CAC Open Codes Lecture Series

Chronus Art Center (CAC), Shanghai assembles the worlds of computing and art with the exhibition Open Codes. Connected Bots, which will remain on view through October 7, 2019.

The exhibition includes artworks based on computer code, or reveal how deeply such code has penetrated our lives. The space is laid out as an architectonic parcours that encourages independent creative activities, such as workshops, lectures, and artist talks.

These events will shed light on the topics lying under the context of Open Codes and show the new visions of Swiss artists and curators working in the intersecting area of art and technology. CAC will collaborate with HeK Basel to invite Gordan Savicic and Boris Magrini over to give lectures on “Entangled Realities” and “Social Media Hacking”.

Entangled Realities

Lecturer: Boris Magrini
Date: August 25, 2019, 13:00–15:00

Boris Magrini will discuss a selection of works that make use of, and challenge artificial intelligence, machine learning and algorithmic economy, as recently presented in the exhibition Entangled Realities on show at HeK (House of Electronic Arts Basel) that lies a specific focus on human interaction with intelligent algorithmic systems and the resulting new intertwined realities.

While framing the current artistic production associated with artificial intelligence into a larger historic perspective, Magrini proposes to consider the challenges involved in the impending coexistence between humans and machines.

Humans and machines are in constant dialogue and it is vital that we understand the conditions of our coexistence. What role will we play in shaping these new interwoven realities? Who supervises the infrastructure of computer-based networks? We have to learn to understand how these systems work as in the future it will be difficult to determine whether content or information is authentic, manipulated or completely artificial.

Boris Magrini (PhD) is curator at HeK (House of Electronic Arts Basel). He organizes exhibitions, performances and talk series that foster transdisciplinary dialogues between the arts and the sciences. Curated shows include Future Love. Desire and Kinship in Hypernature (HeK, Basel, 2018), Hydra Project (Sonnenstube, Lugano, 2016), Grounded Visions: Artistic Research into Environmental Issues (ETH, Zurich,2015–2016) and Mutamenti (Bellinzona, 2007).

Social Media Hacking

Facilitator: Gordan Savicic, Juan Gomez
Date: October 6, 2019, 11:00–16:00

What influence do media technologies have on society and its institutions and on our individual actions? How can (semi) – autonomous actors intervene in social media environments and take up a life of their own? Gordan Savicic and Juan Gomez will explore these questions at the workshop at Chronus Art Center.

Participants will gain hands-on knowledge of techniques implemented for the web 2.0 Suicide Machine, using a tool for automated web application testing. Gordan and Juan will bring you an overview of media hacking practices, and recent web-based network technologies used to program our online experience. You will be introduced into writing simple code for your own projects. This technique could be useful for interventionist tactics and critical hacks within social media. Web-related programming skills desired, but not absolutely necessary!

Gordan Savičić is a creative technologist, artist and designer whose work investigates the relationship between people, networks and interfaces. He has a background in media art and visual communication, and he has been active within the fields of academic research, teaching and design industry. His preferred location is the Internet spending his weekends at the localhost.

Juan Gomez currently lives in Geneva, Switzerland. Juan is working at the intersection between art and design. His current interest is in the materialization of social technologies in temporal urban spaces and their potential for generating valuable discussions. In Geneva, he is the content coordinator of the Center for Future Publishing, where he hosts a monthly event inviting artists, philosophers, and designers to engage a discussion on how their practice is touched by contemporary changes in publishing.

Xenoecologies

Speaker: Vanessa Lorenzo
Date: November 17, 2019, 14:00 – 15:30

From bioreporters to near-earth-objects, the artist talk is going to navigate across 3 projects core to Lorenzo’s practical research about new media ecologies to unveil more-than-human expressions and aesthetics: Mossphone (2011 – 2019), Camera Obscura (2016) and Always Calling Home (2018 – 2019).

Vanessa Lorenzo is an artist working at the crossroads of media, speculative design and biology. Trained as a product design engineer and media designer, she creates fictional scenarios embedding people and the more-than-human into hybrid media ecologies. These installations and interactive objects focus on the agency of the more-than-human exploring alternative storytelling and multispecies encounters through experimental media. Also, she nourishes (from) and believes (in) communities of hackers / artists working in alternative spaces to have the power to subvert the dominating role of traditional science and technology.

!Mediengruppe Bitnik

Speaker: !Mediengruppe Bitnik
Date: December 28, 2019, 14:00-15:00

Artists !Mediengruppe Bitnik will talk about recent works around bots and the online ecosystems that has been forming around them. Through the lens of their recent works around algorithms and bots, !Mediengruppe Bitnik will offer a look into some of the technologies shaping our day-to-day.

!Mediengruppe Bitnik is the Swiss duo Carmen Weisskopf and Domagoj Smoljo based in Berlin. They are contemporary artists working on and with the web. Their practice expands from the digital to affect physical spaces, often intentionally applying loss of control to challenge established structures and mechanisms.