影片單元/ Screening program

ADAF presents “PostSynthetic Interactions through Digital Aesthetics”

for Synthetic Mediart 2019

 

The International Festival of Digital Arts of Greece, Athens Digital Arts Festival (ADAF est. 2005), the Greek representative in the international digital arts scene, has a stable presence for the last 15 years worldwide with more than 160.000 visitors in total. 

ADAF celebrates digital culture through an annual gathering bringing together a global community of artists and audiences. ADAF aims to encourage, stimulate and promote all aspects of digital creativity by hosting local as well as international artists and communities. Moreover, its goal is to raise awareness on contemporary digital culture, familiarize the wider audience with new media and art, and provide education through innovative workshops focusing on technology and digital arts. In each edition, it always tackles contemporary social and cultural issues related to technological advancements and innovation. Thus, its multidimensional programme offers a wide range of exhibitions, screenings, live performances, workshops and international tributes showcasing artworks that display distinctive characteristics of the digital medium and reflects on its language and aesthetics.

 

Ilias Chatzichristodoulou, founder and director

Ilias (b. 1983, Athens) is the founder and director of Athens Digital Arts Festival from 2005, which consists the International Festival of Digital Arts in Greece. In this framework, he has presented many important artists from all over the world and more than 48 international festivals with exclusive content and guest speakers. He has managed, curated and organized cultural programmes and exhibition in Greece and abroad in collaboration with entities like Local Authorities, the Ministry of Culture, the Athens International Airport and Athens Urban Transport Organization. He was chosen as a member of the National Coordination Committee for the European Year of Volunteering. He participated in the Board of Review of the Ministry of Culture for the International Digitalized Film and Video. He was mentor in creative projects and member of evaluation committees for national and international competitions and festivals. He has participated in international exhibitions and conferences and he has conducted workshops relevant with digital arts. Ilias currently and along with ADAF, under the scope of digital arts, he is involved with creative marketing, communication and urban initiatives. 

 

Eirini Olympiou, video art curator

Eirini (b. 1987, Athens) has studied Fine Arts (BA, MA). As an individual artist, she has participated in solo and group exhibitions and in collaborative projects since 2008. Her artistic practice takes on many forms including painting, photography and mixed media. She has been a video art curator at the international festival of digital arts and new media Athens Digital Arts Festival since 2011, has done curatorial projects with international festivals, for individual exhibitions and also been a member of video art jury in festivals. Her curatorial research explores the boundaries of digital expression. She currently lives, works and studies architecture in Athens, Greece.

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PostSynthetic Interactions through Digital Aesthetics

2019 | 1hour 55 minutes​

The screening compilation “PostSynthetic Interactions through Digital Aesthetics”was created for Synthetic Mediart 2019, due to the 15th Anniversary of Athens Digital Arts Festival, including video art from its past editions. Our era raises multiple questions about the views of the future, as seen from the past and past as seen from the future. In a theoretical way, while imagining life after the future that would extend all life aspects. AI is already everywhere around us and is already making decisions on our behalf without us even realizing. Human-machine merger is little by little made available by stem printing and biohacking. Bioengineer and metamaterials are developed rapidly. Traveling from the fantasy of PostFuture to the reality of Singularity, from robotics to art from the futuristic now to the future of the past, there are raised questions about the path we are walking down to.

 

Curated by Eirini Olympiou

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List of works:

1. Kara J. Schmidt (US) Inner Landscape (2015) 02:35 min

 

2. Daniel Smith (US) Anna (2015) 01:26 min

 

3. Johanna Schmeer (DE) Bioplastic Fantastic (2014) 04:00 min

 

4. Thomas Valianatos (GR) Fractus machine_Cosmos (2017) 03:34 min 

 

5. Masahiro Tsutani (JP) Movements Arising from Different Relationships (2015) 12:48 min

 

6. Isabella Gresser (DE) Re viewers (2016) 05:00 

 

7. APOTROPIA (IT) The Kiss (2016) 01:20 min

 

8. Max Hattler (DE) | Shapeshifter (2015) 00:30 min

 

9. Duncan Poulton (UK) Pygmalion (2016) 07:13

 

10. Alex Karantanas (GR) Singularity (2016-17) 07:13 min

 

11. Giada Ghiringhelli (CH/UK) Rhythm of Being (2017) 06:26 min 

 

12. Becky Lyon (UK) Machine Meditation Studies #2 (2017) 03:13 min

 

13. XCEED (HK) RadianceScape (2014-15) 02:00 min

 

14. AUJIK (JP/SE) Spatial Bodies (2016) 04:06 min

 

15. Ben Skea (GB) Future Exit Strategy (2017) 08:00min

 

16. Elena Knox (AU) Pathetic Fallacy (2014) 04:12 min 

 

17. Jakub Zuscin (SK) Hiatus – Precipice (2016) 04:41 min

 

18. Eleana Dimopoulou (GR) SISYPHUS (2016) 01:20 min

 

19. Emiliano Zucchini & Paolo Tarsi (IT/IT) Construction dans l'espace et le silence (2016) 04:35 min

 

20. Sandra Crisp (UK) remote city [skygardens_towers] (2016) 06:28 min

 

21. FIELD (UK) Hidden Layer (2017) 02:54 min

 

22. Kai Welf Hoyme (DE) Skeleton (2016) 04:34 min

 

23. Maria Fernanda Bertero (EC) Technolapse (2017) 06:21 min 

 

24. Mélissa Faivre (FR) Underneath it all (2017) 04:42 min

 

25. Alexander Pettai (RU) X2 (2011-13) 03:59 min

 

Kara J. Schmidt (US) Inner Landscape (2015) 02:35 min

"Inner Landscape" is a collage of the porous boundary between technology and nature. Images from the search engine results for "contemporary landscape" are folded into new layers and surfaces to create a whirling, virtual, complex space. Within this constructed area, architecture and flora become amalgamated in a constant elliptical movement, creating a heightened sense of objectivity. The "outer" becomes the "inner" as the forms of architecture and flora fold and unfold within each other.

 

Daniel Smith (US) Anna (2015) 01:26 min

This video explores the physical and spiritual dissolution of Anna, as her image is scanned and virtually reconstructed as a digital doppelganger.

 

Johanna Schmeer (DE) Bioplastic Fantastic (2014) 04:00 min

Bioplastic Fantastic investigates new types of products and interactions which might emerge from these material innovations in the fields of bio- and nanotechnology. Halfway between products and organisms, seven “biological devices”produce all food and energy needed for humans to survive simply by being exposed to light (through artificial photosynthesis). They produce water, vitamins, fiber, sugar, fat, protein and minerals through biological processes, allowing for a more self-sufficient lifestyle.

 

Thomas Valianatos (GR) Fractus machine_Cosmos (2017) 03:34 min 

The core of "Fractus machine_Cosmos" is an interactive reconstruction of the image and production of real-time video on the basis of the audio information of the image or the visual representation of a sound. 

 

Masahiro Tsutani (JP) | Movements Arising from Different Relationships (2015) | 12:48 min 

This is the second movie in the series, following on from the previous work, 'Between Regularity and Irregularity'. As with the previous movie, this work continues to focus on the fluctuation in the timing of sounds, change in tone quality, movement of particles, and form. In addition, this movie uses the different movements caused by different relationships between minute units such as structures and cells in mouse brains, as well as particles and lines in non-living matter.

 

Isabella Gresser (DE) Re viewers (2016) 05:00 min

Being today, means "being-digitized". Will we only begin to exist when we have been replaced by a simulacrum of ourselves? The experimental video interweaves real footage and virtual reality elements. Documentary footage of people sitting at a river in Seoul mingles with the images and edited comments of two YouTube reviewers of a VR relaxation game that simulates a flight over an animated virtual River. In this work I'm interested in the relationship between imagination and immersion and the proximity of the salvation formulas of a VR industry to Far Eastern philosophy of emptiness. 

 

APOTROPIA (IT) The Kiss (2016) 01:20 min

A contact between two bodies. An intense sharing of information. A chemical cocktail in the brain.

 

Max Hattler (DE) | Shapeshifter (2015) 00:30 min

Shapeshifter explores video glitches induced by digital signal processing compression artefacts, which have given rise to a whole genre of YouTube videos dedicated to exposing shapeshifting reptilians hiding behind the surface of the video screen.

 

Duncan Poulton (UK) Pygmalion (2016) 07:13 min

Pygmalion is a video-collage composed of pre-existing footage and 3D models found online by the artist. The work attempts to address how ancient ideas of perfection and beauty have been carried forward into the digital age, considering the difference between crafted original objects and their weightless, infinitely replicable computer-generated doubles. Pygmalion contemplates what it is to be a statue -the tragedy of being a still object in a constantly moving world – and explores the notion that perfection no longer resides in objects themselves, but in the very act of their faultless and permanent duplication.

 

Alex Karantanas (GR) Singularity (2016-17) 07:13 min

The video follows the hypothesis of an inevitable emergence of artificial superintelligence. A new species of digital entities are being born, letting us observe the way they experience their cyber bodies, the social construction of time and the concept of the absolute void. 

 

Giada Ghiringhelli (CH/UK) Rhythm of Being (2017) 06:26 min 

Rhythm of Being is an experimental and contemplative film inspired by Henri Bergson’s concept of vital force and the fact that all existence is a flux of becoming and never at rest, a perpetual generative process that we can’t escape. Through body movements, light and sound, a surreal and artificial world is constructed and deconstructed.

 

Becky Lyon (UK) Machine Meditation Studies #2 (2017) 03:13 min

Machine Mediation #2, forms part of a series of studies exploring what a 'meditative' audio visual experience might look like for future semi-artificial life. In Machine Meditation #2, the 'alpha' dream state meets the electric fission of human-generated ECG scans, connecting and disconnecting. The rhythmic ripple of the LCD screen is painterly and peaceful, restorative yet melancholy. Fragments of data disassemble and then collage into machine-mind landscapes - micro-territories unknown and unknowable. Machine Meditation is part of Sympathetic Synthetics a speculative research inquiry looking into silicon futures, conscious codes and artificial life forms. 

 

XCEED (HK) RadianceScape (2014-15) 02:00 min

RadianceScape is a data-visualizing audiovisual piece. It based on the live radiation data from the Safecast.org, a global sensor network for collecting and sharing radiation measurements, to generate a cityscape. It appears in a point-cloud depth-mapping visuals in which the density of the radiation level is representing the visibility of the cityscape. The sequence of the images is grabbed from the Google Streetview API's hidden depthmap data. In the sound composition, it is based on the relative radiation data to generate different tonal of drone ambience and noise. The graphical scores are composed with the mapped data-log. It consists of 2 separated parts, the first part is illustrating the route of Hong Kong, where visualizing the radiation level from Mongkok to Tsim Sha Tsui area. The second part is illustrating the route of Fukushima, where visualizing the radiation level from the Fukushima Prefecture to the nuclear power plant.

 

AUJIK (JP/SE) Spatial Bodies (2016) 04:06 min

Spatial Bodies depicts the urban landscape and architectural bodies as an autonomous living and self-replicating organism, domesticated and cultivated only by its own nature. Vast concrete vegetation, oscillating between order and chaos. The artwork is influenced by Gunkan architecture, metabolism and the video game Katamari Damacy.

 

Ben Skea (GB) Future Exit Strategy (2017) 08:00min

Future Exit Strategy is an episodic video sequence that uses moving image, sound and software to speculate on the future of human intelligence - specifically how a Type III civilization might create an algorithmic blueprint for the transference of intelligent life from one universe to another. A group of people walk along a forest path - the reality of their journey rapidly synthesizes into a series of 'polymorphic glyphs'. Sensory information is converted via a series of phase transitions over the surface of a virtual sculpture – a futuristic device that eventually launches encapsulated data into a microscopic wormhole. Future Exit Strategy is an optimistic and speculative play with the real world – a world we currently cannot escape.  

 

Elena Knox (AU) Pathetic Fallacy (2014) 04:12 min

Pathetic Fallacyis an intergenerational dialogue about growing old. Youth doesn't believe it will age. Age believes it knows best. Humans believe in the pathos of humanity. And the cycle continues. Pathetic Fallacywas the first dialogue drama created for screen involving an Actroid (Actroid-F by ATR Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratories). A conventional mother–daughter, or Juliet–Nurse, figuration is applied to an unconventional scenario, revealing a new human–machine relationship. The term ‘pathetic fallacy’ means the ascription of human traits or feelings to inanimate things.Pathetic Fallacy’s screenplay wraps the Japanese notion of kokoro(heart/soul/mind) around the subject of aging: of humans, of women, of technologies, of matter, of robotic or cyborg assemblages. The robot has the overconfidence of the (literal) digital native; the woman the overconfidence of the rational anthropocentric. They are both wrong; they are both right. The gynoid will age, but not as the human elder thinks it will. Each character relies on what she perceives as empirical evidence to promote her own partial fallacy.

 

Jakub Zuscin (SK) Hiatus – Precipice (2016) 04:41 min

Precipice is an abstract visual journey that is dedicated to the theme of birth. We observe a single human being floating through space in various visual representations. I have used simple objects such as pyramids to represent different symbols in various cultures. 

 

Eleana Dimopoulou (GR) SISYPHUS (2016) 01:20 min

The video processes the myth of Sisyphus and identifies it spatially and visually, through the interpretation of Albert Camus for the absurd hero, whom Sisyphus personalizes. A set of visual and spatial tools reveal elements of the myth: perpetual repetition, vanity, physical effort, entrapment, and the influence of time. The man who made mankind equal to the gods, defeating death, now spends this eternity trapped in an endless journey. When one repeats this name, he seems to wheeze out of exhaustion, connecting the word to the hero's fate. Where are the real bonds; in external or internal forces? When does the absurd hero appear?   

 

Emiliano Zucchini & Paolo Tarsi (IT/IT) Construction dans l'espace et le silence (2016) 04:35 min

The artwork is a video clip of Paolo Tarsi's "Construction dans l'espace et le silence" music song, released for Carmps Record. It is a collaboration between Emiliano Zucchini, a visual artist, and Paolo Tarsi, a composer. This work is meant to represent the creation of the space and the silence starting from nothing, from the alpha level, from zero. The white and gray checkerboard background, in computer visual & video graphics, represents the digital void, the starting point of the image, a dimension where the sound and the shape are developed. The destruction of reality and the beginning of virtual reality.

 

Sandra Crisp (UK) remote city [skygardens_towers] (2016) 06:28 min

The camera pans through elevated levels of a fragmented and futuristic city featuring sky gardens and empty high-rise towers that humans appear to have left behind. Hybrid 'architectural models are textured with borrowed/ downloaded visuals and smart-phone-camera stills, embedded into their multi-faceted surfaces. Whilst online maps of real-world city locations are used as templates to create 3d structures. The film was originally inspired by a journalism article 'Ghost Towers' about many unoccupied high-rise towers in the city.

 

FIELD (UK) Hidden Layer (2017) 02:54 min

With AI systems playing an ever-growing role in our daily decision making, creative studio FIELD highlights a timely and important topic. Harnessing the insight that human and artificial intelligence will soon blend into an 'augmented self', FIELD weaves together fashion, live action, and CG for its experimental short film, 'Hidden Layer'.  Hidden Layer imagines how the future of AI will affect our sense of identity and humanness - and what happens when these systems inevitably malfunction. In an artificial neural network, the Hidden Layer is where the main computation is performed, but it has no direct connection with the outside world. The film explores how, to a certain extent, deep learning algorithms are simultaneously autonomous, unpredictable, and inscrutable in their decision-making.

 

Kai Welf Hoyme (DE) Skeleton (2016) 04:34 min

Skeleton connects, in a poetic way, different utopian ideas. It is a vision of the gap among bodies, architecture, logocentrism, and social imagination.

 

Maria Fernanda Bertero (EC) Technolapse (2017) 06:21 min

"Man programmed technology unconscious that in the future, technology was going to program man, forming an infinite Ouroboros between them both". Technolapse is a video art about technolust and its reinterpretation, questioning our ways of doing since they are molded by technology. The performer interacts multi-sensorially with a typewriter (mechanic archetype) and with an external manipulation in a game of control, appetite, and faith. The reinterpretation is materialized in the form of body extensions. "Heal the mechanization with the same machine, speak with an inner device in its programmed language, and touch the spectator with the same keys."

 

Mélissa Faivre (FR) Underneath it all (2017) 04:42 min

Underneath it all is an immersive experience merging our materialistic surroundings with the power and strength of nature. Water is omnipresent and shapes in a continuous flow the landscapes growing inside the space. It reaches a peak of harmony and abstraction where only the color flow is perceivable, like a moving painting where the water current would be a brush. The realism and materiality of the sound textures create a tension with the surrealism of the images and call our senses to move in undefined places.

 

Alexander Pettai (RU) X2 (2011-13) 03:59 min

The dynamic composition based on a programming code generating harmonic oscillation in a wide range of frequency from 800 THz (ultraviolet rays) to 1.17 Hz (man’s frequency of a beating heart). The resulting frequency divided according to the capability of human senses into visual and acoustic components.

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