Ⓥ V.9 Virtual Discussion - Artist Talks
Tuesday, June 25, 2024 |
10:10 AM - 11:00 AM |
Virtual |
Overview
Group discussion giving virtual presenters the opportunity to discuss their work with colleagues and delegates
Details
Join the session here
This virtual discussion session will give virtual presenters the opportunity to participate in a live interactive virtual panel discussion facilitated by an academic chair. Virtual delegates will be encouraged to pre-watch the presentation videos (available via the OnAIR conference platform) and then join this discussion session, which will run through a provided Zoom link. The Aim of this session is to provide an opportunity for presenters to share and discuss their work with colleagues and for delegates to engage in Q&A. Each discussion will run for 30-50 minutes depending on how many virtual presenters and delegates are participating.
This virtual discussion session will give virtual presenters the opportunity to participate in a live interactive virtual panel discussion facilitated by an academic chair. Virtual delegates will be encouraged to pre-watch the presentation videos (available via the OnAIR conference platform) and then join this discussion session, which will run through a provided Zoom link. The Aim of this session is to provide an opportunity for presenters to share and discuss their work with colleagues and for delegates to engage in Q&A. Each discussion will run for 30-50 minutes depending on how many virtual presenters and delegates are participating.
Speaker
Ms. Mingyong Cheng
PhD Student in Art Practice
University of California San Diego
AT: Fusion – Landscape and Beyond: Intersecting Realms of Nature, Urbanity, and Synthetic Memory
Abstract
The Fusion: Landscape and Beyond series explores the nexus of nature, urbanization, and artificial intelligence (AI), reimagining “AI Memory” as a participatory archive, where AI transcends from a mere tool to an integral participant in crafting synthetic memories that resonate with the collective cultural narratives. Beginning with “Synthesis of Time and Terrain (V1),” the series juxtaposes traditional Chinese landscapes against AI’s modernity, reflecting on environmental and urban shifts. Utilizing animations and augmented reality generated through advanced self-fine-tuned Stable Diffusion model, it examines the tension between natural beauty and urban expansion. The subsequent phase, “Calligram of Contrast (V2),” introduces an interactive installation merging AI-generated cityscapes with traditional brushworks, invoking a philosophical pursuit of harmony amidst environmental concerns. Through Clip Interrogator technology and infrared tracking sensor, the 2D canvas is transformed into a 3D space that is interactive and intrusive. The finale, “Illuminating Urban Scars (V3),” critically scrutinizes China’s halted urban projects, representing the repercussions of unchecked development and human cost. This trilogy highlights AI’s ability to fuse historical artistry with contemporary issues, positioning “AI Memory” as a critical medium for cultural discourse and digital heritage.
Biography
Mingyong Cheng, originally from Beijing, China, is now a California-based new media artist, deeply entrenched in AI and generative art. Currently a Ph.D. student in Art Practice at the University of California, San Diego, she integrates visual arts with a keen specialization in Interdisciplinary Environmental Research, collaborating closely with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Mingyong's recent foray since 2021 into the realm of generative AI, for her, AI isn't merely an instrument but a partner in creativity, reshaping historical perspectives and envisioning the future. Equipped with an MFA from Duke University, Mingyong has adeptly navigated from documentary filmmaking to an expansive array of experimental arts, capturing the essence of our shared experiences through innovative mediums. Mingyong's work has been showcased internationally such as Siggraph Asia Art Gallery, NeurIPS Creative AI Track, and various global venues.
Ms. Xuexi Dang
PhD student in Visual Arts
University of California San Diego
Co-presenter
Biography
Mr Zetao Yu
Independent Researcher
Independent Researcher
Co-presenter
Biography
Assistant Professor Amanda Stojanov
Assistant Professor
Monmouth University
AT: A Womxn Destroyed
Abstract
A Womxn Destroyed is a performance that delves into the anger felt by femme or femme-identified individuals who have traversed the spectrum of femme experiences, embracing, trans-forming, or relinquishing this identity while frequently concealing these emotions. Through this virtual performance, I create a space for the expression and exploration of anger. The first performance is a response to The Monologue, Part 2, of Simone de Beauvoir’s 1969 novel The Woman Destroyed. After the first iteration of this performance, other artists will be invited to perform a monologue in their personalized virtual ‘skin’ as a Metahuman. They will create a digital performance as a response to either “The Monologue”, a piece of literature of their choice, or another inspiring text or body of work. Using a set of digital tools, I create a virtual production method using Unreal Engine, Metahumans, biometric data capture from the app Live Link, a microphone, and using Twitch as the distribution platform, as a form of creative expression.
Biography
Amanda is a media artist who investigates how innovations in communication technologies affect perceptions of identity, agency, and visibility, emphasizing concepts of embodiment and the "historically constituted body" within a networked-society. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally in venues such as the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and Ars Electronica, Linz. Her work has also been featured in publications like Artillery magazine, The New York Times, and The Associated Press.
Through installations and the use of world-building techniques, Amanda investigates how innovations in communication technologies affect perceptions of identity, agency, and visibility, with an emphasis on concepts of embodiment and the “historically constituted body” within a networked-society. Areas of expertise are new media, multi-media installations, design, interactivity, creative coding, and networked media. Research interests are physical computing, game theory, mixed reality, and computer graphics within the context of new media art, critical theory, and society.
Assistant Professor Anne Yoncha
Assistant Professor
Metropolitan State University Of Denver
Suon Laulu (Song of the Swamp): Soil Data Sonification of Post-Human Landscapes
Abstract
Suon Laulu (Song of the Swamp) is a graphic score, choral performance, and programmed video visualizing and sonifying 160 years of soil data from post-extraction peatland landscapes. This research is part of Re:Peat, a multifaceted eco-art project. In 2019-2020, Anne Yoncha worked with scientists from Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luonnonvarakeskus, or Luke) to study restoration techniques for peatland extraction sites. Using a hyperspectral camera, she accessed data about soil health from soil core samples which we are unable to see with the naked eye.
The piece moves from past to present. Variations in water content, temperature, and level are mapped onto musical staves, the upper staff representing a restored study plot, and the lower, an unrestored plot. Composer Hannah Selin translated these into a choral composition for the Tuira Chamber Choir, inserting 50 human voices into the data translation process, evoking our enmeshment with soil and the non-human species living in it. Accompany-ing is a video programmed by Brian Givens with Processing visual coding language. In it, the false-color hyperspectral camera image is the hidden “seed image”, rear-ranging pixels in the visible image from the stereo micro-scope. The data both obscures and reveals information about our non-human, soil-dwelling neighbors.
The piece moves from past to present. Variations in water content, temperature, and level are mapped onto musical staves, the upper staff representing a restored study plot, and the lower, an unrestored plot. Composer Hannah Selin translated these into a choral composition for the Tuira Chamber Choir, inserting 50 human voices into the data translation process, evoking our enmeshment with soil and the non-human species living in it. Accompany-ing is a video programmed by Brian Givens with Processing visual coding language. In it, the false-color hyperspectral camera image is the hidden “seed image”, rear-ranging pixels in the visible image from the stereo micro-scope. The data both obscures and reveals information about our non-human, soil-dwelling neighbors.
Biography
Anne Yoncha is Assistant Professor of Art at Metropolitan State University Denver. Born in Wilmington, Delaware, she earned an MFA at the University of Montana, and was award-ed a Fulbright fellowship at Natural Resources Institute Fin-land working with restorationists to make collaborative art-science work about former peat extraction sites. Her practice combines digital sensing technology, such as bio-data sonifi-cation, and analog, traditional painting and drawing processes. Her HAB (High Altitude Bioprospecting) working group includes artists, biologists, and programmers working to con-tact high-altitude microbes using a heli-kite. Outside the stu-dio she can be found doing other environmental “research” via bicycle.
Digital Bothy Ramya Iyer
Student
Georgia Institute Of Technology
AT: Digital Bothy
Abstract
Digital Bothy is an immersive 3D experience combining high-definition digital reconstruction with a narrative on the non-reproducibility of place. It is the product of a solo, 15 mile hike to photogrammetrically capture the Allt Scheicheachan bothy, a little stone building tucked away in the remote Scottish Cairngorms open to any traveler in need of shelter. The resulting 3D scan became the centerpiece for a hyperreal, first-person Highland excursion built with Unreal Engine. The final work honors Allt Scheicheachan’s inaccessibility, subverting expectations of a pixel-perfect digital replica. It takes a traveler 3 hours to reach the bothy’s door in real life. In-game, the journey is condensed into 20 seconds. Given the virtual hiker’s minimal effort and the absurdity of shelter in the digital environment, Digital Bothy resists exposing the bothy’s true structure upon their arrival, wobbling and tessellating as they grow closer, until it is an unrecognizable mosaic of fractured data. A field recording of Cairngorm wind blows with growing intensity as the viewer enters the cloud of swirling bothy shards, magnifying the distortion. This project was completed over the course of a year, and evolved into a personal meditation on the tension between digital simulation and the natural world.
Biography
Ramya Iyer is a technical artist and undergraduate studying computer science at the Georgia Institute of Technology. In both her personal art practice and research projects, she uses a diverse range of approaches to explore how computer graphics and visual design influence virtual immersion.
Mr David Han
PhD Candidate
York University
AT: The Eternal Ephemeral by Friend Generator
Abstract
The Eternal Ephemeral is a WebXR experience created for PC VR head-mounted displays. Drawing from the conference theme of the Everywhen, it employs variance and repetition across multiple spatial, visual, kinesthetic, and auditory motifs to explore the concept of the collapse of the physical and virtual and the coalescing of multiple temporalities.
Biography
David Han is an immersive media artist, scholar and educator whose work employs emerging technology to explore the boundaries between computation and immersive media. His current practice employs a structural approach to explore virtual reality (VR) and aims to understand and expand the range of possibilities for creative practice in VR. His award-winning artwork has been exhibited internationally at FIVARS (Festival of International Virtual and Augmented Reality Stories) and VRTO and his arts-based research is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Professor Lisa Moren
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
AT: Emergence
Abstract
From water’s ability to create and sustain life to its impact
on the current global ecological crisis, its significance
cannot be understated. I work with marine biologists who
know how to solve marine ecological problems, but require
a public who cares about our waters to fund their research
projects. In my collaborations with marine biologist,
Tvetan Bachvaroff, and computer programmers we create
projects that engage the public with water, relative
emergence, and the “umwelt” of marine species.
“Deep Star” is a multi-channel video and audio installation
in live conversation with the Chesapeake Bay. In this workin-progress the public is a complicit witness with Bay
water, its patterns, flows, blooms and their significant
influence on marine wildlife. In September, the Fells Point
docks are teeming with scores of ignored bioluminescent
ctenophore jellyfish that have co-developed in form and
movement passively revealing the waters currents. “Deep
Star” creates unique video, animations and sounds from
critters both invisible (microbes) and visible, but are all
often unnoticed.
To deepen the connection of marine forms interweaving
with the complexity of water patterns, the project will
stream in live data from sensors already in the Bay to the
project. I’m working with the MD DNR and a software
engineer, where we transfer the live pH, oxygen,
temperature, saline (salt), chlorophyl (microbes) and
turbidity (clarity) data from sensors already in the Bay to
the project. For example, working specifically with data
from the Inner Harbor, the high oxygen levels will display
a large deepstaria jellyfish. But when the oxygen is low,
the jellyfish becomes small, or if it’s really low or anoxic,
the animation transforms into a plastic bag. In this way,
many aspects of the video, 3d animation, and sound are
affected by temperature, salt conditions, number of critters,
etc. making Deep Star an undulating multi-channel story
that changes over time and seasons.
Related projects discussed here include “What is the Shape
of Water?” (2020), the experiential reality and augmented
reality (AR/XR) “Under the Bay” that includes the
“Chamber of Wonders” installation (2022). These are part
of a series of cross-species artworks aimed at diminishing
human-centered exceptionalism. The marine
collaborations began in 2019 when I was the inaugural
Artist-in-Resident at the Institute for Marine and
Environmental Technology (IMET). There, I met
researcher and marine biologist, Dr. Tsvetan Bachvaroff,
where he and I immediately shared a like-minded vision to
develop a project that exemplified phenomenal
exceptionalisms in micro-organisms.
on the current global ecological crisis, its significance
cannot be understated. I work with marine biologists who
know how to solve marine ecological problems, but require
a public who cares about our waters to fund their research
projects. In my collaborations with marine biologist,
Tvetan Bachvaroff, and computer programmers we create
projects that engage the public with water, relative
emergence, and the “umwelt” of marine species.
“Deep Star” is a multi-channel video and audio installation
in live conversation with the Chesapeake Bay. In this workin-progress the public is a complicit witness with Bay
water, its patterns, flows, blooms and their significant
influence on marine wildlife. In September, the Fells Point
docks are teeming with scores of ignored bioluminescent
ctenophore jellyfish that have co-developed in form and
movement passively revealing the waters currents. “Deep
Star” creates unique video, animations and sounds from
critters both invisible (microbes) and visible, but are all
often unnoticed.
To deepen the connection of marine forms interweaving
with the complexity of water patterns, the project will
stream in live data from sensors already in the Bay to the
project. I’m working with the MD DNR and a software
engineer, where we transfer the live pH, oxygen,
temperature, saline (salt), chlorophyl (microbes) and
turbidity (clarity) data from sensors already in the Bay to
the project. For example, working specifically with data
from the Inner Harbor, the high oxygen levels will display
a large deepstaria jellyfish. But when the oxygen is low,
the jellyfish becomes small, or if it’s really low or anoxic,
the animation transforms into a plastic bag. In this way,
many aspects of the video, 3d animation, and sound are
affected by temperature, salt conditions, number of critters,
etc. making Deep Star an undulating multi-channel story
that changes over time and seasons.
Related projects discussed here include “What is the Shape
of Water?” (2020), the experiential reality and augmented
reality (AR/XR) “Under the Bay” that includes the
“Chamber of Wonders” installation (2022). These are part
of a series of cross-species artworks aimed at diminishing
human-centered exceptionalism. The marine
collaborations began in 2019 when I was the inaugural
Artist-in-Resident at the Institute for Marine and
Environmental Technology (IMET). There, I met
researcher and marine biologist, Dr. Tsvetan Bachvaroff,
where he and I immediately shared a like-minded vision to
develop a project that exemplified phenomenal
exceptionalisms in micro-organisms.
Biography
Lisa Moren is a multi-disciplinary artist who works with emerging media, bio-matter, public space, AR and works-on-paper. In the early 1990s she created one of the first virtual reality projects at the Banff Centre in Canada. Since then, her ecological and philosophical work on matter and perception has been exhibited at the Chelsea Art Museum, Creative Time, Drawing Center (New York), Cranbrook Art Mu-seum (Michigan) and Ars Electronica (Austria), Akademie der Kunste (Germany), uShaka Museum (South Africa), and the Artists Research Network (Australia). She received the National Endowment for the Arts award, is a Fulbright Scholar; a multi-year recipient of the Maryland State Arts Council and CEC Artslink International, is a R.W. Deutsche Award recipient and a Saul Zaentz Innovation Fellow in Film and Media at Johns Hopkins University.
Her writing has appeared in Performance Research; Visible Language; Inter Arts Actuel; New Media Caucus for “Algorithmic Pollution: Artists working with Dataveillance and Societies of Control” and “CYBER IN|SECURITY”; and her books on “Intermedia”; and Issues in Contemporary Theory for “Command Z: Artists Working with Phenomena and Technology.” Lisa Moren is a Professor of Inter-media and Digital Arts in the Department of Visual Art at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC); is an Affiliate Faculty at the Imaging Research Center (IRC) UMBC; and taught at FAMU and AVU in Prague; and the University of California San Diego (UCSD).
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