Speculative Fictions: Past and Future
About the works
Self portrait, LaJuné McMillian.
Dysbiotic Prophets, David Bayus. It has been suggested that Dysbiosis, an imbalance in the microbiome of the human body, can cause disturbances in mental behavior, even schizophrenia. In the macrobiome-- the human animal taken as a whole--we can imagine a mass dysbiosis that causes civil unrest, revolution, and soothsaying. A social hysteria caused by a microbiotic dystopia!
Galaxy Series (excerpt 1) by Snow Yunxue Fu birth of the galaxies #simulation, #rgb, #representation, #abstraction, #perceptual, #imagemaking, #postphotographic, #NASApictures, #2D, #3D, #dimensions, #digitalrealms, #technosublime, #slowCGI, #Mayagrey, #VR, #wip
Dear Future, Ranu Mukherjee 2020, HD animation, silent, 2.49 loop Dear Future is a short animated letter to the future. It includes images of birds which are currently extinct. This same group of birds appear in several recent works. I am inviting them to speak through different channels that the artwork may open up. Dear Future is part of a practice using speculative fiction to be present with conditions of rupture and to imagine different futures.
The Difference Engine (excerpt), Christina Cornfield (In Collaboration with Renee Rhodes). This video takes 19th century British engineer Charles Babbage’s machine of the 1830s as its starting point. This machine is regarded by many as the world’s first computer and although it was developed and designed by Babbage it was never built in his lifetime, remaining a “virtual” machine.
Finally constructed in the 21st century according to Babbage’s schematic drawings and calculations, this video represents the machine through a series of performative movements that Rhodes developed in response to watching the constructed machine in action. This machine is also closely associated with mathematician Ada Lovelace, which prompted me to draw connections between the virtual nature of Babbage’s original machine and the limited presence of women in the fields of science and technology.
September 29, 2020. Brooklyn, NY. by R. Luke DuBois This work is a synaesthetic object - systems I've been making for twenty years that look at the interplay of sound and image. For this video, the music was made with an electric guitar driving an analog synthesizer, with the different layers being analyzed to create the spinning wheels you see in the video. Each shape on the screen, colored blue (for the guitar) and yellow and red (for the two different synthesizer layers), contains a stylized etching of timbral information, akin to raised dots on a music box. The piece was rendered using Max/MSP/Jitter.
Feels Good by Porpentine Charity Heartscape here's some pics i did
RTTT [Render Truth Through Texture] by Mohsen Hazrati. RTTT [Render Truth Through Texture] Project is a research about mirrors, reflections, and their significance in Iranian mystical literature. the origin of this motif goes back to Ancient Persia. Later on, using the concept of mirror and reflections got more frequent in Farsi literature due to its potentials and aspects. There is a useful technique used mostly in realtime game engines, called RTT (Render To Texture). It is rendering from another camera in the scene and stores the rendered data into a texture to use it as material for an object. this technique is usually used for visualizing mirrors and reflections, each of these textures could show a specific perspective of the running virtual world or contain pixel data from another parallel scene. each of them could have its own specific field of view, size, light, and any other properties, and render in the main camera context as well and follow the main camera properties. Each texture could tile, repeat or spread in many objects in the virtual world and stand for a specific message, reflected on an object in the scene. these textures could act as part of a whole image or content which is spread into objects in the scene. just as a drop could represent the ocean. I find this technique so interesting and meaningful to discover the unity and multiplicity concept trough. as in Persian literature mirrors and reflections describe how each part of the universe may have its own universe within and reflect a vision. Knee, as a part of the human body, and due to Its connection with the forehead, while sitting sad, heartbreaking, thinking, ashamed, etc, has been inspired by many Iranian poets and writers, Abu Sa'id Abu'l-Khayr (Persian poet 967-1049) used the human knee for the first time, later, this concept has been developed in many creative ways and used as many kinds of metaphors, such as a ship, school, observatory, Mirror, etc. in which the poets represented this way of sitting as a way to disconnect from the world and discover in mysterious worlds, meanwhile, some poets like Khaghani and Abdul-Qādir Bedil pushed it a step further and used it as an ideology and talked about their studies and gains in their spiritual journey by their knees.
The Rockette Odyssey, Genevieve Quick. Planet Celadon: The Rockette Odyssey (2020) is a continuation of Quick’s Planet Celadon series. In these works she employs the traditional celadon ceramic glaze, widespread throughout East Asia, as the framework for a fantastical narrative for Asian American diasporic identity. In exaggerating ideas of alienness, futurity, and tradition, she explore alternative forms of communication to address the challenges of communication globally and intergalactically. In this new video, the narrative playfully chronicles the voyage of the Celadonians to Earth aboard the Rockette Ship, a meteorite-like vessel, that is accompanied by the Rockettes, dancing meteorites. The work explores the screen as a container for worlds, both imaginative and real, and as a device for communication.
Screen Sun, Penelope Umbrico. Screen Sun (2006-2020), comprises photographs of images of the sun that I’ve cropped from images of sunsets shared on the web that I’ve collected since 2006. I sequenced these cropped suns into a single video, each image slowly dissolving into the next. As the images overlap the varying resolution and pixel grid of each is superimposed on another which results in a constantly shifting moiré pattern. This well-known moiré phenomenon is further amplified by video recording the sequence with my iPhone. Here, the image sensor on the iPhone conflicts with the resolution of the computer monitor and the pixel grid of the images, creating a single sun that dissolves into and out of the screen. Screen Sun draws attention to the materiality of the screen and further distances us from the natural sunlight source of the original images. I began thinking about the sun, as experienced on the screen, in 2006 because of its meme-like character and the absurdity of this original source of light, warm and infinite, rendered in cool digital screen light. In 2020 it feels like this screen sun has become a reality.
Aquaphobia, Jakob Kudsk Steensen. This video is for demonstration purposes only, showing the environment and narration of AQUAPHOBIA (Room-scale VR, 2017).
In the work itself you are free to move around entirely as you wish, and you can explore the landscape at your own pace in full room-scale 3D. AQUAPHOBIA uses VR to connect inner psychological landscapes with exterior eco-systems. The work is inspired by psychological studies of the treatment of aquaphobia – fear of water- as an entry point to transform perceptions of our relationship to future water levels and climates. AQUAPHOBIA is a full-scale replica of Louis Valentino Jr. Park and Pier in Redhook, Brooklyn, an area greatly compromised by climate change with hurricanes and rising sea levels. The virtual landscape combines red-clay materials with pre-urban plant species in Brooklyn and futuristic settings. While journeying through the landscape, mud, water, subterranean infrastructures, roots and plants intertwine with one another to form a symbiotic landscape the person visiting the virtual simulation of AQUAPHOBIA experiences. While travelling through the landscape, an alien morphing aquatic entity follows you around and emit scuba diving sounds and recites a poem, which tell a breakup story between the landscape and its virtual visitor. Ultimately, AQUAPHOBIA uses VR to mixes past and future geological periods, and the work personifies a landscape through a break-up story. Narration in AQUAPHOBIA: "After the breakup you compartmentalized our relationship beyond exhibitionist plastic glass, you stored images of us on a remote subterranean server. But I broke free. My microscopic wet materials spread like a virus, infiltrating the digital storage units you used to access us from. The wires are warm with me. We reset the power structure of our relationship. I gain control. Direct your eyes downwards, further, towards your feet. You have sunken, about an inch into the mud. Wiggle your toes. Most of you is water. Feel the water in the mud, leaching through the permeable barrier of your shoes, towards your thin porous skin, sink further, my liquid enters the inner workings of your body's system. I don’t understand why you insist on digging in our mutual past. We were many things but we never mutually exclusive. The items you threw out the window in anger of my promiscuous practices will continue to descend slowly, into my red clay mud. You think you are not of me but you are of me. On this peninsula always present, beneath the concrete you paved. You were never in charge. The reality of my physical past, looks and configuration were always present, even though you attempted to hide them through what you call a cultivation processes. My cat tails, red clay, steam and humid were always, looming beneath your nose when we coexisted. Ours is a particular circumstance. Me, but submitting to you, was only an imagination, a virtual reality and fantasy of yours. We are not equals. Learning the math behind my rhythmic behavior make you dance in excitement. Hop in. Head first. Learn the cadence of my movements, animate them, score them. Through the rhythm of my waves, we can learn to move in tandem. Together. Apart. Close your eyes and feel the mass of my droplets slide across body hair, over eyelids. Learn to swim." Text by Jakob Kudsk Steensen, narrated by artist Rindon Johnson in AQUAPHOBIA. Support for the development of AQUAPHOBIA comes from The Danish Arts Council and NYC Office of Cultural Affairs.