Artist Position – Rachel Maclean: If it looks like a duck

Maclean will discuss her latest short film DUCK, a surreal and darkly comic spy thriller starring Sean Connery, which was made using deepfake technology. She will talk about the making of the film as well as the themes it raises related to the slipperiness of identity and the veracity of images in the age of AI.

40 min

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dASOSEVSxc4

Rachel Maclean

Rachel Maclean (UK) is an established artist based in Glasgow whose films have shown widely in galleries, museums, film festivals, and on television. She has screened work at numerous festivals in the UK and internationally, such as Rotterdam International, Fantasia and BFI London Film Festival. She has received significant acclaim with solo shows at Tate […]

Artist Position – Nicolas Gourault: Investigation and simulation, a documentary approach to new media

Through a discussion of some of my previous films, I will introduce the investigative and documentary approach that I employ during the research phase for my projects, along with the aesthetic and technological strategies that I choose for the production of the visuals.

40 min

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dASOSEVSxc4

Nicolas Gourault

Nicolas Gourault (FR) is an artist and filmmaker based in Paris (FR) with a background in visual arts and visual studies. He has worked with Forensic Architecture before graduating from Le Fresnoy, Studio national des arts. His work is imbued with this double training, navigating between online open-source investigations and the critical use of new […]

Artist Position – Paul Trillo: The Sparks: Igniting AI for Artistic Creation

The idea would closely revolve around "Unfiltered Creativity" - How AI frees your mind to go to new places but how constraints are still necessary. It would focus on how I've used my own live action material and my sensibilities as a filmmaker and artist to retain my vision while using AI. I would show examples of my various work.

40 min

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dASOSEVSxc4

Paul Trillo

Paul Trillo (US) is a director and video artist who challenges both his own curiosity and illusion with his visually inventive, conceptual, and technical films. His diverse body of work spans various genres and formats, infusing meaning and purpose into his experimental uses of technology and technique. Whether he’s creating in-camera practical illusions, building the […]

Art Research Paper Session #2 – AI & Speculative Futures

Art Research Paper Session #2 consists of four presentations.

1h 30min

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI0VdW8lS18

Luca Cacini: Bahar Noorizadeh’s Weird Economies: On Post-Media Speculative Politics

This talk examines the role of speculation as a tactical strategy in the context of post-media artivism, with a specific focus on the work of artist Bahar Noorizadeh and her piece "Teslaism: Economics at the End of the End of the Future." Traditional forms of activism and artistic expression are evolving in a time of exponential technological advancement and media omnipresence. Post-media artivism represents a paradigm shift, incorporating new media, digital platforms, and speculative narratives to engage with socio-political issues. The concept of speculation is situated within the broader discourse of tactical media, which emphasises the subversive and interventionist potential of media practices. This theoretical framework serves as a lens through which to analyse Noorizadeh's artistic practice and her engagement with speculative strategies. Central to the analysis is an exploration of how "Teslaism" encapsulates the ethos of post-media artivism through its use of speculative economies (see “Weird Economy”) and technological imaginaries. Her work offers a nuanced critique of techno-capitalism and its reverberations across society. By employing speculative fiction and visual storytelling, "Teslaism" not only envisions alternative futures but also exposes the power dynamics inherent in contemporary technological discourses.

20 min

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI0VdW8lS18

Luca Cacini

Luca Cacini (IT/AT) is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher in new media. His work investigates the intersections of queer ecology and techno-capitalism. Through mixed media installations and research projects, he explores how the mode of production and desire shape our stance towards culture, art, and technology. L.C. has been featured, among others, in transmediale, Ars […]

Amy Alexander: Deep Hysteria: Toward a Constructive Approach to Algorithmic Bias

Deep Hysteria is a still image series that repurposes algorithmic bias in the service of unraveling a deep human bias. Artworks are generated using deep learning algorithms trained on still frames of thousands of YouTubers speaking to the camera. Generated individuals are then algorithmically gender-adjusted and the variations fed to Amazon Rekognition, a commercial deep learning based facial analysis algorithm that attempts to classify faces according to the subject’s gender, age, and emotional appearance. Despite the marketing of such tools, reading emotions solely by analyzing a person’s face is a feat that neither humans nor “AI’s” can reliably do. Further, these deep learning algorithms are themselves trained on data categorized by humans — so they reflect human biases. The side-by-side images in Deep Hysteria compare Rekognition’s interpretation of similar expressions on more masculine and more feminine versions of the same face. The comparisons interrogate how humans perceive emotion differently, and often in alignment with stereotypes, when observing people of differing genders. In this talk, Amy Alexander will discuss historical and contemporary social perceptions of female “hysteria” and the ways such subtle social biases embed themselves in deep learning systems. She’ll discuss how recent research on race and gender bias in objective facial analysis classification systems informs current research on bias in subjective systems like emotion classifiers. She’ll discuss the process behind the Deep Hysteria project, proposing it as a way in to approaches by which art and research can redeploy algorithmic bias in the service of helping us better recognize deeply embedded human biases.

20 min

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI0VdW8lS18

Amy Alexander

Amy Alexander (US) creates computational artwork which spans installation, performance, and online media. With background in film, music, and expanded cinema, she was one of the early artists working in the development of generative net art beginning in the mid-1990s. In addition to her work under her own name, she has developed tactical media projects […]

Dr. Ellen Pearlman: Language Is Leaving Me: Epigenetic memory in multilingual visual and verbal AI

In 2021 Open AI released CLIP and VQGAN, neural network architectures for still and nascent moving text-to-image models. The response was overwhelming though in the rush to implementation issues surrounding data sources, algorithmic parameters and prompt engineering were deemphasized. Language Is Leaving Me – An AI Cinematic Opera Of The Skin, a mixed realty performance installations focuses on AI, algorithmic rendering, sound, and biometrics through the lens of epigenetic, or inherited traumatic memories of cultures of diaspora. Examining multi-lingual multi-visual renderings of prompt engineering combined with Stable Diffusion image-to- image comparisons it reveals inherent structural flaws and biases highlighting challenges for emerging visual taxonomy’s representation of non-quantifiable human experiences across cross-cultural dimensions.

20 min

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI0VdW8lS18

Dr. Ellen Pearlman

Ellen Pearlman (US) is a New York based media artist, curator, writer and critic. She is a Visiting Research Professor at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering and a New Works Artist Grantee at Harvestworks in New York City a Senior Research Assistant Professor at RISEBA University in Riga, Latvia and a Contributing […]

Maria Pfeifer & Peter Holzkorn: 23nm: Case study of Data Art Research as a model for practice in Data Art & Science

As machine learning systems are rapidly changing our world, the role of data science as a discipline is elevated. However, existing approaches in science communication and data visualization are not sufficient to address the complexity of such systems and the profoundly changing relationship between humankind and data. We introduce the “Data Art & Science” (DAS) project in which the role of art as an integral part in the discourse about data is inves- tigated through a series of commissioned art projects and close monitoring of their creation process and impact. For this paper, we propose a Data Art Research model and use it to discuss one of these art projects, 23nm. We aim to show the value in creating a system to reason about DAS and position the latter as a new way of approaching data-reliant projects in academia and industry to increase the quality of public knowledge and discourse.

20 min

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI0VdW8lS18

Maria Pfeifer & Peter Holzkorn

Maria Pfeifer (AT) is Key Researcher for Future Narratives, where she investigates the question, how stories about the futures can change the here and now. Other thematic interests lie in Art Thinking, art-inspired innovation, Data Art and Science and the collaboration between art and science. She studied art, comparative literature and cultural studies in Vienna […]

Art Paper Session #2 – Creative AI

Art Paper Session #2 consists of five presentations.

1h 30min

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTShjxEE1_8

Scottie Chih-Chieh Huang: Biomimicry Aesthetics: Exploring Reactive Systems in Generative Art

"Sensitive Floral" is an innovative interactive artwork that delves into the intersection of art, biomimicry, and computational systems. This generative piece emulates the reactive behavior of Mimosa pudica, commonly known as the "sensitive plant," using a sophisticated blend of fractal tree structures and Cellular Automata (CA). The work synthesizes these elements to mirror the adaptive and responsive characteristics of natural systems, offering a visual and experiential exploration of nature’s inherent complexity. In "Sensitive Floral," user interactions trigger a cascade of movement within a digital ecosystem, where thousands of virtual leaves respond to stimuli much like their botanical counterpart. This dynamic system not only replicates the mechanical response of Mimosa pudica but also extends its expressive potential into the realm of generative art. The artwork’s algorithmic foundation organizes coding rules and geometric relationships to generate forms that evolve in real-time, offering an immersive experience that bridges the gap between human-computer interaction and digital aesthetics. This presentation will discuss the development of "Sensitive Floral," focusing on its computational framework, the role of biomimetic design in generating organic visual experiences, and the broader implications for kinetic art and adaptive systems. Attendees will gain insights into how complex biological behaviors can inspire new modes of artistic expression, pushing the boundaries of interactive and generative art in contemporary digital practices.

15 min

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTShjxEE1_8

Scottie Chih-Chieh Huang

Scottie Chih-Chieh Huang (TW) is an Associate Professor of Art, Architecture, and Design at the Center for General Education and the Interdisciplinary Program of Technology and Art at National Tsing Hua University (NTHU), Taiwan. As the leader of the BioLogicDesign (BLD) Lab, he explores biologically-inspired computing to create novel aesthetics in generative graphic art and […]

Michael Wallinger: ITERATIVE BODY SYNTHESIS: Investigating Algorithmic Agency in Social Media Body Representations

This talk will introduces ITERATIVE BODY SYNTHESIS, a media installation that acts as both a research infrastructure for an experimental online investigation and a neural backend and monitoring interface for a virtual identity on Instagram. The project aims to investigate the impact of algorithmic decision-making on body representations in social media, exploring how these platforms may shape and distort forms of representation and perception such as body aesthetics, choreography, iconography, and authenticity. Social media platforms like Instagram treat their users as black boxes, analysing their affects based on continuously sampled visual media. By reversing this practice and identifying algorithmic "affects" towards specific body characteristics, we cast a virtual hyper-embodiment of Instagram's affective economies and notions of integrity. To this end, we have developed a prototype of a self-operating software architecture based on principles of black box testing, machine learning, and synthetic data. With this, ITERATIVE BODY SYNTHESIS explores technological possibilities for developing a digital infrastructure that empowers citizens to collectively monitor algorithmic systems that moderate, filter, and verify our media realities. This work in progress presentation will move through the different trials, challenges and (preliminary) results of the project, elaborate on areas for further research and provide an overview of the project's ongoing and future developments.

15 min

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTShjxEE1_8

Michael Wallinger

Michael Wallinger (AT) is a media artist. Their practice strives to fathom the performative, communicative and symbolic dimensionalities of data-driven technologies. Besides the co-founding and ongoing association with Format(*.strk), a network of collaborators from arts and science working on interdisciplinary productions and formats in the realms of media, art and technology, a variety of projects […]

Verena Repar: Exploring the Transformative Potential of Evocative Interactions with Diffusion Models

echoes of grief is a filmic reappraisal of a fatal loss, delving into the complex interplay between grief, human creativity, and the utilization of generative artificial intelligence in artistic expression. Drawing upon the author's personal experiences and observations, the film is the result of a partly co-creative investigation with a non-human creative instance, while uncovering parallels between co-creation and the process of bereavement. Through qualitative analysis and reflective inquiry, the film uncovers the nuances of acceptance, relinquishing of control, and the emergence of new aesthetic possibilities inherent in this unconventional creative practice. The findings shed light on the transformative potential of integrating generative AI into artistic endeavors, offering insights into the dynamics of human-machine collaboration and the renegotiation of artistic agency within a context marked by unpredictability, serendipity, and chance.

15 min

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTShjxEE1_8

Verena Repar

Verena (AT) is a transdisciplinary visual artist, exploring different technologies and their interplay in a rather explorative and playful approach. While studying Graphic Design at the University for Applied Arts in Vienna, a pivotal year in Portugal sparked her deep interest in film, animation, and moving images. Apart from her work as an animator for […]

Yuchen Yang: The Transaction: Your Day Reconfigured Through Swiss Historical Archive

The Transaction is based on an intelligent agent that utilizes diary-like text to create videos. Diverging from generative AI models that create fictional content, the agent integrates audiovisual excerpts of archival content from Radio Télévision Suisse (RTS, the Swiss national broadcasting company) and transforms text prompts into a montage of historical clips. The Transaction then transforms the montage into a Manga strip printed by a thermal receipt printer. Each receipt strip is augmented with a QR code, facilitating access for a closer look into the associated full-length archival videos with context. This work operates on an improved narrative-aware language-video joint embedding space based on deep learning, where text inputs are translated into vectors, and used to retrieve historical archival clips to construct a new video. The final Manga strips are transformed from the generated video through state-of-the-art image generation and style-transfer models. Playfully sitting at the intersection of memory, history, and narrative, this work uses the dialectical and serendipitous encounter with archival footage to destabilise the fixed linearity of history and archival narratives. This transaction between private memory and public history aims to reveal the fragility, plurality, and absurdity of the accepted norm, calling for a reexamination of our perception of the past and the present.

15 min

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTShjxEE1_8

Yuchen Yang

Yuchen (CN/CH) is working on the SNF Sinergia interdisciplinary project “Narratives from the Long Tail: Transforming Access to Audiovisual Archives” under the supervision of Prof. Sarah Kenderdine at the Laboratory for Experimental Museology at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. His research interests include multimodal machine learning, knowledge representation and semantics, audiovisual narrative, HCI, and digital […]

Wei-Cheng Hsu, Yu-Fang Lai & Cheng-Yun Yeh: Co-constructed Narratives of Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence, and Theatrical Arts

This research began by exploring the influence of the traditional ritual, Guān Luò Yı̄n, on contemporary virtual reality storytelling. Subsequently, we developed a new narrative experience system that harnesses the potential of new media. In this presentation, we will introduce our system design, where performers serve as mediators between artificial intelligence and the audience. This interaction facilitates the creation of personalized narratives and adaptive soundscapes within a virtual reality environment. This triangular co-creation framework transcends the limitations of pre-written scripts, allowing for deeper explorations of inner realms and providing a more personalized storytelling experience. In our current development, we use frame-by-frame AI-generated images as visual content. This creates a unique sense of time, simulating participants’ internal visual experiences as they explore the subconscious. Performers guide the audience to share their own stories, using the audience’s verbal descriptions as prompts to generate real-time animations that facilitate the exploration of their subconscious. This project has been publicly presented in Taiwan and France, with over a dozen showings. It has enabled participants from diverse cultural backgrounds to have transcendent experiences. Additionally, it offers new insights into audience interaction and the emotional impact of immersive technologies. Compared to previous mainstream VR projects, this new form more effectively guides real-time personalized storytelling, providing audiences with unique and unreplaceable spiritual experiences. Our future studies will optimize the real-time conversational narrative system and gather extensive feedback to improve and validate its applicability and effectiveness across diverse artistic and cultural contexts.

15 min

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTShjxEE1_8

Wei-Cheng Hsu, Yu-Fang Lai & Cheng-Yun Yeh

Wei-Cheng Hsu (TW), Yu-Fang Lai (TW), and Cheng-Yun Yeh (TW) are three artists from Taiwan, currently pursuing studies in the Interdisciplinary Program of Technology and Art at National Tsing Hua University. Their expertise lies in virtual reality, real-time image generation, audiovisual art, dance, and performance, using these mediums to craft immersive and dynamic experiences. Driven […]

Art & Industry – Dr. Jan Pinkava: The illusion of choice in interactive storytelling

Once upon a time, there was a king, or a princess, or a sausage (choose one), and every day he, she, it, asked himself, herself, itself: What are the limits of audience agency in narrative gaming or interactive storytelling? or, How can we understand the complexity of choose-your-own-adventure story graphs? or, When is a choice not a choice in an interactive story? or, What is the difference between conscious and unconscious interactivity? or, What determines who is the protagonist in an interactive story? or, What is essential to the memory of a story experience? This talk will explore some or all of these questions, depending on audience interaction, or not.

60 min

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR9etepCaM4

Dr. Jan Pinkava

Jan Pinkava (CZ/UK/US/DE) has worked in animation storytelling for over thirty years. He began his thirteen year career at Pixar directing award-winning commercials and worked in story and animation on the studio’s early feature films. He wrote and directed 1997 Oscar-winning short film Geri’s Game and was the creator and co-director of Pixar’s Oscar-winning 2007 […]

Art & Industry – Bonnie Mitchell: The Time Tunnel: Discovering Past, Present and Future

The notion of looking backwards as we continually move forward often refers to how the past influences our perception of the future. In the field of expanded animation, we often strive for innovative approaches using the latest technology and contemporary techniques, yet the outcome is always shaped by our knowledge and past experiences. By creating an immersive Time Tunnel in 2023, Mitchell invited participants to traverse the history of computer graphics experientially and didactically in hopes that future creators and thinkers would not only become interested in the past but be inspired to move beyond it. In the summer of 2023, the SIGGRAPH organization celebrated its 50th conference. Mitchell coordinated a series of events, talks and displays to mark the occasion with the immersive, interactive Time Tunnel as the core of the experience. The content for the walls of the Time Tunnel was a mix of real-time generated and pre-rendered animations and data visualizations. Using innovative technology to create a fully immersive experience of this magnitude, we capitalized on the idea that in the future, reality and virtuality will be fused. The Time Tunnel and other SIGGRAPH 50th conference celebration events merged the past, present, and future to create an illusion that transported the viewer to various points in time relative to their personal experiences. The field of Expanded Animation is a wide-open discipline where the impossible is possible and the past can become the future. The visual styles, technical innovations, failures, and successes of the past have helped to pave the path we are currently on. This talk will showcase the works of the SIGGRAPH History celebration. It will also discuss altered perceptions of time and how immersive experiences can encourage people to think differently as they forge ahead into the future.

60 min

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR9etepCaM4

Bonnie Mitchell

Bonnie Mitchell (US) is a new media artist and Professor at Bowling Green State University in Digital Arts, in Ohio, USA. Mitchell’s artworks explore spatial and experiential relationships to our physical, social, cultural, and psychological environment through animation, interaction, and immersion. Her current creative practice focuses on the development of physically immersive, animated environments that […]

Art Research Papers Session #3 – Hybrid Spaces

Art Research Papers Session #3 consists of four presentations.

1h 30min

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE01kSGwFtM

Victoria Szabo

Victoria Szabo (US) is a Research Professor of Art, Art History & Visual Studies and Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke University, where she also directs the PhD Program in Computational Media, Arts & Cultures and the Certificate Program in Information Science + Studies. Her published research, teaching, and creative practice focus on archives-driven […]

Greg Bott & Musaab Garghouti: Lo-Fi, Quick and Glitchy: T(h)inkering with Unreal Engine in Digital, Hybrid, and Expanded Theatre

This paper explores the creative tensions involved in bringing together the rapid ideation of theatre devising process with the meticulous development typical of 3D and immersive production. With reference to a collaboration between University of Plymouth and the Wardrobe Ensemble theatre company, the text focuses on the integration of Unreal Engine into devised theatre production. It discusses: the navigation of these differing temporalities; methodologies for creating media in a way is incorporated into the devising process; and the promotion of media assets as active elements within the narrative. The approach of "t(h)inkering" is introduced—combining the concepts of thinking and tinkering—as a process that eschews linearity of common 3D, animation and VFX production pipelines, emphasizing instead reflection and experimentation in media creation. The text explores how low-fidelity assets and fast turnaround times facilitated a dynamic dialogue between theatre and creative technologists and concludes by emphasizing a shift in perspective towards viewing Unreal Engine as a sandbox for experimentation rather than a linear production tool, advocating for a process-oriented approach to media creation.

20 min

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE01kSGwFtM

Greg Bott & Musaab Garghouti

Based in Cornwall, UK, Greg Bott (UK) is a lecturer in Digital Arts at Callywith College. He recently undertook an MRes at the University of Plymouth and has spent the last year working with the university as a Research Assistant and Technologist, enmeshing a range of techniques for creating 3D animatics and virtual environments with […]

Biin Shen: Some Practices and Reflections on World-building as a New Path for Design Education under Oriental Thinking

World-building emerges as a transformative paradigm in global design education, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and holistic perspectives. Rooted in disciplines like speculative fiction and game design, it transcends constructing alternate realities to encompass a comprehensive design process. Designers cultivate critical thinking, systemic understanding, and narrative proficiency through immersive exercises. Leading institutions integrate world-building, preparing students for real-world challenges. In the School of Animation and Games at the China Academy of Art, world-building is an experimental approach to facing traditional education challenges. Nevertheless, it evolves to integrate diverse research methods, challenging stereotypes, and attempting to emphasise solutions to real-world problems through virtual worlds.

20 min

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE01kSGwFtM

Biin Shen

Biin SHEN (CN) is an artist whose work spans across art, design, technology, and societal themes. She holds an MA in Design Interactions from the Royal College of Art in London, where she studied under Professors Dunne & Raby. SHEN has presented at prestigious events such as the Design Futures International Conference at Tsinghua University […]

Juan Carlos Vasquez: From Dice to Metaverses: Gamifying Musical Experiences

This paper provides a historical survey of gamification concepts and techniques applied to music composition, performance, and listening experiences. It traces the origins back to 18th century musical dice games before exploring how digital technology enabled new interactive and immersive possibilities pioneered by composers like Xenakis, Tudor, and Laurie Anderson. The growth of gamified musical experiences is highlighted, both experimental works in virtual worlds/metaverses as well as mainstream concerts like Travis Scott's Fortnite event. Psychological concepts like flow state are discussed in relation to fostering creativity and engagement through game-like elements. Recent examples are also examined, such as Enrique Tomas' Ars Electronica's Metaverse and Ecstasy / Light / Inertia. This paper positions current musical gamification practices within a rich historical tradition.

20 min

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE01kSGwFtM

Juan Carlos Vasquez

Dr. Juan Carlos Vasquez (CO, www.jcvasquez.com) boasts a remarkable trajectory as an award-winning composer, video game researcher, and academic. With two decades of dedicated engagement in intermedia projects, his innovative journey has illuminated the global stage. His creations, ranging from spatial audio works to immersive interactive experiences and game art, have resonated across continents, being […]

Wolfgang Höhl: Understanding Hybrid Spaces: Designing a Spacetime Model to Represent Dynamic Topologies of Hybrid Spaces

This paper develops a spatiotemporal model for visualizing dynamic topologies of hybrid spaces. The joint representation of spatiotemporal data is a well-known problem, for example in digital twins and urban planning. There is also a lack of a basic ontology for understanding hybrid spaces. Existing concepts and types of representations of hybrid spaces are presented. The spatiotemporal model is developed in three layers. The model was tested on the occasion of an art exhibition. Range, number of interactions and response rates were recorded. Various dynamic topologies of hybrid spaces could be successfully represented. An online survey provided a positive correlation between modality and individual activity. The three-leveled model structure helps to improve class formation and software architecture in serious games or digital twins. The joint representation of real and virtual places also revealed that range and urban density are equivalent concepts. Media can be described as places. Multilocality could successfully be mapped. Modality of hybrid spaces shows new relations between media and transportation. Combinations of the examination parameters allow a large number of different dynamic topologies to be represented. Pattern recognition in hybrid spaces enables further research and user experience studies. The results of this study convey a new understanding of urban space.

20 min

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE01kSGwFtM

Wolfgang Höhl

Wolfgang Höhl (AT/DE) is the institute director of the privately owned Research Institute for Visual Computing and an adjunct professor for Visual Computing and xR-Technologies at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). Born and grown up in Vienna, Austria, he worked as an architect and city planner in Vienna, London, Hamburg and Munich. He has […]

Art Paper Session #3 – Performance & Animation

Art Paper Session #3 consists of five presentations.

1h 30min

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCUtc8t7mWg

Immerea: Exploring New Dimensions in the Phygital: At the Intersection of Performance Art, Real-Time Installation, and Extended Realities

“Beyond My Skin” is an interdisciplinary research project presented in the forms of an interactive real-time installation, hybrid performance, and MR (Mixed Reality) experience. By exploring the hybrid relationship between bodies and their digital representation in a posthuman context, the project creates a phygital (physical-digital) space where visitors can experience new dimensions of self-perception and interaction with others, in a constant interchange between physical and virtual worlds.

15 min

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCUtc8t7mWg

Flavia Mazzanti & Manuel Bonell

Flavia Mazzanti (IT/BR/AT, *1994) is multimedia artist, co-founder of Immerea – a media company based in Vienna focusing on the development of VR Games and interactive installations –, co-organizer of XRVienna, Austrian co-ambassador of Euromersive, and active as public speaker and university lecturer. Listed in the Forbes 30 Under 30 List of 2023, Flavia graduated […]

June Kim: Animating Tangible Narratives: Creative Application of Animation and Interactive Technologies for Playful Interactions in the exhibition of Ceramic Stories [digital connections]]

This paper explores the creative application of animation and interactive technologies to craft playful, tangible interactions that convey imaginative stories and enhance spectator experiences in the exhibition "Ceramic Stories [digital connections]" at the Australian Design Centre. It demonstrates the process of creating digital connections between artifacts and audiences, based on the imaginative and historical narratives collaborating with two ceramic artists, Sebastian Conti and Casey Chen and their series of work in distinct. This illustrates the process of establishing digital linkages between artefacts and audiences. The study suggests the use of interactive technologies and animation to change spectator experiences and increase audience participation by drawing on this experience.

15 min

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCUtc8t7mWg

June Kim

June Kim (AU) is a lecturer at the Faculty of Arts, Design, and Architecture at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia. Her teaching responsibilities encompass the fields of Media Arts and Interaction Design, where she provides guidance and supervision to students. With over ten years of experience in the animation industry, […]

Margarita Köhl & David Altweger: Sphagnum Dances: Merging with Mosses. Vegetal agency in distributed more-than-human choreographies

The ongoing interdisciplinary, art-based research project „Sphagnum Dances” aims to question the disembodied rationale of Western epistemology and related regimes of dominant knowledge by focusing on vegetal agency. Following the approach of “Plant Thinking”, sphagnum mosses become the protagonists in this endeavor, as they are to be considered as key regulators of peatland ecosystems resisting the severe consequences of anthropogenic interference such as desiccation. Informed by feminist posthumanism the project aims to transgress the distinction between subject and object by tracing the formation of configurations, where nature and culture construct each other. The project involves two mutually informative art-based strategies of inquiry which both use mimesis as a lens: Based on a period of gathering data via field experiments, interviews and walks with biologists, audiovisual research about peatland and mosses, a laboratory experience space was created which invites the audience to immerse themselves in a living archive of mosses. The second strategy of inquiry addresses the interaction between the audience and the specimens. This is made possible by using artificial intelligence models mediating between the audience and the biomes and communities, the mosses interact with. By training a number of specialized LORA models with the collected hundreds of images of biomes and specimens, we can prompt those AI models to turn participants into plants, fungi, soil and whole ecosystems that move along with them. The project invites to participate in seemingly rational practices of objectification such as collecting, inspecting, sorting and categorizing and juxtaposes them with seemingly affective practices of performance and dance. By activating the entire body to explore the dynamics of vegetal phenomena, the project critically approached the disembodied rationale of Western epistemology thereby exposing the dichotomy of human activity and plant passivity as a myth. The result is a distributed choreography involving human and more-than-human actors.

15 min

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCUtc8t7mWg

Dr. Margarita Köhl & David Altweger

Margarita Köhl (AT) is a transdisciplinary researcher and artist working at the intersection of arts, eco-social as well as science and technology studies, recently focusing on the role of affect in more-than-human relationships. She holds a PhD in Communication Studies and an MA in Arts & Cultural Management, East Asian Studies, and Art History. She […]

Steve Jones & Alejandra Abad: Lexicon de Plantas (Lexicon of Plants): Cyclicality and Participatory Community Experience in an Immersive Animated Installation

Lexicon de Plantas (2024) is a large-scale audiovisual and site- specific art installation that immerses the observer in a realm of visual poetry through layering memories from the past with contemplation of the present and of possible futures. It features the transformation of drawings into animations; these are then projected onto paper sculptures. It features conceptual and collaborative activations that work to break down the barriers between artist and audience by sharing community-sourced stories relating to memories of plants. This work invites the audience to engage with the complexities of memory, migration, and belonging. It explores magical realism through a lens of belonging and mutual compassion as key parts of collective wellness. The goal is to inspire environmental awareness through acts of care and intentionality by remembering and revering shared familial traditions that link to our relationships with plants. These memories become heirlooms, manifested in a space that allows for reflection before passing them down. The end of the installation featured a live music performance, readings of the written memories, and an open invitation for the audience to participate by telling their stories related to memories of plants. This collaboration between interdisciplinary visual artist Alejandra Abad and musician Steve Jones aims to foster empathy and to nurture our communities by engaging memory in relation to the moving image, collective awareness, and storytelling.

15 min

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCUtc8t7mWg

Steve Jones & Alejandra Abad

Steve Jones (US) was a UK Fulbright Scholar to the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth from 2010-2011, where he conducted dissertation research on Welsh Modernist Literature. He received his PhD in British Literature from Ball State University in 2013 and his MA in Literature (with a concentration in Film Adaptation of Literature and Comics) […]

Rewa Wright: Towards the Eco-Digital: Real-Time Animation with Plants, Data and Sound

The ’eco-digital’ is an area of artistic research that explores the intersection of digital technology and ecological themes. Often artists are looking at how art can help highlight the climate crisis, motivating the public to act. Combining digital art practices, such as computer animation, virtual reality, and generative art, with a focus on ecological issues, eco-digital art invites and encourages discourse on a wide range of environmental sustainability, biodiversity, and the relationship between technology and nature. In this intersectional domain, animation can play a valuable role, creating new approaches that reflect, critique, and even propose solutions to contemporary environmental challenges. The eco-digital approach emphasizes the integration of natural processes and digital aesthetics to foster a deeper understanding of and engagement with the natural world. Working at the intersection of animation, sound, installation and data visualisation, we explore ways that digital systems and ecological systems can interact, drawing attention to the common threads that link both humans and plants. This is possible through a variety of methods and techniques: this research examines one such approach, combining plant bio-electrical signals, Indigenous thinking, human music and real time animation. Our goal is to develop approaches that might benefit future hybrid ecosystems, incorporating Indigenous practices of environmental care that mobilise animation and operate to bring the public closer to nature.

15 min

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCUtc8t7mWg

Rewa Wright, Simon Howden & Mereana Wright-Osborne

We are transdisciplinary art researchers with a collaborative practice, encompassing exhibition, performance, publication, presentation, music and community engagement. Working with different modalities of analogue and digital art, we explore with new methods in motion-based and sonic media, including live performance, music, digital design, and virtual image creation. Rewa (NZ/AU) is an interaction and systems designer, […]