Relationality in VR – Luzern workshop at HSLU 22 March 2023

Organizer Hochschule Luzern, Design & Kunst, Dr. Christina Zimmermann, Projektleiterin Forschung

***

Tikka Pia

Enactive Co-presence in Narrative Virtual Reality

The talk describes our most recent project The State of Darkness (SOD 2.0; work-in-progress).

SOD 2.0 is a virtual reality installation in which human and non-human lives coexist. The first is lived by the participant while the latter is lived by the non-human Other. The narrative VR system is enactive, this is, all elements of the narrative space are in a reciprocally dependent state with the other elements.

The participant’s experiential moves are interpreted from their biosensor measurements in real-time, and then fed back to drive the different elements of the enactive narrative system. In turn, the facial and bodily behaviour of the artificial Other feeds back to the participant’s experiential states. The scenography and the soundscape adapt to the behaviours of the two beings while these adaptations affect back to the atmosphere of the intimate co-presence between the human and the Other.

The concept of non-human narrative allows the State of Darkness 2.0 to reflect the human-centric perspective against that of a non-human perspective. The intriguing question is whether narratives and the narrative faculty should be considered as exclusively characteristic to humans, or if the idea of narrative can be extended to other domains of life, or even to the domain of artificially humanlike beings.

The SOD 2.0 is an artistic dissemination of the project Enactive Co-presence in Narrative Virtual Reality: A Triadic Interaction Model.

The MOBTT90 research project which combines arts and sciences to explore how the viewer’s experience of co-presence can be controlled by parametrically modifying the behavior of a screen character or its context. It is led by research professor Pia Tikka, Baltic Film, Media and Arts School (BFM) & Centre of Excellence in Media Innovation and Digital Culture (MEDIT), Tallinn University.The project is funded by the EU Mobilitas Pluss Top Researcher Grant and Estonian Research Council.

Read more of the project here: http://enactivevirtuality.tlu.ee/the-state-of-darkness-ii/

CUDAN Pizza-pitching 22.02.

The CUDAN Show & Tell seminars with brief (10 minute) presentations!

Abstract

The field of social robotics, be these physical or virtual, is advancing fast, however, the challenge continues to be the socially relevant context awareness of these artificial characters so that human interaction with them would become meaningful in varying situations of everyday life.

The research aims at developing novel ways to adopt the films and their scripts as a training material for social robotics. This would constitute a major breakthrough for modeling systemically adaptive dynamics of artificial characters with increased human relevance for a variety of societal XR applications, e.g. in medical or educational fields.

The proposed research focus converges the multidisciplinary expertise at TLU on audiovisual narratives, semiotics, VR/XR, cultural data analytics, machine learning, psychophysiology, and social robotics. It strengthens TLU’s international collaborations within these fields.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MYL3nLMpQ_vWJYh9bH04PbgAucyCpydOuuHnxggcsC0/edit?usp=sharing

Enactive Virtuality Lab hybrid seminar 24 Nov, 2pm – 6 pm – Open for online attendance!

Enactive Virtuality Lab present the most recent work by the team members.

The event takes place in Tallinn University, Nova building N-406 Kinosaal

Date: 24.11.2022. 14:00-18:00 (EET / CET +1)

Join Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/95032524868

Speakers and Schedule, see below.

SPEAKERS

Tanja Bastamow: Virtual scenography in transformation

The performative possibilities of virtual environments

Scenography has historically been understood as the illustrative support for a staged drama. However, in the recent decades, the field has expanded to encompass the overall design of performance events, actions and experiences. Positioning this expanded understanding of scenography in dialogue with virtual reality (VR) opens up interesting possibilities for designing virtual scenography which can become an enabler of emerging narratives, unforeseen events and unexpected encounters. In my research I investigate the question of shifting agencies and virtual scenographers’ role as a co-creator rather than a traditional author-designer. Who – and what – become the creators, performers and spectators in virtual experiences and encounters in which the real-time responsiveness, transformability, (im)materiality and immersivity of virtual scenography play a key role? In my talk I will introduce thoughts around these questions by describing the process of building the virtual scenography for “State of Darkness II” VR experience.

Tanja Bastamow is a virtual scenographer working with experimental projects combining scenography with virtual and mixed reality environments. Bastamow’s key areas of interest are immersive virtual environments, the creative potential of technology as a tool for designing emergent spatial narratives, and creating scenographic encounters in which human and non-human elements can mix in new and unexpected ways. Currently, she is a doctoral candidate at Aalto University’s Department of Film, Television and Scenography, doing research on the performative possibilities of real-time virtual environments. In addition to this, she is working in LiDiA – Live + Digital Audiences artistic research project (2021-23) as a virtual designer. She is also a founding member of Virtual Cinema Lab research group and has previously held the position of lecturer in digital design methods at Aalto University.

https://lidia.fi

https://virtualcinema.aalto.fi/

Ats Kurvet: DESIGNING VIRTUAL characters

Ats Kurvet is a 3D real-time graphics and virtual reality application developer and consultant with over 8 years of industry experience. He specialises in lighting, character development and animation, game and user experience design, 3D modeling and environment development, shaders and material development and tech art. He has worked for Crytek GmbH as a lighting artist and runs ExteriorBox OÜ. His focus working with the Enactive Virtuality Lab in researching the visual aspects of digital human development and implementation.

Matias Harju: Traits of Virtual Reality Sound Design

Whilst sound design for VR borrows a lot from other media such as video games and films, VR sets some unique conditions for sonic thinking and technical approaches. Spatial sound is inarguably one of the most significant areas in this respect. That entails the whole process from narrative decisions to source material recordings to 3D audio rendering on the headphones. Other sound design considerations in VR may relate to the level of sonic realism and the role of sound in general. My talk will briefly expose some of the characteristics of sound in VR from both artistic and technical perspectives.

Matias Harju is a sound designer and musician specialising in immersive and interactive sonic storytelling. He is currently developing Audio Augmented Reality (AAR) as a narrative and interactive medium at WHS Theatre Union in Helsinki. He is also active in making adaptive music and immersive sound design for other projects including VR, AR, video games, installations, and live performances. Matias is a Master of Music from Sibelius Academy with a background in multiple musical genres, music education, and audio technology. He also holds a master’s degree from the Sound in New Media programme at Aalto University

MARIE-LAURE CAZIN:Freud’s last hypnosis, validating emotion driven enactions in cinematic VR

Dr Marie-Laure Cazin will present the study she has been conducting in the context of her European Mobilitas + postdoctoral grant with Enactive Virtuality Lab BFM, TLU (2021-2022). She is currently developing an artistic prototype of Emotive VR for interactive 360° film. The project aims to obtain emotional interactivity of the viewer with the film’s soundtrack. While experiencing her VR film, Freud’s last hypnosis, the emotional responses of the viewers are collected with physio-sensors, eye-tracking and with personal interviews after the viewing. Project is in collaboration with Dr Mati Mõttus from the Interaction lab of the school of Digital Technology (TLU) and Matias Harju, composer and sound designer (Finland).

Marie-Laure Cazin is a French filmmaker and a researcher. She is teaching in Ecole Supérieure d’Art et de Design-TALM in France. She was a postdoctoral researcher at MEDIT BFM, Tallinn University with a European post doctoral grant Mobilitas + in 2022-23. She received a PhD in Aix-Marseille University for her thesis entitled “Cinema et Neurosciences, du Cinéma Émotif à Emotive VR”[1] in 2020. This thesis is about cinema experience, contextualized by neurosciences research, describing the neuronal process of emotions and trying to think further about the analogy between cinema and the thinking process. She is also a regular teacher in the Ecole Supérieure d’Art et de Design TALM, le Mans (France).

She comes from an artistic background, having studied in Le Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts Contemporains, the Jan van Eyck Academy, post graduate program in residency (Masstricht, Netherlands) and in the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. She has conducted many art-science projects together with scientific partners that have been shown in many exhibitions and festivals, creating prototypes that renew the filmic experience. In her Emotive Cinema (2014) and Emotive VR (2020) projects she applies physiological feedback, like EEG, in order to obtain an emotional analysis from the brains’ activity of the viewers that changes the film’s scenario.

[1]Cazin, M-L. 2020. Cinéma et neurosciences : du cinéma émotif à emotive VR. Accèss https://www.theses.fr/2020AIXM0009

MATI MÕTTUS: Psyhco-physiology and eye-tracking of CINEMATIC VR

There are various ways to track our emotions through physiometric signals. Most common of these signals are electrical conductance of skin, facial expressions, cardiography and encephalography. In my talk I’d like to discuss the reliability and intrusiveness of physiological measurements in interactive art. While the reliability of measurements is not too critical in the domain of art, the intrusive sensors over art-enjoyers’ bodies can easily spoil the artistic experience.

Mati Mõttus is a lecturer and researcher in the School of Digital Technologies, Tallinn University. His doctoral degree on computer science in the field of human-computer interaction focused on “Aesthetics in Interaction Design” (2018). The current research interests are hedonic experiences in human-computer interaction. The focus is two-fold. The use of psycho-physiological signals in detecting users’ feelings while interacting with technology and explaining emotional behavior on one hand. On the other hand, the design of interactive systems, based on psycho-physiological loops.

Robert McNamara: Empathic nuances with virtual avatars – a novel theory of compassion

Technological mediation is the idea that technology affects or changes us as we use it, either consciously or unconsciously. Digital avatars, whether encountered in VR or otherwise, are one such technology, often in concert with various machine learning applications, that pose potential unknown and understudied interactional effects on humans, whether through their use in art, video games, or governmental applications (such as the pilot program at EU borders which was used to detect traveler deception, iborderctrl). One area where avatars may pose particular interest for academic study is in their perceived ability to not only evoke the uncanny valley effect, but also in their potential to promote a “distancing effect.” It is hypothesized that interaction with avatars, as an artistic process, may also result in increased expressions of cognitive empathy through the conscious or unconscious process of abductive reasoning.

Robert McNamara has a background in American criminal law as well as degrees related to audiovisual ethnography and eastern classics. He is from New York State, but has lived in Tallinn for the last five years. Currently, he specifically focuses on researching related to ethical, socio-political, anthropological, and legal aspects in the context of employing human-like VR avatars and related XR technology. He is co-authoring journal papers in collaboration with other experts on the team related to the social and legal issues surrounding the use of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and virtual reality avatars for governmental immigration regimes. During 05-09/2020 Robert G. McNamara worked as a visiting research fellow working with the MOBTT90 team. 10/2020 onwards he continues working with the project as a doctoral student. In the Enactive Virtuality Lab Robert has contributed to co-authored writing; the most recent paper accepted for publication is entitled “Well-founded Fear of Algorithms or Algorithms of Well-founded Fear? Hybrid Intelligence in Automated Asylum Seeker Interviews”, Journal of Refugee Studies, Oxford UP,

DEBORA C.F. DE SOUZA: SELF-RAting of Emotions in simulated immigration interview

Humans benefit from emotional interchange as a source of information to adapt and react to external stimuli and navigate their reality. Computers, on the other hand, rely on classification methods. It uses models to calculate and differentiate affective information from other human inputs because of the emotional expressions that emerge through human body responses, language, and behavior changes. Nevertheless, theoretically and methodologically, emotion is a challenging topic to address in Human-Computer Interaction. During her master’s studies, Debora explored methods for assessing physiological responses to emotional experience and aiding the emotion recognition features of Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVAs). Her study developed an interface prototype for emotion elicitation and simultaneous acquisition of the user’s physiological and self-reported emotional data.

Debora C. F. de Souza is a Brazilian visual artist and journalist. Graduated in Social Communication at the University of Mato Grosso do Sul Foundation in Brazil. Her artwork and research are marked by experiments with different kinds of images and audiovisual media. Recently graduated with an MA in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI); she is now a doctoral student at the Information Society Technologies and a Junior Researcher at the School of Digital Technologies at Tallinn University. In the Enactive Virtuality Lab, she is researching the implications of anthropomorphic virtual agents on the human affective states and the implications of such interactions in collaborative and social contexts, such as medical simulation training.

SCHEDULE 14-18

14:00-14:10 Pia Tikka: State of Darkness (S0D)- Enactive VR experience

14:10-14:45 Tanja Bastamow – Designing performative scenography (SoD)

14:45-15:00 Ats Kurvet –Designing humanlike characters (SoD)

15:00-15:20 Matias Harju – Traits of Virtual Reality Sound Design

15:20-15:40 Marie-Laure Cazin:Freud’s last hypnosis, validating emotion driven enactions in cinematic VR

15:40-16:00 Mati Mōttus: Experimenting with Emotive VR cinema

Break (10 min)

16:15-17:15 Robert McNamara: Empathic nuances with virtual avatars: a novel theory of compassion.

17:15-17:35 Debora Souza: Self-rating of emotions in simulated immigration interview

17:35- 18:00 Discussion

****

BFM PhD is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Enactive Virtuality Lab hybrid seminar
Time: Nov 24, 2022 10:00 Helsinki

Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/95032524868

Meeting ID: 950 3252 4868
One tap mobile
+3726601699,,95032524868# Estonia
+3728801188,,95032524868# Estonia

Dial by your location
+372 660 1699 Estonia
+372 880 1188 Estonia
+1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
+1 360 209 5623 US
+1 386 347 5053 US
+1 507 473 4847 US
+1 564 217 2000 US
+1 646 558 8656 US (New York)
+1 646 931 3860 US
+1 669 444 9171 US
+1 669 900 9128 US (San Jose)
+1 689 278 1000 US
+1 719 359 4580 US
+1 253 205 0468 US
+1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
+1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)
+1 305 224 1968 US
+1 309 205 3325 US
+1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
Meeting ID: 950 3252 4868
Find your local number: https://zoom.us/u/abUQJvmMJi

Join by Skype for Business
https://zoom.us/skype/95032524868

State of Darkness II – drafting the co-presence experience in narrative VR

VR Experience – draft April 2021, Pia

An updated version of feelings and experience of co-presence with a stranger as inner early state of darkness, but with upgraded functions and meta human char and perhaps participant may move in the space (t.b.d.)

The story

You (as a participant) put the head set on.

You hear warlike sound from somewhere above around suggesting you are below the ground, maybe a cellar.

You find yourself at the doorway of a cellar room. It is dark. Maybe some light streaming through the window crack to the street level…

You may be able to move around (or then the installation is experienced seated).

You are inside the room. Not sure if you are alone.

Then you realise there is some movement around you.

A flashlight is turned on.

You see a person sharing the room with you.

That person is a stranger for you (three different versions of meta human).

From this onwards, you need to hide in this cellar with a stranger.

External sound scape of the warlike situation outside.

The soundscape of the cellar.

The behaviors of the stranger (and the plausible hidden motivations) and events in the cellar will be written in more detail by Eeva, who will join the enactive team starting May 1.

Tasks:

Eeva: responsible of create the situation (story), behavioural motivations for the “stranger” and choreograph the movements and default facial behavior. This includes working with Ats with motion capture.
Tanja:performative environment elements.
Ats: UE environment, the characters, visuals, sound scape, etc. all UE related functions, including motion capture.
Abdallah: tracking of user behavior and interpreting that into UE environment, finding the suitable way to measure facial expressions, eyetrakcing, etc. inside headsets (you proposed one option) – we should check that in more detail.

Robotitieater by Liina Keevalik with Enactive Virtuality Lab contribution on A.I. Checkov

Image: The artificial A.I. Checkov created by Enactive Virtuality Lab, Ats Kurvet.

The trailer we used before the performances is here: https://youtu.be/Uyu7aN3AFr0
The trailer that uses material of the actual performances is here: https://youtu.be/rxjJ0Otoj04

For media some more photographs of the rehearsals or of the performance https://robotiteater.ee/gallery/

The full credits are as follows (also on our web page: https://robotiteater.ee/repertoire/

Unio Mystica by Helen Kaplinsky at Tallinn Art Hall Oct 26

26.10 at Niguliste Museum, Tallinn

Unio Mystica: Medieval women’s visions and the virtual imagination

Still from ‘Tragodia’ VR play (2019) by Tai Shani. 30 minutes, with original soundtrack by Maxwell Sterling. Commissioned by Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Jindřich Chalupecký society, and Graz Kunstverein.

The storytelling event ‘Unio Mystica’ concludes the two-month residency research of contemporary art curator Helen Kaplinsky at Tallinn Art Hall for international project Beyond Matter, exploring the virtual technological and mystical visions of women.

17.00 – Intro by curator Helen Kaplinsky at St Catherine’s Friary
17.10 – Anu Mänd is an Art Historian focusing on gender, death, and animal symbolism in the late medieval Baltic region. She will begin by taking us on a tour of the oldest known Estonian woman’s gravestone. At Niguliste museum we will discuss the experiences of poor women and their children – how could the underprivileged prepare their souls for death?
17.45 – Artist Dominika Trapp will read from a hand-written scroll providing an over-view of ten years of her art practice against a backdrop of autobiographical ruminations – coming of age as a young woman in the Hungarian countryside, discomforts with contemporary feminism and her commitment to somatic intelligence, influenced of mystic and philosopher Simone Weil.
18.00 – Artist and conservationist Olesja Katšanovskaja-Münd will present her reconstruction of a rare and deteriorated 15th century painting – ‘The vision of St. Emerentia’. This will be followed by a somatic exercise, guiding a connection between the trinity of visual stimuli, inner feelings and bodily expression.
18.30 – VR screening of ‘Tragodía’ (2019) by artist Tai Shani. Tragodía is a VR play written about three generations of women in the artist’s family and their nonhuman kin. The viewer embodies the avatar of the Ghost Child with each family members’ colossal head orbiting just out of reach. The work could be understood as a mystical vision of undefinable states of being that emerge during grief.

The residency is part of the large-scale cooperation project BEYOND MATTER – Cultural Heritage on the Verge of Virtual Reality, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. It is dedicated to novel, digital approaches to exhibition revival, documentation, and dissemination, as well as the artistic, curatorial and museological development of the opportunities presented by virtual representation.

Biofiction -panel: Neurotechnology and how it will shape our future bodies April 8, 2021

BIO·FICTION

Neurotechnology and how it will shape our future bodies

The BIO·FICTION Science Art Film Festival is one of a kind: It’s a creative and boundary-crossing event with a program filled to the brim with content exploring cutting-edge emerging sciences – in the present, but also in possible futures. https://bio-fiction.com/

BIO·FICTION Panel

8 Apr 2021 19:00 — 21:00

BIO·FICTION Panelist (in image)
with Riitta Hari, Pia Tikka, Markus Schmidt and Kasperi Mäki-Reinikka (moderator)
Thursday, April 8, 19–21h (Finnish time, UTC+2)
via Zoom | in English

Neurotechnology and how it will shape our future bodies is the underlying question of the BIO·FICTION Science Art Film Festival. For the kickoff of the Helsinki edition, where we will show a selection of nine films, all of which have been awarded or screened at the festival, we invite you to join the BIO·FICTION online panel. During it, Kasperi Mäki-Reinikka will discuss together with festival director Markus Schmidt, neuroscientist Riitta Hari and artist Pia Tikka neurotechnology and its current and potential impact on society.

Join the panel via Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83861833745

– –

Riitta Hari MD PhD is Professor Emerita of Systems Neuroscience and Human Brain Imaging at Aalto University, Finland. She has been developing magnetoencephalography (MEG) for tracking millisecond-scale activation sequences in the human brain, providing fundamental insights into human sensory, motor, cognitive, and social functions in both healthy and diseased individuals. Hari is Academician of Science in Finland since 2010 and member of the National Academy of Sciences USA since 2004. She currently attempts to bridge art and neuroscience without privileging either.

Kasperi Mäki-Reinikka is a Helsinki-based media artist, art educator and researcher working with technological notions of sense. As part of interdisciplinary Brains on Art collective his practice is informed by collaboration with scientists and researchers and the friction between art and science. Mäki-Reinikka is a board member of the Bioart Society, a foil fencer and a teacher of Art and Artificial Intelligence in Aalto University. Mäki-Reinikka is writing an artistic dissertation on interdisciplinary art and its possibilities to discuss changes in human-machine relation. Since August 2020, Mäki-Reinikka has been teaching art in Kallio Upper Secondary School of Performing Arts.

Dr Markus Schmidt founded Biofaction, a technology assessment, science communication and art-science company in Vienna, Austria. With a background in electronic engineering, biology and risk assessment, he carried out environmental risk assessment and public perception studies in various fields, such as GM-crops, nanotechnology, converging technologies, and synthetic biology. He has published over 35 peer-reviewed papers and three edited books about the future of life. In 2010, he helped to chart the field of xenobiology. Schmidt was part of the FUTUREBODY project.

Dr Pia Tikka is a filmmaker and EU Mobilitas Research Professor at the Baltic Film, Media, and Arts School, Tallinn University. She is a founder of NeuroCine research group that studies the neural basis of storytelling. She has published widely on the topics of enactive media, narrative complex systems, and neurocinematics. A Fellow of the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image and a member of European Film Academy, her filmography includes international productions as well as fiction films, interactive films and VR films she has directed. Currently, she leads Enactive Virtuality Lab at Tallinn University.

– –

BIO·FICTION is part of the ERA-NET project FUTUREBODY and funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF: I 3752-B27). The BIO·FICTION programme at Bioart Society is funded via the Biofriction European collaboration project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European.

Panelist in Moscow Round table The Art of Moving Images Today and Forever – Dec 18

Pia Tikka

NETWORK PROJECT-FORECAST PRO&CONTRA – three days in Moscow, Dec 16-18

«MEDIA ART 2020–2040»

MediaArtLab is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the PRO&CONTRA network project «MEDIA ART 2020–2040», which will bring together the pioneers of the world media art in the format of discussions-forecasts and online exhibition. The Media Forum is a festival consistently exploring contradictions and interconnections of cinema and video art.

DECEMBER 18, 7 PM (GMT+3)

Round table The Art of Moving Images Today and Forever

2020 has transferred all cultural activities to the network. Cinema and video are watched the same way now: on a computer sitting on a sofa. We now have the audience from all the corners of the world that we have never been aiming for — together with a tactile hunger and general screen fatigue. It seems that now it is the time to talk about the art of moving images — what it has become and what it will be in the future.

Moderator: Olga Shishko (Russia), curator, founder of the MediaArtLab.

Participants: Pia Tikka (Estonia), Martin Honzik (Austria), Erkki Huhtamo (Finland/USA), Boris Debackere (Belgium/Netherlands), Olesya Turkina (Russia), Andrey Velikanov (Russia), Miloš Vojtěchovský (Czech Republic), Peter Weibel (Austria), Olia Lialina (Russia), Christa Sommerer (Austria) and Laurent Mignonneau (France), Bjørn Melhus (Germany/Norway), Shelly Silver (USA), Raymond Bellour (France), Kathy Rae Huffman (USA), Alexandra Dementieva (Russia/Belgium).

The event will be held in Zoom in Russian and English with simultaneous translation. If you want to use the translation, please, register via: https://mediaartlab-org.timepad.ru/event/1505852/

Attached, please, find the full program of the event, duration up to 2 hours.

The links to the follow the Discussion December 18.

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/439832857035358

Timepad registration: https://mediaartlab-org.timepad.ru/event/1505852/

###

FULL PROGRAM

See below

NETWORK PROJECT-FORECAST PRO&CONTRA

«MEDIA ART 2020–2040»

FULL PROGRAM

DECEMBER 16, 7 PM (GMT+3)

Round table “Media Art: Communication Shaping the Future”

DECEMBER 16, 9 PM (GMT+3)

Opening of the online exhibition “back forward rewind” on the website mediaartlab.ru

DECEMBER 18, 7 PM (GMT+3)

Round table “The Art of Moving Images Today and Forever”

DECEMBER 18, 9 PM (GMT+3)

Zoom-party in honor of the 20th anniversary of MediaArtLab

DECEMBER 16 /// 7 PM (GMT+3)

Round table

Media Art: Communication Shaping the Future

Together with the growth of the Internet, the end of the 20th century brought us new forms of art that explore how technologies changed our world and, more importantly, how a man changed. It is only logical that this new art could exist in the digital sphere only and use most experimental developments as its instruments.MediaArtLab came to be as a platform that started to look for a way to communicate with such art, to explain it to the audience, to help professionals speak the same language with artists, who use radically different aesthetic criteria. Now that digitalization of culture has become a common place, it seems symbolic to celebrate the anniversary of the MediaArtLab with a discussion on the subject that was topical the year it was born and became pretty much the most crucial for art today.What impact does the media have on our ability to communicate without distortion of a meaning? What limitations can we never overcome neither in virtual reality nor in imaginative spaces? What is going to happen to freedom of speech on the Internet of late capitalism in five or more years?

Moderators: Anna Bouali (Russia), curator, producer for MediaArtLab; Arjon Dunnewind (The Netherlands), artist, researcher, founder of the IMPAKT festival.

Participants: Luchezar Boyadjiev (Bulgaria), Dmitry Bulatov (Russia), George Drivas (Greece), Marina Gržinić (Slovenia), JODI (Belgium), Almagul Menlibayeva (Kazakhstan), Alexey Shulgin (Russia), Rasa Šmite and Raitis Šmits (Latvia), Olga Shishko (Russia), Andrey Velikanov (Russia).

The event will be held in Zoom in Russian and English with simultaneous translation. If you want to use the translation, please, register via: https://mediaartlab-org.timepad.ru/event/1505842/. If you do not need the translation, please, join the broadcast on the website of the project.

MEDIAARTLAB.RU

«MEDIA ART 2020–2040»

DECEMBER 18 /// 7 PM (GMT+3)

Round table The Art of Moving Images Today and Forever

The most important project of the MediaArtLab is the Media Forum, a festival consistently exploring contradictions and interconnections of cinema and video art which have undergone a serious revision in 2020 with the transfer of all cultural activity to the network. It turned out that both cinema and video are watched the same way now: on a computer sitting on a sofa. We now have the audience from all the corners of the world that we have never been aiming for — together with a tactile hunger and general screen fatigue. It seems that now it is the time to talk about the art of moving images — what it has become and what it will be in the future. How do we re-define our cultural life in isolation in the light of restrictions? Will there appear new online-cinemas that expand our experience of the moving image and bring us back the experience of care and touch? Great epidemics, pandemics and wars have always come together with dramatic changes in art, what changes can we expect due to COVID-19? What representations of isolated body and sickness can be found in the moving image? What are the formal and imagined strategies adopted by the artists of the past and present to reflect the conditions of the pandemic? Will we succeed in slowing down the flow of images that overwhelms us?

Moderator: Olga Shishko (Russia), curator, founder of the MediaArtLab.

Participants: Martin Honzik (Austria), Erkki Huhtamo (Finland/USA), Boris Debackere (Belgium/Netherlands), Olesya Turkina (Russia), Andrey Velikanov (Russia), Miloš Vojtěchovský (Czech Republic), Peter Weibel (Austria), Olia Lialina (Russia), Christa Sommerer (Austria) and Laurent Mignonneau (France), Bjørn Melhus (Germany/Norway), Shelly Silver (USA), Raymond Bellour (France), Kathy Rae Huffman (USA), Alexandra Dementieva (Russia/Belgium), Pia Tikka (Finland).

The event will be held in Zoom in Russian and English with simultaneous translation. If you want to use the translation, please, register via: https://mediaartlab-org.timepad.ru/event/1505852/. If you do not need the translation, please, join the broadcast on the website of the project.

NETWORK PROJECT-FORECAST PRO&CONTRA

Online-exhibiiton “back forward rewind”

It is quite symbolic that—due to obvious reasons—the anniversary exhibition of MediaArtLab takes place online, in the virtual space. After all, the lab was established in the 1990s precisely for exploring and conceptualizing the digital environment, which has been engulfing humanity deeper and deeper. As an open platform, MediaArtLab has built an international community of artists and invites them to reflect on the new reality today. “back forward rewind” is an in-depth review of themes and artistic methods developed by MediaArtLab over twenty years of its work, a lens to convey the artists’ view of the past, the future, and back to the present. Among them are utopias, environmental problems, anxiety, and dreams. The exhibition title suggests a free surfing through artworks—as if they were frames of an elusive fluid world,—and through imagination of the artists, each of them having contributed to the image of contemporary media art.

Participants: Tanya Akhmetgalieva (Russia), The Blue Soup (Russia), Alexandra Dementieva (Russia/Belgium), George Drivas (Greece), Omer Fast (Israel), William Hooker and Phill Niblock (USA), JODI (Belgium/The Netherlands), Sergey Kishchenko (Russia), Olia Lialina (Russia), Katherine Liberovskaya (Canada/USA), Bjørn Melhus (Germany/Norway), Almagul Menlibayeva (Kazakhstan), Csaba Nemes (Hungary), Marnix de Nijs (The Netherlands), Kenji Ouellet (Canada/Germany), Shelly Silver (USA), Rasa Šmite and Raitis Šmits (Latvia), Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau (Austria/France), Eve Sussman and Simon Lee (USA), Miloš Vojtěchovský (Czech Republic), Martin Zet (Czech Republic).

The exhibition will be available on the website mediaartlab.ru from 21:00 (GMT + 3) December 16, 2020 to January 10, 2021

MEDIAARTLAB.RU

«MEDIA ART 2020–2040»

DECEMBER 18 /// 9 PM (GMT+3)

Zoom-party

Right after the end of the round table, Zoom will become a venue to congratulate MediaArtLab on its anniversary, to exchange memories, hopes and greetings from different parts of the world. The central theme of the party is a reunion of old friends and partners. There will be no strict regulations and rules, but there will be live interventions of people united by art and the network. Master of Ceremonies: Olesya Turkina (Russia). Among the special projects of the party are:

Olia Lialina /// Best Effort Network (2015/2020)

The piece reveals the process of sending and receiving datasets over computer networks. In her work, Olia is riding a carousel, and if the vision disappears, it means that the site (best.effort.network) is loaded on another browser. Olia will appear again when it is your device’s turn to receive the dataset. Zoom-performance will make the process of migration of information, images, and viewer’s attention visible. Each partier can offer his/her window to the artist to wander around…

Tanya Akhmetgalieva /// Masks (2020)

Creative thinking is like a filter an artist uses to perceive the reality. This is the way Van Gogh’s famous coloristic vision worked, and the same way new media artists use media as a lens to refract and reflect digital images. Tanya’s works create a distinctive psychedelic universe that one can try on during the party. Her masks can be put on and took off during the party, or they can be exchanged and used to distinguish like-minded people and push the limits of ordinary… Was not it the main reason for inventing the parties?

Andrei Silvestrov /// Jubilee Romance (2020)

Music by Iraida Yusupova with lyrics by Mirkakson (Russian for Life as a Dream)

A musical tribute to the anniversary of the MediaArtLab and to the memory of Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe.“Jubilee is the main word to define the late Soviet times. When we were kids, everything was “jubilee”—avenues, restaurants, gastronomes, cookies. But it was usually unclear whose and what’s jubilee it was. The piece combines different states of mind: nostalgia for the childhood, horrors of the diluted consciousness of the late Soviet era and acute feeling of inconsistency between a vibrant institution that is the MediaArtLab and a charnel notion of Jubilee”. Andrei Silvestrov

Vladislava Berezina, Marina Blinova, Anastasia Korotkova, Evgeny Kruglov, Svyatoslav Oleinik, Maria Romanova, Alexey Shulgin /// Discrete Therapy (2020)

Under new circumstances, we are looking for a language of safe cooperation. Having reconsidered musical improvisation, Alexei Shulgin and a team of musicians exposed therapeutic aspects of an improvisational act, in which the image of a musician (composer) finally dissolves into the stream of network sound. Interaction based on the intuition—established in the process of music-making—calls into question the notion of authorship and audience participation: each participant of the sessions is invited to take on the role of both a musician and a sensitive listener.

All the instructions for online-performances will be shared with the registered participants shortly before the party.

NETWORK PROJECT-FORECAST PRO&CONTRA

MEDIAARTLAB.RU

The project is supported by Trust For Mutual Understanding

Contact: mediaartlab@mediaartlab.ru

Artistic work in “Transdisciplinaridade Arte, Ciência e Neurociência” (Art Catalog)

The enactive VR project State of Darkness by Tikka and Enactive Team presented in an online art exhibition Transdisciplinaridade Arte, Ciência e Neurociência and published in Transdisciplinaridade Arte, Ciência e Neurociência (e-Art Catalog), eds. Nara Cristina Santos and Hosana Celeste Oliveira, 33-38. Capes PrInt/UFSM, PPGART Publishing House, 2020.

https://www.ufsm.br/app/uploads/sites/740/2020/12/catalogo_transdisciplinaridade_.pdf

SIMPÓSIO TRANSDISCIPLINARIDADE NAS CIÊNCIAS E NAS ARTES– Resultados do Projeto Capes PrInt (2018-2020)
20 a 22 de outubro de 2020, Universidade Federal de Santa Maria

ORGANIZAÇÃO GERAL Profa. Dra. Maria Rosa Chitolina (PPGs em Ciências Biológicas: Bioquímica Toxicológica e em Educação em Ciências: Química da Vida e Saúde); Profa. Dra. Nara Cristina Santos (PPG em Artes Visuais);Pós-Doc Dra. Hosana Celeste Oliveira (PPG em Artes Visuais)

Invited Artist at at the exhibition of Transdisciplinarity in Science and Arts – Capes Print Symposium at UFSM, Brazil

Pia Tikka as one of the six invited international artist at at the exhibition of Transdisciplinarity in Science and Arts – Capes Print Symposium at UFSM, Brazil

The VR installation State of Darkness by Pia Tikka and the team presented online exhibition during 20-22. Oct 2020. See art exhibition catalogue at http://enactivevirtuality.tlu.ee/artistic-work-in…ncia-art-catalog/

The platform : the LABART on Instagram, Facebook, Youtube and some channels of UFSM.

See LABART/UFSM links:
https://www.instagram.com/labart.ufsm/
https://www.facebook.com/labart1228
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCw274rzHP9t7muJG9zAW_aw

Página inicial

Página Inicial

PPGART

Publicações