Month: Friday August 17th, 2018

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On July 22, Chronus Art Center (CAC) organized the public workshop "Field Remediations: Carbon"  initiated by Karolina Sobeck, one of the participating artists of CAC summer exhibition Machines Are Not Alone. The five invited guests in the workshop shared some of their research and practices in the fields of photosynthesis, carbon dioxide capture, geological utilization and storage technologies and carbon market. They also joined the hands-on experiments devised by the artists and unfolded a multi-aspect discussion based on a series of issues surrounding the carbon cycle.

 

Public Talks 

Photosynthesis: C3 and C4

Guest: ZHU XingGuang, Institute of Plant Physiology & Ecology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

 

CO2 Capture, Geological Utilization and Storage Technologies

Guest: WEI Ning, Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

 

Carbon Market in China

Guest: QIN Siyan, Pony Testing Internation Group.

 

Deep Swamp

Guest: Tega Brain, artist.

 

▼ Artist Karolina Sobecka introduces the topic and background of the workshop.

 

▼Experiment & Discussion: Drawing Carbon Cycle

 

▼Experiment & Discussion: Closing the Carbon Cycle

 

 

Special thanks to Pro Helvetia Shanghai and the strategic support from Swissnex China

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Topic:
Climate Engineering: Between Science and Fiction

Date:
19.08.2018 Sunday

Time: 
14:00-15:30

Language: 
Chinese/English

Venue:
Chronus Art Center (BLDG. 18, NO.50 Moganshan RD., Putuo District, Shanghai)

Reading Material Cost:
15 RMB/person

 

Field Remediation Reading Group is a series of educational and participatory events derived from the art project Field Remediations: Carbon by the artist Karolina Sobecka, one of the participating artists of the CAC summer exhibition Machines Are Not Alone. The Reading Group will take place occasionally during the exhibition (21.07.2018 - 21.10) and discussions will develop in relation to its context. Materials related to the Reading Group will be archived and become part of the Field Remediation Library.

“The idea that humanity makes its own history and does so against the backdrop of the Earth’s slow unconscious evolution is deeply implicated in modernity. We are accustomed to thinking of humans, having emerged from the primordial darkness, as independent entities living and acting on a separate physical world, a world we plough up, mine, build on and move over but which nevertheless has an independent existence and destiny. This understanding of the autonomy of humans from nature runs deep in modern thinking; we believe we are rational creatures, arisen from nature, but independent of its great unfolding processes.”  

——  Clive Hamilton, Earthmasters: The Dawn of the Age of Climate Engineering

 

 About the Topic

Anthropogenic climate change today affects not just the atmosphere but the chemical composition of the oceans (acidification), the biosphere (species extinctions and shifting habitats), the cryosphere (melting ice masses) and the lithosphere itself. In the face of the unprecedented global crisis brought about by climate change, will mankind be able to shift our perspective and throw into question the anthropocentric worldview that has dominated western, modernist thinking: the idea that man as an autonomous subject, while being separate from nature, enjoys unlimited power to conquer, modify nature at will and eventually transcend everything in the universe? In the international community, what makes possible the co-existence of the denial of climate change and the support of climate engineering? What is climate engineering, both its overall strategies and their scientific and technological basis? Are we able to predict the consequences these methods may incur? How does carbon emission reduction as a method to mitigate global warming become trapped in the prisoner’s dilemma? We will examine these questions during our reading group’s first meeting on Sunday, August 19th. Some selected art projects created by artists in collaboration with scientists and engineers will also provide us with different and critical perspectives to look at climate issues.

 

How to Join 

Please reply "Booking+Name+Tel+Email" on the CAC WeChat Channel

* If you have successfully registered for the event, you will receive a list of materials, including a selection of recommended to prepare prior to the event.

* If you need to cancel your reservation, please reply on the CAC WeChat channel at least 24 hours before the event.

To download the reading group's introductory text, please click on "Read More" at the bottom of this article.

 

Call for Suggested Topics 

Anyone may suggest a topic for CAC's Reading Group!
Please send your proposal to info@chronusartcenter.org with

- the email subject line: Field Remediations Reading Group Proposal

- a proposal in PDF format including the Topic+Time+Abstract (around 500 words in Chinese/English), your name, occupation and contact information.

Proposals will be selected based on their relevance to the concept of “Machines Are Not Alone”. Selected topics will be scheduled for the future meetings, and the proposal's author may participate in that meeting's planning and organization.

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Workshop Leader: 
CHEN Baoyang

Language:
Chinese

Date: 
04/08/2018

Time: 
11am – 5pm

Location: 
Chronus Art Center (No.18 Bldg, No.50 Mo Gan Shan Rd)

Event Ticket
Workshop                             200
CAC Member                        120
Student                               100

Join CAC Membership to enjoy 40% off!

*Only 12 seats available, R.S.V.P

Please click on http://cacsummercamp.mikecrm.com/NlHfoUO

Imagin...

When you wake up in an escape pod, you want to send a warning to the future, but you’ve forgotten how to signal danger......

Once rapid technological developments are made into a product, their internal logic is inevitably subsumed by commercial rhetoric, which creates a kind of black box. The artist’s role is not to develop new technology, nor is it to merely supplement that technology. This workshop’s dual orientation encompasses ways of thinking about virtuality and reality by learning about the technology of virtual reality (xR: AR, VR, MR) and its practical application using the interface Unity, as well as experiencing and analyzing how such artistic practice provokes real-time, bodily “hallucinations.”

This workshop is designed for those with no prior knowledge and will thoroughly explore virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality and seek the heterogeneity and homogeneity among them. At the same time, we will compare the VR technology with traditional technology and study the differences behind various xR platforms. Each participant will design a xR-based Escape Pod developed from their own imagination and the sci-fi storyline provided in the workshop and then create it using Unity.

 

11：00 – 13：00

Introduction:“Technology as Author,” and basic formations of technological ways of thinking

Technical analysis, comparison and study of the differences behind various xR platforms

(Break)

14：00 – 17：00

Design the elements of the Escape Pod

Producing the pod with Unity

Pod construction:

I. Importing the 3D model into Unity and adding materials

II. Controlling light within Unity

Changing the World:

Controlling the movement of characters

Virtualizing the Scene:

Importing scenes from Unity into StreamVR and adjusting it to accommodate VR optics.

The End of Days Escape Pod takes off!

 

System Requirements 

Please bring a laptop. MacBook Pro or gaming laptop is recommended.

 

About the Workshop Leader 

CHEN Baoyang (b. 1989) is an artist who works at the intersection of art and technology. He graduated from Columbia University with a master's degree in 2016. Chen's artistic practice originates from his thinking that technology is more than just a way of making art and can now be seen as an artistic collaborator. He often hacks technology by using it in ways other than its intended commercial applications, which coincide with and further his creative thinking. He also writes about "Technology as Author." By synthesizing our collective experience with ontological and ethical questions surrounding technology, he examines the boundary between us, machine, and beyond, between perceptual and embodied space. His working tools include self-coded algorithms and innovative technics, which can create extremely chaotic surfaces; nevertheless, a certain order emerges from the effortlessness with which they are constructed and remains there. He uses computational formulae to create new forms based on pre-existing images. In his work, he continually evokes the concept of the “impossibility of improvisation” – variation arises from standardization, and this has been essential to his creative thinking and practice.

His solo exhibitions include Do Androids Dream of Electric Cows (Gallery Yang, Beijing, China, 2017) and The Framework (Cloud Gallery, New York, USA, 2016). He has participated in group exhibitions at a number of institutions and galleries, including Times Art Museum (Beijing, China), the Riverside Museum (Beijing, China), the Power Station of Art (Shanghai, China), the BRIC (New York, USA), The Dedalus Foundation (New York, USA), OpenHand OpenSpace (London, England), Liu Haisu Art Museum (Shanghai, China), Los Angles Center for Digital Art (Los Angles, USA), Wuhan Art Museum (Wuhan, China), National Art Museum of China (Beijing, China), Museum of China Academy of Art (Hangzhou, China), Agora Gallery (New York, USA), Gallerie Huit (Arles, France), Chambers Fine Art (Chelsea, New York, USA), and Wook Choi Gallery (New York, USA).

 

 

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Chronus Art Center (CAC) is pleased to announce that the fifth Research/Creation Fellowship (USD$10,000) has been awarded to Mileece for her project proposal Bio-Semiotics AI. After the selection from a competitive pool of international applicants, Mileece begins her residency program from July 31. During the 3-month program, she will work closely with CAC to realize her project Bio-Semiotics AI.

Jury Statement 

Chronus Art Center's fellowship program aims to support and advance research-based artistic practice, with a particular emphasis on artists who employ scientific methodologies and technological developments in the conception and production of their work. 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 related to CAC's research/creation lines of inquiry.

Mileece proposes to think about machines as a function of nature rather than frame them as strictly human-related and artificially-created objects. Bio-Semiotics AI conceptually blurs the ever thinner distinction between the natural and the artificial by bridging, through technological layers, certain aspects of the biosphere with intelligent, artificial agents.

In addition to the strong conceptual quality and artistic potential that Mileece’s proposal demonstrates, the project also catalyzes the development of a sonic and visual bio-semiotic generator, a tool for exploring new possibilities of harnessing biological intelligence in order to expand AI systems. In addition, the project will experiment with custom pattern-recognition systems, an audio synthesis engine to generate lingual-based sonification and an existing laser-based sonoluminescent transducer.

Mileece: Tahitia Hicks, 2010  © Courtesy the artist

 

About the Work 

Bio-Semiotics AI by Mileece

Inevitably, artificial intelligence will eventually form its own identity. How that identity forms, however, will likely be determined to a significant degree by how we design its preliminary frame of reference. In essence, we are designing AI in our image. It is for this reason that we must examine what that image is and consider how its trajectory might diverge from what we need and desire for ourselves and our environment, if we hope to anticipate accordant AI.

Our common and most basic human nature is Biophilic. The original definition of ‘biophilic’ by Edward Wilson is “humans’ innate urge to affiliate with other forms of life.” Although it may be true that the human relationship to AI is an urge to affiliate, with regards to other forms of organic life, it is more accurate to define it as ‘an innate need to integrate.’

This is plainly illustrated by considering our collective need to breathe. As consumers of oxygen, our integration with plants and photosynthesising bacteria that produce all our planetary oxygen isn’t just an urge, but a common, irrefutable, irrevocable need, as it is for billions of other living creatures on Earth. We are in constant exchange with the biosphere as we breathe in and out, which we do as a function of life.

In this regard, we can and should look towards ourselves as being a form of nature, a nature able to make decisions, and a nature with agency upon its nature. “Machine” can thereby be considered a function of nature whereby our decisions to amplify our agency and drive the creation of technology, which is in turn subject to natural laws.

This project is about creating an alternative position to this viewpoint which although arguably crucial, is rarely engaged: that of the natural intelligence of the biosphere applied directly to AI. It seeks to engage the possibility of harnessing biological intelligence to iterate learning frameworks for AI with the least amount of human intervention, and thus introduce the biosphere’s integration with technology as a basis for expanding intelligence systems.

The result at month three will be a generative light and sound experience with occasional congruencies iterating as cross-modal, word-like bursts. Actual systems will be created and integrated in place, replicable and expandable by nature. The work will continue to self-orient towards greater expression and viability over time, with plenty of room for further contributions, refinement, collaboration and expansion

Mileece: Tahitia Hicks, 2010  © Courtesy the artist

 

About the Artist 

Mileece is a sonic artist, composer, interactive ecology designer and clean-energy ambassador. She has helped pioneer the modern evolution of plant biofeedback, presenting PiP, her custom coded synths and hardware for plant bio-data sonification at an array of prestigious museums (MoMA, NYC), festivals (BHIF Festival, Bhutan), and venues (Kew Gardens, London). Her work in immersive installations, sonic design and composition, interactive sculptures, as well as original products, materials and instruments, are central to a series of highly lauded projects, including the Miracle Gro “Grow Something Greater” campaign, and her “Sonic Garden” installation for Sonos Studios.

As a composer and recording artist, her debut work Formations was critically acclaimed internationally, and heralded by the BBC as an “outstanding release, real musical science.” Her message of 'promoting ecology through technology and the arts’ guides her roles as Creative and Technical Director to several institutional collaborators and brands.

Currently, she is developing zero energy, network-based urban wilderness sanctuaries inside technologically augmented biodomes to help balance our modern lives with the needs and benefits of the biosphere.