Mike Phillips had the great pleasure of being a Keynote Speaker at the 2018 Cumulus Wuxi—Diffused Transition& Design Opportunities conference.
[image by Polly Macpherson]
Oct. 31st -Nov. 3rd 2018, Wuxi, China
Hosted by Jiangnan University
Tuesday September 25, 18:00-20:00
FACT Foundation for Art and Creative Technology88 Wood Street, 01748 Liverpool
Join the conversation between a group of young people, artists and curators working with AI; Luba Elliot, Anna Ridler, and Birgitte Aga, Coral Manton and Mike Phillips from the i-DAT Collective.
With the evolution of AI (Artificial Intelligence) as a ubiquitous cultural force, there is an emergent debate about the role of AI in art, and its validity as art. AI in ART attempts to extend this conversation to examine to the role of art practice in engaging the public in a wider debate around the future impact of AI on the individual and the society as a whole.
The event brings together artists and curators working with AI for a conversation with a group of teenagers who have been prototyping AI art as part of intensive summer workshops with artist collective i-DAT. The participants will present their work and be interrogated by the group of young people who will ask the kinds of questions we wouldn’t think of, or dare to ask. In shaping their future these conversations will explore their artificial cultural inheritance.
The event is organised by the i-DAT Collective with a group of young people, in partnership with FACT and KARST.
The project is funded by Arts Council England and the University of Plymouth as part of the Infinite Guide Project.
British Council Digital Cities Summit.
Presentation by Mike Phillips presents on the Digital Cities Summit.
At Birmingham City University, 26 March 2018.
CONNECTING THE WESTERN BALKANS AND THE UK
Organisations working in creative and digital industries are becoming critical for the development of local communities. We have analysed the needs of 129 digital businesses in the Western Balkans and developed an intensive mobility and capacity development programme to connect and strengthen digital industry collaboration between the UK and the Western Balkans.
https://kosovo.britishcouncil.org/en/programmes/education/digital-cities/summit
Design Research Workshop delivered in collaboration with the Message and Design Knowledge Research Groups.
Professor Leon Cruickshank, Professor Rachel Cooper and Professor Iain Stewart have contributed to research workshops and poster events. Now all Design Area staff and PGR/T students are invited to take part in the Design Research Skunk-Works to be held on the 21 June 2018.
The Skunk-Works day-long prototyping workshops will focus on three themes related to the UK Industrial Strategy (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/industrial-strategy-building-a-britain-fit-for-the-future). It also offers an opportunity for staff to rehearse ideas and prototypes for the Impact Lab and South West Creative Technology Fellowships (SWCTN). The SWCTN will fund a total of 24 fellowships a year for 3 years across the 4 partner institutions, UWE, Bath Spa, Falmouth and Plymouth. Plymouth, through a competitive process, will probably receive 2 x £15k Fellowships, 2 x £15k Industry Fellowships and 2 x £18k New Talent Fellowships (recent graduates or equivalent) per year for 3 years.
Meet: 2nd Floor RLB – Design Lab.
The themes for the workshops are: Immersion/Automation/Data. Immersion being the first SWCTN call to be published this June for an August submission and September start. Three parallel prototyping workshops will be held on floor 2 of the Roland Levinsky Building starting with a briefing in the Design Lab. Each themed prototyping workshop will be supported by skilled students from the Ion Studio representing the broad range of skills and practices of the Design Research Area. These will facilitate the prototyping workshops to help rapid prototype of ideas.
The Skunk-Works outputs will be captured and published in the first of a series of digital publications.
In order for us all to gain a greater awareness of research interests, ideas and skills currently being undertaken within the Design Area, you are asked to produce a research poster to accompany the event. A template will be provided shortly.
Timetable:
10:00: Poster Session and Briefing
[Pete Davis/Mike Phillips/Vicky Squire].Design Lab RLB Floor 2 Landing.
11:00: Theme Teams [Immersion/Automation/Data]
Spaces [Design Lab / 209 / 204&5A]
Theme Leaders: Coral Manton [Immersion] / B Aga [Automation / Data [Dane Watkins].
The Theme Teams will be supported by members of ION Studio:
Christopher Smith / Ellie Seal / Daniel Ward / Lucy Goodall / Stephanie Field / Harry Sayers / Feyisara Odunuga / Gavin Keightey / James Moseley.
Luke Christon will be on hand for VR and Fulldome support.
Stewart Starbuck will also be there to support the Rapid Prototype kit and electronic bits n pieces.
Motivations:
Thinking and making outside of individual disciplinary focus.
Response to external Research England/ UK Industrial Strategy themes.
Develop research questions and agendas beyond individual preoccupations.
Inter(sub)disciplinary collaboration – get them to collaborate and have some fun together.
There will be egos and sacredness so needs playful cultivation.
Context:
1: http://i-dat.org/funded-industry-academic-new-talent-fellowships-14-june/
2: https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/research/institutes/sustainable-earth/impact-lab
Outcomes:
New inter(sub)disciplinary collaborations
Prototypes
Documentation: Digital form [Examples could be (but not): http://liveablecities.org.uk/outcomes/little-book-series
Sketch Session and Ideas Generation.
We will be using a compressed version of: https://designsprintkit.withgoogle.com/methods/
12:30: Prototyping / Documentation.
Prototyping resources will be available, such as electronics [Arduinos/PI’s/sensors], VR kits, IVT, etc.
13:00: Lunch
14:00: Prototyping / Documentation
More of the same…
15:00: Show & Tell / Documentation
DEMOORDIE!
16:00: End.
[i-DAT/Design Knowledge/Message – researchplayaywayday]
i-DAT is part of the Environmental Futures and Big Data Impact Lab project, focusing on data harvesting (through remote sensor devices), analysis, simulation and visualisation of climate change data – the Impact Lab.
Impact_Brochure_28_Pages_FINAL
The Impact Lab is a partnership of seven world class Devon based organisations. The partnership comprises the University of Exeter, Exeter City Futures, the Met Office, the University of Plymouth, Plymouth College of Art, Plymouth Marine Laboratory, and Rothamsted Research. The Impact Lab is part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund: Total funding is £6.4 million.
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The Impact Lab builds on four key i-DAT research themes:
https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/research/impact-lab/our-data-visualisation-projects
Data Visualisation & Simulation:
Object & environment scanning / modelling / interactivity / gamification / immersive – VR/AR/Fulldome…
Geo Data Science:
Sub-surface modelling / scanning / GIS / geo-thermal / active tectonics / geohazards…
Data Science & Statistics:
Questionnaire design / data analytics / social media analytics / predictive modelling / Machine Learning…
i-DAT is working closely with the Sustainable Earth Institute to deliver the Impact Lab. The Sustainable Earth Institute: promoting a new way of thinking about the future of our world: More about the Sustainable Earth Institute
The University of Plymouth is proud to be supported by the European Regional Development Fund. As one stream of funding under the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) Growth Programme 2014–2020, the ERDF focuses on smart, sustainable and inclusive growth.
The main priorities involve contributions to research and innovation, supporting and promoting small and medium size enterprises (SMEs), and the creation of a low carbon economy.
Dr. Gianni Corino has been selected to be part of the GLUON scientist in residency program. The programme is a collaboration between Ars Electronica, BOZAR, the Serpentine Gallery and several universities and research institutions . Gianni will be working work with famous Belgian painter Luc Tuymans in his studio in early 2018.
Dr Corino’ GLUON launch presentation at Ars Electronic, Linz.
GLUON Session at Ars Lectctronica with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Paul Dujardin, Rachel Rose, Manthia Diawara, Damian Ortega, Jan de Cock, Beatrice de Gelder, Gerfried Stocker, Christophe De Jaeger.
Gluon launches Scientist in Residence program
What happens when the ‘artist in residence’ model reverses into science? The GLUON Scientist-In-Residence programme is designed for a new generation of scientists interested in collaborating with artists.
Our intention is to challenge the hierarchy between the arts & empirical sciences predominant in the twentieth century, and challenge the technological and scientific determinism by enabling artists’ to input experimentally creative, critical and societal ideas.
The GLUON Scientist-in-Residence programme is a collaboration between Ars Electronica, BOZAR, the Serpentine Gallery and several universities and research institutions. For the 2017/18 edition of the programme Hans Ulrich Obrist has been invited as the lead curator along with invited artists Rachel Rose, Manthia Diawara, Jan De Cock & Damian Ortega.
The initiative will be accompanied by two exhibitions: a poster show with slogans and statements from the participating researchers, as well as a historical exhibition on highlighting arts and technology organisations which have added significantly to shaping the future of interdisciplinary collaborations.
Research Residency & Artist Talks
Residency: 2017.12.12 – 12.21
Artist Talks: 2017.12.20 (Wednesday), 14.00 – 17.00
Language: English (with Chinese interpreting)
Venue: Chronus Art Center (No.18, No.50 MoGanShan Rd, Shanghai)
Organized by: Chronus Art Center
Funded by: Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation, IT University Copenhagen, and University of Plymouth
About the Research Residency
This residency forms a research collaboration for techno-organic practices, exploring emergent innovations at the intersection of digital technology and organic matter. Through the installation, the researchers enable conditions for a wide spectrum of life-forms to assemble (artificial chemical life, to biological life, and computational life in silico) into novel configurations with unique and emergent dynamics, creating a proto-environment, a hybrid ecology, that contains living, semi-living, and non-living actors.
The experiments developed for this work include a hanging small-scale robot that nurtures and maintains the artificial chemical life that evolves in the petri-dishes. A computational system tracks, analyzes, and identifies the matter that is composed within the petri-dish, and based on its results, the robotic ecology is controlled and actuated. The robotic system becomes an autonomous agent that attempts to explore the creation of life, and through the development a range of organic/soft-robotic structures begin to emerge in aeriform, solid, and liquid matter.
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About the Artist Talks
As the part of the outcome, BDTB-researchers will do a series of artist talks based on their own research focus:
Laura Beloff – Design of Nature
The merger of technology and biological matter is currently evolving in many different levels. The dichotomy between biological and technological is shifting boundaries and there is no longer a clear division between things, which emerge from nature, and things that are designed by humans. Design and engineering principles and methods are increasingly appearing into a growing number of areas, e.g. due to possibilities to manipulate and modify biological matter. It is becoming obvious that the natural world is increasingly based on man-made design, a development that changes our relation and perception of nature, as well as our understanding of the concept of real. Beloff’s research sees that this development is leading to the construction of uncanny nature; a concept based on the M. Mori’s idea of the “uncanny valley”. Where Mori was investigating robots and their human-likeness, the author points towards possible similar sensations concerning man-made biological organisms. The lecture will address the real and uncanny nature present in art & science works that are located in a liminal space – in between what has been and what will come next.
Stavros Didakis – Transdimensional Ecosystems & Extended Consciousness
Our current almighty techno-gods have successfully managed to deliver their utopian promises; immediacy, satisfaction, engagement. The manifested reality is now enhanced, augmented, and glitched, offering to the creative mind saturated desires that redefine the limitations of our bodies, consciousness, and imagination. The repercussions have dwelled the core of human existence, reshaping as well our understanding of what Art is, or what it can ultimately become. Examining this transitional phase in our Post-Digital era, trends and patterns begin to flourish and reproduce, demonstrating that the artistic exploration is not limited to traditional tools and resources, but spans across electronics, digital media, artificial and evolutionary systems, virtual cyberspaces, as well as organisms, bodies, and cells.
Jonas Jørgensen – Soft Robot Aesthetics and Materiality
The talk presents ongoing research on the aesthetics, materiality, and ecological potential of soft robots. Jørgensen will give a broad introduction to central aspects of technical soft robotics research and discuss selected examples of soft robots in media art. His research identifies different notions of soft materiality and argues that soft robotics as a phenomenon should be seen as giving prominence to the enactive and processual potential of soft matter. Against this background, Jørgensen’s own practice-based research on soft robotic visuality, haptics, and movement will be discussed.
Stig Anton Nielsen – Braided Robots – Mixed Substrate Computation
Robots can be defined as entities that based on stimuli from their environment autonomously sense, interpret, and react. Robots can perform such cognitive tasks through embedded electronics but it is to a high degree necessary for them to make use of their structural bodies as well. Examples demonstrate how computation can be entirely offloaded to the material and structural composition of the robotic body. Soft robotics have already demonstrated some capabilities in the area of material computation and cognition, however we propose a novel form of robots entirely constructed from composites of filament material structured in braids.
David Kadish – Tomorrow’s Ecologies
Hybrid ecosystems exist in a liminal state. They are not quite ecosystems “as-they-were” and yet they exist, operate, and function as ecosystems. They are modulated by human activity – and in this case, robotic activity – but they are still bound to their former realities. This talk explores the position of robots in these hybrid ecosystems, specifically in relation to ecosystems that produce food, through historical examples and a case study involving the hanging robot that has been developed for this residency.
The residency is hosted by Chronus Art Center.
Chronus Art Center (CAC) is China’s first nonprofit art organization dedicated to the presentation, research / creation and scholarship of media art. CAC with its exhibitions, residency-oriented fellowships, lectures and workshop programs and through its archiving and publishing initiatives, creates a multifaceted and vibrant platform for the discourse, production and dissemination of media art in a global context. CAC is positioned to advance artistic innovation and cultural awareness by critically engaging with media technologies that are transforming and reshaping contemporary experiences.
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WeChat Article:
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/
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Artists Bios:
Laura Beloff’s Short Bio:
Laura Beloff (Finland/Denmark) is an internationally acclaimed artist and researcher who has been actively producing art works and exhibiting worldwide in museums, galleries, biennales, and art events since the 1990’s. She has been a recipient of various grants, art residencies and awards. In 2015-16 she received with partners the largest art grant within Nordic countries from the Nordic Cultural Fund for the project Hybrid Matters. Her recent years’ artistic focus includes practice-based investigations into a merger of biological and technological matter; and results to process-based art works and installations. She also has a large body of works on networked wearable objects that are designed for humans use. In a wider perspective, Beloff’s artistic research investigates the relationship between technologically enhanced human and his/her enhanced and manipulated environment – both of which are currently increasingly evolving towards new types of existences. All these investigations engage with the fields of art & science, biotechnologies, biosemiotics, and information technology in connection to art, humans and society.
Stavros Didakis’ Short Bio:
Stavros Didakis (PhD) is an international maker, researcher, and academic, creating interactions, systems and installations, challenging preconceptions and speculations on possible technological futures with practices that merge various disciplines, such as computational media, Internet of Things, interface design, as well as sonic, visual, and interactive art. His current research focuses on the development on architectural augmentations and inhabitant personalization, exploring sensorial interfaces and technological frameworks as extensions of human environments. At present Stavros is an Associate Professor at the University of Plymouth (UK), and a Visiting Lecturer in Peking University and South University of Science and Technology (China). Stavros has won grants and awards in creative technologies, he has exhibited his interactive works in international exhibitions and biennale, and he has also made numerous publications in conferences, journals, and books.
Jonas Jørgensen’s Short Bio:
Jonas Jørgensen is a Danish researcher, media art practitioner, and educator. He is formally trained as a physicist (BSc) and an art historian (BA, MA) at Copenhagen University and Columbia University (New York). Jonas is currently a PhD fellow at the IT University of Copenhagen (ITU) with a practice-based project that interrogates soft robotic technology through art and aesthetics. Jonas’ writings have appeared in a number of peer-reviewed and popular outlets including edited volumes, artist monographs, exhibition catalogues, art pedagogical journals, and conference proceedings. His collaborative artistic work has been exhibited at art institutions in Denmark, Norway, and Finland. He has given lectures, presented papers, and organized workshops on soft robotics and robotic art at a number of international events including ISEA, Pixelache festival, MOCO, and MediaArtHistories.
David Kadish’s Short Bio:
David Kadish is an artist and engineer whose work focuses on the complexities of bio-robotic ecosystems. He is currently immersed in the exploration of hybrid agro-ecologies, where plants, robots, and humans grow multifaceted food ecosystems. He holds a BSc. in System Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo (Canada), an MSc. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of British Columbia (Canada), and an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of British Columbia (Canada). David is currently working on his PhD at the IT University of Copenhagen.
Stig Anton Nielsen’s Short Bio:
Stig Anton Nielsen (PhD) is Postdoc at the IT-University, Dept. of Computer Science and member of the REAL group. His research combines notions from arts, science and technology with the focus on embodiment and different aspects of computation. Since his graduation from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts 2008, Stig Anton worked as project architect at COBE Architects, as well as Assistant Researcher for Martin Tamke at the Center of Information Technology and Architecture at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (CITA). Stig Anton Nielsen has been involved in numerous projects dealing with rapid prototyping and CNC fabrication through digital techniques and he has been invited to run international workshops on ideas of physically informed approaches in architecture in both Warsaw PL and Manchester UK. His current research is based on a new strand of structures for both soft and rigid composite robots called braided robots.
Degenerative Cultures
Project runtime: December 13, 9 AM – December 15, 2017, 2 PM
Locations for viewing and interacting:
Fungal feedback loop at Classense Library (via Alfredo Baccarini 3, Ravenna, Italy)
Project ephemera at MAR (Museum of Art in Ravenna, via di Roma 13, Ravenna, Italy)
Fungal twitterfeed at @HelloFungus (twitter feed on Internet)
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Cesar & Lois advance the fungal colonization of human knowledge systems through the merging of fungal networks and Internet-based communications. A growing fungal colony tweets as it grows over/redacts the text of a book. Fungi grow on physical books about the human endeavor to dominate nature, with degenerative readouts tweeted by fungi as it grows. In a reversal of typical planetary dynamics, the fungal network overtakes the human system. Retweets by human viewers impact the fungal readings. Through this “bhiobrid” network, Internet users can communicate with the fungus and help to spread a kind of “digital spores.”
If one considers human societies as a biological culture on Earth, our substrate is the global ecosystem. Incongruously, human societies consistently destroy this substrate, resulting in a massive cumulative loss of data in the form of species extinctions and environmental devastation. This behaviour is conceptualized, planned and justified with ideas of control, domestication and the superiority of humanity proliferated through religion, science, philosophy and other contexts of society. Degenerative Cultures integrates different forms of life in a poetic act of cooperation, crossjng boundaries between biological and digital networks in order to corrupt the cultural patterns of the more devastating aspects of modernity.
Degenerative Cultures accommodates the opposite flow of information degradation and allows nature to disrupt human cultures through the degeneration of text. The algorithmic scaling of the biological culture’s growth and resulting censoring of human culture generate a continuous series of fungal tweets by @HelloFungus. Retweets produce a responsive feedback loop between these natural and technological networks.
Fungi form a natural Internet, sending signals and connecting nodes through mycelia. This project combines this Internet of Natural Things with the Internet in a “bhiobrid” system that permits a feedback loop between human and microbiological cultures. Books, as symbolic objects, are the storage vaults of human knowledge. For most human societies, knowledge, even when digitized, is stored in text, which is ultimately essential for storing/restoring human culture.
The project is a collaboration between Cesar Baio and the League of Imaginary Scientists (LOIS) under the artist pseudonym Cesar & Lois. The project has a basis in Cesar Baio’s art on the playful disruption of systems of technology and power and LOIS’ data play with nature. In their various bodies of work, Cesar Baio shows that disruptions to algorithms are natural to autonomous systems, while LOIS replicates degradative datastreams sourced in nature.
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The project is part of Generative Art International Exhibition at Museum of Art of Ravenna, on view from 13th to 15th of December.
Project runtime: December 13, 9 AM – December 15, 2017, 2 PM
Locations for viewing and interacting:
Fungal feedback loop at Classense Library (via Alfredo Baccarini 3, Ravenna, Italy)
Project ephemera at MAR (Museum of Art in Ravenna, via di Roma 13, Ravenna, Italy)
Fungal twitterfeed at @HelloFungus (twitter feed on Internet)
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Online documentation and images can be found at:
http://imaginaryscience.org/project/bhiobrid/
For publications and exhibition histories, please visit:
cesarbaio.net
imaginaryscience.org
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Research and lab work for Degenerative Cultures was supported by:
Scott Morgan, Biologist at California State University San Marcos.
A New Book by LEA Cloud and Molecular Aesthetics published on the new platform Contemporary Art and Cultures. Thanks to OCR, The MIT Press, andMIT Media Lab. The volume –https://www.pubpub.org/cac/page/cloud-and-molecular-aesthetics – is edited by Lanfranco Aceti, Paul Thomas, and Edward Colless.
Cloud and Molecular Aesthetics is an open access book by Leonardo Electronic Almanac edited by Lanfranco Aceti, Paul Thomas, and Edward Colless. It is published by MIT Press with the support of Operational and Curatorial Research (OCR) and Goldsmiths, University of London.
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