Reencountering Stranger Senses

“… to live means first and foremost to look, taste, feel, and smell the world around us.” (Emanuele Coccia, 2016)

With more recent enhancements of immersive and sensing technologies, our ‘sensoriums’ have intensified and become more mediated than ever before. Art and concepts (that are our “strange tools” – coined by contemporary philosopher Alva Noë (2015)) are perfect instruments to stimulate our perception. By drawing upon prior experience, cultural shifts and technological advancements, art becomes a medium that creates new and transformative experiences so crucial for reorganizing ourselves. As contemporary art historian, curator and author Caroline A Jones has put it, “what we want art to reorganize us into, also changes” (2016).

Meandering between different realities, actual, hybrid and virtual, RIXC Garden program PostSensorium reflects upon an incessant evolution of the human and “more-than-human” sensoriums conditioned by new technological advancements. Located in a triangulation between three cities – Riga (LV), Boston (US) and Karlsruhe (DE), RIXC Garden program will feature Live Concert from the Greenhouse at RIXC Fields Art Residency in Latvia; an immersive online exhibition and screening program Stranger Senses by young and emerging artists who are at the forefront interrogating novel sensing and artistic tools; and a virtual room for spatial webVR experiences and networked interactions.

Overall, PostSensorium: Reencountering Stranger Senses program explores and combines sensorial perception, new media and experiential practice, to redefine sensorial apparatus and project a futuristic outlook of intertwining relationships between the actual and virtual, organic and artificial, natural and techno-social, human and more-than-human …

Video

Rasa Smite, Raitis Smits. “Atmospheric Forest” (2020), VR immersive installation. Credit: Kristine Madjare

Kwan Q Li. “Insomniac/Amnesiac” (2021), deep neural network, video, Credit: Kwan Q Li

Rasa Smite, Raitis Smits. “Atmospheric Forest” (2020), VR immersive installation. Credit: Kristine Madjare

Pohao Chi. “Plantfluencer Gazing” (2021), webVR, Credit: Pohao Chi

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PostSensorium. Stranger Senses

Kwan Q Li (HK/US), Pohao Chi (TW/US), Weihan Jiang (CN/US), Weilu Ge (CN/US), Kelon Cen (CN/US), Ieva Viksne (LV), Gustavs Lociks (LV), Jung Eun Lee (KR/DE), Christina Vinke (DE)

“..to live means first and foremost to look, taste, feel, and smell the world around us.” (Emanuele Coccia, 2016) With more recent enhancements of immersive and sensing technologies, our ‘sensoriums’ have intensified and become more mediated than ever before. Art and concepts (that are our “strange tools” – coined by contemporary philosopher Alva Noë (2015)) are perfect instruments to stimulate our perception.

PostSensorium. Atmospheric Forest

Rasa Smite (LV), Raitis Smits (LV), and other RIXC Garden participant WebVR works.

Meandering between different realities, actual, hybrid and virtual, RIXC Garden program PostSensorium reflects upon an incessant evolution of the human and “more-than-human” sensoriums conditioned by new technological advancements. Located in a triangulation between three cities – Riga (LV), Boston (US) and Karlsruhe (DE), RIXC Garden program will feature Live Greenhouse Concert from Riga; an immersive screening program by young and emerging artists from Boston; and Virtual PostSensorium room for spatial webVR experiences and networked interactions.

PostSensorium. Hearing Notes

Krista Dintere (LV), Ivo Taurins (LV), Lauris Smits (LV), RIXC (LV), LiepU MPLab (LV)

Our senses have always been “mediated” – the sound can’t be heard without the “medium” of water or air. With more recent enhancements of immersive and sensing technologies, our ‘sensoriums’ have intensified and become more mediated than ever before (Caroline A Jones, 2006). The ‘constructivist’ potential of the sound has been used to a large extent in music or radio, whereas ‘experiential’ capabilities such as sensual and immersive properties of the sound have been mainly explored by art practices that emerge outside of purely musical environments.

Credits

RIXC Garden programme is curated by Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits, and it is a satellite event of RIXC Art Science Festival 2021: PostSensorium (festival2021.rixc.org), and a collaboration with Art, Culture and Technology program at MIT (US).
Participating artists and musicians: Kwan Q Li, Pohao Chi, Weihan Jiang, Weilu Ge, Krista Dintere, Ivo Taurins, Jung Eun Lee, Christina Vinke, Lauris Smits and others from Riga / Liepaja, Boston and Karlsruhe.