Technology

Folk the Algorithms

Bob L. T. Sturm (US)

Sturm builds, learns from and collaborates with AI systems trained on transcriptions of traditional music. These systems effectively generate an unlimited supply of new tunes imitating traditional ones. Sometimes these tunes are perfect as they are, and sometimes they are imperfect in interesting ways, but they all lack the credentials of “real” traditional tunes.

Music as Experience in an age of Artificial Intelligence and Computational Creativity

Kingston University and Durham University (UK), New York University (US), Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst, Stuttgart (DE), University of Music and Performing Arts of Vienna (AT), KTH Stockholm (SE)

This discussion will focus on aspects of working with AI as artists, and also wider aspects about implications of the technology.

Gala Mariachi Dron

Ars Electronica Garden Tequila, Oficina de visitantes y convenciones, Cámara Nacional de Comercio, SwarmPixel Thiret/Creative and Producer Director

This piece is a tribute from Mexico to Austria inspired by the world-renowned project Spaxels (pixels in space) by Ars Electronica Futurelab. What we will see is a spectacular collaboration between Mariachi artists, technologists and scientists with the objective of remembering the beauty and love of our country through our music that reflects our passion and the union to face any future.

Hybrid Tech-ila: Imagining landscapes through neural networks.

GAN breeder, Pedro H. Baez by AI/THEIA

Hybridization of art is -more and more- a common subject for artists seeking inspiration and tools for extending their imagination. GAN breeder is an open source Neural Network that processes images and reinterprets them to produce new results. By choosing a selection of images, the curator can partake onto a different result.

COSA Connector Tour Part 1

Everest Pipkin (US)

Engage with the first of three playlists from our COSA Connectors, exploring open-source tools for artists. We have curated useful selections from across the internet of free software to help you express your creative side. The guided tours will focus on what the tool can do, what kinds of projects you might use it for, and quick tips and tricks for getting started.

Science Gallery Detroit Presents Shigeto

Shigeto

Artists take on pseudonyms for a multitude of reasons, but in Zach Saginaw’s case those reasons run deeper than most. Shigeto is Zach’s middle name as well as his grandfather’s name: a tribute to the Japanese branch of Zach’s family tree. Shigeto also means “to grow bigger”—appropriate, given Zach’s premature birthweight of less than a pound. Today, Shigeto stands for Zach’s vividly beautiful electronic music. Beat-driven, but given to richly textured sound design; rhythmically fractured, but melodically sumptuous, Shigeto’s music is a bridge between the past and present, bringing the artist face to face with a creative legacy that spans decades.

Exploring presence and time in lockdown

Jason Phu (AU), Josh Harle (AU)

"The Eternal Parade”, combines a world of mythological and fantasy creatures together in an endless parade of supernatural spirits. Exploring lockdown-appropriate, novel ways of making and presenting VR art, artist Jason Phu worked with Tactical Space Lab to create a perpetual, constantly-changing street scene via a 360 YouTube live-stream, accommodating anything from phones, TVs, or laptops, to various VR headsets to view in isolation or otherwise.

Exploring communities in out-moded utopias

Kylie Banyard (AU), Josh Harle (AU)

Extending from a body of work inspired by the history of Black Mountain College, an experimental avant-garde college in the mountains of North Carolina, artist Kylie Banyard worked with Tactical Space Lab to explore a model of ‘intentional’ community spaces within virtual reality. Initially attracted to Mozilla Hubs for its broad accessibility, Hubs aptly echoed the same idealistic, almost utopian themes of communal, alternative living at the heart of BMC, Freetown Christiania and others.

Recomposing histories through VR

Claudia Nicholson (AU), Josh Harle (AU)

Claudia Nicholson’s paintings reconfigure colonial depictions of first contact in the Americas, embedding the work with folklore and personal histories in a bid to disrupt colonial narratives. Landscapes are rearranged to leak into each other, to conflate time, myth and ecologies.

Being within the story

John Gillies (AU)

A virtual experience of uncertainty, intangibility, and off-kilter interpersonal connections. Developed through experimental collaboration at Tactical Space Lab, making use of 180-degree stereo footage in a 6dof virtual space, and experienced within a theatrical physical staging, the work makes use of a rich landscape of spatialized sound to create a sense of shared presence.

Curators’ Conversation

Ralph Borland, Cezanne Charles, Olga Stella, Antajuan Scott, Mark Sullivan, Devon Akmon

Take a look into the process of planning our third exhibition FUTURE PRESENT and hear from the panel of curators to get an overarching view of our subthemes. We will also answer questions from the Science Gallery Community.

Reconciling conflict in imaginary places

Louise Zhang (AU), Josh Harle (AU)

Working in collaboration with Tactical Space Lab, the work invites the audience to visit the "Mei guanxi" temple as a place not dictated by a single narrative, but of multitudes and acceptance, and inhabited by a selection of Zhang's sculptural works that have been scanned, modelled, and simulated using HoudiniFX to imbue them with life and motion.

On the symbolic power of architectural form

Tarik Ahlip (AU), Josh Harle (AU)

This project extends Tarik Ahlip’s study of sculptural form as a medium for exploring ontologies and socialised ideals of nature. Drawing on his background in architecture and interest in film, Ahlip’s worked with Tactical Space Lab to explore the figurative dimensions in sculpture within a cinematic composition of scenes in VR.

The music between chaos and control

Nic Cassey (AU), Josh Harle (AU)

Riffing on discussions around improvised performance, musician Nic Cassey worked with Tactical Space Lab to create a generative ‘instrument’ in VR, both played by and in collaboration with the VR participant. Combining elements of a mandala-inspired, hand-drawn style with a unique system for creating generative music, the work explored the tension at play between chaos (change) and order (the static) at play in improv music and other generative systems, manifested as the tension between harmony and dissonance, progression and development of the music.

On eco-sensuality with untethered VR

Grace Kingston (AU), Josh Harle (AU)

Artist Grace Kingston’s work with Tactical Space Lab explored themes of artifice and facade vs nourishment and connection in our digitally-mediated evocations of the natural world, making use of the stand-alone capabilities and hand-tracking of the Oculus Quest to create a site-specific VR work that maps to the natural landscape and features it’s experienced in.

Into the Woods

Engine Studios (TW)

A folklore about people who lost in the woods and taken by spirits of forest. After years, a girl experiences what had happened before at the same place.

Barkley: A Secret Party In THE WAREHOUSE

studio2 Animation Lab (TW)

A stray dog accidentally found the warehouse where Barkley and other cats lived. The curious dog found the cats and began to run after them for fun but Barkley and the cats were frightened by the enthusiastic dog. Thus, they began to ran and chased each other in the warehouse, triggering a domino effect. The shelves and goods fell down one by one. It seemed like they were having a party.

Upload not Complete

Peppercorns Interactive Media Art Co., LTD (TW)

Created by Taiwanese artists Hu, Chin-Hsiang and Tsai Bing-Hua, this piece attempts to use a hybrid reality, LED lights, wearable devices, and fans to build an installation that uploads the human mind to digital space. Imagine that upload process can be seen as virtual objects in real space. When you see the virtual object and feel the influence (wind and vibration), after passing through the upwardly extending tunnel, the screen enters the completely virtual space, but you don’t know whether the upload is completed.

Kuo Hsueh-Hu: Three States of Home Gazing

Oready Innovation LAB (TW)

Kuo Hsueh-Hu is the most important gouache painter in Taiwan and was born in the Dadaocheng area of Taipei. In the year of 1964, Kuo migrated to Japan. Then his eldest son Kuo Song-Fen, who studied in the United States, participated in the Defend the Diaoyu Islands movement, which was then put on the "blacklist". With less time spent together with his own flesh and blood, Kuo’s family then migrated to the United States to reunite in his later years.

Bodyless

Virtual and Physical Media Integration Association of Taiwan (TW)

Bodyless is from director’s childhood memories which depicts the reduction of humanity by military government during the martial law, the colonial culture as well as the digital era into a story beyond reality. A political prisoner becoming a ghost returned to the living world to visit his family, but found out that the house is empty.