Month: Saturday November 18th, 2017

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Chronus Art Center (CAC) is pleased to announce that the fourth Research/Creation Fellowship (USD$10,000) has been awarded to Mattia Casalegno for his project proposal The Futurist Aerobanquets RMX. The selection was made from a competitive pool of international applications.

 

Jury Statement 

Chronus Art Center's fellowship program is conceived to support and advance research based artistic practice, in particular, assisting artists who employ scientific methodologies and technological developments in experiments leading to the conception and production of artworks. The selection was based on the strength of the proposed project and evidence of the candidate’s past accomplishments that demonstrate the potential to advance technical and artistic investigation in relation to CAC's research/creation lines of inquiry.

Mattia Casalegno’s project investigates new forms of augmented virtuality media. Inspired by the multi-sensorial dinners described in the 1932’s The Futurist Cookbook by Italian artist Filippo Marinetti, the project explores novel ways in which food consumption can be approached through the technological transformations of modernity.

In addition to the strong conceptual quality and artistic potential that Casalegno’s proposal demonstrates, the project also catalyzes the development of opensource research tools for participatory AR, VR, and interactive audiovisual content generation, as well as the integration of this with realtime motion capture systems.

 

About the Work

The Futurist Aerobanquets RMX by Mattia Casalegno

The Futurist Aerobanquets RMX is a series of public events consisting of immersive, multi-sensorial dinners inspired by the fictional ‘banquets’ described in the 1932’s Futurist Cookbook by Italian artist Filippo Marinetti.

Food is vital and it has been a part of daily rituals since the beginning of time. Throughout the history, participatory nature of eating allowed communities and cultures to thrive. Around dinner tables and banquets, stories are shared, special moments are celebrated and personal relations are forged. Every society and era has a distinctive way of preparing and consuming food, and the Futurist were among the first visionaries to envision novel ways to approach food based on the technological transformations of modernity. The Futurist Aerobanquets RMX aims to investigate how contemporary technologies might revolutionize food consumption in the near future.

At the current stage of its development, virtual/mixed reality is mainly used for introspective and solitary experiences, while we aim to develop deeper narratives focused around the act of sharing a meal that are participatory, communal and relational, and to explore how embodiment and memory can influence how one experiences food.

 

Previous works of the artist:

End User, Installation, 3 ch. 4K UHD video, stereo, 2016

TWINS, Installation, OLED 65″ flat screens, manila rope, HD video, 2015

The Open, wearable architecture, custom made electronics, software, microphone, fresh sod, 2014

 

Artist's Bio

Mattia Casalegno is an interdisciplinary artist, live-media performer and installation artist working in a broad range of media. His multidisciplinary work is influenced by both post-conceptualism and digital art, and has been defined relational, immersive, and participatory. His practice explores the effects new media have on our societies, investigating the relationships between technology, the objects we create, our subjectivities, and the modes in which these relations unfold into each other. He is exhibited internationally in various festivals and museums, such as Mutek Festival in Canada, Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts in Taiwan, MADRE and MACRO in Italy, Rome Fashion Week 2010, Cimatics festival and Nuit Blanche in Belgium, Optronica in UK, Le Cube - Contemporay Art Museum in France, OFFF in Spain, AVIT in Germany, Wright Gallery, AxS Festival, YAA Museum and LACMA in US. His work has been featured internationally in publications and catalogues such as A Touch of Code, Gestalten Books; New Media Design, Sometti, and Deleuze and Audiovisual Art, Manchester Metropolitan University, and on media outlets as the Wall Street Journal, Art Tribune, the Creators Projects, Creative Applications, Hyperallergic, Digicult, Art F City, We Make Money not Art, e-artnow. He holds an MA in Communication Studies from La Sapienza University in Rome and MFA in Design and Media Arts from UCLA. Nominated to the New Technological Art Awards in 2014 and artist in residence at Eyebeam in 2015. He received various grants and fellowships from, among others the CCI - Center for Cultural Innovation, GAI - Young Italian Artists Network, NY Foundation for the Arts, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, AV Node, Elettrowave, DAC - Digital Arts Center Taipei. In 2015, he co-founded the artist space Roomservice in Brooklyn, NY, and is currently visiting professor at the department of Digital Arts, Pratt Institute and Rhode Island School of Design in US.

 

About <CAC_LAB> 

<CAC_LAB> is a space dedicated to the inquiries about art, design, science and technology and their impact on global contemporary culture and society. Through artistic practice, technological development and research methodology, <CAC_LAB> seeks to enable creative processes that result in works of art of high production and aesthetic value. <CAC_LAB> is a space of flux which encourages artistic practice as a generator of new knowledge, a territory where art and science and technology converge into an experimental field of interdisciplinary research; free from dominant cultural establishments, technological overload and economical biases.

More info at: http://lab.chronusartcenter.org

 

Fellowship Support 

This Fellowship is a chance for international artists and researchers to engage and learn from the art, technological and entrepreneurial communities of Shanghai. The selected Fellow will be offered a total amount of USD$10,000 for a 3 month deep-immersion period; including artist fees, living expenses and materials. In addition our lab facilities and tools are available for the fellow's needs; these include but are not limited to: Laser-cutter, bandsaw, sander-belt, press drills, all sorts of hand tools, a variety of electronic components, arduinos, raspberryPis, an oculus rift DK2 headset, Surface Mount Infrared soldering, soldering irons and other prototyping tools.

For international Fellows, CAC is happy to provide necessary paperwork and advice to help expedite the process of securing his/her visa, travel and accommodation in Shanghai whereas all the expenses will be covered within the amount of the fellowship.

During the 3-month program, CAC will work closely with the selected Fellow to see his/her project realized and offer program support in developing work for performances, events, seminars, exhibitions, or other public and educational programming during the term of the Fellowship. CAC will also facilitate joint presentations alongside community partners, host conversations with the artists and display works in progress; revealing the creative process as it happens.

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CAC x ON AIR Artist Talk | Posthuman Worlds

Artist: Lawrence Lek
Date: 18.11.2017
Time: 15:00-16:30
Language: English (with Chinese interpreting)
Venue: Chronus Art Center (No.18, No.50 Mo Gan Shan Rd, Shanghai)
Organised by Chronus Art Center (CAC)
Co-organised by <ON AIR>

 

Free admission. To reserve a seat, please click here.

 

Who will the artists of the future be? When AIs attain superhuman levels of creativity, will we embrace or exile these non-human creators? In Lek's science fiction film Geomancer, an international group of pro-human activists formulate the 'Anti-AI Art Law' because of their fears about the rise of creative AIs. While banning AIs from galleries, literary awards and art prizes might seem excessive, it might not be so far from reality. As automated digital technologies extend traditional notions of authorship, creativity in the new millennium will become an increasingly political frontier.

Using his most recent film Geomancer and other examples from his virtual worlds, Lawrence Lek will trace the development of his use of fictional artists to explore the politics of creativity. Drawing from his background in architecture, music and filmmaking, these works use video game engines to re-imagine real places within science fiction scenarios. These projects also include Sinofuturism (1839-2046 AD); and Play Station (Art Night, London, 2017). During the artist talk at Chronus Art Center, Lawrence Lek will also explore how digital artworks – themselves symptomatic of a neoliberal shift towards the experience economy - enable artists to construct new narrative forms that both celebrate and critique technology.

《风水师》(Geomancer), 2017, HD video, stereo sound, 48m15s

《中华未来主义》(Sinofuturism), 1839-2046 AD, 2016, HD video, stereo sound, 60m00s

 

About the Artist

Lawrence Lek is an artist based in London. He creates speculative worlds and site-specific simulations using gaming software, video, installation and performance. Often based on real places and fictional scenarios, his digital environments reflect the impact of the virtual on our perception of reality. Recent exhibitions include: Play Station, Art Night, London (2017); HyperPavilion, Venice Biennial 2017; Glasgow International, Tramway, Glasgow (2016); SeMA Biennale Mediacity Seoul 2016, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul (2016); Missed Connections, Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf (2016); Secret Surface, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2016); and The Uncanny Valley, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge (2015). Lek received the Jerwood / Film & Video Umbrella Award in 2017, Jerwood / Film & Video Umbrella Award in 2017.

 

About <ON AIR>

As a joint initiative between International Art & Science Research Institute (China) and videoclub (UK), <ON AIR> will launch a series of art projects and events from 2017 to 2019 in both China and the UK.

<ON AIR> has received funding support from Arts Council England and Creative Scotland. Focusing on creativity and exchange in the field of contemporary art, it aims to bring about refreshing and diverse activities in forms of discussion, exhibition, performance and screenings.

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unReal. the Algorithmic Present，an exhibition curated by ZHANG Ga and Sabine Himmelsbach, co-presented by Chronus Art Center (CAC) and House of Electronic Arts Basel (HeK), supported by Pro Helvetia Shanghai, Swiss Arts Council and Department for Culture and Education of the German Consulate General Shanghai, opened on November 11 2017 and will be on view till January 21, 2018.

unReal. the Algorithmic Present is an exhibition that attempts to confront the digital present through the very means of technological intervention both as critical examination as well as alternative prospects. The twenty-three works in the exhibition by international artists underscore the often-hidden materiality of bits and bytes, bringing to the fore the algorithmic processes that constitute our digital present.

More about the exhibition

 

Opening Reception

2017.11.11 17:00-19:00

 

Panel with artists and curator

2017.11.11 16:00-17:00

Panelists: ZHANG Ga, Ralf Baecker, Pe Lang, Daniel Canogar, Kerstin Ergenzinger, Fito Segrera, WANG Yuyang, aaajiao, Kelani Nichole

 

Exhibited Works


Heather Dewey-Hagborg
Stranger Visions, 2012-2013
Found genetic materials, custom software, 3d prints, documentation

 


Pe Lang
modular | nº 1, 2017
Actuators, O-Rings, silicone, various mechanical elements
240 x 240 x 240 cm

 


Daniel Canogar
Small Data Series, 2014-2016

 


Fito Segrera
1 & N chairs, 2017
Wooden chair, screens, camera, custom software and cognitive computation engine
211×165×50 cm

 


Ralf Baecker
Interface I, 2016
Aluminum tubes, DV motors, strings, eleastic bands, custom electronics, geiger müller tubes
480 x 650 x 170 cm
Production supported by NOME Gallery

 


Cod.Act
πTon/2, 2017
Polyurethane hose, 4 DC motors, 4 speakers
Production supported by Faulhaber Minimotor

 


Zahra Poonawala
The Fool’s Ballad, 2016
Interactive sound installation
135 x 50 x 50 cm

 


WANG Yuyang
Aura, 2015
Video installation
Television, Surveillance Equipment, Computer, Stainless Steel Track
400 × 400 × 60 cm、250 × 250 × 50 cm

 


aaajiao
Limited Landscape, Unlimited Floating, 2015
3D printing, Magnetic levitation device
Sculpture: 9 x 9 x 8 cm
Base: 75 x 21 x 4 cm
In cooperative with XU Cong, LIU Xiaoguang and SHEN Lei

 


aaajiao
Obj.4, 2016
LCD screen, wood
24,5 x 16,5 x 4 cm
In cooperative with ZHANG Tao

 


TRANSFER Download
Video installation
62:08 min
Courtesy TRANSFER Gallery, New York
Artists: AES+F, LaTurbo Avedon, Claudia Hart, Rollin Leonard, Rosa Menkman, Lorna Mills, Harvey Moon, Eva Papamargariti, Sabrina Ratté, Rick Silva and Nicolas Sassoon, Phillip David Stearns, Daniel Temkin

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Panel | unREAL as the New Real

Guests: Ralf Baecker, Kerstin Ergenzinger, Daniel Canty, ZHANG Ga

Time: 12.11.2017, 14:00-16:00

Language: English/Chinese

Venue: Department for Culture and Education of the German Consulate General Shanghai

Address: Cross Tower 101, No. 318 Fuzhou Road, Huangpu District, Shanghai

Co-organized by Chronus Art Center and Department for Culture and Education of the German Consulate General Shanghai

 

Free admission. To reserve a seat, please click here

 

In contemporary art of the last fifty years, the concept of real has often been characterized as an embodied engagement of social transformation and an imagined utopia against a pictorial formalism. With the advent of mass consumption of the internet and the ubiquitous deployment of digital devices, a technologically constructed time-space has largely reshaped our concept of temporality and spatiality, work and play, politics and economics. Reality thus takes on a new level of complication that resists any easy categorization and signification. Along with this new reality where the politics of the real no longer lies only in the sphere of the social, here we are confronted with this fundamental question: who has the ownership of this new reality that is constructed by the materiality of bits and bytes and the algorithmic power of the digital?

As part of the public program associated with the CAC exhibition unREAL.the Algorithmic Present, on Sunday November the 12th, the artists Ralf Baecker and Kerstin Ergenzinger, together with Daniel Canty - Ergenzinger’s collaborator for her work Wanderer – Spacetime Poetry, will be joined by ZHANG Ga, co-curator of the exhibition and artistic director of Chronus Art Center, for a panel discussion entitled “unREAL as the New Real” at the Department for Culture and Education of the German Consulate General.

Ralf Baecker: Interface I, 2016

Kerstin Ergenzinger: Wanderer – Spacetime Poetry, 2017

 

Biographies 

Ralf Baecker, German artist born in Düsseldorf in 1977, works at the intersection of art, technology and science. In his installations and built machines, Baecker explores the fundamental mechanisms of the action and effect of media technologies. In his representations and spatial depictions of microscopic processes he attempts to put our perception to the test.

http://www.rlfbckr.org

Kerstin Ergenzinger, born in 1975, lives in Berlin. In her works she explores the sensory and conceptual relationships between the individual and its physical environment. By focusing on processes of perception, on technologies and strategies applied in the production of knowledge and more specifically in spatial and mental navigation, she examines the limits of human perception and our ability to understand and interpret our environment.

http://www.nodegree.de

Daniel Canty is a writer and director hailing from Montréal, Québec. His work circulates between literature, cinema, the visual arts, theatre and design and has been shown in various international contexts. He provides words and dramaturgy for the scriptural automata of Wanderer – Spacetime Poetry.

www.danielcanty.com

ZHANG Ga is artistic director of Chronus Art Center and an internationally recognized media art curator. He is Distinguished Professor at China Central Academy of Fine Arts and Senior Fellow at University of California Santa Barbara. Previously, he was a Professor at the Academy of Arts and Design, Tsinghua University, and Associate Professor of Media Art at Parsons School of Design, and has held visiting positions at the MIT Media Lab, Stanford University, The Graduate Center, CUNY and Swiss Federal Institute of technology Lausanne (EPFL).  In his capacity as Consulting Curator of Media Art at the National Art Museum of China from 2007–2014, he curated the widely acclaimed international media art triennial series including Synthetic Times (2008); Translife (2011), and thingworld (2014), among others. These large-scale exhibitions critically investigated and examined global media art trends, and generated intellectual discourses about art, technology and culture. He served on the juries for Prix Ars Electronica, VIDA, and Franklinfurnace’s Future of the Present Award, to name a few. He has spoken widely on media art and culture around the world and has edited several books and authored essays that were published by the MIT Press, October, Liverpool University Press and Tsinghua University Press. He currently serves on the editorial board of Leonardo Books, published by the MIT Press.

 

About Department for Culture and Education of the German Consulate General Shanghai

The Goethe-Institut is the cultural institute of the Federal Republic of Germany with a global reach. The Institute promotes knowledge of the German language abroad and fosters international cultural cooperation. It conveys a comprehensive image of Germany by providing information about cultural, social and political life in the nation. Cultural and educational programmes encourage intercultural dialogue and enable cultural involvement.

In Shanghai the Department for Culture and Education of the Consulate General of Germany (Abteilung Kultur und Bildung) performs the tasks of the Goethe-Institut.

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Artist Talk | Speculative Fabulation

Artist: Joey Holder

Date: 12.11.2017

Time: 13:00-14:00

Language: English (with Chinese interpreting)

Venue: Chronus Art Center (No.18, No.50 Mo Gan Shan Rd, Shanghai)

Organised by Chronus Art Center (CAC)

Co-organised by <ON AIR>

 

Free admission. To reserve a seat, please click here.

 

SF is a method of tracing, of following a thread in the dark, in a dangerous true tale of adventure, where who lives and who dies and how might become clearer for the cultivating of multispecies justice.

Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene

 

Joey Holder draws us into a fable of the ecosystems and anthroposystem. Connecting forms which have emerged through our human taste, culture and industrial processes, Holder investigates the complex systems that dissolve notions of the ‘natural’ and the ‘artificial’. Genetically modified products, virtual biology and aquatic creatures are incorporated into an extended web, challenging our perception of evolution, adaptation and transformation. By comparing the substances of the so-called ‘organic’ and ‘man-made’, and their perceptions through a series of abstractions, Holder creates a manifold world that shows the most natural and unified harmony than it has ever been. These hybridities may suggest a particular function or natural form but remain elusive through their odd displacement. During the event, Holder will transform the CAC project room into a sci-fact scenario with three works - Selachimorpha, Ophiuchus, and Ophiux, which will guide the audience to experience the artist’s fascination with our universe and the unknown.

Welcome to join the open-ended sharing about the future of science, medicine, biology and human-machine interactions!

Selachimorpha, 2017 © Courtesy the artist

Ophiuchus, 2016 © Courtesy the artist

Ophiux, 2016-2017 © Courtesy the artist

 

About the Artist

Joey Holder is a London based artist who received her BA from Kingston University (2001) and her MFA from Goldsmiths (2010). Her artistic practice and research spans video and multimedia installations both online and offline. Her work raises philosophical questions of our universe and things yet unknown, regarding the future of science, medicine, biology and human-machine interactions. Working with scientific and technical experts she makes immersive, multi-media installations that explore the limits of the human and how we experience non-human, natural and technological forms. Mixing elements of biology, nanotechnology and natural history against computer programme interfaces, screen savers and measuring devices, she suggests the impermanence and inter-changeability of these apparently contrasting and oppositional worlds: “everything is a mutant and a hybrid”.

Recent solo/duo exhibitions include SELACHIMORPHA, Photographers Gallery, London (2017); Ophiux, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge (2016); TETRAGRAMMATON, LD50, London (duo w/ John Russell) (2016); Lament of Ur, Karst, Plymouth (duo w/ Viktor Timofeev) (2015); BioStat., Project Native Informant, London (2015) and HYDROZOAN, The Royal Standard, Liverpool (2014). Recent group exhibitions include Alien Matter, transmediale, Berlin (2017); The Noise of Being, Sonic Acts, Amsterdam (2017); Winter is Coming, Georg Kargl, Vienna (2016); Deep Inside, 5th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Moscow, Russia (2016); The Uncanny Valley, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge (2015); BODY HOLES, New Scenario, online exhibition at the 9th Berlin Biennale, Berlin, Germany (2016); Sunscreen, online and at Venice Biennale (2015); A Plague of Diagrams, ICA, London, UK (2015); #WEC- Whole Earth Catalyst, The Composing Rooms, Berlin, Germany (2015); Hypersalon, Art Basel Miami, USA (2014); Vestige: The Future is Here, Design Museum, London (2013) and Multinatural Histories, Harvard Museum of Natural History, Massachusetts, USA (2013). Upcoming projects include Hydrozoan at the 7th Moscow International Biennale Of Contemporary Art, Russia; WALLPAPERS at New Forms Festival, Canada and Designing Desire at FACT, Liverpool, UK.

 

About <ON AIR>

As a joint initiative between International Art & Science Research Institute (China) and videoclub (UK), <ON AIR> will launch a series of art projects and events from 2017 to 2019 in both China and the UK.

<ON AIR> has received funding support from Arts Council England and Creative Scotland. Focusing on creativity and exchange in the field of contemporary art, it aims to bring about refreshing and diverse activities in forms of discussion, exhibition, performance and screenings.

 

* Free cold brew will be provided during the event to spark the intelligence and energy. Special thanks to SAY COFFEE COLD BREW for its generosity.

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Leonardo Art, Science and Technology Lecture Series | transmediale: Art & Digital Culture At Face Value

Speaker: Kristoffer Gansing

Introduced by ZHANG Ga

Time: 10.11.2017, 19:00 - 20:30

Language: English (with Chinese interpreting)

Venue: EXTRA TIME(NO.888 Changde Road, Jing’an District, Shanghai)

Co-organized by Chronus Art Center, CAFA Center for Art and Technology (CAFAcat), CAFA School of Experimental Art

In collaboration with Leonardo / ISAST

 

Free admission. To reserve a seat, please click here.

 

About the Lecture

Based on the thirty-year legacy of critical engagement with media art of the Berlin-based transmediale festival, this lecture makes a case for the values of speculative, interventionist practices in art and (post-) digital culture. Hybrid research and development processes that fuse art, science and technology are ever more in demand but are at the same time increasingly separated from processes of value creation. The latter are determined by the drive to datafy everything in order to implement fine-grained forms of measurement and quantification. As creativity becomes a highly sought after skill in an increasingly knowledge-driven economy we need to ask ourselves whose and what innovation is eventually being produced by artists intersecting with industrial contexts, scientific knowledge paradigms and a financialised economy. The lecture will explore artistic work produced within the framework of the festival which offer new critical imaginaries of what technological development might look like in this moment of a datafied reality, algorithmic communication cultures and post-digital breakdowns of the analogue and the digital.

transmediale 2017 ever elusive exhibition view “alien matter”  © transmediale

 

About the Speaker

Kristoffer Gansing is a Swedish curator, writer and researcher living in Berlin where he for the past seven years acts as the artistic director of the world-renowned transmediale festival for art and digital culture. Intersecting art, theory and technology, Gansing’s writing and curatorial work is a critical interrogation of our relation to technology from a post-digital perspective where digitisation has become part of everyday life. Gansing has contributed articles to academic volumes such as Place Studies in Art, Media, Science and Technology (WDG, 2009), Online Territories (Peter Lang, 2011) and journals such as The Fibreculture Journal. His PhD Transversal Media Practices (2013) dealt with how media archaeological art practices reconfigure linear conceptions of technological development and was published by Malmö University Press in 2013. With Ryan Bishop, Jussi Parikka and Elvia Wilk he edited across & beyond – a transmediale reader on Post-digital Practices, Concepts, and Institutions published by Sternberg Press in 2016. Prior to these activities, Kristoffer Gansing worked in between media research, art and curation, including the artist run TV channel tv-tv in Copenhagen and as co-director of the media art festival The Art of the Overhead, devoted to the near forgotten medium of the overhead projector.

 

➙ As an installment of the Leonardo Art, Sicence and Technology Lecture Series 2017, this lecture will be premiered at Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) on November 7th.

About the LEONARDO ART, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY LECTURE SERIES

Co-organized by Chronus Art Center(CAC), CAFA Center for Art and Technology (CAFAcat) and CAFA School of Experimental Art, in collaboration with Leonardo / ISAST, each installment of the series will feature renowned guest speakers from around the world on topics within the ever-expanding scope of Art/Science. CAC and its partner institutions will provide the venues for the events.

About Leonardo/ISAST

Leonardo/The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (Leonardo/ISAST) serves the global network of thinkers and practitioners working in the realms where art, science and the humanities connect. Since its beginnings nearly 50 years ago, Leonardo has fostered and supported the work of artists, scientists and scholars dedicated to breaking down the barriers that often separate fields of endeavor. Today, Leonardo/ISAST continues its leadership in cross-disciplinary creativity through the publication of content on evolving platforms (in collaboration with the MIT Press); the presentation of events, residencies and art/science projects; and other programs designed to address the interests of the art/science/humanities community.

More info at: www.leonardo.info

 

* Special thanks to EXTRA TIME for providing venue support for this event