(re)understanding media stands as a checkpoint to revisit where we are at in the face of the ever-developing electronic age. As a reflection to re-examine the relationship between men and machines, we encourage visitors to rethink and reimagine how media arts rebalance and restore the benevolent aspect of technology in society and culture so as to foster and cultivate a more equitable and hopeful future through technology.
Marshall McLuhan published Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man in 1964. He posited that “the medium is the message”. Sixty years on, the mass public is still wondering about the meaning of this message. This exhibition serves as a checkpoint to revisit where we are at in the face of the ever-developing electronic age. As a reflection to reexamine the relationship between men and machines, we encourage visitors to rethink and reimagine how media arts rebalance and restore the benevolent aspect of technology in society and culture so as to foster and cultivate a more equitable and hopeful future through technologies.
Counteracting the dystopian media injustice, artists challenge the status quo to regain agency for users of media tools. Through interactive multimedia installations, Sam Anthem, Benjamin Glass, Patrick Glennon, Yuwen Huang and Liang He invite visitors to explore regained agency through arts and technology. Examining blockchain, video games, man-versus-machine, AI-generated contents, bioart and motion-capture, artists create an immersive space where visitors re-learn media tools to build a better and more hopeful world.
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Black Box
Patrick Glennon (US)
Black Box is an iterative project that merges custom synthesizer hardware and video game programming. The game component responds dynamically to the audio output of a light-controlled granular synthesizer activated by an optical sequencer. The game mechanics and narrative arc of the series explore scarcity, labor, and automation through visual manifestations of hierarchy and exploitation.
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Divine Nutraceuticals
Ben Glass (US)
This mixed-media artwork is a critical exploration in mystic fabulation, and a critique of the contemporary health and wellness industry. It combines living biology, sound art, artificial intelligence tools and critical design. At its core, the work is an artist-crafted spirulina farm, where an algae culture is grown to the vibrations of artificially-generated Gregorian chant…
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How to Become a Punch Card
Liang He (CN)
The project delineates a feedback loop between the earliest and the latest machines considered computers, activated by a human medium as a necessary gear. The algorithm perpetually generates maps and delivers weaving instructions with text, and binary codes. They are translated onto the weavings by a human loom operator, who redraws the globe as an after-work…
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In-circle Series
Yuwen Huang (CN)
In-circle Series challenges participants to reflect on inclusivity and accessibility on the internet. The project features two interactive websites built on Ethereum smart contracts, blending internet interaction, blockchain technology, creative writing, interactive poems and physical installations.
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morphological imag(in)ing
Sam Anthem (US)
morphological imag(in)ing is an interactive multimedia video and sound installation featuring four printed medical images taken of the artist’s chest, mapped projections and manipulated sounds of the MRI machine used to take the images. Both sound and mapped video interactively change in relation to bodily movements of visitors captured through a mounted camera.
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (US)
Art & Technology / Sound Practices (AT/SP) is a place to explore artistic production with technology, sound, or their unlimited hybrid forms through focused study and interdisciplinary exploration. AT/SP offers a large, diverse, and ever-changing range of courses designed to provide students with an immersive, thorough, and critically engaged course of study from a global perspective.