RIXC FESTIVAL 2020, THE 5TH OPEN FIELDS CONFERENCE AND ECODATA EXHIBITION
Amanda Lewis. A Study of Scarred Landscapes
“A Device for the Study of Scarred Landscapes,” is an open source multi-layered pollution sensing device which allows the user to interact with the environment by revealing invisible information about the land. The device is a tool of engagement as the user travels to different landscapes. While it serves as a scientific tool for collecting environmental data, it is also an instrument of interpretation as it creates generative sounds based on the data collected combined with nature sound recordings of the investigated spaces. The sounds are deep and electronic, referencing the artificial nature of the pollutants they are sensing. Depending on the pollution levels of the area, the sounds range from low and steady to aggressively high frequency. Through this field work, the artist searches for new ways to interact with and understand the land in order to critically examine her relationship with the earth.
Amanda Lewis is an environmental artist and designer from Saint Louis, Missouri and currently based in Paris, France. She completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art, Media, and Technology at Parsons Paris, where she developed her thesis project on the investigation of air pollution in natural spaces using open-source sensing technology and sonification techniques. In her work, she examines the intersection of environments and digital technologies through research and artistic practices. Her goal is to discover a tangible and accessible way to comment on, augment, or improve our relationship with nature through technology.
Michal Kindernay. Data carpets (across critical history)
Presentation of a long-term project and related topics connected with usage of environmental data in art within the context of political and ecological practises of Central European cities during the (not only) communist regime.
The case study was carried out (and is still ongoing) at the “normalization” housing estate Pankrác in Prague, which was built in the 1960s and 1970s as an extensive residential complex with a specific art and decor of public space. Czech Sculptor Miloš Zet (1920 – 1995) was part of urban planning of Pankrác area and in general significant part of his work is connected with architectural ones and urban projects also in other parts of Prague: the Opatov housing estate, metro station, the Prague hotel etc. All these localities are opportunities for reinterpretation and recontextualization of copyrighted works and their current state. Sculptures, walls and other sculptural elements by Miloš Zet in the Prague housing estate Pankrác are subject to historical, political, social, weather changes and temperature fluctuations, intense rains and hail, including differences between day and night temperatures, strong UV radiation, etc., and currently climate change. Data prints presented on the walls include: time-lapse technology, humidity, temperature, pressure, group of gases affecting air quality, NH3, NOx, benzene, CO2, M10, PM2.5, wind speed and sound intensity.
The project is realised online and also within the summarizing exhibition of the artist in House of Arts in Brno, Czech Republic (Martin Zet – Sculptor Miloš Zet – Walls, Plinths and Mock-ups, 12.2. – 26.7.2020.)
In my work I reflect ecological issues through various technological approaches in relation to nature environment. My work includes audiovisual performances, interactive installations, experimental documentary projects, sound projects and compositions. I’m interested in interdisciplinary approaches of sound and media art, which I assume correlate a lot with today’s issues and topics and initiate critical questions. My artistic, curatorial and educational practice cover various approaches to contemporary visual art, experimental film, sound art, intermedia projects and science. My projects are also devoted to building alternative audiovisual devices and ideas, which raise different aesthetics, new approaches to human and social perception, sound, motion image and its philosophy and which also address specific issues and communities.
Michal Kindernay is an intermedia artist, sound artist, curator and performer. His audio-visual installations interconnect art, film, technology and science. He reflects ecological issues through various technological approaches in relation to nature environment. His works include video performances, interactive installations or experimental documentary projects or sound compositions. He is one of the founders or yo-yo non profit culture organization and initiator or RurArtMap project. He was one of the curators of Skolska 28 gallery in Prague. He teaches in Prague College – MA Fine Art and in Centre of Audiovisual Studies in Film and TV School of Academy of Performing Arts (creative modules). As an organizer or artist he was involved in many international projects.
Oksana Chepelyk. Exploring Ecodata within Art, Science and Society Program at IMéRA
Art, Science and Society Program at IMéRA that supports the artist’s collaboration with Mediterranean Institute of Marine and Terrestrial Biodiversity and Ecology / Marine Station of Endoume and Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography in Marseille is oriented toward valuable impact by raising awareness around environmental protection, climate change and danger for biodiversity, preventing the loss of biodiversity, learning from micro structure of diverse underwater species in order to bring it into architecture design, searching for symbiotic future, exploring an ethics of companionship.
Mediterranean Institute of Marine and Terrestrial Biodiversity and Ecology is focussing on Metabolomics as a systematic study of unique chemical “fingerprints” specific for processes occurring in living cells useful for understanding of functioning of biodiversity and as biomarkers of effect of environmental changes. How art and technology can reveal the hidden layers? Art, engaged into cognitive practice socially and environmentally oriented, could shape society responsible for sustainable future. Appealing different ecodata parameters from ecological and economic sciences: Biocapacity, Ecological Footprint, or Biological Wealth an art-science project is developing at IMéRA as the translation of complex bio-chemical events into audio-visual “Metabolomics” data-driven installation, where the invisible and insensible, unimaginable can be made visible that people become aware of future loss.
Dr. Oksana Chepelyk is a leading researcher of the New Technologies Department, Modern Art Research Institute of Ukraine, author of book “The Interaction of Architectural Spaces, Contemporary Art and New Technologies” (2009) and curator of International Festival of Social Sculpture, Kyiv. Oksana studied art in Kyiv, followed PhD course, Moscow, Amsterdam University, Banff Centre, Canada, Bauhaus Dessau, Germany, Fulbright Research Program at UCLA, USA. Awards: ArtsLink1997/2007 Award (USA), FilmVideo99 (Italy), EMAF2003 Werklietz Award 2003 (Germany), Artraker Award2013 (UK), Best Project2018 (Taiwan). Works shown: MOMA, NY; MMA, Zagreb; German Historical Museum, Berlin and Munich; Museum of the Arts History, Vienna; MCA, Skopje; MJT, LA; Art Arsenal Museum, Kyiv; “DIGITAL MEDIA Valencia”, Spain; MACZUL, Maracaibo, Venezuela, “The File”, Sao Paolo; LPM-2016/2017 Amsterdam.
Fernando Nobre Cavalcante. Who is afraid of ayahuasca?
It focuses on the concept of biomedia based on the image analysis related to a hashtag on Instagram: #ayahuasca. It discusses the concept of framing in a Goffmanian perspective derived from ethnomethodological studies, assuming that images can be supposed brackets of a literality of the lifeworld. An image modulated by the functionality of motion and instantaneously could be assumed as an anchor of human-computer interaction. It uses grounded theory by code analysis in software-based qualitative research. Research corpora criterion is conducted by the researcher’s observation, codified explicitly by feelings of fear, curiosity, and belonging. The research proposes a metareflection on the mediatization studies on taboo frames.
Fernando Nobre Cavalcante is an associate researcher at the State University of Campinas as a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Applied Linguistics. Investigates interactions in mediatized groups, developing a project called QualiChat, a software for quali-quantitative analysis aimed at researchers who have an interest in the way the news are spread on WhatsApp groups. Ph.D. in Media Studies and Master in Sociology. Associate professor at UNI7. Visiting professor at the University of Bremen (Germany-2020) and the University of Kansas (United States-2018). A keen interest in qualitative method innovation applied in the fields of Media Ethnography. Specialist in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) by compiling qualitative perceptions in quantitative reports.
Karla Brunet, Toni Oliveira, Carlos Alessandre Domingos Lentini, José Garcia Vivas Miranda. Antarctica Convergence
Having in mind the image of the oceans converging in Antarctica, a visual artist, a code artist, and two scientists got together to create a hybrid art portraying this confluence of the seas and art & science. Antarctica Convergence is a fusion of sounds, images, and data visualization of the sea around King George Island, in Antarctica. A loop video shows the place’s perception of a submerged camera, data collected by the CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth), and data sonification/visualization. It is a dive into the cold water of the Southern Ocean and a dive into the data. Antarctica Convergence intends to present a sensitive form of understanding this remote underwater environment. It is about feeling the data, exploring the sea.
Karla Brunet is an artist and researcher, has a Ph.D. in Audiovisual Communication (UPF, Spain), a master’s degree in Fine Arts (Academy of Art University, USA). She has participated in different media art exhibitions in Europe, the Middle East, North, and South America. From 2009-2012, Karla was the coordinator of a media lab focused on women and free technology, and in 2012, she was the curator of LabMAM. In 2014, she got a postdoc grant at UDK, Berlin. Karla is a professor at IHAC/UFBA, where she coordinates the Ecoarte Group. Her art practices involve photography, video art, data visualization, sensory environment, hybrid art, audiovisual performance, webart, mapping art, and gaming – always focusing on experiences in nature.
Url: http://karlabru.net/site/
Toni Oliveira is the coordinator of the undergraduate degree in Music Production and professor of “Electronics for the Arts” at UFRB (Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia). He is an experienced musician and researcher of new open-source digital technologies and computer programming contextualized in artistic environments. He holds a Master’s degree in Culture and Society by Federal University of Bahia – theme: “The source code in a symbolic context in Computational Art: a panorama of the relationship between software and culture.”
José Garcia Vivas Miranda
Graduated in Physics from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (1995), MA in Physics from the Federal University of Bahia (1997) and Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences – University of La Coruña (2000). Worked as a postdoctoral researcher on two occasions at the University of La Coruña – ES and once at Harvard University – USA. Currently an associate professor at the Federal University of Bahia. He has experience in complex systems, with emphasis on computational models, acting on the following topics: fractals, complex networks, computational models, neuroscience and biomechanics.
Carlos Alessandre Domingos Lentini holds a bachelor degree in Oceanology from the Federal University of Rio Grande (FURG), an M.Sc. in Physical Oceanography from the Oceanographic Institute of USP (IOUSP) and a Ph.D. degree in Physical Oceanography and Meteorology from the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science at the University of Miami (RSMAS/UM). He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Earth and Environment Physics at the Institute of Physics at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) and leader of the Tropical Oceanography Group (GOAT). He has experience in the areas of Physical Oceanography and Remote Sensing, with an emphasis on Ocean Dynamics, Western Boundary Currents, Altimetry, SAR data, and geophysical data analysis (in-situ and numerical).