Exhibitions / Projects

The City as a House – A speculative exploration of the possibilities of abolishing known forms of habitation

Rebecca Merlic (HR)

Vast amounts of pictures, sounds, videos and 3D scans are organized as environments in Rebecca Merlic’s The City as a House, in form of an interactive visual novel. A work about the experiment of a white European 30-year-old heterosexual human living in Tokyo without inhabiting a private apartment over a period of time. A speculative exploration of the possibilities of abolishing known forms of habitation.

If once we ever were by Jaime Carrejo (USA)

Black Cube Nomadic Museum (USA)

Black Cube Nomadic Museums’ executive director and chief curator Cortney Lane Stell presents If once we ever were, a virtual recreation of a public sculpture and temporary monument by artist Jaime Carrejo that recognizes immigrants and their contributions to our communities. The monument is a triumphal arch composed of chain-link fencing that originally appeared in Denver, Colorado and acts as a metaphor for boundaries—the delineation of private and public space, the division of geographical borders, and the separation of rights.

Augmented Idolatry (AI) - inaugural project of the Desert Valley Art Ranch (VAR), San Luis Valley, Colorado

LAST/RESORT Club

Augmented Idolatry (AI) is a collective AR artwork composed of seven distinct AR idols, designed in direct response to the landscape, history and spirituality of the San Luis Valley, home to the artist residency “Desert Valley Art Ranch.” An actual mud plinth built on-site is shared among the seven AR idols and connects them to the land. The AR idols refer to memento mori, indigenous histories, natural resources and sacred geometries.

Rio Verde

Cherish Marquez (US)

Rio Verde is a socially conscious video game by Cherish Marquez that explores the healing powers of the desert, as well as themes such as Latinx iconography and mental wellness.

TOC ONE

Moritz Simon Geist (DE)

The Music Robotic System TOC ONE explores the sound properties of physical objects. It can be used to squeeze sound and rhythms out of almost everything - from music instruments like drums to experimental materials like metal sheets, household items or old car parts. The robotic actuators are mounted on clamps, to be attached in a free manner to surfaces, objects and instruments. The robotic actuators are controlled with standard music systems like Ableton Live or a keyboard.

Crosser & LaMigra

Rafael Fajardo (US)

Crosser & La Migra are two video games that represent opposite perspectives on the dynamics at the US-Mexico border, rendered as early arcade graphics and presented as a diptych. Artist and designer Rafael Fajardo is the founding director of SWEAT, a loose collaborative that makes socially conscious video games in order to explore the poetics of interactivity, critique and deploy electronic media, and comment on cultural realities.

Frontera!

John Jota Leaños

Leaños directed and produced the animated documentary, Frontera!, retelling the history of the 1680 Pueblo Revolt in New Mexico. The film has been supported by a 2012 Guggenheim Fellowship in Film and Video and a National Association for Latino Arts and Culture Grant, among others. Collaborators: Conroy Chino (Acoma Pueblo), Warren Montoya (Santa Ana Pueblo, Tamaya and Santa Clara Pueblo, Khapo Owinge’), Lee Moquino (Santa Clara Pueblo, Zia Pueblo, Apache/Yaqui), Aimee Villarreal, and Cristóbal Martinez (Alcalde).

Co\\aborative Conc(re)te

Gareth Proskourine-Barnett (GB), Mike Dring (GB), Alessandro Columbano (IT)

Co\\aborative Conc(re)te is an ongoing conversation between the artist collective, C100, and the cityof Birmingham using architecture to examine notions of progress, change, dis-location, and discovering the lost, forgotten and misplaced works reflecting a landscape of continual synthetic flux. When a building is demolished, it becomes a ghost. Its image haunts us, reminding us of a future that never came to be. But what if previous versions of the city remain in the digital realm. Our events explore what happens when a building that no longer occupies physical space lives on within digital networks - when it ceases to exist the physical matter its occupation of virtual territories take on an added significance? We (re)construct, (re)imagine and (re)build an idea of the future, for temporary gatherings in galleries or other unexpected venues as we work across sound, digital imagery, printed works, moving images, and structural models. Using adapted archival material and found soundscapes, C100 celebrates a collective vision for the future city, one lost to the bulldozer, the other emergent from the dust.

Emilie Trice & LAST/RESORT present Garden del Rio Grande

LAST/RESORT (US)

Garden del Rio Grande pays homage to the geographic region around the Rio Grande River, which runs from central Colorado along the U.S./Mexico border to the Gulf of Mexico. Our garden contemplates how technology can reconnect us to the land and amplify indigenous voices, while questioning to what extent can art and design fortify sustainable ecologies. Through emerging technology we seek to reverse-engineer the past in order to reimagine the future.

UrbanM

STEAMHouse, Birmingham City University (UK)

Urban M is an Interreg Europe project led by Birmingham City University, its aim is to support nine European Cities to develop their city and regional innovation policies to help local makerspaces thrive.

The STEAMhouse Approach

STEAMhouse, Birmingham City University (UK)

STEAMhouse is a centre for innovation, creative thinking, prototyping and business development. STEAMhouse supports entrepreneurs, sole traders, companies and citizens to build their businesses, develop products and services and bring new ideas to life. The centre supports both city and business challenges and takes an interdisciplinary approach to these issues. STEAMhouse is a partnership between Birmingham City University and Eastside Projects and funded by the European Regional Development Fund., It aims to drive innovation and research for major long-term growth across the region.

STEAM INC

Ars Electronica (AT), Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin (IE), Birmingham City University (UK), University of Arts London: Central Saint Martins (UK), Aalto University (FI), Technische Universität Dresden (DE), University of Amsterdam (NE)

Rapid change requires rapid adaptability, and our capacity to adapt is informed by our ability to integrate diverse approaches. To accommodate this, higher education has needed to transcend an historically embedded approach to learning that has seen different types of knowledge segregated across disciplinary silos. Policy ambitions throughout Europe and across the world have recognized that knowledge in science, engineering and mathematics need to be nurtured to engage with rapid advances in technology. However, it has also become increasingly evident that art as a unique and adaptive form of knowledge should also be combined with our approach to STEM education. Art thinking offers a holistic way of understanding complex connections and can act as a translator between different communities of knowledge. By including art, STEAM education ensures that there is an interdisciplinary switchboard operator actively integrating different approaches to solving the same problems we face today.

Exhibition: Augmented Empathy

As part of The Living Planet, FACT’s programme focusing on the non-human, the artist collective Keiken have developed a multi-layered participatory project called Augmented Empathy in collaboration with FACT’s Learning team.

Exhibition: And Say the Animal Responded?

This immersive exhibition brings you face to face with animals from around the world through film, art and creative technology.

SYSTEM2020 Learner's Perspectives

Discover how learners involvement with out of school science education has allowed them to expand their knowledge and adapt with the changing world around them.

OSHub.Network

Ars Electronica (AT), Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin (IE), Impact Hub Siracusa (IT), La Casemate (FR), Onl'Fait (CH), SCIENCE IN (CZ), Município de Figueira de Castelo Rodrigo (PO), SciCo (GR)

The pace of change in society - from technological innovation to global interconnectedness - is rapidly increasing and has fundamentally altered the way people live, work and learn. Moreover, the societal challenges of the 21st century bring with them an urgent need to integrate the knowledge and expertise of different societal actors, and to develop meaningful and inclusive ways of connecting schools, universities, enterprises, civil society, governments and local communities using more innovative, efficient and open methodologies.

SYSTEM2020 Map

Science learning initiatives outside the classroom are crucial in educating and forming Europe’s next generation of researchers and innovators. By gaining insights into these initiatives all around Europe SySTEM 2020 wants to gain a better understanding of the types and kinds of programmes in operation, learn from each other and collaborate to be able to respond to challenges ahead. The SySTEM 2020 map is an online visualisation tool where over 2000 STEAM initiatives or projects are mapped providing a network of organisations for you to connect with. For the general public it offers a way to find informal learning initiatives in their area. For organisations it offers the opportunity to get connected and gain visibility as a collective community within Europe.

CyberArts 2020 - Prix Ars Electronica Exhibition

The OK im OÖ Kulturquartier has been presenting the CyberArts exhibition since 1998. As a showcase for the Prix Ars Electronica winners, it is an excellent platform from which to observe current developments and trends in our digital age, with a special focus on their social and economic impact. The selected works exemplify the social dynamics and issues that are dominating today’s discourse.

Guest Projects

An Atlas of Absence - Online meeting performance

Summer Mei Ling Lee and Laura Boles Faw

Technology was supposed to connect us. The dominant modality for communication and connection during this pandemic era is the digital screen. In this work, collaborators Laura Boles Faw and Summer Mei Ling Lee continue their ongoing series addressing distance and longing that increasingly figures into this heightened moment.