Analodigital

Analodigital
12 June–6 July 2024
Kulturno informativni centar, Preradovićeva 5, Zagreb
https://www.kic.hr/

We are honored to announce the opening of a guest group exhibition entitled Analodigital at the Kulturno informativni centar in Zagreb, Croatia, from 12 June 2024 to 6 July 2024, which will feature the artworks of Alice Daeun Kim, Nika Erjavec and Valerie Wolf Gang. The curator of the exhibition is Peter Tomaž Dobrila.

Nature, man, tool, technique, research, science, art. Seven items of genesis and evolution, seven elements of action, seven feelings of creation, where thought acts as a crossbar, a river in which streams flow, where we direct the currents with which we sail towards the sea. We come from water, we are created in air, we breathe, we inhabit the Earth as general markers of the surface and the loose definition of the material we are on. It would be better to write that we are on Earth, a planet that is so elemental and diverse, rich to the finest nuances of thought and fist in the subtlest feelings. We carry antiquity within us in order to understand history and live in the here and now and look to the future.

We understand and remember. We resort to tools that use ancient engineering to make, carry on tradition and set space-time to create our own worlds for journeys in and out, through landscapes that show us paths in gorges and use views through them. It's like being enchanted by the entanglements of your own presence at the scene of the »crime«. We use and use up, exploit and destroy, take advantage of and exhaust ourselves, but also upgrade and continue, even if regressively and passively. We are actors and passers, observers and companions. Creatures in the material.

Artificial intelligence and nature. Sound and electronics. Sensors and interaction. Camera and control, observation and deformation, data and parameters, screen and image. Computing in the Paleozoic. As Alice Daeun Kim draws a bow from ancient fungi, animated by artificial intelligence in Minorities, Nika Erjavec with Third Landscape ennobles an ecosystem with bundles of gathered branches, to which the knowledge of our presence adds an audible component, while Valerie Wolf Gang with the interactive installation The Beautiful Face of Artificial Intelligence reinterprets the mirror as a parable of our image, which is modified, shaped and distorted by the parameters generated by internet applications.

From nature into nature. Analogous to the beginning. Digital as artificial, as simulation and simulacrum. Artificial intelligence as machine memorization and recapitulation of memory, regeneration of life. As a remnant of the collective consciousness that we carry inside us. Like the thought that we are. As a belief that you can. Like the fact that it will. Nature as technique and technique as nature. Man as an interface, mediator, medium between the environment and tools. Programmer and designer. And the user. Coexistence and cooperation. Interaction in all directions. Even in harmful and especially self-serving ones, they do not consider the consequences. But it could be better if we internalized our actions as being responsible for everything, ourselves, others, nature, the world... and the universe, the universe or the multiverse. To remember Galileo: »And yet it moves!«

Alice Daeun Kim: Minorities, video, installation, 2021

Alice Daeun Kim is an artist who focuses on 3D digital media content, space and the design of moving images. She explores ways in which stories and ideas could be told by using virtual and augmented reality and how to present them to the audiences in an interactive way and through immersion. Due to this she adheres to using technologies such as augmented reality, virtual reality and projection techniques used to transform objects, often irregular shapes, into visuals (projection mapping). Her work was exhibited in London, Lisbon and in Seoul in South Korea.
Minorities is a project that on the one hand stems from the inherent bias of data, machine learning and artificial intelligence and on the other hand from the possibilities of restoring endangered species by using these tools. In this project artist Alice Daeun Kim focused on the so called endangered »minor« species, species that are never or are rarely a subject of public interest when it comes to public conservation campaigns. The artist used AI to visualise the Tsukiyotake mushroom (lat. Lampteromyces japonicus) and two algae (lat. Dictyosphaeria cavernosa and Coccophora langsdorfii) which all belong to the kingdom of fungi and marine algae, respectively. All are considered the so called »minor« species and classified as endangered species in South Korea.
During her research at the Korean National Institute of Ecology, the artist realized that getting a specimen for any kind of further investigation is extremely difficult due to the fact that these species live in remote places – inside of a mountain, somewhere at the shore of Jeju Island or somewhere in the rocks of the East sea.
For her on-going research, Alice posed a question: »What does it look like if the AI tries to restore these species?« She took one image of each species as a starting point, while using Topaz gigapixel AI in order to pursue increasingly intriguing visual results of images getting distorted.

Nika Erjavec: Third Landscape, interactive intermedia installation, 2021

Since 2018 Nika Erjavec has been developing hybrid artistic research related to sensory perception at the intersection of art and science and (in) visible transformations of the environment in the last two centuries. In her installations, she interweaves everyday, banal, consumable materials, such as various temporary building elements, artificial plants, processed electronic toys, etc. as representatives of our current subject and living culture. On the other hand, she explores, harvests, and includes dried plants from abandoned urban areas. These are mainly third landscape spaces, either undefined and abandoned pieces of land in cities, fenced spaces, or construction pits awaiting capital investments such as car parks, luxury housing, and shopping malls. During this time and seeming neglect, spaces of complex ecosystems are evolving. These are places of great biodiversity, the abundance of different species that thrive in these systems surpasses the composition of mercury on the average surface that is regulated, nurtured by humans. Indigenous and invasive alien species come together in these areas. Upon contact with the installation, the visitor enters a predetermined system of operation, either through an active management gesture or through his presence and movement, with which he/she introduces perceptual disturbances into space. One cuts and suddenly changes the acoustic landscape of the space, triggers vibrational disturbances of sound, tactile and visual in the contact of the natural and the social. These are concentrated in the most marginalized and weak points of the installation, which escape us from our perceptual field due to the speed of movement.

Valerie WolfGang & Žiga Pavlovič: The Beautiful Face of Artificial Intelligence, interactive installation, 2022

At the heart of Valerie Wolf Gang's artistic research lies the complex relationship between man and technology and the impact of the latter on the individual and society, especially on man's perception of his own identity and understanding of contemporary social issues. With the interactive installation The Beautiful Face of Artificial Intelligence, the artist rethematizes the mirror as a parable of her image, which is changed, shaped and distorted by the parameters generated by online applications. The baroque frame, in which the digital mirror is inserted, contains three derivatives of the three building blocks of a person's self-image: his own vision of himself, projections and desires, and the aspect of society. The first look in the mirror thus enables the visitor to look at his own body in its reality. The second exposes the visitor's inner world, as the image in the mirror begins to change, and the appearance of the image is additionally transformed by extracting data – such as the value of stocks, bitcoin or the temperature of the atmosphere – from the Internet.

Our appearance is shaped by global political, economic and social indicators that correspond with the captured image in real time and transform it into a digital form that becomes a cyber superego, an uncontrolled virtual self. Valerie Wolf Gang juxtaposes the intuitive with the rational, questions the genericity of the form with its appearance in techno-capitalism, deforms the personal image like a room of mirrors, thereby setting up provocative combinations of messages to the public, with which she responds to current social issues, which often have a drastic or even dramatic impact on the development of culture and society. Moral judgement, says the author, is an individual matter, referring to the words of de Saint-Exupéry: »Essence is invisible to the eye.«

– Peter Tomaž Dobrila

More: https://www.kic.hr/

Biographies

Alice Daeun Kim melts her interdisciplinary artistic practice, combining time and space exploration in virtual and physical spaces, storytelling, interactive and immersive experiences, artificial intelligence and virtual and augmented reality technologies.
»I am a media artist from South Korea with a broad background in fine art, commercial design and interdisciplinary projects. I studied new media art in London. Conceptually my focus lies on the difference between virtual time and space, while through my artworks I want to explore ways of presenting different narratives in an interactive and immersive way. In my practice I work mostly with 3D and 2D software as well as physical materials, making short films, AR lenses and interactive moving images with sound. There are no limitations on the materials and tools I use, while always striving to make an interesting and enjoyable experience for the audience. My aim is to create virtual spaces related to our real world, interesting stories and discussions. As we become able to manipulate our senses and identity in virtual spaces, we can find new ways to make us think and share meaningful insights. Currently I am participating in a group project related to artificial intelligence, augmented reality and photogrammetry.«

https://www.alicedaeunkim.com/

Nika Erjavec (1994, Ljubljana) works in the field of research intermedia art, theater, photography, and design. In 2017 she graduated from the Department of Unique Design at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana, where she is currently completing her master’s degree in the Department of Sculpture. In recent years, he has been researching the perceptibility of vibration and sound, from its materiality to the hyper-objectivity of environmental changes at the level of the acoustic landscape and beyond. For a series of installations (in)VISIBLE and hybrid art research, she received the Prešeren Award ALUO in 2019 and was nominated for the University Prešeren Award. In the last year, she has presented solo intermedia exhibitions at the BS Mala galerija and the Alkatraz Gallery. During her years of study, she has actively participated in local and international exhibitions. As a set designer, prop designer, and photographer (Bronze Medal of the Serbian Photographic Association 2017) she occasionally works in the theater (SNG Ljubljana, MG Ptuj, MGL, SNG Maribor). At the same time, she is gaining knowledge at various workshops at home and abroad, and prepares and leads workshops on the topic of cultural accessibility, sensory and material potentials, and contemporary environmental and social contexts.

Valerie Wolf Gang (1990) is a multimedia artist working as external collaborator and mentor at the Famul VideoLab research unit. Her work focuses on video and contemporary artistic practices. She graduated from the Ljubljana School of Design and Photography, then obtained a BA degree in art video and digital artistic practices from the School of Arts at the University of Nova Gorica, followed by a MA degree in Media Art and Practice, specializing in video and contemporary art. She improved her theoretical and practical knowledge at the FAMU film academy in Prague and at the art academy ESAD in Portugal. She has the status of an independent cultural worker, video artist.

https://valeriewolfgang.com/

< Alice Daeun Kim: Minorities, video, installation, 2021; photo: Janez Klenovšek