RIXC Art Science Festival 2021
Sander VEENHOF. Zoom Ballet
Oksana CHEPELYK. Drift from Immersive Environments to VR: Ukrainian projects on Mozilla Hubs
Jānis GARANČS. Simulated Sensorium for Immersive Mappings of Ephemeral values in time
Dimitra KOUSTERIDOU. Surfaces In Becoming.
Paula VĪTOLA. Experiencing electricity
Sander VEENHOF. Zoom Ballet
Zoom Ballet – INSTRUCTIONS part 1
If you’re on a PC or Mac then you can join the Zoom Ballet session by running the “Snap Camera” software in the background. We’ll activate this AR software inside Zoom when the “Zoom Ballet” session starts. To be prepared, download this software program:
https://snapcamera.snapchat.com/download/
For more than a year our day to day reality consisted of videoconferencing. Our work life and much of our personal encounters happened in Zoom or Teams sessions. Some of us tried to make the best of it, experimenting with virtual backgrounds or AR facefilter effects. Sometimes, everyone started activating new filters every second. But instead of bringing a sense of togetherness, the feeling that gave was often one of being isolated, all enjoying our filter finds individually.
“Zoom ballet” is different, in many ways. It uses some of the filter functionality, but not to enhance people with fluffy bunny ears, which is fun for just a few seconds. Zoom ballet is based on a very minimalistic effect, just the movement of the screen.
Another aspect of Zoom ballet which empowers the experience is the synchronization. Thanks to a timer script, all movements of all people in one Zoom session are happening in sync. This ‘facefilter’ effect isn’t about an individual show-off but it’s a collective experience.
An adrenaline pumping experience too! Because after spending a year being a digital presence appearing in a virtual grid-organised world of little screens, a jumpy window almost feels like a physical experience. And a bit of adrenaline is what we might need, if this temporary reality is here to stay for a little longer.
https://meetyourstranger.com/ballet/
Sander Veenhof (NL, 1973) loves to spend time in semi-digital worlds. Programmable environments in particular. Although his curiosity relates to a far away future society in which we all live in a mixed reality universe, his art practice is hands-on and situated in the present. His present. Thanks to AR he is able to stage his own speculative real life versions of an imaginary universe, and live in it. By doing so he is able explore new (tech) domains from the inside out, with a focus on what it is like to become a semi-digital being enhanced with new super powers but limited by new boundaries too. Veenhof started creating cross-reality projects a decade ago in the avatar world Second Life, then moved on to AR and last year his playground was our Zoom reality. It turned us all into (programmable) digital appearances, so sitting still wasn’t an option for Veenhof. Nor for the attendees of his invite-only interactive Zoom sessions in which he tested various multi-user synchronised AR effects.
Oksana CHEPELYK. Drift from Immersive Environments to VR: Ukrainian projects on Mozilla Hubs
The properties of the technological part of the environment, providing the psychological state of human, in which his “I” perceives himself wrapped, included and interacting with a certain environment, providing him/her with a continuous flow of stimulus-reactions and experience with reference to “Liquid Times” (Zygmunt Bauman, 2006) in the projects: “Meta-Physical Time-Space”, “Refraction of Reality”, when uncertainty becomes a constant and fluidity – a new urgency.
Projects ARTEFACT Chornobyl+MADATAC, “GENESIS”, “VR Collider” on Mozilla Hubs are in the focus of presentation. VR COLLIDER on Hubs is an architecture structure consisting of 4 platforms, which hang as a space station in the orbit of the planet Earth, capturing and decoding the vibrations of our time: hub.link/YGkQoSe.
Through spatial ideas, the project searches for Universe understanding referring to quantum physics, human consciousness in the age of algorithmic society, and postsensorium, as Chernobyl tragedy is an example of the biggest information catastrophe, when silence, manipulation, fake propaganda of the authority led to the real victims. Prypiat Room with GENESIS project works as a real-time birth-rate monitoring in Ukraine. It is a space shaped by walls-screens with 2D and 3D USE videos of the fetus and the body of a pregnant woman: https://hubs.mozilla.com/scenes/m98G5hq, https://youtu.be/WnGgQ_HuFcY.
Dr. Oksana Chepelyk is a leading researcher of the New Technologies Department, Modern Art Research Institute of Ukraine, author of book “The Interaction of Architectural Spaces, Contemporary Art and New Technologies” (2009) and curator of International Festival of Social Sculpture, Kyiv. Oksana studied art in Kyiv, followed PhD course, Moscow, Amsterdam University, Banff Centre, Canada, Bauhaus, Germany, Fulbright Research Program, UCLA, USA. Awards: ArtsLink1997/2007 Award (USA), FilmVideo99 (Italy), EMAF2003 Werklietz Award 2003 (Germany), Artraker Award2013 (UK), Best Project2018 (Taiwan). Works shown: MOMA, NY; MMA, Zagreb; German Historical Museum, Berlin and 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; MADATAC-2020, Madrid.
Jānis GARANČS. Simulated Sensorium for Immersive Mappings of Ephemeral values in time
This presentation highlights main concepts and reflects on results of artwork/etude series that feature mappings the change of multiple values in feeds of ‘time-series data’ from e.g. financial transactions. These etudes are conceived as an interactive VR/AR installation and audiovisual performance interface. Ephemeral relationships are revealed and emphasized by the spatially organized audio-visual cues (perspective, sharpness/blur manipulation), audio-panning and timbral modulation (using 3D VR engine, live audio packages and sound spatialization). Various sound properties, such as pitch, timbre, rhythmic elements make mutual transition with visual representations of reference grids across curvilinear parameters.
These artwork series are thematically motivated by re-emergent and growing prominence of gambling factor in global economic activities (institutional promotion of investment products for masses, crypto-asset trading, online casinos, etc.). It appears that value storage and trading infrastructure increasingly merge with methods of manipulation of the human attention and emotions, and are mediated by computer networks, and increasingly – AI (Artificial Intelligence).
The investigative aspects are embedded in the emerging research area of immersive analytics, that is considered as a fusion of more recent developments in visualization, auditory displays, computing and machine learning, that has been developing in an ad-hoc way, and there have been recent efforts of elaborating the definition and proposing and organizing framework for the further research (Skarbez, Polys, Ogle, North, Bowman, 2019).
Else, the phenomenological mechanisms of the (somewhat speculative concept of) induced or ‘artificial synaesthesia’ are investigated, e.g. either as consequence from hypermedia (Bolter, 1991) or creating specific conditions where ‘Adults Can Be Trained to Acquire Synesthetic Experiences’ (Bor, D., Rothen, N., Schwartzman, D. et al, 2015), these etudes also investigate potentials of spatially expressive, ‘synthetic anisotropy instruments’ for the VR/AR staging of live data and are theoretical and practical investigation into the continuum between immersive analytics and VR/AR artwork.
Initially trained in classical arts, Jānis Garančs primarily works in technological and algorithmic art genres – interactive multi-media installations and performances, Virtual Reality. Since 2000 J.G. focuses on stereoscopic imagery, immersive 3D sound and combination of complex programmed, algorithmic structures with spontaneous gestures and live improvisation on-stage. He has exhibited and presented his work internationally at venues and events including Ars Electronica (1997,1998,2002), DEAF (Rotterdam), Transmediale (Berlin), ISEA (Helsinki 2004, Montreal 2020), Society for Art and Technology (Montreal), RIXC Art and Science Festival (Riga), EVA-LONDON, Banff New Media Institute, EXPO 2000 World Exhibition Hanover, and others. During 2006-2008 he was researcher team of EU -IST international research consortium ‘Live’ ( Institute for Media and Imaging Technologies / University of Applied Sciences, Cologne) – focusing on future interactive TV formats.
Dimitra KOUSTERIDOU. Surfaces In Becoming.
I would like to propose a piece situated between a performance and a sound installation exploring the concept of sym-poiesis simply translated as “making-with” which is in contrast to auto-poiesis, or self-making. The author Donna J. Haraway offers a redefinition of the Anthropocene, describing our epoch as one in which the human and nonhuman are inextricably linked in symbiotic practices. I refer to viewpoint through the use of acoustics and built sound environments in which I employ found and self-made instruments, objects that channel and transpose the sound like a fixed piano, DIY circuits, piezo microphones, slow-drying matter such as clay, all connected rhizomatically and acting as a singular organism. The sympoetic system can be left to sound by itself, letting the environment cause the materials to undergo micro changes, determining the piece’s sonic structure, engaging the performer as a component of its circuit. I translate the capacity of the material itself to undergo microstructural and subtle changes in real time, revealing the potentiality of producing, not just parts and visual compositions that are assembled together, but vibrations that are captured as sound waves, rhythms that escape from within themselves. By exploring a field of vitality including the non-living realms, resonances between the rhythmic interfaces of the body, the observer and the living material assemblages, the circulation of energy and the alteration of matter, are composing new echosystems.
Dimitra Kousteridou (GR) is a multidisciplinary artist, currently lives and works in Athens, GR. Her Diploma in Art and Design was received from Akto Art and Design College, her Bachelor degree in Fine Arts from the Hanze University|Academy Minerva, Groningen, NL and obtaining a Master degree in Music Composition with New Media from the Musicology of National and Kapodistrian University Athens, GR.
Her work is driven by a desire to invent a language in composition that examines tactile and sound aspects within site specific art installations, painting and improvisation. Through multidisciplinary forms that include installations, ephemeral situations and fractures of object ,she creates a space for research, while using the sound and aesthetics of the materials in time. Recently working on improvised sound compositions with handmade instruments (interactive handmade synthesizers). She has performed and exhibited in the UK,
the Netherlands, Germany, Norway, Portugal, Serbia and Greece.
Paula VĪTOLA. Experiencing the Electricity
We don’t spend too much time thinking about electricity, signals and inner workings of technological devices around us until something stops working. Modern technologies have become so complex that a lot of it is impossible to comprehend even by experts.
Can we see and experience technology in a way that it makes sense without learning complicated technological concepts?
In my presentation I will discuss how artistic explorations in electrical signals might help us understand technology and shape our relationship with it.
Paula Vitola is an artist and lecturer at the University of Liepaja, mainly working in the field of media art and art research, as well as recently focusing on sound art. In her creative work, the artist is experimenting with different technologies, natural and physical phenomena, trying to understand them, finding new means of expression and ways to deal with them.