Ⓥ 5.1 Experimental Arts in Public Space
Tracks
Track 1
Tuesday, June 25, 2024 |
1:30 PM - 3:00 PM |
Plaza Auditorium |
Overview
This session will be livestreamed from Brisbane for virtual delegates
Speaker
Ms Lubi Thomas
Curator
Experimenta
Experimenta
1:30 PM - 1:45 PMAbstract
Experimenta, one of Australia's leading not-for-profit arts organisations, has garnered a global reputation for its high-calibre curated programs, commissioning cutting-edge works from some of the world's most adventurous contemporary artists operating at the intersection of art, science, technology, and societal discourse. Since its inception in 1986, Experimenta has been dedicated to fostering the exploration of contemporary issues through dynamic visual arts engagement, driven by ideas and shaped by technological innovation.
Experimenta presents their recent project for the seminal Now or Never Festival in Melbourne (2023) exploring the critical dialogue surrounding the role of experimental art in activating public spaces. The work challenges conventional notions of spectatorship, catalysing discourse on the complex interplay between art, technology, and societal transformation.
Having commissioned works by Jon McCormack and Peter Thiedeke for Now or Never, Experimenta's Managing Director, Kim de Kretser and Curator at Large, Lubi Thomas will introduce these artists, along with Rajcic, contextualizing their recent projects within the broader discourse surrounding site-specific, technologically informed art interventions in urban environments.
Experimenta presents their recent project for the seminal Now or Never Festival in Melbourne (2023) exploring the critical dialogue surrounding the role of experimental art in activating public spaces. The work challenges conventional notions of spectatorship, catalysing discourse on the complex interplay between art, technology, and societal transformation.
Having commissioned works by Jon McCormack and Peter Thiedeke for Now or Never, Experimenta's Managing Director, Kim de Kretser and Curator at Large, Lubi Thomas will introduce these artists, along with Rajcic, contextualizing their recent projects within the broader discourse surrounding site-specific, technologically informed art interventions in urban environments.
Biography
Lubi Thomas is a highly experienced curator working across digital and new media arts. Her area of curation - Art – Technology – Science – Society has allowed her to engage with artists focused on contemporary ideas expressed through cutting-edge art forms and tools for over two decades.
With over forty exhibitions, national and international exhibitions and tours, experimental practice projects, festivals, residencies, and mentorship programs, Lubi has deep knowledge and experience in curation, transdisciplinary projects, programming and audience development, and project management.
Lubi has developed cultural policy, strategy, and process for several organisations and agencies and led, mentored, and developed diverse creative teams in delivering program outcomes. This has included brokering signification site-based partnerships and working with key organisations, including LEGO Education, ARS Electronica, EMARE, Experimenta and The Australia Council, as well as global networks to support international exchange of ideas and creative opportunities.
In her role with Experimenta Lubi co-curated Experimenta Life Forms (2021-2023) and Experimenta Make Sense (2017-2021), curated the ‘Now or Never Art Trail’ in 2023 and is curating the upcoming tour Experimenta Emergence (2025-2027).
Mrs Kim de Kretser
Managing & Creative Director
Experimenta
Co-presenter
Biography
Kim de Kretser is a highly accomplished creative director, producer, curator, and artist with over two decades of experience in the arts and cultural sector. Her extensive background as a creative strategist has allowed her to guide stakeholders and lead multidisciplinary teams, engaging artists, scientists, thought leaders, and communities in curated collaborations across various disciplines.
Drawing from her extensive expertise in transdisciplinary initiatives, curatorial practice, stakeholder collaborations, audience engagement strategies, and creative production management, Kim has orchestrated and executed an impressive portfolio of public art exhibitions, events, festivals, and wide-ranging cultural programs that span diverse artistic disciplines. Her expertise spans working with local and state governments, philanthropic organizations, corporate partners, universities, and arts institutions.
In her current role as Managing Director at Experimenta, Kim has spearheaded the organization's strategic direction, creatively directing the 'Now or Never Art Trail' in 2023 and the upcoming Experimenta 9th National Tour of Media Art, Emergence (2025-2027).
Professor Jon McCormack
Monash University
FP: Holon: A Cybernetic Interface for Bio-Semiotics
1:45 PM - 2:10 PMAbstract
This paper presents an interactive artwork, "Holon", a collection of 130 autonomous, cybernetic organisms that listen and make sound in collaboration with the natural environment. The work was developed for installation on water at a heritage-listed dock. Conceptual issues informing the work are presented, along with a detailed technical overview of the implementation. Individual holons are of three types, inspired by biological models of animal communication: composer/generators, collector/critics and disruptors. Collectively, Holon integrates and occupies elements of the acoustic spectrum in collaboration with human and non-human agents.
Biography
Jon McCormack is an artist and researcher based in Melbourne/Narrm, Australia. He is currently research Professor and director of Monash University’s SensiLab, a creative technologies research laboratory that brings together artists, designers and scientists and technologists in trans-disciplinary collaboration. McCormack’s own creative practice encompasses generative systems, human-machine creativity and creative Artificial Intelligence. He is the recipient of over 18 awards for both artistic innovation and technical research, including the Eureka Prize for Innovation in Computer Science and the Lumen Prize for Digital Art.
Mr Peter Thiedeke
Griffith University
PIC: Speculating Smart: An Ambiguous Image Object
2:10 PM - 2:25 PMAbstract
TWIFSY (The world is fine, save yourself) is a media art installation designed to stimulate thought about how urban life, which is increasingly mediated by opaque black boxes and artificial intelligence algorithms, may one day manifest in the future Smart City, where time and space have collapsed into a dystopian post-human virtual world. TWIFSY is concerned with the implications of the current sociotechnical paradigm of surveillance capitalism––the automatised monopolistic power and control over Big Data by Big Tech and the transformation of personal information, including human needs, mobility, beliefs, thoughts, and expressions into a capital commodity.
The creative practice uses speculative design methods to initiate a debate for preferable futures over the undesirable and destructive market-driven forces of the past and present to inspire change before the future happens. TWIFSY evolved as a thought experiment that speaks to the speculative cultures of science-fiction, futurism, literature, politics, and film. It offers citizens a space to free their imagination from the pragmatics and preoccupations of day-to-day reality. The work’s visual language stems from post-digital aesthetics of failure, where the detritus of digital technologies become raw material for a subcultural do-it-yourself approach typified by the maker and post-digital hacker movements.
The creative practice uses speculative design methods to initiate a debate for preferable futures over the undesirable and destructive market-driven forces of the past and present to inspire change before the future happens. TWIFSY evolved as a thought experiment that speaks to the speculative cultures of science-fiction, futurism, literature, politics, and film. It offers citizens a space to free their imagination from the pragmatics and preoccupations of day-to-day reality. The work’s visual language stems from post-digital aesthetics of failure, where the detritus of digital technologies become raw material for a subcultural do-it-yourself approach typified by the maker and post-digital hacker movements.
Biography
Peter Thiedeke is an interdisciplinary image-maker concerned with post-digital critique. Peter works at the intersection of art and design and contributes to international art and design collectives, creative agencies, publishers, technologists, designers, architects, universities, museums, activists, and cultural festivals. He has exhibited in London, Paris, New York, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Tokyo, and Buenos Aires. He has received international awards from the D&AD (Design and Art Direction, Worldwide), the AOP (Association of Photographers, UK) and the Nikon Press Awards (UK). Peter lectures at the Queensland College of Art and Design. His research is situated within futurist discourses surrounding the Smart City, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the Internet of Everything (IoE). Peter uses speculative design to investigate plausible visual futures in urban environments through media architecture, digital placemaking projects, and acupunctural urban art interventions to increase consciousness of the city’s systems. He is a project leader of Future Projections, a funded initiative for the Creative Arts Research Institute (CARI) at Griffith University. This work involves conceiving, designing, producing, post-producing, and documenting non-traditional creative research projects in collaboration with various academic disciplines and city stakeholders.
Dr Nina Rajcic
Monash University
AT: Language is the New Material
2:25 PM - 2:40 PMAbstract
The increased coherence and readability of AI generated text that came with the release of LLMs marks the transition towards an earnest enquiry into the machine's comprehension of human matters. The adoption of machine-generated text in creative work no longer serves as a conceptual provocation, a celebration of the absurd, but is too an exploration of heartfelt meaning in human-machine communication. In this artist talk, I present a body of work in which language constitutes the material, a body of work that is relentlessly striving to answer the question: If we do draw meaning from machine text, then where does that meaning come from?
Biography
Nina Rajcic is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher, and developer exploring new possibilities of human-machine relationships. Her doctoral thesis focused on unpacking the links between language and the self, exploring the role of narrative in the synthesizing of meaning and the constructing of identity. Her broader research investigates the nature of human-machine relationships in an increasingly posthuman world, ultimately seeking to offer new rituals that produce shared meaning in the human and non-human assemblages of today. Nina’s work has been exhibited internationally at venues including Tretyakov Gallery Moscow and ZKM Karlsruhe. In 2022 she was a finalist in the Women in AI awards for her contributions to research in generative AI.
Session chair
Kim de Kretser
Managing & Creative Director
Experimenta
Lubi Thomas
Curator
Experimenta
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