GAMESCENES

EVENT: FUMI OMORI (JUNE 2 - 15 2023, ONLINE)

Fumi Omori

Home Sweet Home

machinima/digital video (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 2’ 35”, Japan

June 2 - 15 2023

Introduced by Matteo Bittanti

vral.org

 
Home Sweet Home explores personal memories and their translation into physical architecture through Animal Crossing: New Horizons. With a history of frequent relocations, the artist captured their rooms in photographs, preserving emotional connections to past spaces. Animal Crossing, a beloved game providing an idyllic refuge during the Covid-19 pandemic, allowed the artist to craft personalized rooms reflecting their personality. This project questions the impact of translating real-life spaces into the virtual realm. Employing photogrammetry, the artist reconstructs their past homes in the game, blurring boundaries with imaginative architecture. The interplay between virtual and physical layers offers a fresh perspective, showcasing a unique visual hacking method. Automating realities on the virtual plane reveals the intricate relationship between our fragile understanding of reality and memories. Digital reverie becomes an avenue for escapism, confronting the present, future, nostalgia, and denial.

Fumi Omori navigates the crossroads of the cultural diaspora with her transcendent visual language. Currently nearing the culmination of her master’s degree in photography at the esteemed École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ECAL) in Switzerland, Omori’s diverse cultural experiences serve as a potent source of inspiration. Born and raised in Japan, the artist spent over a decade living in prominent American coastal cities (New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco) before gravitating towards the medium of photography. Her previous stints as a perceptive graphic designer and discerning art director have indubitably permeated her artistic vision.

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EVENT: REFIGURED (MARCH 3 - JULY 3 2023, NEW YORK)

Rachel Rossin, still from The Maw Of, 2022. Web-based animation with augmented reality (AR). Commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art for its artport website and Kunst-Werke Berlin Institute for Contemporary Art AP.2022.1. © Rachel Rossin

 

Refigured

Curated by Christiane Paul

March 3 - July 3 2023

Whitney Museum
of American Art
99 Gansevoort Street
New York, NY 10014

press release

Refigured, opening at the Whitney Museum of American Art on March 3, brings together five installations by leading artists working in the field of digital art to reflect on the ways technology intersects with and influences our ever-evolving identities, underscoring the dynamic between digital and physical artworks and blurring boundaries between them.

Featured artists include American Artist, Morehshin Allahyari, Zach Blas and Jemima Wyman, Auriea Harvey, and Rachel Rossin. Drawing from the Museum’s collection and including digital video and animation, virtual sculpture, and augmented reality, the installations in this exhibition respond to the various forces that form identity and engage with the concept of “refiguring.” Sculptures are presented concurrently in digital and physical space alongside animations that escape the confinement of screens and reach into the gallery. Constructs of identity, self-representation, structures of oppression, and colonialism are explored through a variety of lenses and mediums. Some artists investigate the ways identity is reflected in the structures of artificial intelligence and computer interfaces, while others consider how selfhood transforms in online environments and ancient cultural myths.

Refigured will be on view March 3–July 3, 2023 in the Museum’s Lobby Gallery, a space that is accessible to the public free of charge and often highlights the latest emerging talent and innovation in American art. Three works in the exhibition are also accessible on artport, the Museum’s portal dedicated to Internet art and an online gallery space for commissions of net art, and can be directly launched through a QR code. This exhibition is organized by Christiane Paul, Curator of Digital Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

“Experimenting with the idea of ‘refiguring’ is at the core of the works presented in this exhibition,” says Paul. “Through practices of appropriating material forms and reinventing them, the artists are challenging what it means to construct or shape identity.”

“Under Christiane’s leadership, the Whitney has long been dedicated to building an important collection of digital art,” says Scott Rothkopf, Senior Deputy Director and Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator. “With Refigured we will shine a spotlight on this key area of our holdings and some of the most innovative artists working in the field today.”

American Artist is an interdisciplinary artist whose work incorporates video, installation, new media, and writing to consider Black labor, visibility, and antiblackness within digital systems and the internet. Their legal name change to American Artist represents the basis for their practice and affirms blackness as descriptive of an American artist while simultaneously erasing identity in virtual spaces where “American Artist” remains anonymous online. Mother of All Demos III, American Artist’s installation in Refigured, alludes to the historical underrepresentation of the Black workforce in Silicon Valley. The installation features a mold of an Apple II computer—the company’s last model with a black home screen—coated in dirt, with liquid seeping out of the keyboard and handprints stamped on each side. The physicality of the computer sharply contrasts with the sleekness of Silicon Valley, commenting on how ideologies influence design choices and digital interfaces.

Morehshin Allahyari’s hypertext narrative The Laughing Snake was commissioned for artport in 2018 and will be presented in-gallery as an installation including a sculptural component. The work is based on the myth of jinn, supernatural creatures from Arabian mythology, to explore the status of women and the female body in the Middle East. Allahyari is an artist, activist, and educator whose work addresses the political, social, and cultural contradictions we face every day. Employing technology as a theoretical toolset, the work documents and reflects on collective life struggles faced today.

A collaboration between artists Zach Blas and Jemima Wyman, im here to learn so :)))))) is a four-channel video installation centered on a chatbot examining the politics of pattern recognition and machine learning. The chatbot was developed by Microsoft in 2016, and its

learning and language imitation were influenced by aggressive trolling on platforms like Twitter. Within hours, these influences led the chatbot to use genocidal, homophobic, misogynist, and racist language, and it was shut down. For the installation, the chatbot is resurrected as an avatar to reflect on life after AI death and contemplate the experience of being stuck inside a neural network and the “apophenic” pursuit of patterns within information and algorithms.

Debuting both online and in the exhibition, Auriea Harvey’s SITE1 is the latest commission for artport. SITE1 is an illusionistic online space and the origin site of sculptural characters the artist has been working on over the course of many years. This work will be on view alongside Ox and Ox v1-dv2 (apotheosis), the virtual and physical sculptures that represent the “origin story” of Harvey’s online identity. The sculptures embody the artist’s virtual avatar and her working process, which combines clay sculptures, digital 3D modeling, and video game and software development. Harvey’s digital sculptures are the core of the work, and she sees the physical sculptures as an extension of the virtual pieces.

Rachel Rossin’s THE MAW OF, a recent commission for artport that launched in 2022, is a transmedia story that unfolds across multiple platforms and formats and reflects on the alterations our bodies and minds experience with technology. Rossin, a multidisciplinary artist and established pioneer in the field of VR, blends painting, sculpture, new media, gaming, and video to create digital landscapes that focus on entropy, embodiment, and the effects technology has on our psyche. This work investigates the relationship between humans and machines, highlighting technology’s evolution from a tool to an extension of the mind and body.

LINK: Refigured

EVENT: THOMAS HAWRANKE AND LASSE SCHERFFIG (JANUARY 6-19 2023, ONLINE)

COLOSSAL CAVE ADVENTURE – THE MOVIE

Digital video (1024 x 1024), sound, color, 55’ 33”, 2022, Germany  

Created by Thomas Hawranke and Lasse Scherffig

January 6 - 19 2023

Introduced by Matteo Bittanti

vral.org

 

An adaptation sui generis of an early text-based adventure games, Colossal Cave Adventure - The Movie remediates the program developed by Will Crowther in 1976 based on the architecture of the Mammoth Cave complex in Kentucky. The original game used text to describe the environment whereas the animated film uses AI-generated visuals. Every eight seconds, the AI system receives a new textual description, taken from Colossal Cave Adventure’s source code, comprising 379 inputs ranging from narrative descriptions of nature to jargon from the vocabulary of speleologists to single words meaning an object, a compass direction, or an exclamation. The camera constantly moves downwards, digging through geological layers and exposing new cave spaces again and again.

Born in 1977 in Bergisch Gladbach, Germany, Thomas Hawranke is a media artist and researcher whose practice investigates the influence of technology on society and the impact of computational logic onto human-animal-machine relationships. In his eclectic interventions, Hawranke operates at the intersection of performance and video art: a central concern of his is bringing to the surface the ideologies that inform everyday life. Hawranke graduated in Media Art at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne and received a PhD from the Bauhaus-University in Weimar, Germany, with a dissertation on the modification of video games, also known as modding, as a method for artistic research. Since 2005, he has been a member of susigames, an independent art label founded in 2003 that investigates alternative gaming’s approaches, and he is the co-founder of the Paidia Institute in Cologne. His works have been presented at several exhibitions and festivals, including the zkm_gameplay in Karlsruhe and the RENCONTRES INTERNATIONALES PARIS/BERLIN. Hawranke lives and works in Cologne, Germany.

Lasse Scherffig is an artist and scientist with a background in cognitive science/machine learning and computer science. Scherffig is interested in the relationship of humans, machines, and society; cybernetics and the technological infrastructures of communication and control; and the cultures and aesthetics of computation and interaction. His work oscillates between computer science and experimental artistic practices, engineering and amateur/DIY methods, science and humanities. A professor of Interaction Design at Köln International School of Design, he previously served as the Department Chair of Art and Technology at San Francisco Art Institute, where he taught as assistant professor. Scherffig co-founded the artist group Paidia Institute and off topic, magazine for media art. His art projects have been shown at numerous exhibitions. Lasse holds a doctoral degree in Experimental Computer Science from KHM, Academy of Media Arts Cologne.

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CALL FOR ENTRIES: FILE 2023 (DEADLINE: FEBRUARY 15 2023)

 

One of the most exciting digital arts festivals in the world, FILE - Electronic Language International Festival has recently launched its 2023. After a three years hiatus, FILE is back in grand style. Applications will be open from December 19th to February 15th.

 

The 22nd Edition of the Electronic Language International Festival will take place at the FIESP Cultural Center, in São Paulo, from July 5th to August 27th 2023. The selected projects will also be able to collaborate in parallel events in different states of Brazil, also taking place in 2023. The submission is free of charge.

FILE 2023 focuses on four  categories: Electronic Sound, Interactive Art, Digital Language (including video games and machinima, VR and AR) and Educational.

Click here for more information about the submission process. (Thank you Clarissa!)

EVENT: I’LL BE YOUR MIRROR: ART AND THE DIGITAL SCREEN (FEBRUARY 12-APRIL 30 2023, FORT WORTH, TEXAS)

Nam June Paik, Video Flag Y, 1985. 84 ten-inch television sets, three Plexiglas cases, fans, LaserDisc players, LaserDiscs, and video tapes. 72 x 144 x 50 inches. JPMorgan Chase Art Collection. © Estate of Nam June Paik.

I’ll Be Your Mirror: Art and the Digital Screen
February 12–April 30, 2023

Curated by Alison Hearst 

The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
3200 Darnell Street
Fort Worth, Texas 76107 USA

press release

The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth presents the landmark I’ll Be Your Mirror: Art and the Digital Screen, a thematic group exhibition that examines the screen’s vast impact on art from 1969 to the present. This exhibition surveys more than sixty works by fifty artists over the past five decades. The artists included examine screen culture through a broad range of media such as paintings, sculpture, video games, digital art, augmented reality, and video. Organized by Curator Alison Hearst, I’ll Be Your Mirror: Art and the Digital Screen will be on view at the Modern February 12 through April 30, 2023.

Screens affect nearly every aspect of life today. Their pervasiveness has bred a 24/7 breaking news cycle, the looming corporate-sponsored virtual-reality “Metaverse,” unlimited accessibility and content, and an ease in how ideas and images are distributed, undoubtably shaping culture in profound ways. This exhibition starts in 1969—the year of the televised Apollo moon landing and the launch of the internet’s prototype, ARPANET—as this was the watershed year where collective connectivity through screens was first mobilized in modern society. This era forged what the media theorist Marshall McLuhan presciently deemed in the 1960s a “global village,” a place where distance is collapsed and people from across the world readily interact. Following this trajectory, contemporary life is hybrid and increasingly mediated through screens. These flat and finite surfaces embody more than what meets the eye—they hold up a mirror to society and contribute to forming meaning in life and mainstream culture.

I’ll Be Your Mirror: Art and the Digital Screen is organized into nine key themes:

liminal space: From the late 1960s to the late 1990s, several artists were working alongside the early major technological developments of the screen: Gretchen Bender, Nancy Burson, Harold Cohen, Vuk Ćosić, Peter Halley, Frederick Hammersley, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Eduardo Kac, Tatsuo Miyajima, Nam June Paik, Lillian F. Schwartz, and Andy Warhol. These artists’ works are highlighted in this section for their innovative processes.

connectivity: Screens connect us with incredible ease to friends, colleagues, a network of other users and players, apps, news, and streaming services. We share—and are shared with—through screens. As culture courses through society via these means, screens are at the axis of most of our interactions, and these connections are a topic interrogated by many artists, including Cory Arcangel, Liss LaFleur, Eva and Franco Mattes, Cassie McQuater, Jacolby Satterwhite, Frances Stark, and Wickerham & Lomax.

surveillance: While we find community through technology, we simultaneously become linked to broader systems of data extraction through our devices. Our information is captured for national security purposes, geo-mapping, and corporate surveillance capitalism, where targeted ads are deployed based on purchases and browsing history. Hasan Elahi, Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, and Jon Rafman investigate the positive, negative, and humorous aspects of surveillance today.

the repository: Today’s constant stream of data has led to round-the-clock ingestion of content. This informational sphere is made even more accessible via handheld devices. Speaking to a vast and complex array of image and information circulation in the screen age are the artists Morehshin Allahyari, Kahlil Robert Irving, Trevor Paglen, Jason Salavon, Skawennati, and Penelope Umbrico.

digital abstraction: While painters of all genres use technology in their work, artists such as Cory Arcangel, Wade Guyton, Jacqueline Humphries, Laura Owens, and John Pomara explore the intersections of the digital screen and formal abstraction. Historically compared to windows and mirrors, the often flat, rectangular format of paintings also acts like a screen in today’s world—a passageway that disrupts the viewer’s physical space or mirrors contemporary life.

the posthuman body: In the digital age, technology has become an extension of the body. Posthumanism, a concept arising from science fiction, is the idea that humans will be transformed by technological progress. Depictions of the human body in a media-induced world are far from monolithic, as demonstrated by the artists Caitlin Cherry, Petra Cortright, Huntrezz Janos, Guthrie Lonergan, Carson Lynn, Avery Singer, and Hito Steyerl, who traverse concepts of self and portraiture in the technological era.

automation and the loneliness epidemic: The relationship between man and machine is addressed by Cao Fei and !Mediengruppe Bitnik, specifically the tension of isolation in an increasingly automated world. Set in environments where human labor has been replaced by automation, Cao Fei’s and !Mediengruppe Bitnik’s works exemplify the paradoxes of human intimacy in the screen age.

ecology: Electronic debris, such as plastics, batteries, monitors, and phones, fills landfills and off-gasses toxins that contribute to water pollution. Several artists in this exhibition, including American Artist, Alice Bucknell, Simon Denny, Kristin Lucas, Rick Silva, and Elias Sime, demonstrate the complexities of ecology in the digital age.

turning a mirror on ourselves: Holding a mirror to society and ourselves, screens construct reality, molding many of the themes at the forefront of culture today. Through extraordinarily different works, the artists Arthur Jafa and Molly Soda make videos that shine a light on society through the lens of found, vernacular videos already circulating online.

More than 25,000 square feet of gallery space will be devoted to the exhibition, which will include iconic works by prominent national and international artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, such as Cory Arcangel, American Artist, Gretchen Bender, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Arthur Jafa, Nam June Paik, Hito Steyerl, and Andy Warhol, as well as several leading artists living in Texas, including Liss LaFleur, Kristin Lucas, and John Pomara. Several new and never-before-seen works by key artists Caitlin Cherry, Simon Denny, Hasan Elahi, and Kahlil Robert Irving will debut in this exhibition. This is the most in-depth show of its kind in the Southwest region and is one of only a few presentations exploring art and digital technology in the past decade at this scale.

Curator Alison Hearst notes, “Artists have long shone a light on the world and the human experience, and the artists in I’ll Be Your Mirror: Art and the Digital Screen respond to, challenge, and probe new technologies and the cultural conditions these technologies have shaped. Using the screen as a tool and formal device, many of the artists in this exhibition expand the parameters of artmaking through the digital language unique to their generation.”

Publication
The exhibition will be accompanied by a full-color catalogue featuring contributions by Alison Hearst, curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; Dr. Omar Kholeif, director of collections at Sharjah Art Foundation; Dr. Tina Rivers Ryan, Assistant Curator at Buffalo AKG Art Museum; and professor and cyberpsychologist Dr. John Suler. 180 pages, 100+ illustrations; published by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and distributed by DelMonico Books/D.A.P.

There will be an online platform for the exhibition.

Artists in the exhibition:
Morehshin Allahyari, Cory Arcangel, American Artist, Gretchen Bender, Alice Bucknell, Nancy Burson, Caitlin Cherry, Harold Cohen, Petra Cortright, Vuk Ćosić, Simon Denny, Hasan Elahi, Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0, Cao Fei, Wade Guyton, Peter Halley, Frederick Hammersley, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Jacqueline Humphries, Kahlil Robert Irving, Arthur Jafa, Huntrezz Janos, Eduardo Kac, Liss LaFleur, Guthrie Lonergan, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Kristin Lucas, Carson Lynn, Eva and Franco Mattes, Cassie McQuater, !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Tatsuo Miyajima, Laura Owens, Trevor Paglen, Nam June Paik, John Pomara, Jon Rafman, Jason Salavon, Jacolby Satterwhite, Lillian F. Schwartz, Rick Silva, Elias Sime, Avery Singer, Skawennati, Molly Soda, Frances Stark, Hito Steyerl, Penelope Umbrico, Andy Warhol, Wickerham & Lomax

LINK: I’ll Be Your Mirror: Art and the Digital Screen

EVENT: THE PIECES I AM (SEPTEMBER 30 2022 - JANUARY 8 2023, SHANGHAI)

panGenerator, Infinity, 2020

The Pieces I Am

Curated by Douyin Art 

September 30 2022 - January 8 2023

UCCA Edge
2F, No.88 Xizang Bei Lu,
Jing'an District, Shanghai

press release

SHANGHAI, China — From September 30, 2022, to January 8, 2023, UCCA and Douyin Art present the group exhibition “The Pieces I Am,” focused on humanity’s existence in the digital age. The exhibition features 27 artists and groups from China and abroad who use and/or explore technology in their works. The Chinese exhibition title takes its inspiration from the idiom 吉光片羽(jíguāngpiànyǔ), which metaphorically refers to fragments of treasured ancient relics, and changes the first character to the homophonous 集 (jí) to alter the meaning to suggest a collection of precious, beautiful, and enlightening “pieces” drifting down from the digital world. “The Pieces I Am” offers a possible starting point for understanding our digitized reality, interpreting and disenchanting the contemporary digital age through a wide range of art that traverses between digital and real, authentic and virtual, natural and technological, and logical and emotional. In doing so, it seeks to offer us new ways of recognizing the self, the world, and the relationship between the two in our fragmented contemporary context. “The Pieces I Am” is curated by UCCA Lab Curators Liya Han and Yoojin Tang together with special guest curator Iris Long, designed by Shen Ruofan, and organized by the UCCA Lab team.

Exhibition co-organizer Douyin Art has specially developed an online exhibition space as well as interactive viewing experiences for the offline exhibition. Douyin Art also hosted a special opening livestream including the premiere of an eponymous exhibition concept film starring art ambassadors selected by UCCA. Please find more information on the opening and film below.

Works in the exhibition

Participating artists include Pascale Birchler (b. 1982, Einsiedeln), Ian Cheng (b. 1984, Los Angeles), Chun Shao (b. 1987, Hangzhou), Guo Cheng (b. 1988, Beijing), Ann Veronica Janssens (b. 1956, Folkestone), Lawrence Lek (b. 1982, Frankfurt am Main), Lin Ke (b. 1984, Zhejiang province), Liu Di (b. 1985, Shaanxi province), Jiayu Liu (b. 1990, Liaoning province), Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (b. 1967, Mexico City), David OReilly (b. 1985, Kilkenny), panGenerator (formed 2010), Pete Jiadong Qiang (b. 1991, Shaanxi province), Shinseungback Kimyonghun (formed 2012), Shi Zheng (b. 1990, Jiangsu province), Yehwan Song (b. 1995, Seoul), Studio Above&Below (formed 2018), Sun Yitian (b. 1991, Wenzhou), Tang Chao (b. 1990, Hunan province), Coralie Vogelaar (b. 1981, Delft), Wu Ziyang (b. 1990, Xuzhou), Xin Yunpeng (b. 1983, Beijing), Ye Xuan (b. 1989, Hunan province), Yin Yi (b. 1978, Shanghai), Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries (formed 1999), Wenxin Zhang (b. 1989, Hefei), Payne Zhu (b. 1990, Shanghai)

UCCA EDGE: Opened in May 2021, UCCA Edge occupies 5,500 square meters over three levels of the new EDGE tower in Shanghai’s Jing’an District. Designed by New Yorkbased architecture practice SO – IL, the museum includes 1,700 square meters of gallery space as well as a wraparound outdoor terrace and public spaces including a lobby and auditorium. Situated just north of People’s Square and Suzhou Creek, and directly above the Qufu Lu station of the Shanghai Metro in a bustling revitalized neighborhood, UCCA Edge will quickly become an essential destination and an integral part of Shanghai’s vibrant cultural fabric.

David OReilly, Everything, 2017

Wu Ziyang, Pasig River 2030 - 6 Plus, 2022

Ian Cheng, BoB (Bags of Belief), 2018-2019

LINK: The Pieces I Am (Thanks, Gemma!)

EVENT: MARTINA MENEGON (SEPTEMBER 30 - OCTOBER 13 2022, ONLINE)

when you are close to me I shiver

video recording of live simulation

digital video/machinima (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 7’ 47”, 2020, Italy

Created by Martina Menegon

Sound design by Alexander Martinz

Introduced by Luca Miranda

vral.org

when you are close to me I shiver is an algorithmically controlled live simulation, hereby presented as a video recording, that is, a real-time generated virtual experience that takes place in a version of the future in which humans, out of desperation, gather in masses on the last remaining piece of land. Inspired by the walrus scene in the documentary Our Planet narrated by David Attenborough and produced by Silverback Films, the project proposes a scenario encompassing ongoing environmental and personal crises. The video depicts a desolated island populated by 3D-scanned clones of the artist herself. Through these perceivable avatars, the artist creates a new identity that arises out of plurality, proprioceptively renegotiating the fragility of both the physical and the virtual self and its realities.

Martina Menegon (Italy, 1988) is an artist working predominantly with Interactive and Extended Reality Art. In her works, Martina creates intimate and complex assemblages of physical and virtual elements that explore the contemporary self and its phygital corporeality. She experiments with the uncanny and the grotesque, the self and the body and the dialogue between physical and virtual realities, to create disorienting experiences that become perceivable despite their virtual nature.

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EVENT: ZUZA BANASIŃSKA (AUGUST 19 - SEPTEMBER 1 2022, ONLINE)

ROAD OF FEELINGS

digital video (1920x1080), color, sound, 8’18”, 2022, Poland

Created by Zuza Banasińska

August 19 - September 1 2022

Introduced by Gemma Fantacci

vral.org

A teenage girl’s room. When she ingests a handful of pills, it start to grow. Normally, as she works out, 1,2,3... 1,2,3... 1,2,3... her muscles can carry stones. Now, they are literally carried. The room walks with her as she touches the ground. In the rhythm of the workout, the walls open up and start chewing the world. Road of Feelings is a video animation created with the Unity 3D engine as part of the artistic collective Ellen Muscle’s LARP (Live Action Role Playing). The scenario was based on a queer-feminist narrative, set in a world where extreme muscle growth is encouraged, especially for teenage girls. Every girl has to take pills that enhance body musculature. Some teens begin to overdose, shortly discovering that the phenomenon enables them to produce hybridized connections. Those hybridizations happen through the muscles themselves. Teens start building and experiencing global networks between things and beings.

Zuza Banasińska (b. 1994) is an audio-visual artist making video-based environments. In her works, virtual and real elements are hybridized beyond distinction in an effort to move from representation towards affective mapping. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, Universität der Künste in Berlin, and Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam. In 2020, she won first prize in the Polish Experimental section at Short Waves in Poznań and On. Art in Wrocław. Her works have been shown at the U-Jazdowski CCA in Warsaw, Dům Umění Mesta Brna in Czech Republic and Blindside in Melbourne. She lives and works in Amsterdam.

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EVENT: YALOO AND SIAN FAN MY GARDEN, MY SANCTUARY (JULY 21 - OCTOBER 9 2022, LIVERPOOL)

View of My Garden, My Sanctuary, FACT Liverpool, UK, 2022. Photo: Rob Battersby.

Yaloo and Sian Fan
My Garden, My Sanctuary
July 21–October 9, 2022

Curated by Carrie Chan

FACT Liverpool
88 Wood Street
Liverpool L1 4DQ
UK
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 11am–6pm

press release

FACT launches the summer exhibition My Garden, My Sanctuary: a collection of new, immersive artworks by Yaloo and Sian Fan—two artists using creative technology to tell stories of ancestry and self-discovery in a hyperconnected world.

Presented by FACT’s 2022 Curator-in-Residence, Carrie Chan, My Garden, My Sanctuary immerses visitors in playful, watery worlds. From anime and K-pop, to lotus flowers and seaweed, artists Yaloo (South Korea) and Sian Fan (UK) weave commodified symbols of east Asia throughout their work to reclaim their cultural identities, and remix their coming-of-age stories. The new commissions transform the galleries, taking shape as large-scale animated installations and interactive gaming environments.

Combining ancient Korean traditions and beliefs with family histories, Yaloo presents a mystical installation environment. Birthday Garden (2022) begins with a temple-like gateway, leading visitors into an underwater seaweed garden and giant, animated sheet mask. The work explores the challenge of shaping self-identity and cultural stories against the commercial context of Korean culture within global media.

As part of FACT’s work around how young people craft and embody digital identities, Yaloo expands on the themes in her work to include young people’s views and critique of popular culture and social media. A series of conversations with members from the University of Liverpool’s K-pop Society, and a group of young people from Liverpool, will result in a K-pop inspired dance, public performance and a podcast documenting their creative process.

Sian Fan, Lotus Root, 2022

Sian Fan combines imagery found in anime and fantasy video games with commercialised depictions of East-Asia. In her new commission Lotus Root (2022), Sian presents an anime fantasy video game set in a sanctuary of lotus flowers and lily pads. Hyper-real avatars are nestled within the space, inspired by the characters from anime series Sailor Moon and video games Final Fantasy and Grandia. Deity (2022) is a shrine to the virtual self. Multi-angle ‘mirrors’ wrapped in root-like sculptures present a digital performance, combining motion capture and physical movement. An avatar of the artist responds to audience interaction, revealing the connection with our virtual selves. The immersive installations challenge romanticised ideas of East-Asian culture and standards of femininity found in gaming and animation.

Sian Fan, Deity, 2022

Established in 2019, FACT’s annual residency programme invites curators to develop their ideas and research into a major exhibition and public programme of events. Carrie Chan, 2022 Curator-in-Residence at FACT, said: “The exhibition has been curated to feel like a rite of passage: a journey where visitors encounter two artists whose works reflect on their own identities and cultural heritage within a technology-driven, alternative world. My residency at FACT has enabled me to explore diverse curatorial approaches in narrating stories on ancestry, identities and belonging, and has given me the opportunity to bring two acclaimed digital media artists to Liverpool – a city with a strong history of Asian immigrants and diaspora.”

My Garden, My Sanctuary forms part of Radical Ancestry, FACT’s current year-long programme. Maitreyi Maheshwari, Head of Programme at FACT, said: “From ‘alternative museums’ of artworks that question how science and technology have shaped our understanding of the past, to the ways in which the stories and songs we inherit help define key moments in our lives, the Radical Ancestry programme is an exploration of our changing sense of self. This exhibition continues our journey from the past into a present in which the artists playfully remix symbols from their familial heritage with pop cultural references, creating new possibilities and hybrid identities. Carrie has introduced us to ambitious new artists whose outlooks and practices convey the energy and the difficulties in trying to forge a new way of being.”

My Garden, My Sanctuary is now open at FACT until October 9, 2022. The exhibition will be accompanied by a public programme of family friendly events including food-based workshops, curator tours, a talk exploring stereotypes and representation in gaming, and artist performances.

LINK: Yaloo And Sian Fan My Garden, My Sanctuary

EVENT: FILE. ELECTRONIC LANGUAGE INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL 2022 (JULY 13 - AUGUST 14 2022, SAO PAULO, BRAZIL)

FILE: Electronic language international festival 2022 SUPERCRIATIVIDADE

July 13th to August 14th, 2022
Edifício Banco do Brasil /Torre Matarazzo
Av.Paulista, 1230, Bela Vista, São Paulo/SP

 The theme of the amazing Brazilian festival is SUPERCREATIVITY, which is described by the organizers and founders of FILE, Ricardo Barreto and Paula Perissinotto, as

Creativity overcomes obstacles and builds new realities. In each moment, as said in Philosophy, art lies confined in the cloister of its time. From time to time, however, creativity produces gaps that enable art to break through into new realms. And it’s almost a norm to say that creativity is an exclusive property of art.
Creativity is not limited to the arts. It also takes place in all disciplines of Culture. Thus, in the aesthetic sense, it ceases to be creativity and becomes Supercreativity: the sum of all creative engines that permeate and connect to our culture. In economics, we see it emerge in Joseph Schumpeter’s “destructive creativity” and Clayton Christensen’s “disruptive theory”. In mathematics, we see it in the creation of Alan Turing’s universal machine, in John von Neumann’s autonomous cells and in Claude Shannon’s logic electronic circuits. They created, along with many other creative geniuses, the intelligent machines that originated Artificial Intelligence. Supercreativity, however, is not a property of Artificial Intelligence, but its very inventor. Supercreativity, teaming with Artificial Intelligence or not, is and will be the main condition to the world’s development in all its nuances.

This year's program features an insane amount of terrific projects, including (but not limited to):

Lu Yang – The Great Adventure of Material World (China)

Jon Rafman – Disasters Under the Sun (Canada)

Leo Castaneda – Levels and Bosses – (United States, Colombia)

Save MeOh - Save Generosa (France)

Glasz DeCuir You Have NO CHOICE. Yes I saw an angel (Spain)

and many more...

Of huge interest for this space is a special program entitled

ANIMA+GAMES 2022 – Augmented Reality
FILE ANIMA+GAMES 2022

Featured artist: Raquel Meyers (Spain)

Conception: Ricardo Barreto

Curatorship: Clarissa Oliveira

Design: Estúdio Quadradão

Guest artist and performer Raquel Meyers talks about using obsolete technologies to create real-time animation, storytelling and 8-bit aesthetics.

Featuring works by

Melodie Mousset – HanaHana AR  (France, Switzerland)

Theo Triantafyllidis – Genius Loci AR(Greece)

Amanita Design – Samorost 3 (Czech Republic)

Dinosaur Polo Club – Mini Metro (United States)

Giant Squid – The Pathless (United States)

Joel McDonald – Prune (United States)

Ludopium Studio – Vectronom (Germany)

and many more...

LINK: FILE 2022