Category: Exhibitions

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De-fragmented Bergen

Carbon Death will transmit a live cinema experience at the crossing between environmental harsh noise wall music and bleak November landscape during Piksel Festival. A machine will received films and sounds to produce a new forms of live cinema based on landmarks and landscapes of Bergen. Defragmentation stands for the transformation of this material based on the analysis of the level of activities in the images and the sounds recorded. The semi-autonomous AI program will re-compose a new landscape with a cold perception of the evolution of the environment in order to creates a new machine anti-perspective view on our world. Man with a movie camera by Dziga Vertov creates a new vision of the cities in the early days of the 20th century industrialisation, 92 years after Carbon Death proposes a machine to reinvest the subject Defragmenting Bergen using no literature, no theater, no cinema, the machine is its author, editor and producer.

Carbon Death – non-collective experience

Carbon Death is a non-collective of artists that offers artistic and scientific research without territorial limits, potentially opposing artists, curators, scientists and academics, by way of a voluntary impertinence towards places and concepts and by revisiting, redefining and reorganising these domains.

The Live cinema installation will be displayed on the Piksel festival website and multiple streaming platform.

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PAC-MOM

PAC-MOM [1] is a parody of the popular arcade game PAC-MAN (1980) by Toru Iwatani. Game scholars classify PAC-MAN as an eating game. PAC-MOM is a game about gender and food insecurity. PAC-MOM takes place in a situation where accessing
food requires PAC-MOM to work a disproportionate amount more than PAC-MAN. In
addition to having to work more for the same amount of pellets as PAC-MAN, PAC-MOM
has to avoid powerful ghost-enemies including patriarchy, misogyny, racism,
ableism, and many more. Watch a playthrough on Vimeo. [2]

  • Links:
  • [1] PAC-MOM Website: http://www.anninaruest.com/pac_mom
  • [2] PAC-MOM playthrough video: https://vimeo.com/469158684

Annina Rüst is an artist-technologist. She creates electronics and software-based media art. Her works often focus on political issues within tech culture, including gender representation and online privacy. Rüst’s work has been
reviewed in such publications as Wired and the New York Times Magazine. The Huffington Post called her recent
robotics work a “Badass Feminist Robot”. Besides making and exhibiting technology-driven art, she writes scholarly
articles that contextualize her own work and the work of others. Rüst teaches programming, game development,
electronics, data visualization, and digital fabrication at the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College at Florida Atlantic
University where she is an Associate Professor.

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Platform Sweet Talk

Today’s dominant social media platforms are designed to produce, above all else, user engagement. Engaged users contribute increasing amounts of data, transforming platforms from empty containers of nothing into profitable private stores of human behavior and culture. But this production doesn’t happen by itself; it requires careful engineering to craft and present the right message at the right time in a way that compels users to keep scrolling, liking, and posting. Platform Sweet Talk examines a primary tactic Silicon Valley employs to seduce its users into a one-sided relationship: notifications. Based on longitudinal research into a major platform’s notification strategy, this work presents their extensive notification language in a depersonalized form, revealing how notifications operate to encourage, manipulate, and woo users into maximal platform engagement.

Ben Grosser creates interactive experiences, machines, and systems that examine the cultural, social, and political effects of software. Recent exhibition venues include the Barbican Centre in London, Museum Kesselhaus in Berlin, Museu das Comunicações in Lisbon, and Galerie Charlot in Paris. His works have been featured in The New Yorker, Wired, The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Washington Post, El País, Libération, Süddeutsche Zeitung, and Der Spiegel. The Chicago Tribune called him the “unrivaled king of ominous gibberish.” Slate referred to his work as
“creative civil disobedience in the digital age.” Grosser’s artworks are regularly cited in books investigating the cultural effects of technology, including The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, The Metainterface, Critical Code Studies, and Technologies of Vision, as well as volumes centered on computational art practices such as Electronic Literature, The New Aesthetic and Art, and Digital Art. Grosser is an associate professor in the School of Art + Design, and co-founder of the Critical Technology Studies Lab at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, both at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA.

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Latent Voice

Creation of a system to capture / record / transfer to the gallery space (or other inside) voice of the river flowing from Svartediket.

Jarek Lustych is Polish visual artist (b.1961). He received his MFA degree from Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts; and since then he has been working as a freelance artist. Initially, the main area of his artistic focus was relief printing. Exploring its possibilities and limitations, he has created a series of works that have been shown in Poland and abroad and also in
competition presentations. His solo exhibition showed various stages of these experiences – in the changing technical solutions, formats, and in the methods of imaging. After his fifteen-year career in the confined space of printmaking
following his basic training, Lustych decided it was time for some change and enriched his practice with an extra
dimension in an attempt to redefine the perception area of art. Since then, he has participated in several international sitespecific symposiums and artist-in-residency programmes making sculptures, installations and organizing street actions / interventions. Twice he received the Polish ministerial scholarships, but the most creative so far were his stays in VillaWaldberta AiR (Germany) & A4 AiR – Luxlakes A4 Art Museum, Chengdu, China.

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Island of Doubt

The little cars Wally, Dory, Mortimer, Ferguson, and Baxter move back and forth in different combinations on the wood curvy tracks. They report their location to the brain of the system that functions as a communication line between all of them. The brain remembers and communicates the position of each sculpture to the other that is in proximity. For instance, when Wally and Dory are the farthest from each other they might realize they miss each other and therefore go into a certain state of behavior that reflects their sadness while if they are closest to each other they might mingle. Once every so often, they move together or towards each other. The tracks never cross so the sculptures can never touch each other unless they are already tangled together, coupled, from the beginning.

When the visitors walk they first see the movement of the fabric sculptures and then realize the tracks. All of the electronics in the ceiling are somewhat hidden because the tracks are designed to blend into the architecture and become an appendage to it. The very complicated system on the ceiling is reflected by not so complicated movements at eye-level. While the tracks blend into the architecture, the vertical sculptures jump out and drool onto the floor as if they are reaching for the audience. The piece facilitates a physical relationship between the architecture and the residents in it.

As the visitors enter the installation and walk through they have to change their behavior in the space according to the sculptures or interrupt the system. They may choose to interrupt the system by pushing the pieces out of their way, pulling them, or just holding them. This physical interruption by the audience interrupts the relationships within the system. Every time the audience chooses to hold one of the sculptures a second more than the sculpture is supposed to stay in that place, the counter in the brain that remembers and reports where the sculptures are or what they are supposed to do next gets interrupted and confused. As a result, the relationships between the objects alter.

In contrast, the audience is also interrupted by the sculptures. When placed in a cramped space where the audience has to walk through the sculpture to get to the other side, visitors that do not want to touch the pieces will have to navigate around the pieces and walk in a zigzag like pattern or get hit by them.

My aim in this project is to investigate relationships between mechanical objects that have physical qualities within a closed system and the system’s relationship to the architecture and the audience. It is a meditation on how two very separate entities like the visitor and the art piece can affect each other physically but not be aware of the unseen consequences that may follow their physical interaction.

Berfin Ataman is an Artist, Designer and researcher. Her artwork has been materialized as wearables, installations, and other soft, kinetic, sculptures. Over multiple series and projects, she has explored humans’ relationships to their environment and the non-human.

Berfin Ataman was born in Izmir, Turkey. She went on to get her BFA in Theatre Design from the University of Southern California, her Post – Baccalaureate degree from the School of Art Institute Chicago, and her MFA from UCLA, Design Media Arts. She has shown her work in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Korea and Istanbul in galleries and museums.

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VEXTRE, augmenting rural realities

VEXTRE
In the popular imagination, a narrative has been constructed around the cultural nature of Extremadura that is rooted in stereotypes of socio-economic underdevelopment. Historically, the region has been defined by its status as a peripheral and border territory, a space on the margins with a low density of population and an example of what some scholars refer to as “internal colonialism”, reflected in the metrópoli-colonia dichotomy, between the centre and periphery or urban and rural, and visible here within the same territory. This implies different forms of domination over the decades, form estates held by large landowners to the repression to which more progressive forces were subjected after the Civil War.


Emigration has been a constant since the early 20th century and cultural identity has been constructed largely from outside through regional associations and centres that acted as meeting spaces with strong identity ties. These associations and centres were not without their critics, however, who claimed that they perpetuated the same social constructs experienced before leaving. True change must come from within. Having overcome the social inequalities that emerged in the wake of the Franco dictatorship, life is different in Extremadura. To continue the progress, the collaboration of the so-called Extremeñan diaspora is sought. The creative class is very much part of this diaspora and the artist Maite Cajaraville is rooted in that context. This new claim to identity is articulated through the symbolic and the political act rather than an administrative approach or one that reproduces the patterns of the past. Emigration between the rural and urban world is still present in the 21st century but life in the countryside and in small villages and towns is very different from the way it was fifty years ago. The Manifesto of Rural Futurism, drafted by researchers Leandro Pisano and Beatrice Ferrara challenges today’s capitalist discourses on the rural world as an authentic place: utopian, provincial, tradition or stable that idealises the anachronism of these territories from the megalopolis. The manifesto shares a new message, based on “belonging vs. alienation, development vs. backwardness.”


Vextre is presented as an emotional map in three dimensions. It is a journey that constitutes a rapprochement to rediscover the territory we inhabit and to subvert these accepted realities. It starts with a physical sculpture that Cajaraville designed using the 3D printing technique in 2017, during her participation in the first edition of the Regional Government of Extremadura’s Cáceres Abierto contemporary culture programme. Data compilation and new technologies were put to the service of modern art, and the documentation is materialised in a visual and organic piece of enormous presence and aesthetic beauty. Vextre evolved in 2021 towards an environment manufactured wholly in digital format. We find ourselves before a hybrid display that interacts with the audience / viewer through a mobile device, generating new environments for the museum and those who visit it. The piece, created ex profeso for the MEIAC, is a three-dimensional virtual object produced using technological media after exhaustive documentation and data processing work using a number of different parameters representing the socio-economic values of Extremadura, such as GDP and unemployment and emigration statistics. A series of narratives thus emerge, facilitating dialogue and critical thinking with the audience through each individual’s opinion. The data flow in this piece the same way culture is transmitted, evolves and is shared through social and educational processes, thus constructing identity. This exhibition aims to rediscover the territory with an urgent message on caring for the environment and its peoples against the mass tourism that can result from unabated consumerism, and to reformulate internalised prejudices with a technological and advanced image that interferes with traditional patterns with the idea of a new data map of Extremadura.


The landscape generated by the artist constantly questions nature, the city and the code as an example of interrelation between art, science and technology. There is also an online initiative that aims to break the passive viewer barrier, creating the Instagram profile vextre_extremadura. The aim is to reach a wider, more diverse audience and to spark a debate before the inauguration and to launch an exercise of reflection: how is Extremadura perceived elsewhere? But, above all, how is it perceived from within by its inhabitants? It also goes beyond the spatial boundaries of the museum. Cajaraville invites us to position Extremadura all over the world through our smartphones, advancing other possible formats for artistic expression and breaking the boundaries of the white cube.

VEXTRE, Augmenting the Rural Reality is supported by the Ministry of Culture and Sport from the Spanish Government.

Maite Cajaraville combines her artistic career with curator commissions and cultural management projects.

She is a media and video artist and AV performer whose creations have been exhibited in festivals and events such as the Sónar Festival of Advanced Music in Barcelona, Matadero Madrid and Art Futura in Madrid. Also the Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona, MACBA, MEIAC in Extremadura or the Art and Centre Pompidou in Málaga have displayed her videos and installations. Internationally her artwork has been displayed largely world wide, along EU, South America, Russia and Cameroon.

She is curating together with Gisle Frøysland, the Piksel festival in Norway since 2014. Under the Piksel umbrella in collaboration with Gisle F. she has developed other programs, Piksel Kidz, the Piksel Fest Spill, Music Pavilion events.

Cajaraville curates and coordinates cultural projects of national and international grounds, like TransPiksel.

Her videoworks have been shown in the most important cultural national TV programs: Metrópolis, La Mandrágora, Antiestático, Miradas,…

She has been teaching Media Art at Camilo Jose Cela University under the Film Studies 4 years (2014-2017).

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Sympathetic Motion

Sympathetic Motion includes four large-scale sculptures that are detailed in fabric design and in their movements. Each sculpture inherits distinct characteristics that formally and technically distinguishes them from the other pieces in the series. They also have different spatial relationships in regards to one another. While developing this project, I was interested in systems that make up and surround the artworks which concern interconnectivity, logic, memory, emotion, and interaction. The sculptures and the systems they create become a part of the architecture and an extension of it for the audience to interact with. All of these elements give the audience a sense of liveliness. The way I think about systems in sculptural form is influenced by nature and natural creatures. It will become apparent that my pieces visually resonate with the underwater world through the spaes and colors that I use. The various colors, shapes, and movements in my artwork direct how the audience perceives the sculpture and the site that surrounds it.

Berfin Ataman is an Artist, Designer and researcher. Her artwork has been materialized as wearables, installations, and other soft, kinetic, sculptures. Over multiple series and projects, she has explored humans’ relationships to their environment and the non-human.

Berfin Ataman was born in Izmir, Turkey. She went on to get her BFA in Theatre Design from the University of Southern California, her Post – Baccalaureate degree from the School of Art Institute Chicago, and her MFA from UCLA, Design Media Arts. She has shown her work in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Korea and Istanbul in galleries and museums.

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Used to Be My Home Too

Are we living in a globalised world that is becoming more and more homogeneous? Plants, fungi and animal species are continuously decreasing. In the distant future, will only domesticated species survive? What impact does this homogenisation process have on our lives and our environment?
«Used to be my home too» addresses this global change and shows how humans have become biodiverse agents to interact with the most fundamental processes of the earth.
In this experiment you fly to the locations where observers send observations of organisms to *iNaturalist in real-time using *Google Earth. Threatened and extinct plants, fungi and animal species that are taxonomically most similar and occurred in the same country are automatically added. This data comes from *RedList.org.

Marc Lee *1969 *Switzerland creates network-oriented interactive projects: interactive installations, media art, internet art, performance art, augmented reality (AR) art, virtual reality (VR) art. He is experimenting with information and communication technologies and within his contemporary art practice, he reflects critically creative, cultural, social, economic and political aspects. His artworks reflect the visions and limits of our information society in an intelligent
manner and question this critically.


Marc has exhibited in major art exhibitions including: ZKM Karlsruhe, New Museum New York, Transmediale Berlin, Ars Electronica Linz, HeK Basel, MoMA Shanghai and MMCA Seoul. Lee’s work are in private and public collections including the Federal Art Collection Switzerland and the ZKM Karlsruhe and he has won many prices and honorary mentions at international festivals, including Transmediale Berlin and Ars Electronica Linz

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Kube y su conjunto

A visual-sound performance work with experimental-noise characteristics combining electronic music, programming languages, real-time projections + an immersive experience using virtual reality (360).

The project was one of the winners of #PlataformaFuturo, a program for emerging artists with a jury made up of Daniel Melero, Gely Gonzalez, María Negroni, Claudia Del Río, Anibal Buede, Pichon Baldinú, Nicola Constantino, Emilio García Wehbi and Vivi Tella .

The video was made 100% in Blender on Gnu / linux

Links
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC9pJIvHVUo
https://archive.org/download/4k_20200817/4k.mp4