POSTCITY

Shared Habitats

The exhibition Shared Habitats focuses on the influence of technology on socio-cultural processes through fourteen works of a digital, biological, and interactive nature. The exhibition focuses on the location of organisms in their environment, the effects of humans on their habitats, and the artistic handling of new biomaterials and technologies. Many of the works on display are based on scientific experiments that are analyzed in a cultural context.

PSEUDOREALITY ALTERNATIVES

Cheung Kong School of Art and Design – Digital Media Art Department, Shantou University

Worldwide human society is moving from the digital to hyper digital age where virtuality is becoming as important as reality. Interpersonal communication is largely happening within a pseudo-real social landscape recently enriched with new artificial intelligence. However, we still find it confusing to navigate our existing social environment and understand each other clearly on different levels such as cultural, emotional, intellectual, and interpersonal. Through the works exhibited by Cheung Kong School of Art and Design, students are trying to communicate ideas of multiple understandings and misunderstandings, subtle and alternative meanings, and how that can affect our social and emotional realities. As artists and descendants of the Bauhaus, we recognize that our role is changing. We no longer believe in the heroic genius of the master who forms the world in a state of intuition. Embedding and feedback reveal that responsible action requires diverse cognitive variations that involve the counterpart in a performative way.

HKU Showcase

HKU University of the Arts Utrecht

HKU Showcase is a mini showcase of upcoming talents from the HKU University of the Arts Utrecht. The focus for this showcase is on three diverse works in the field of “playful intervention.” The HKU Expertise Centre for Creative Technology has curated this mini showcase.

Generative agents

Jérôme Nika (FR)

Computer music designer, researcher, and musician, Jérôme Nika (FR) develops his own software instruments in collaboration with Ircam, and in interaction with expert improvisers and composers.

Earthlink

Saša Spačal (SI)

Earthlink performs a planetary biogeochemical feedback loop catalyzed by microbial metabolism. Through the intimate process of breathing, humans are bound to the planet, immersed in an intra-flux of exchanges and negotiating relationships. What happens when the connections become technologically mediated? How will we breathe? Who or what will dispense the dose? Who will survive? How will we grieve?

Trans*Plant: connecting with mycorrhiza intranet [edible version]

Q.R*3 – Quimera Rosa (ES/AR/FR) + Roger Rabbitch (ES) + Rebeca Paz (ES)

“2024. March 8. The annual resources of the Earth have been exhausted. The equivalent of 4 planets is needed to satisfy human consumption. From a VPN of a second Internet, a group of biohackers, Q.R*3, tries to connect with the mycorrhiza, a network composed of a symbiosis between roots and fungi through which the terrestrial plant world communicates. The first members of this group died immediately under the effect of an unknown molecule. Nothing is known about the rest of the group.”

I am {Emotion}

Manolis Perrakis (LE) in collaboration with Mathis Antony (CH)

The installation is comprised by a sun lounger bed that the audience can lie on, and receive real-time “psychological” advice. GPT2 in conjunction with tacotron2 and an emotion classification algorithm is used to extract the emotion from the participant’s face and vocalize it into an endless stream of artificial wisdom.

xDiversity Project

Yoichi Ochiai (JP), JST CREST xDiversity Project Colleagues (JP)

This project aims to explore AI-assisted human-machine integration techniques for overcoming impairments and disabilities. The final goal is a social design and deployment of the assistive technologies towards an inclusive society.

Found Sound Discovery

Robin Weijers (NL), Manolis Perrakis (EL)

Found Sound Discovery explores movement, time and sound. An installation that involves analogue and digital interactions with the world around us. Through sensors and found objects, mechanical and digital interactions create the possibility of discovered sound.

Species Reclamation Via a Non-linear Genetic Timeline: An Attempted Hymenochirus curtipes Model Induced by Controlled Breeding

Brandon Ballengèe (US)

This project involved the selective breeding of frogs from the Hymenochirus family, located in the Congo. There, biodiversity is threatened by forest clearing and increased demand for wood. Also, political turmoil in Congo has limited biological studies and conservation efforts. In their native habitat, wild Hymenochirus populations may currently be in decline or have become extinct.