Data Collision
Sonntag, April 6th, 2008Data Collision
an intermedia art show
11 – 30 April 2008
Opening on Friday, 11 April 2008, at 8 p.m.
Exhibiting artists: Dragan Zivadinov, Dunja Zupancic and Miha Tursic, BridA (Sendi Mango, Jurij Pavlica and Tom Kersevan), Hans H. Diebner, Florian Grond
In April 2008, the City Gallery Nova Gorica and the artists’ collective BridA are staging DATA COLLISION; a show that fosters dialogue between science and art. The exhibition will present four projects by artists who work in related fields of contemporary artistic practices and who have made a mark internationally as the most forward-looking researchers of new tools of expression in the visual arts.
The show has been conceived and the projects selected by the group BridA, who met most of the artists at the ZKM in Karlsruhe, during their artist-in-residence program in the framework of the 5th Triennial of Contemporary Slovene Art.
“The exhibition is a coming together of two apparently opposite poles of artistic production. On the one hand, there are scientists who are aware of the fact that art can represent an alternative for, or even the goal of, exploring the unreachable dimensions of our subconscious. On the other hand, there is art as an unquestionably legitimate instrument that erases all boundaries between science and art, unprejudiced and creating new architectures of expression, where ideas acquire material properties.
Quantum mechanics, the theory of dynamic systems, and hermeneutical approaches are the bases for simulating the processes of perception and the functioning of the brain. These simulations are scientific models of sorts and at the same time exceptional artistic representations. At the apparent parting of their ways, art and science meet at the precise point where collision occurs, as well as the attraction in the physical and philosophical senses, and where a computer is no longer enough to process such a massive amount of data.” BridA
Liquid Perceptron By Hans H. Diebner and Sven Sahle
a reactive video installation
Liquid Perceptron is the simulation of a simplified model of a brain consisting of only roughly 200,000 neurons. The neurons are arranged in a 2-dimensional array with simplified homogeneous local coupling. The coupling topology between neurons in a real brain is far from homogeneous. Rather it is a very complex nonlocal network. Nevertheless, the simulation is already pretty complex and at the edge of the performance capacity of an up-to-date PC, which is why the simplified coupling has been chosen. The dynamical equation of the activity of a single neuron is lacking a closed solution, as mathematicians say, let alone the whole network of coupled neurons. That means, the single neuron and even more the entire network is impossible to be understood without a sensualized (audio-visual, haptic, tactile, etc.) simulation. Beyond that, Liquid Perceptron allows an even more intensive interaction. The network responds to the spectator’s movement. To study the formation of activity patterns through the physical involvement of the researcher and the spectator, respectively, is in the epicenter of that visual-based approach.
Hear and now by Florian Grond
an audio-visual installation
Hear and now is an audio-visual installation consisting of a floor projection and a circular audio setup with 8 speakers. The visual projection on the floor is a set of slowly moving lines. Each of these lines represents a particle’s trajectory in a nonlinear dynamical system defined on a circle. The trajectories flow from the center of the circular setup outwards toward the speakers. From the center of the installation, the spectator can observe the moment when the trajectories arrive at the border of the circle. There, the actual positions of the particles in the trajectories are transferred to the loudspeakers via distinct acoustic entities. These sounds move according to the changing positions of the particle’s trajectories. Rather than moving randomly, the dynamical system forces the majority of the particles to move in a cluster, as can be seen in the visualizations provided.
Analysis of the Sequencing – Docking Protocols By Dragan Zivadinov, Dunja Zupancic and Miha Tursic
video installation
An analysis of the sequencing of docking protocols, vectorially oriented toward the absolute event:
The module is procedurally coordinated with the planned sequence. There are three planned sequences. The third one is death! Death is an absolute event in direct contact with absolute nothing. Fear of death is fear of one’s own observing mind. We are constantly in the process of analyzing our own values.
Because of this, death is, and will forever remain, a distant event.
When reason collides with life, a deadly concentration occurs. Concentration and control. Thus modular patterns of various time dispersions jeopardize our present, which is located in the docking module.
Information accelerator by BridA (Tom Kersevan, Jurij Pavlica and Sendi Mango)
an audio-visual installation
Information Accelerator is a tangible and very graphic sound and visual anatomy of one possible current of information. In addition to the device there will be graphic presentations of the electronic circuits, enriched with a variety of symbols and contents that also dictate diverse possibilities for the flow of information, the entire process of the messages traveling with all the data, commands, and transitions through the mysterious world of sound, picture, and word. With its precise synthetic-analytical approach to art, the group BridA finds its creative paths in the sphere of the latest contemporary art. In it the social concept too is open for the latest meanings: the systems and values of information create close bonds between artists and science and artists and social sensitivity; the field of mutual influences is very strong and develops ceaselessly.