Upcoming activities
Conference on Art, Science, Media, and Activism
Organised by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, HacTe, Barcelona’s Hub of Art, Science and Technology, and the digital magazine Artnodes, this conference aims to explore in depth how the arts, the media, activism and science address in a transdisciplinary way the global challenges in which the planet is immersed in a period of social, climatic and economic uncertainty.
The session will bring artists, academics and scientists into dialogue through, on the one hand, the presentation of the issue 33 of the journal Artnodes, which traces a genealogy of media artivism; on the other, the presentation of Mark Farid’s Invisible Voice project, a digital tool that reveals the power structures of corporations and brands in order to promote social action; and finally, an open conversation that invites to debate the power of the liminal spaces between transdisciplinary practices and narratives and activism when it comes to tackling climate challenges.
This conference is organised in the framework of the S+T+ARTS in the City project, a partnership between six European S+T+ARTS Regional Centres of which HacTe is a member. The S+T+ARTS programme is an initiative funded by the European Commission that aims to stimulate cross-innovation between the arts, sciences and technologies. The S+T+ARTS in the City project is supported by the Generalitat de Catalunya.
Programme
16:00 h – Welcome
Manel Jiménez, UOC Vice President for Culture
Pau Alsina, Artnodes
Tere Badia, HacTe’s Director (Barcelona Hub of Art, Science and Technology)
Moderated by: Àlex Hinojo (Open Science UOC)
16:15 – 17:15 h – Presentation of ARTNODES 33, Journal of Arts, Science and Technology
Archaeology of media artivism: challenges of digital culture for social change
The emergence of media artivism over the last decades constitutes a new and relevant field of study for researchers of digital culture and social change, digital art historians and media archaeologists. Since the inception of the new millennium and the spread of electronic culture, media artivism has grown into a field of its own with distinctive organizations, artists, curators and critics devoted to engaged practices that are close to political antagonism and far from the concerns of the elitist art world. Considering the worsening environmental and political crisis around the globe, the spread and conscious use of new technologies becomes essential to update the concept of artivism, intended as a kind of action-taking art devoted to social issues.
The guest editors of this Artnodes special issue are two founding members of the Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities (Ca’ Foscari University): Carolina Fernández-Castrillo (UC3M) & Diego Mantoan (University of Palermo).
17:15 – 17:45 h – Project presentation
Digital Transparency: Unveiling Power Structures with the Invisible Voice project, by Mark Farid
Presentation of Invisible Voice, a digital platform that allows users to obtain economic, political, social and environmental information about the practices and people behind the websites of the organisations they visit. It is a tool that reveals power structures and seeks to promote collective action to bring about meaningful social change.
A project by Mark Farid, artist in residence at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) as part of the interdisciplinary residency promoted by HacTe, Hub of Art, Science and Technology of Barcelona, within the European project S+T+ARTS in the City, funded by the European Commission.
17:45 – 19:00 h – Conversation
Stirring knowledge, transforming understanding. Art, science, media and activism to address the climate crisis in urban environments
The current challenges facing cities today, such as globalisation, demographic change, climate change, sustainable and competitive energy and social polarisation, require a medium- and long-term perspective to implement effective solutions.
This conversation recovers the perspective of art and activism to debate the climate crisis and its associated challenges.Beyond environmentalist narrative strategies or superficial visual approaches, the liminal spaces between art, science, media and climate activism unfold as contexts of possibility for artists, researchers, institutions and activists, with their diverse expertise and resources, to work together towards the common goal of raising awareness and promoting action against the climate crisis.
Through an open and collective conversation, it aims to examine how the intersection of digital art practices and narratives with science and activism can contribute to addressing the challenges posed by the climate crisis, exploring the means of collaboration between diverse agencies in responding to the climate crisis.
In this context: how do digital art practices and narratives, in their intersections with science, contribute to addressing these challenges? Can art and academic institutions help cities like Barcelona envision radical changes that can curb the effects of the climate crisis and be effective in that ambition? By adopting a narrative approach and shifting the focus from scientific facts and data to emotional engagement, is it possible to mobilise citizens?
Participants:
Carolina Fernández-Castrillo. Associate Professor of Cyberculture and Transmediality in the Department of Communication at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and Research Fellow at the Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities (VeDPH), Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.
Diego Mantoan. Digital, public and contemporary art historian at the University of Palermo. Founding member of the Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities and member of The Ecological Imperative at Universität Bern. Currently, PI of a Next Generation EU-funded project on Artivism in the Mediterranean area.
Mark Farid. Artist, researcher and lecturer at Central Saint Martin’s University, London. His work is specialised in the intersection between the virtual and physical worlds and the effect that technologies have on people. Based on the hacker ethic, he addresses issues linked to privacy policies and surveillance technologies becoming a social, legal and political critique.
A conversation open to all attendees, with a zero row made up of agents from the world of contemporary art, climate activism, public institutions, research and academia.
19:00-20:00 h – Networking & finger-food
Previous activities
Xerrada de Mark Farid a Sobtec. VI Congrés de Sobirania Tecnològica
Mark Farid, artist in residence at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) as part of the S+T+ARTS in the City programme, will participate as a speaker at Sobtec, VI Congrés de Sobirania Tecnològica. During the event, which will take place at Hangar next March 2, Farid will present his project ‘Invisible Voice’ (IV), a platform that reveals the power structures and business practices behind the websites we interact with. The project seeks to leverage our collective action to bring about meaningful change through the empowerment of data.
The talk will be in English.
Workshop by Matthew Fuller: Art as Metadiscipline
In recent decades artists have increasingly worked on the problems and the modes of enquiry of other disciplines and fields. The findings, styles of thought, and habits of operation and conduct of the sciences, sociology, mathematics, literature, governance and education, amongst others, have become resources for reworking and expanding. They are used to probe questions of power, imagination and invention. This condition has multiple roots. Some are quantitative, due to the expansion of art schools and the sheer volume of people trained and prompted to rework ideas in a reflexive manner characteristic of contemporary art. Others are to do with the changing terrain of post-conceptual art and its multiple tendencies, including what is discussed as research. Some of this includes an engagement with sciences and the adoption and alteration of their working methods. Such work includes approaches ranging from treating disciplines and their objects as “found objects” or of elaborating techniques of mutual interest. Others rework the idea of art into a process of learning and becoming in education or in forms of political and ecological direct action or speculation and also, uniquely to art, a mobilisation of what is rejected or expelled by disciplines.
These tendencies suggest that art is fragmentarily emerging as something that might be called a meta-discipline: a mode of work whose operation includes both working in other disciplines and to act upon them. Mathematics and philosophy have been key meta-disciplines for a long period. They work in and on both the conditions of possibility and the working matters of other fields.
Art has historically been allocated the role of working on sensation and feeling via representation. In the present, art also works on concepts, institutions, techniques and information, including the workings of these prior-metadisciplines. This workshop will examine aspects of the genealogy and potential of this tendency. The workshop will consist of an introductory talk and then a mapping exercise, all artists, curators, organisers and anyone interested are very welcome.
Xerrada performativa ‘The Smallest of Worlds’, amb Uwe Brunner, Bettina Katja Lange i Joan Soler-Adillon
This activity is part of the program Oasi, within the exhibition Digital Impact
Oscillating between the physical and the virtual dimension, The Smallest of Worlds
(2021) and #See You at Home (2022) explore the meaning of private and intimate space
in times of ubiquitous connectivity, examining home in its dual relationship between safe
shelter and a platform for public exhibition.
This lecture performance will delve into the archive of these two artworks, which is made
up of a multitude of digitized private spaces, with its narrative, intimate routines, and
personal memories: fragments that were collected in more than 40 countries during the
most intense periods of self-isolation during the pandemic.
Showing the archive from a new perspective, custom made for Digital Impact’s immersive
space, the artists will discuss the implications of the ways our perceptions of such private and
intimate spaces radically changed during this intense period, and are now being reconfigured
to achieve new meanings in a hybrid context where our online and offline presence is
ever more entangled.
Since 2020, Uwe Brunner, Bettina Katja Lange and Joan Soler-Adillon have worked
together to explore how immersive experience can offer new and unique narratives.
Their work has been shown in major European XR and documentary festivals in Europe
and around the world. Now, for the first time, the immersive experience leaves behind
single-person headsets and standard screens to be experienced collectively in a
large-scale projection space.
Language: Catalan and English
Conversa/demo sobre Intel·ligència artificial i música, amb AWWZ, UPC i Sónar
Foto: AWWZ b2b AI / Klamer Hernandez
La intel·ligència artificial s’està convertint ràpidament en la medul·la digital de les nostres vides, amb un impacte en totes les facetes de l’entreteniment, la cultura i la comunicació. Impulsat al 2021 per Sónar, la UPC i betevé, l’AI and Music S+T+ARTS Festival va explorar el rol d’aquestes noves tecnologies en les nostres vides prenent la música com un exemple.
Una de les tres cocreacions d’artistes i enginyers especialment creades pel Festival va estar AWWZ b2b AI Dj, fruit de la col·laboració entre la productora i dj AWWZ, i un equip d’investigadors de la UPC: Mireia de Gràcia, Casimiro Pio i Dimas Ávila.
En el marc de Digital Impact, aquest equip transdisciplinar ens explicarà com va estar aquest procés de cocreació on s’entrecreuen la classificació de gèneres amb intel·ligència artificial i la performance. Durant la xerrada es presentarà aquesta IA especialment entrenada que tradueix els comentaris de Youtube en suggeriments de cançons i AWWZ ens en farà una petita demo del seu funcionament.
Participa:
- AWWZ (Gemma), dj i productora
- Mireia de Gràcia, enginyera de telecomunicacions especialista en so i computació musical i dj
- Antònia Folguera, comissària de Sónar+D
Aquesta activitat forma part del programa Oasi, en el marc de l’exposició Digital Impact
Performance ‘Sons en Causa’, amb l’Orquestra del Caos
Aquesta activitat forma part del programa Oasi, en el marc de l’exposició Digital Impact
Sons en Causa és un projecte basat en un arxiu sobre el qual l’Orquestra del Caos treballa des del 2009. En creixement constant, l’arxiu de Sons a Causa conté preses d’alta qualitat de paisatge sonors realitzades per Carlos Gómez i Josep Manuel Berenguer al capdavant de diferents equips a la proximitat de llocs de Llatinoamèrica on les activitats humanes han experimentat un increment notable en èpoques recents. El mostreig acústic al llarg de trajectes entre les zones més afectades pel bullici humà i les més allunyades podria arribar a donar idea de com va ser el paisatge sonor en aquests contextos abans que la influència humana el transformés a mesura que les societats es feien cada cop més complexes.
Actualment recull 1700 preses d’àudio binaurals realitzades a Amèrica Llatina, a 24 bits de resolució, 48kHz de freqüència de mostreig i de 20 minuts de durada. La raó d’una tan llarga durada és el desenvolupament lent de l’evolució temporal del comportament de les fonts sonores al paisatge. No ens interessen els sons aïllats, sinó llurs relacions; llurs conflictes i llurs resolucions, que s’aprecien de manera gradual o sobtada i en relació amb els equilibris immediatament precedents. L’escolta atenta i profunda del batec del món és molt gratificant. Proporciona un gaudi estètic considerable d’evident interès per a nosaltres, artistes i músics; però el registre sonor no és únicament una qüestió d’abast estètic, així que, malgrat la nostra tendència a valorar els aspectes formals, els que més directament orienten les nostres accions i projectes, ens sentim profundament responsables de les seves implicacions més enllà del que és purament artístic. Estem convençuts que l ́escolta atenta del paisatge sonor és un element distingit de conscienciació sobre les necessitats socials d’un so saludable. D’aquesta manera neix la nostra orientació cap a la presa de so en contextos d’especial interès humà i social. Amb el temps, s’ha convertit en un esperó de primera magnitud. Ens orienta a la reflexió sobre els dominis de l’art i de la seva funció, sempre en redefinició.
Amb la participació de:
- Lina Bautista
- Josep Manuel Berenguer
- Matias Klenner
- Anna Gatz
- Ginebra Raventós de Volart
Xerrada ‘L’espai-temps, el material més rigid que coneixem’, amb Eugenio Coccia (IFAE)
L’espai-temps té les propietats d’un material. Es deforma i vibra com els materials que coneixem, però no n’hi ha cap de més rígid.
La teoria de la gravetat ens explica com la massa deforma l’espai temps i com es poden produir vibracions de l’espai-temps que viatgen pel cosmos. D’aquí surten els forats negres i les ones gravitacionals, fenòmens còsmics que ens permeten entendre el passat de l’Univers.
I si l’espai-temps no fos continu sino digital?. És una proposta que ens ajudaria a entre el més petit i el més gran en una sola teoria. Seguim investigant l’univers amb instruments cada cop més precisos per tal de descobrir si és així o no.
Xerrada/demo sobre escultura virtual, amb UPC
Aquesta activitat forma part del programa Oasi Digital, en el marc de l’exposició Digital Impact
En aquesta xerrada s’explicarà el procés de creació d’escultures digitals amb l’eina Tilt Brush, un pinzell virtual que permet pintar en un espai 3D en realitat virtual. La seva paleta pot incloure textures tan variades com ara tinta o fum, neu o foc, explorant totes les possibilitats d’aquesta eina virtual de pintura en l’espai.
Aquest recull de peces que es presentaran ha estat confeccionat per l’alumnat de l’assignatura de realitat virtual del Grau d’animació i art digital del Centre de la Imatge i la Tecnologia Multimèdia de la Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya.
Crèdits dels projectes seleccionats:
City of Tears
- Daniel Anter Tolansk de Melo
- Judith Berenguer Guinovart
- Jazmin Catrea
- Oscar Cerezo Garcia
- Edurne Espes Rodriguez
Fantasy Scenario
- Nuria Roca
- Michela Vistarini
- Marçal Rossell
- Jana Moyes
- Judıth Estrada
A look in the Deep
- Leyre-Ying Paredes
- Cristina Gutierrez
- Victoria Castro
- Carla Asensio
- Claudia Dai
Anatomy Park
- Lois Navarro
- Sara Roig
- Blanca Perez
- Eric Olmo
Xerrada participativa ‘Ventrilòquia amb Intel·ligència Artificial’ amb Estampa
Aquesta activitat forma part del programa Oasi Digital, en el marc de l’exposició Digital Impact
Les eines d’intel·ligència artificial aplicades a la imatge han evolucionat molt durant els últims deu anys. Avui, són un mitjà capaç tant de canviar-te l’aspecte de la cara a les xarxes socials, com de fer-te dir coses que no recordes haver dit mai. Si entenem com funcionen aquestes eines, aprenem a entrenar-nos en la sana habilitat de sospitar de les imatges, però, i si ens ho mirem per la banda creativa? En quines situacions ens agradaria veure el nostre doble digital? Quines possibilitats tenim a l’hora d’imaginar doblatges impossibles? Quins dibuixos ens agradaria que parlessin dels nostres problemes? Podem intervenir en les obres d’art més icòniques?
El pròxim 7 de juny, el col·lectiu Estampa oferirà una xerrada participativa on reflexionarà i posarà en pràctica les possibilitats creatives i les implicacions dels deepfakes, una tècnica d’intel·ligència artificial que permet produir vídeos de persones –anònimes o conegudes– parlant o duent a terme accions que no han passat mai.
Performance col·lectiva Òrbita #4, amb Núria Nia i Citlali Hernández
Aquesta activitat forma part del programa Oasi Digital, en el marc de l’exposició Digital Impact
Òrbita #4 és una performance col·lectiva on, a través d’instruccions bàsiques, es programa el llenguatge d’un bot. Mitjançant una posada en escena que hibrida la performance i el taller participatiu s’exploren les possibilitats temàtiques i textuals d’una nova personalitat digital. L’experiment de crear una narrativa digital col·laborativa entre les persones assistents a Òrbita #4, propicia la revelació dels codis i els entramats que conformen aquestes personalitats digitals capaces de formar discursos més o menys lògics sense perdre el rastre de la mà humana que l’ha entrenat per a la missió.
ÒRBITA #4 és la 5a de les ÒRBITES que Citlali Hernández i Núria Nia activen performativament centrant-se en els conceptes dels cossos digitals, la telepresència, la comunicació per satèl·lit i la representació del cos en 3D. Aquestes ÒRBITES neixen amb el projecte Cos Satel·lital que les artistes van desenvolupar el 2021 en el marc de la IV Beca Hangar-FBSabadell, i han estat presentades al Festival Loop, a Fabra i Coats al Festival ECOSS, a Lo Pati d’Amposta amb ISEA2022, a Hangar i a les Jornades Wikifem del Konvent. Òrbita #4 és de nova creació i serà vista per primera vegada en el marc de Digital Impact.
“Excess, Indifference and Absence: Alternative Anatomical Architectures”, keynote by STELARC
| Within Digital Impact’s Oasi programme, Stelarc offers a keynote speech that takes as its starting point the new concept of embodiment the digital world offers. In the artist’s own words: In the liminal spaces of proliferating Partial Life, Synthetic Life and Machine life, the body has become a floating signifier. An empty signifier. The body now is no body at all. Performing increasingly remotely online, presence becomes problematic. Presence is marked by a double absence. Or perhaps absence is marked by a double presence. We are neither all-here-now, nor there all-of-the-time, but partly here sometimes and partly somewhere else at other times.
We continuously slide between offline and online worlds, navigating from physical nano-scales to virtual non-places. The body increasingly inhabits abstract realms of the highly hypothetical and of streaming subjectivity. The digitial is not merely the realm of the digital. The dead, the brain-dead, the partially living, the yet to be born, the cryogenically preserved, the prosthetically augmented, synthetic live and artificial life, all now share a material and proximal existence. At a time that the body is threatened existentially by fatally being infected by biological viruses, what becomes apparent now is that the human species is confronted by the more pervasive ontological risk of being invaded by its digital entities and viral algorithms. The individual body achieves planetary escape velocity but the human can no longer achieve escape velocity from the machinic and digital realm. IMPORTANT: This activity will be in English |
Project in collaboration with NewArtFoundation and V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media