Semi-Artificial Imagination
24 October 2012 | Trove Gallery, Birmingham, UK
Does life imitate art or does art imitate life? For philosophers and artists there have always been two types of imagery: 1) the faithful reproduction and 2) the image that is distorted intentionally. Increasingly interactions with synthetic and technologically driven spaces could be said to blur our perception of what is authentic. Designers and artists have often attempted to create faithful simulacrum that mimic the natural environment (in a process of bio-mimicry).
But in the 21st Century, where we are increasingly impressed by our own technological prowess, we now have the tools to adapt and reform our environment – no longer biased by the the biological but servant to the synthetic.
This Salon will question the limits of representation and imagery exploring different ways in which technology is fundamentally changing what it means to be human. We will explore the themes of image, thrill, and the semi-artificial imagination.
This Virtual Futures Salon is supported by the Centre for Fine Arts Research (CFAR) at the Birmingham Institute for Art and Design and the University of Warwick Theatre and Performance Studies Department. With special thanks to Ian O’Donoghue and Rob Batterbee.
Speakers
Pat Cadigan, Queen of Cyberpunk
Prof. Johnny Golding, Philosopher & Director of Centre for Fine Arts Research
Dr. Dan O’Hara, Philosopher of Technology
Dr. John Pickering, Cognitive Scientist at University of Warwick
Sascha Pohflepp, Artist (Synthetic Aesthetics)
Mer Roberts, Artist from collective 0rphan Drift
Contributing Artists
Adam Bee (Franken Beaumont), Performance Artist
Liam Worth, Installation Artist
J.R. Dooley, Sound Artist & Composer
Videos
Summary
The 24th October 2012 saw the first of a series of Virtual Futures Salon events.
This was a very sexy event: held in the TROVE gallery, a very Berlin-style disused warehouse right in the centre of the city, and showcasing some of the strangest and most avant-garde art and thought happening right now. Prof. Johnny Golding from the Centre for Fine Art Research at BIAD, Birmingham City University, introduced the evening, which was organized by the director of Virtual Futures, Luke Robert Mason.
I spoke about maps and wiring diagrams, ‘photogenic drawing’, glitch, and (implicitly and probably entirely predictably) the dangers of animism, anthropomorphism, and the god in the machine. Dr. John Pickering from the Psychology department at Warwick University told us about the limitations of AI in military (and other) robots, digging a little deeper into the ways in which our mental constructs conspire to produce sympathy for machines, and bringing some much-needed historical rigour to the current drone-delirium. Sascha Pohflepp gave us selected glimpses of his artworks from the past five years, ranging from his genetically-modified plant visions (created with Daisy Ginsberg) to his simulations of spaceflight weightlessness, which touched a Stelarc-like VF nerve in their evocations of the human body reaching escape velocity.
The event then marked the return of Orphan drift, after fifteen years, to Virtual Futures and to the UK, when Mer Roberts introduced a screening of the Orphan drift film ‘A Wilderness of Nowheres’: timely, as the Orphan drift book Cyberpositive has just been published in a new edition. Franken Beaumont‘s eerie installation artwork sat behind the audience, its mouth moving as if echoing the speakers; Liam Worth‘s dynamic ferrofluid sculpture was also on display, as were J.R. Dooley‘s dancing, dynamic sonic/visual cellular forms.
Pat Cadigan capped the evening with a masterclass in story-telling, her apparently effortless facility with verbal imagery giving us all a metaphorical lesson in the proper use of tools.
[Written by Dan O’Hara, 2011]