Category: untitles (to be changed)

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phantom//wash

Immersive, multimedia noise performance by STUDIO ZYKLOS
(Melody Chua & Chi Him Chik)

“every seven years we are literally, completely new beings.
every cell, dead and replaced.
we wonder, how all these new cells have remembered 
how to be alive in the way
of their dead ancestors,
and what ghosts, when understood, 
make us whole.”

STUDIO ZYKLOS is an ensemble and lab comprised of Melody Chua and Chi Him Chik—The core of ZYKLOS’ practice is performing with self-developed improvisation machines (Aiii and AIYA) in order to challenge their methods of improvisation and push them to find new ways of human-machine interaction, collaboration, and production. ZYKLOS aims to destabilize traditional hierarchies of human and machine, create innovative formats for music performance, and develop narratives beyond the anthropologic gaze. Personal storytelling through interactive media is at the heart of everything ZYKLOS does—a more-than-human dialogue of understanding that takes the form of music-making, translation, and movement across different bodies, both visible and invisible.

phantom//wash premieres at the Immersive Arts Space on 17 & 18.October 2024 at 19:30. Duration 45 min. Trigger warning: death, suicide, strobe, noise

Ticket reservation [here]
Please arrive 10 minutes prior to the start of the event.

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Mugen

Mugen is an multidisciplinary immersive opera, that is based on Japanese writer Natsume Soseki’s (1867-1916) first dream from his short story “10 Nights of Dreams” (1908). The piece is divided into 7 x 7 minute parts following the character’s symbolic journey, that forms the emotional core of “Mugen”, while its themes of death, love, longing and the ambiguous syntheses of time and space create a rich character.

“The dreamer realises that he is sitting with his arms folded next to a woman lying on a bed, and she quietly confesses to the figure that she will soon die. This surreal encounter with the woman doesn’t faze the dreamer, and he asks her when she will die and whether she has to die. She confesses that she cannot change her fate and that she would like to ask the figure to bury her after her certain death. He is instructed to dig her grave with a large shell, bury her in it and erect a gravestone with a fragment of a fallen star. Finally, he is to wait in a hundred-year vigil for her self-proclaimed return. The dreamer follows her instructions and begins to count the days that pass as the sun moves from east to west. After some time, he wonders whether the woman has betrayed him. Unexpectedly, a white lily begins to grow from the fresh grave. At the end of its blooming period, he finally knows that 100 years have passed and the mysterious return of the woman is imminent.”

It will be a seated show, with audio-visual interaction on projection, with lights programmed to the music, dance, live music. 

The shows will take place on 31st October, 1st November (two shows) and 2nd November 2024. Tickets can be reserved [here]

Credits:
MUSIC & CONCEPT:   PAUL TARO SCHMIDT
DRAMATURGY: LEONARD LAMPERT
CHOREOGRAPHY:     IVANA BALABNOVA
DANCERS: COKO DE WINDT
COSTUME DESIGN/MAKE-UP: CAROLINA MISTZELLA
VISUAL ART: WEIDI ZHANG
ART DESIGN/POSTER: OLGA ANTONOVA
LIGHT DESIGN: CHI HIM CHIK
SOUND DESIGN: JONAS FULLEMANN
PHOTOGRAPHY: ARDENNES ORNATI, PAUL TARO SCHMIDT
VIDEOGRAPHY: BENJAMAT HESS, JUAN PABLO SALAZAR,  OLIVER KIMBER
FILM EDITOR: BENJAMAT HESS
PROJECT_MANAGER: OLENA IEGOROVA

MUSICIANS
NARRATION ERI OSHIKAWA
SHO NAOMI SATO
VOCALS SALOME CAVEGN, ALEKSANDRA SUCUR
DOUBLE BASS AZUNA OISHI
PERCUSSION BARBARA RIBEIRO
PIANO PAUL TARO SCHMIDT
VOICES ARDENNES ORNATI, DMITRY SMIRNOV, ALEKSANDRA SUCUR, CHI HIM CHIK, SAIKO SASAKI, STEPHAN TEUWISSEN, OLGA ANTONOVA
STRINGS MAX BAILLIE, ALESSANDRO RUISI, GRETTA MUTLU, OLI LANFORD, HÉLÈNE CLEMENT, ANNE BEILBY, KIRSTEN JENSON, COLIN ALEXANDER
MUSIC CONTRACTOR ELEONORE, SUSIE GILLIS
RECORDED BY JOHN BARRETT AT ABBEY ROADS STUDIO 2

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Kikk Festival

reconFIGURE will be showcased at KiKK Festival in Namur (Belgium)

Founded in 2011, Kikk International Festival of Digital & Creative Cultures is a city-wide exhibition space and market place for designer, scientists, makers, entrepreneus, artists, musicians and many more.
This year`s festival asks the questions “Can we still believe in visuals?” and “Can we distinguish between true and false in the digital age and the development of generative AI?” We live more and more in a world, where the line between reality and illusion is blurred. Our online presence has become a meticulously curated representation—a manifestation of the “selfie society.” Social networks thrive on self-promotion and the relentless pursuit of validation through likes and followers. The content we consume and create is standardized, shaped by influencers and algorithms, creating a disjunction between our digital personas and authentic identities (see more here).

Our project reconFIGURE will be part of the exhibition from 24th to 27th October 2024.
More infos [here].

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Probing XR’s Futures: Opening Workshop 

“Extended reality” (XR) devices like Apple’s recently announced Vision Pro or Meta’s Oculus Quest 3 enable new possibilities for mixing the real world with a computationally generated one, promising to “change interaction as we know it.” What are we to make of this claim?  

To tackle this question, Probing XR’s Futures brings together designers, scholars, artists and curators during a 4-year SNF-funded research project. Its opening workshop on Wednesday, 19 June 2024, will bring together project partners, collaborators, and interested researchers at the Immersive Arts Space to take a first stab at core issues relating to XR from contrasting perspectives. These perspectives include design fiction, sensory ethnography, video analysis, critical disability studies, STS and more. 

The opening workshop at the IAS offers an apt opportunity to engage interdisciplinary conversation on design fiction, bodily experience, and critical inquiry, while providing a forum for instructive exchange between upcoming scholars and established researchers. Confirmed participants include Sabine Himmelsbach (HeK Basel), David Howes (Concordia), Lorenza Mondada (Basel), Pilar Orero (Barcelona), Andreas Uebelbacher (Zugang für Alle, Zurich).    

Workshop participation is upon invitation. For those interested in joining, please contact Joëlle Kost at IAS. 

Where: ZHdK | Immersive Arts Space | 1.J30
When: 19.06.2024

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Immersive Arts Research

The Immersive Arts Space conducts practice-based research on the field of interaction between art, design and digital technology. The team members have their professional roots in film, game design, interaction design, music, computer science and engineering, and often members have a background in more than one discipline. The IASpace is part of the research cluster of the Digitalization Initiative of the Zurich Higher Education Institutions (DIZH).

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SNSF-Project: Probing XR’s Futures. Design Fiction, Bodily Experience, Critical Inquiry

“Extended reality (XR) devices like Apple’s recently announced Vision Pro or Meta’s Oculus Quest 3 enable new possibilities for mixing the real world with a computationally generated one, promising to “change interaction as we know it.”  Yet, there is little research on exactly how XR might reshape bodily subjectivity and experience. Probing XR’s Futures utilizes a critically-historically informed, practice-based design approach to examines how XR technologies reimagine bodily subjectivity, interaction and experience, on the one hand, and how bodily experience could reimagine XR, on the other. The 4-year project employs critical, creative, conceptual and empirical approaches to address three questions: How is everyday interaction in XR achieved? How will XR change interaction and what social reciprocity and mutual access will be enabled? What concrete effects and forms of discipline will be enacted on disabled bodies interacting in XR? The objective is to use design fiction, a design research method that prototypes objects and scenarios to provoke new ways of thinking about the future, as a form of critical inquiry to probe the present and future of social interaction in XR in three different settings and contexts: the lab, public space and in collaboration with disabled researchers and communities. Situated at the Immersive Arts Space at the Zurich University of the Arts, the project is at the interdisciplinary intersection of Critical VR studies, Science and Technology Studies (STS) and experimental media design. It will constitute one of the first in the context of Swiss and German speaking design research to develop alternative thinking and experimental aesthetic-design analysis, reflection and critique of XR directly in situated action and use with the general public.

Team:
Christopher Salter (Project Lead)
Puneet Jain (PhD Candidate)
Eric Larrieux (Researcher)
Chris Elvis Leisi (Researcher)
Oliver Sahli (Researcher)
Philippe Sormani (Senior Researcher)
Stella Speziali (Researcher)

Project Partners:
Andreas Uebelbacher (Access for All Foundation)
John David Howes (Concordia University Montreal, Sociology/Anthropology)
Sabine Himmelsbach (Haus der elektronischen Künste Basel, HeK)
Pilar Orero (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Transmedia Research Group)
Lorenza Mondada (Universität Basel, Institut für Französische Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft)

Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation SNSF (01.11.2023 – 31.10.2027)

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Zurich Art Weekend @ Immersive Arts Space

At the Zurich Art Weekend, the Immersive Arts Space will provide insights into two ongoing research projects that deal with the transfer of the visitor’s body into the digital domain in different ways. The multiuser mixed reality experience Doppelgänger invites visitors to a confrontation with their own self as a three-dimensional double in a real environment. In the installation A Hero’s Return, the viewers’ bodies provide the starting point for generative heroic images in real time.

When: 07.06.24 | 17:00 – 21:00
08.06.24 | 13:00 – 17:00
09.06.24 | 13:00 – 16:00
Where: ZHdK | Immersive Arts Space | 1.J30

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A Hero’s Return

Copyright ZHdK 2024

The interactive installation A Hero’s Return transforms visitors’ poses into a digitally generated alter ego. The creation of the character and its background is realized in real-time by artificial intelligence models. This installation prototype explores the capabilities of these models (such as Stable Diffusion) and focuses on the technical and aesthetic possibilities in combination with the performative interaction with visitors. The installation also incorporates popular film representation techniques: a virtual camera performs a circular tracking shot around the scanned visitor’s body, reminiscent of scenes from numerous action hero films.

Credits:
Artists: Martin Fröhlich, Stella Speziali
Thanks to: Ege Seçgin

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doppelgaenger:apparatus

doppelgaenger:apparatus is a multiuser mixed reality experience that enables participants to confront their computer generated 3D doubles in a real physical surrounding. Enabled by a custom designed AI-based process, a frontal 2D image of the participants is taken and quickly transformed into an animated 3D reconstruction. From the moment the visitors put on the headset, they see the real environment captured by a camera on the headset. Gradually, this familiar space shfits, with the appearance of the visitors’ double standing before them. Co-present with other participants, visitors intimately interact with their ‘mirror image’ while observing and interacting with others doing the same. While at first the participants get the feeling of controlling their ‘mirror image’, this rapidly shifts as their doubles, free from the constraints of the original bodies, start to invade the participants’ personal space, leading to a disturbing and uncanny play between them. Historically, a doppelgänger was seen as a ghostly counterpart for a living person, seen as an omen or sign of death. Freud later argued that encountering one’s double produces an experience of “doubling, dividing and interchanging the self.” This installation thus takes the next step in exploring how new digital sytems increasingly produce uncanny tensions between our bodies and their captured other.

Video Copyright ZHdK 2024

Credits:  
Artist and Development: Chris Elvis Leisi 
Artist and Sound: Christopher Lloyd Salter 
Machine Learning: Florian Bruggisser

Next presentation: MESH Festival, 16. to 20. October at HEK in Basel. More information [here]

Recent exhibition: REFRESH x FANTOCHE, 04.-08. September 2024 from noon to 8pm.

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BODIES-MACHINES-PUBLICS

A glocal network exploring bodies in the age of computer mediated reality

BODIES-MACHINES-PUBLICS brings together a “glocal” (global and local) network of cultural and research partners in Switzerland, India and Chile that seek to provide time and space for artists to develop prototypes and works exploring the sensitive body and technical mediation in relation to public space. The project is a two-year collaborative initiative between NAVE (Chile), KHOJ Studios (India), Immersive Arts Space/ZHdK (Zurich, Switzerland) and Kornhausforum (Bern, Switzerland) and is supported by the Pro Helvetia Synergies Program.

People increasingly interact with technologies such as wearable sensors, VR/AR headsets or other data gathering systems on an intimate, bodily level which successfully blurs the lines between the physical and the digital; the body and its interaction with its environment. At the same time, the involuntary data collection and machine-led decisions that arise from these sensing technologies exacerbates historical inequalities, particularly affecting marginalized groups. Addressing the capture of human motion, thoughts and experience through new technologies is therefore an ongoing challenge that requires new kinds of creative and imaginative practices.

Residency 2024

The project starts this year with the combined residencies at the Immersive Arts Space and Kornhausforum. The two part residency starts on 9th September at the IAS and moves then into the Kornhausforum until 5th October 2024, where there will be a public presentation of the projects. Two artists – one from Switzerland, and another one from Chile – will share the spaces and work on their projects with the aim to exchange artistically as well as culturally.

The Swiss artist is Ludovica Galleani d`Agliano, who graduated in 2023 from Interaction Design (ZHdK) with her project Syntia_CAM. In the month long residency she aims on developing Syntia_CAM into a live performance and therefore interactive installation between the main characters and audiences.

Javier Muñoz Bravo is a composer within the field of instrumental and electronic music. Javier was trained at The University of Chile (Santiago) and Institut de recherche et coordination acoustique/musique (Ircam) in Paris. Today, Javier is based in Paris and works together with choreographer Stefanie Inhelder and the cie glitch company creating immersive dance performances. During the residency the duo will develop Une saison en métavers – an immersive piece, with a female singer in combination with AI driven visuals, motion capture and live electronics.
https://javiermunozbravo.com/