink to biopower. His interests relate to the abstraction of the physical and digital self through performance, web-navigation, irony, humor and intimacy. He has exhibited in Lebanon, Denmark, Georgia, England, Pakistan and online. He is currently a digital design resident at Fikra Designs in Sharjah.
________________
Alla SEMENOVSKAYA, Eva LINDSAY, Dhruv Shah aka LODAYA. Microplot: genomic technologies as a potential tool of revelation for deliberate terraforming
The project is a call to recalibrate the approach to design by recognizing the microbiome as an additional parameter and overlooked agent of terraforming. The technological mediation of the continuous, interchangeable and entangled relationships between microbiomes, environments and ourselves allows for higher resolutions of perception in the way we compose synthetic landscapes.
When germ theory originally framed microbes as pathogens, design was driven by “sterilization” and aimed at the “extermination” of microbial life and the production of highly tempered and sealed environments, propelling a culture of cleanliness. With the potential advancement and accessibility of metagenomic sequencing, we may be at the cusp of refining our understanding of these microbial systems, and reframing our design practices from the reactory to the nuanced, adaptive, and proactive.
Manifesting alternative, more precise compositions across various sites and scales of intervention, the project narrates how sequencing could become a potential design tool to inform deliberate terraforming.
Alla Semenovskaya is an interdisciplinary researcher and consultant based in Russia, with a background in strategic business development and launching emerging technologies. She is a graduate in Asian and African Studies from National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow, and a fellow of the postgraduate design-research program «The Terraforming» of the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design. Her recent work has specialised in research projects and site specific collaborative practices, exploring comparative governance, climate policies, and implications of computational technologies. She is interested in how interspecies connections inform our perception of assembled ecosystems.
asemenovskaya@yahoo.com, https://www.facebook.com/aasemenovskaya/
Eva Lindsay is an architect and set designer. Since graduating from the Glasgow School of Art she has worked in various design studios in Rotterdam, Paris, Brussels and Berlin. Recently she took part in a second cycle research program “The Terraforming” at the Strelka Institute. Eva’s work has specialised in research projects ranging from problematising planning systems to futureproofing infrastructure space. The work has been displayed in various formats including exhibitions, films and publications.
evalindsay@live.com, https://www.facebook.com/eva.lindsay.9
Dhruv Shah Aka Lodaya is an Architect and Architectural Historian residing in Vadodara, India. After completing his Bachelor of Architecture in India, Dhruv has graduated with a master’s in Architectural History from University College London (UCL) Bartlett, London, UK. He was also a part of the second cycle of the Terraforming research program run at the Strelka Institute, Moscow. He is currently working as an assistant professor at Anant University In India, involved in academia, research, and curatorial architectural practice. Working closely with the medium of Text and Image, his interests lie in the intersection of projected power, politics, and placemaking.
dhruvshah317@gmail.com, https://www.facebook.com/dhruv.shah.79274