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Atmospheric Forest VR Experience
You are kindly invited to the opening reception of Atmospheric Forest by artists Rasa Smite and Raitis Smite (RIXC Center for New Media Culture Riga, Latvia), featuring an immersive screening and VR experience, and apéro, taking place on Wednesday, March 8, 2023, 18:15–20.30
in the Immersive Arts Space.
Along with an immersive screening, two headsets will be available for VR experience:
VR1 – for VR short-episodes (ca 5 min) – no registration needed.
VR2 – for VR full-experience (ca 15 min) – please make booking HERE
The VR Experience event is following the public lecture by Rasa Smite On Atmospheric Forest taking place a day before – on Tuesday, March 7th 2023, 17:15-18:30
Kamituga | Digital Gold @ Zurich meets Berlin
Beneath the surface of the global tech industry
The exhibition Kamituga | Digital Gold which was originally created for the exhibition Planet Digital at the Museum für Gestaltung (February to June 2022) will be showcased in an adapted version during the Festival Zurich meets Berlin. From November 3rd to 7th 2022 projects from ETH, University of Zurich, ZHdK and ZHAW will be displayed at the Museum für Naturkunde in the heart of Berlin!
Furthermore, a panel discussion with Gabriel Kamundala (PhD student, Department of Geography UZH) and Florian Bruggisser (Research Associate, ZHdK) hosted by Gayatri Parameswaran (KUSUNDA, NowHere Media) will take place on Saturday, November 4th. During the panel the experts will give insights into the creation of the exhibition and try to give outlooks on what can be done to create a more sustainable, more transparent and social chain of trade and consumption.
For more info go to
www.digital-gold.ch | Zurich meets Berlin | Berlin Science Week
Designing Enactive Co-Presence with Humanlike Characters in Cinematic Contexts
Talk by Pia Tikka (Enactive Virtuality Lab, Tallinn University)
Tuesday, 18th October 2022 @ Research Academy
The scope of technologies available to filmmakers is expanding and apparently opening new avenues of storytelling. My focus is on the application of new findings in the fields of psychophysiological tracking and machine learning in order to create virtual characters, whose behavior resembles that of humans in the most natural ways.
In this talk Pia Tikka will share some recent updates in this fast developing domain and discuss their possible applications to the co-presence of human participants and humanlike virtual characters in narrative contexts. This implies a range of multidisciplinary challenges. The core research question is what types of roles can the filmmaker give to machine learning and psycho-physiological tracking in the process of creating humanlike behaviors in narrative settings. The discussion draws from the holistic embodied approach to the mind, which in my view provides useful explanatory frames for my claims. The talk aims to inspire discussions related to the use of adaptive artificial characters in the future of virtual storytelling.
Pia Tikka is a filmmaker and EU Mobilitas+ Research Professor at the Baltic Film, Media, and Arts School (BFM), Tallinn University. Her filmography includes international film productions, feature films, and interactive VR installations. The founder of the NeuroCine research group and Enactive Virtuality Lab, she has published on the topics of neurocinematics and enactive media, and written the book Enactive Cinema: Simulatorium Eisensteinense (2008). She is Adjunct Professor of New Narrative Media at University of Lapland, fellow in the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image, and member of the European Film Academy. Currently, she focuses on biosensor-driven virtual storytelling.
Lab Insights
On June 29th and 30th, the Immersive Arts Space presented new developments from current projects. Visitors were invited to experience shifting realities with or without Virtual Reality goggles and to learn more about digital gold in our smartphones.
More about the featured research project Shifting Realities.
More about Kamituga | Digital Gold.
Book Launch: Conflict Minerals INC.
Thursday, June 30th, 2022, 16:30 | Immersive Arts Space, ZHdK
The term “conflict minerals” regroups artisanal tin, tantalum (coltan), tungsten and gold originating from war zones in Central Africa. In his book, Christoph N. Vogel tells the story of how well-intended efforts to solve a global problem have led to white-washing and abetting the continued exploitation of Congo’s resource wealth.
Conflict Minerals INC focuses on a topic that is also addressed by a a joint production of the Immersive Arts Space and the Department of Geography of the University of Zurich. The exhibition Kamituga | Digital Gold allows insights behind the shiny surface of the mobile tech industry and invites the visitors to engage with the concrete challenges and living conditions of artisanal gold miners in the region of Kamituga (Democratic Republic of Congo). [more]
No registration is needed. | Location: Immersive Arts Space, 1.J30, entrance via gate to film studio. > See map here.
Immediately after the book launch, visitors can take part in the LabInsights: The Immersive Arts Space presents new developments from current projects. [more]
Lecture by Takashi Ikegami
Tuesday, June 28th, 2022, 17:15–18:30 | Kino Toni, ZHdK
Abstract:
Even now, I am often asked as a scientist”Why do you also do art projects? I wonder why. When I do research on complex systems, there is a lot of fascinating data that I can’t reproduce (I forget the initial values and parameters) when I do computer-based simulation experiments. Science is about reproducibility, and if you do it 10 million times, you want the same event to happen 9999 times; if it happens once in 10,000 times, that’s not science, that’s art. I consider that once-in-a-lifetime interest to be art. This talk will introduce a series of works created since 2005 with a range of collaborators including the composer Keiichiro Shibuya, sound artist evala, and photographer Kenshuu Shintsubo, as well as recent works based on a custom designed android called Alter in order to discuss the meaning, possibility and challenges of the intersection between the arts and the sciences.
Takashi Ikegami is Professor in General Systems Science in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at The University of Tokyo and principle investigator of the Ikegami Lab. He received his PhD in physics from The University of Tokyoand is internationally known for his contributions to the development of complex systems science and artificial life. Some of his results have been published in Life in Motion (Seidosha, 2007) and Between Man and Machine (Kodansha, 2016). He has also been active 2005 in the arts with works such as “Filmachine” (with Keiichiro Shibuya, YCAM, 2006), “Mind Time Machine” (YCAM, 2010), “Long Good bye” (with Kenshu Shimpo, Japan Alps Festa, 2017), “Offloaded Agency” (Barbican, 2019), among many other.
No registration is needed.
Kino Toni, ZHdK, Pfingsweidstrasse 96, 8005 Zürich > See map here.
Exhibition: Planet Digital
February 11th – June 6th 2022| Museum für Gestaltung, Zürich
The exhibition Planet Digital featured a joint production of the Immersive Arts Space and the Department of Geography of the University of Zurich. The exhibition segment KAMITUGA | DIGITAL GOLD allowed insights behind the shiny surface of the mobile tech industry and invited the visitors to engage with the concrete challenges and living conditions of artisanal gold miners in the region of Kamituga (Democratic Republic of Congo). About seven percent of global gold is used for technological purposes, as a chemically stable and exceptional conductor. It is found in all our smartphones, tablets and computers.
The starting point for all digitally-based experiences were the photographs, videos and 3D scans that PhD candidate Gabriel Kamundala recorded in Kamituga in the summer of 2021 using a latest-generation smartphone. In this way, a ubiquitous device, itself containing gold and rare minerals, provided insights into the living conditions of artisanal mine workers and, at the same time, drew attention to the many challenges of the mobile tech industry.
Visitors also encountered texts about the global context. With the help of QR codes, they could view supplementary information on their smartphones. Thus, awareness of both how our digitalized lives are dependent on rare minerals and of the problematic interrelation of supply chains in the mobile tech industry was promoted.
[ Planet Digital website ] [Arte report about the exhibition]
> Digital Gold has its own website. Please visit www.digital-gold.ch
RECENT EVENTS
Public Lecture Series (Spring 2023)
The Immersive Arts Lecture Series for spring semester 2023 investigates artistic and design experiences in which humans, media and architectural spaces shape one another within the context of the built environment. Guest lecturers who come from the fields of digital arts, architecture, theater studies and the visual arts, will focus on specific artistic works from their practice, as way to open up critical discussion around emerging paradigms of bodily experience in spatial computing environments, human-machine interactions in architectural spaces, and immersive experiences between human, technical and natural systems.
Rasa Smite | March 7th, 2023 | 17:15-18:30
ON ATMOSPHERIC FOREST
Christopher Salter | March 21st, 2023 | 17:15-18:30
ON ANIMATE
Daniela Mitterberger | April 4th, 2023 | 17:15-18:30
ON DEGREES OF LIFE
Selena Savic | April 18th, 2023 | 17:15-18:30
A DATA-DRIVEN DRAMA
Kurt Hentschläger | May, 2nd, 2023 | 17:15-18:30
THE AMBIVALENT PRACTICE OF IMMERSIVE INSTALLATIONS AND PERFORMANCES