CAC 2019(Spring) Research/Creation Fellowship Winner Announcement

Chronus Art Center (CAC) and CAC-LAB are pleased to announce that the sixth Research/Creation Fellowship  (USD$10,000) has been awarded to Arvid Jense & Marie Caye (Arvid&Marie) for their project proposal 'I Feel Me', interrogating the world through the eyes of machines. The duo will start the 3-month residency program beginning June 18th.

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 development in experiments leading to the conception and production of artworks. The selection was based on the strength of the proposed project, its relevance to this year’s theme ‘Observer Mechanics: Interfacing Truth’, 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.

Arvid Jense’s and Marie Caye’s project ‘I Feel Me’ aims to bring our relationship with technology beyond that of an interface, providing a glimpse in how everyday devices and services perceive and interpret the world they operate in. A mundane body of an autonomous massage chair bearing the ability to both, comfort and invade, along with textual communication bringing machine logic abstractions closer to a conversation we are used to have with each other, will aim to set an interactive stage for a discussing collaborative future visions between humans and machines.

In addition to strong conceptual quality and artistic potential that Arvid&Marie demonstrate, ‘I Feel Me’ points straight at increasing global actuality of collaborative human-machine futures. Whilst ‘Interfacing Truth’, the project accessibly demystifies algorithmic vision and autonomous agency of machines through clever use of a culturally-specific domestic device.

About the Work 

I Feel Me by Arvid&Marie

With just over 70 years of digital technology humanity has been finding more and more ways to interact with the world and other humans mediated. With the advent of smart, intelligent and learning systems, however, the role that technology plays in society is rapidly changing. No more simple tools to serve our needs, our algorithms are taking decisions affecting whole populations, machines are sensing their environment. Technology is becoming an observer of the world.

Although automated machines, computers, programs sense the world and interact with it, it is in a different logic than our own. What is a machine’s observable universe and how does it confront our own? Expanding upon our continued research, we strive towards a collaborative vision for the future of humans and machines.

In this project, we aim to create an installation through which it is possible to experience how the machine can be more than an interface alone, at the same time giving an insight into what the world is through the eyes (sensors) of a machine.

We are fascinated by conversational programs as imitation of human interaction, achieved with a complete different mechanic than the human processes. We aim at unveiling this machine truth in the context of chatbots. While we are transfixed and curious to research this machine mind, we also wonder about its body. We would like to challenge what an art piece can do by using touch and physical contact between machine and humans as our medium of narration. Looking at massage devices, audio storytelling, Arvid&Marie are ready to research an interactive experience where the piece is not only the subject but also the stage for discussion. A deep Dive into ‘Machine Truth’.

Arvid&Marie: The Bestiary of Autonomous Machines, 2018  © Courtesy the artists

About the Artist 

Arvid&Marie is a duo of artists, experience designers and technological adventurers always aiming to discover new ways to stretch our world. Together Arvid Jense (NL, MSc at TU/e) and Marie Caye (FR, BA Design Academy Eindhoven) collaborate on their shared passion for art and technology. Through the use of interactive objects and performative storytelling, Arvid&Marie use their collaborative effort to explore post-human theories, focusing their creative attention on practical cybernetics and autonomous machines. They believe that researching how humans express themselves, philosophically and technologically, can lead to long-lasting, positive change.

http://arvidandmarie.com/