BBWCXR: Panel Digital Bodies – Material Fragments
with Irini Mirena Papadimitriou, Mark Coniglio, Marlon Barrios Solano, Gabriel Massan, Carrie Chen, Esteban Lecoq, Vali Lalioti, Jona Wolf
The second day of the symposium is entitled ‘Digital Bodies – Material Fragments’ and is guided by the initial question of what happens when the digital double or robot partner takes over. So what happens to the physical body, the embodiment and consciousness of the self and the actual self-consciousness? What impact does this have on felt experience, such as the feeling and sense of one’s own identity and the perception of oneself as a situated being? If bodies are, as media scholar John Fiske suggests, ‘the place where the system of power becomes material’ and where ‘the struggle for control is waged’, what kind of struggle – if any – is waged when the digital takes the place of the flesh? How can this relationship be imagined as technology evolves, and is it even possible to imagine a future in which digital and carnal bodies, physical and digital spaces are interwoven in a seamless continuum or even symbiosis?
These considerations and impulses guide the contributions of the participants: Irini Mirena Papadimitriou (‘Technological Embodiments’) explores how technological embodiments are characterised by human characteristics, fears, hopes, convictions and also mistakes; Mark Coniglio (‘The Importance of Being Interactive’) reports on how GPS trackers can expand the body in an artistic way. In the lecture performance ‘Duets in Latent Space’, Marlon Barrios Solanos explores the interplay between humans and AI, between action and reaction, and attempts to make the memorable, the affective and the speculative tangible. Speculative experiences and spiritual worlds of experience will then be explored in a series of online lectures by Gabriel Massan ‘Mapping out reparation: Worldbuilding as a practice’), Teresa Fernández-Pello ‘High-tech Mysticism’ and Carrie Chen ‘Avatars of Memory: Exploring Ancestry, Productive Uncanny, and the Sublime’. Esteban Lecoq will then look at artistic work with VR, AR and AI, before Vali Lalioti expands this perspective to include the role of creativity and art in the development of AI and robot technologies in her lecture ‘The Art and Tech of Creative Robotics’. Jona Wolf’s lecture ‘Space Invaders- Exploring the Intersection of Digital and Physical Spaces’ explores the tensions and possibilities that arise at the interface of digital and physical spaces. Finally, Maria Chatzichristodoulou will bring the participants together in a joint roundtable.
Duration: 13:00 – 19:30
Language: English with German simultaneous translation
13:00
Lecutre by Irini Mirena Papadimitriou ‘Technological Embodiments’
Although technology is so embedded in our daily lives and shapes the way we behave, perceive and interact with the world, it is often portrayed as an independent force that drives change independently of the human bodies that created it. In her lecture, Irina Papadimitriou will share examples from her curatorial practice and work, in which she explores how technological embodiments are shaped by human characteristics, fears, hopes, beliefs, but also failures. Social inequalities are inscribed in technologies, while technological embodiments control, monitor, objectify and quantify our bodies. Irina Papadimitriou presents examples of how artists develop counter-narratives to (Western) technological colonialism, reductionism and prejudice. Narratives that reshape the definitions of posthumanism and the future and allow us to imagine other perspectives and realities.
13:45
Lecture by Mark Coniglio ‘The Importance of Being Interactive’
From GPS trackers in our phones to smart watches, the idea that we are being monitored – that human actions are being turned into data – has become the rule rather than the exception. What remains unusual, however, is the use of such devices to augment the body in an artistic way, particularly in the context of live performances on stage. In his lecture, Mark Coniglio will talk about his experiences as a creator of interactive performances and what can happen when such tools are used to become the conductor of a media orchestra of video, sound and light – an ensemble that goes beyond accompaniment and becomes an extension of one’s own body.
14:30 Uhr
Marlon Barrios Solano ‘Duets in Latent Space’
‘Duets in Latent Space’ is a live collaboration between the artist – sitting in front of a laptop – and machine learning models and their enigmatic latent space. Through various forms of input, be it movements, sounds or digital interactions, the AI responds in kind, generating visual, auditory or textual outputs that are rendered in real time. ‘Duets in Latent Spaces’ is conceived as a lecture performance that interacts with web apps programmed by Marlon Barrios Solano and attempts to make the remembered, the affective and the speculative tangible. The lecture performance combines a series of vignettes, narratives, interfaces, software, movement scores and re-performances, interweaving themes such as cybernetics, time travel, queer longing, recursion and migrations with algorithmic playfulness.
15:30
Online lecture by Gabriel Massan ‘Mapping out reparation: Worldbuilding as a practice’
Gabriel Massan discusses the concept of ‘fictional archaeology’ in the context of her work that engages with digital sculpture and video art and has sparked a maximalist practice of world-building and collaborative storytelling.
15:55
Online lecture by Teresa Fernández-Pello ‘High-tech Mysticism’
In her lecture ‘High-tech Mysticism’, Teresa Fernandez-Pello introduces the central themes of her artistic practice by presenting a series of current and past works and projects, focussing on the underlying research that connects technology and spirituality, art and religion, high-tech and mysticism. At the centre of Teresa’s practice is an exploration of how technological progress is linked to the development of spiritual practices and social narratives. Teresa is particularly interested in the ways in which contemporary digital societies engage with mysticism. As a designer, Teresa is interested in the design of these very forms, which are crucially linked to the accelerated and consumerist lifestyles prevalent in these societies.
16:20
Online lecture by Carrie Chen ‘Avatars of Memory: Exploring Ancestry, Productive Uncanny, and the Sublime’
This lecture will provide an overview of Carrie Chen’s recent work and explore how avatars, spatial installations, and new technologies evoke the ‘productive uncanny’ to reflect on ancestry, memory, cross-cultural narratives, and the sublime.
17:00
Lecture by Esteban Lecoq ‘XR Dance Experience Creations with VR, AR and AI’
Esteban Lecoq presents the work of AΦE, WHIST, 0AR and LILITH.AEON and offers valuable insights into the creative process with VR, AR and AI and explores how they can be used in revolutionary technologies in immersive performance productions.
17:30
Lecture by Jona Wolf ‘Space Invaders- Exploring the Intersection of Digital and Physical Spaces’
Jona Wolf’s lecture explores the tensions and possibilities that arise at the intersection of digital and physical spaces. Digital space can serve as a playground for future narratives and at the same time as a tool for documenting and sharing real environments. On the one hand, it is possible to immerse oneself in a fantasy world using digital means or to project oneself to a distant yet real place via platforms such as Google Maps and thus experience spaces and places that have been scanned in the past. In this lecture, various projects and well-known scenarios will be presented that illustrate the friction and interplay between these two areas.
18:00
Lecture by Vali Lalioti ‘The Art and Tech of Creative Robotics’
In her lecture, Vali Lalioti will explore the crucial role of creativity and art in the development of AI and robotics technologies and how they shape our relationship with ourselves, others and the world around us. Drawing on her research and academic experience in training future creative technologists in the UK and advising global companies in the US, Europe and Asia, she will emphasise the important role of the arts and share her insights on how integrating artistic perspectives into AI and robotics is essential for promoting sustainable and just societies.
18:30
Roundtable
Concluding discussion with Irini Mirena Papadimitriou, Mark Coniglio, Marlon Barrios Solano, Gabriel Massan Carrie Chen, Esteban Lecoq, Vali Lalioti and Jona Wolf, moderated by Maria Chatzichristodoulou.
Irini Papadimitriou is a curator, and currently Director of Exhibitions at Diriyah Art Futures. She was previously Creative Director at FutureEverything, UK; Artistic Director at Sea Art Festival 2023, South Korea; Digital Programmes Manager at the V&A; and Head of New Media Arts Development at Watermans, UK. Recently curated exhibitions include: AI: Who’s Looking After Me? Science Gallery London; Flickering Shores, Sea Imaginaries Sea Art Festival, Busan; FutureFantastic, Bangalore; Plásmata: Bodies, Dreams, and Data and You and AI: Through the Algorithmic Lens, Onassis, Athens; [Digital] Transmissions, Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, Amman; Artificially Intelligent, V&A. Irini is a co-founder of Maker Assembly, a critical gathering about maker culture, and she has served as jury member for Prix Ars Electronica, D&AD, Lumen Prize, EU STARTS and ACM Siggraph.
Recognized as a pioneering force in the integration of dance and media, composer, media artist and programmer Mark Coniglio creates large-scale performance works that integrate music, dance, theater and interactive media. He will present an artist talk that combines an overview of interactive/media-intensive theatrical performances with a consideration of how to keep this work meaningful in the future.
Marlon Barrios Solano is a Venezuelan-American interdisciplinary artist, creative technologist and researcher with a background in dance, software engineering and cognitive science. His works combine generative AI, machine learning, creative coding and performance. He is currently Maker-in-Residence focused on AI, Arts and Diasporas at CAME Center for Art, Migration and Entrepreneurship at the University of Florida in Gainesville, USA. He is also an artist-in-residence with the Rewilding Cultures program at Radiona in Zagreb, Croatia, and at Lake Studios Berlin, Germany, where he is founding member. His recent works are deployed as dynamic browser-based AI art, performance interfaces, improvisational scores, sound environments, AI chatbots and video that he organizes as installations, workshops, participatory performances and/or lectures. All the work and code is published and distributed with an open source license.
Gabriel Massan (b.1996 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) is a Berlin-based multidisciplinary artist. Combining storytelling and worldbuilding, Massan creates worlds that simulate and narrate situations of inequality within the Latin American experience. Framed through a conceptual practice they call ‘fictional archaeology’, and working across 3D animation, digital sculpture, games, sound, and interactive installations, the artist challenges warped conceptions of the so-called ‘Third World’ while investigating possibilities for subversive otherness. Selected residencies and awards include the Arts Explora Program supported by Cité Internationale Des Arts (2023), Dazed 100 (2022), Circa x Dazed (2021), Instituto Moreira Salles (2020), and ETOPIA – Center for Art & Technology (2019). They have created significant commissions with Serpentine Arts Technologies (2023), Bangkok Biennale (2022), The Photographers’ Gallery (2022), and X Museum (2022).
In 2023, Massan presented their first solo exhibitions, starting with the critically acclaimed multipart project ‘Third World: The Bottom Dimension’ at Serpentine Galleries, followed by ‘Continuity Flaws’ at Outernet London. The artist has been commissioned in 2024 by the Geneva Public Art Program MIRE to produce a new video work, has conducted a solo exhibition at Pina Contempôranea and has won the award of distinction of Ars Electronica Prize in the Interactive Art+ category.
Carrie Chen (she/her) is an artist, independent curator, and educator based in Los Angeles. Her work spans CGI animation, real-time interactivity, game engine simulation, and installation, exploring themes of hybridity, representation, time, and memory. Spending time between the US and China, Carrie’s practice draws on non-Western ontologies while also deconstructing and reconfiguring her relationship to intercultural narratives. She is interested in what she calls the “Productive Uncanny” and engages with the complexities of social behavior, identity, culture and technology.
She has exhibited internationally at Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (Sweden), STRP Festival (Netherlands), SKF/Konstnärshuset (Sweden), Denver Digerati Emergent Media Festival (USA), New Wight Gallery (USA), Vellum LA (USA), and Epoch Gallery (Digital). She has participated in large-scale public art installations at CIRCA DTLA (USA) and West Hollywood Moving Image Media Arts (USA) and has been invited to speak at X Museum (Beijing), STRP Festival (Netherlands), and UCLA Media Arts (USA).
As a curator, she was recognized as the 2024 Emerging Curator of the Year at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) for her curation of “A Fossil, A Ruin, A Memory” at the Philosophical Research Society. Chen is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor at USC’s Media Arts + Practice program, where she teaches Advanced Visual Communication. She is also a lecturer of 3D Arts at Parsons Design & Technology.
Esteban Lecoq, a French choreographer and dancer, is the Co-founder and Co-Artistic Director of AΦE. With a background in education at Palucca Schule Dresden and working at prestigious dance companies like Johannes Wieland, Jasmin Vardimon, and Punchdrunk, he began choreographing in 2008 while still performing. In 2016, he co-founded AΦE with Aoi Nakamura, pioneering XR technologies in dance. Based between the UK and France, AΦE has toured 15 countries and over 60 venues. In 2021, AΦE became associate artists of the Institute of Cultural and Creative Industries – University of Kent and launched A+E Lab located at The Historic Dockyard Chatham. Across all works, AΦE has engaged over 100,000 live audience members and participants. Their latest production, LILITH.AEON, an AI-driven XR dance work, is set to premiere in October 2024.
Vali Lalioti is a pioneering designer, computer scientist and academic who helped build the first VR systems in Germany in the late 1990s before setting up a cross-cultural VR research centre in post-apartheid South Africa that explored new areas such as VR and storytelling in Township cultures. She won the Royal Television Society Judges award for her work developing the first Augmented Reality productions at the BBC among other innovation awards. Vali has taught innovation around the world and has extensive international leadership and innovation experience from Silicon Valley, Africa, China, Japan and Europe. Her Innovation Consultancy has developed diverse projects from AR Medical books to Operatic VR. Vali is Professor in Creative XR and Robotics at the Creative Computing Institute (CCI) at the University of the Arts London (UAL), and passionate about how society and technology interact to build a more equitable and sustainable society.
Jona Wolf is a trans-disciplinary artist, workshop facilitator and researcher. Their practice focuses on reimagining and transforming educational practices, processes of (un)learning and collaborative creation. They have exhibited internationally for example at NOW Gallery London, CTM Vorspiel Berlin, DAAD Gallery Berlin, Berghain (Halle) Berlin, ACF Bratislava, Design Week Milan or Design Week Vienna. They have been researching and teaching in several institutions like Leibniz University Hanover, University Kassel, University for Applied Art Vienna and University Innsbruck.
