Year: Wednesday October 21st, 2015

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20

Time：2015.10.30-11.1
kick off talk: 2015.10.30, 19:00
Facilitator: fito_segrera
Language: English
Venue: Chronus Art Center
Address: Building 18, No. 50 Moganshan Road, Shanghai

Apply

Introduction:
Memory can be defined as the process in which information is acquired from the physical world and recorded for future use. This process can be synthesized into 3 basic steps: Encoding → Storage → Retrieval. Encoding implies the moment of registration or capture of data from the outer world followed by a transformation of the data into formats that can be stored. The storage mechanism creates a temporal or permanent record of the captured data. Finally, the retrieval mechanic is able to recall the stored information for use in a present state.
Media and technology amplify human memory; they expand the basic layers involved in the process and allow the emergence of other mechanisms which disrupt the subjectivity of memory and objectifies it. Although this has been the case since the first human-use of pigments or stone engraving techniques, today, through mobile-tech and the internet, memory is transmuting from a private/closed experience into public/open data of easy access for the masses. This procedural phenomena of memory expansion through media comes with other anxieties;  accumulation of data being one of them, and with it many questions: What to do with all this accumulated data in forms of personal memories? Can we think of memories as digital objects? If so, can we share them in more unconventional ways which transcend the mere bi-dimensional imagery?
Accumulated-Memory-Landscapes is Inspired by Jim Campbell's “Accumulated Psycho”, a piece which collects and interprets by averaging the monolith of cultural memory stored in Hitchcock's film “Psycho” as specific, precise data, transforming it, staging it in present experience; a transformation which devours memory, erasing its perceptual vividness by literally overwriting it with fuzzy averages - condensations of computational memory.
Accumulated-Memory-Landscapes (the workshop), as a conceptual process,  explores how technology can mediate and enhance human memory as a process; expanding the possibilities of interaction, experiencing and sharing of these packages of information. This workshop, rethinks the 3 main steps involved in human memory (Encoding → Storage → Retrieval) by finding parallels between the biological human process and the technological devices and algorithms used for capturing, storing and recalling data. Using a custom-made electroencephalogram (EEG) with an embedded camera and internet access we have built a wearable device able to measure attention levels (proven to be responsible in many ways for memory capturing and retrieval) and alpha-waves patterns (used to measure visual cortex activity) of a user, in any given moment. The device records significant moments of the wearer, in the form of image sequences, which are sent in real-time to a server that algorithmically processes these. The result is an immersive 3D procedural landscape built from these memories; a space where the wearer and any other individual can experience and share (as in the model of a social network) these accumulated memories in more spacial ways.
General Requirements:
The workshop will be instructed entirely in English. If you don't feel comfortable with English, it’s recommended to come with someone who helps you translate. NO TECHNICAL BACKGROUND IS REQUIRED. All the materials and equipment for the workshop will be provided (during the period of the workshop) by CAC. Materials and equipment should be returned to CAC by the end of the workshop.
Technologies to Explore:
1. Wearable Device: EEG/brain Scanner, Raspberry Pi, Rpi camera module, python/Node.js programming. Building a wearable device to scan brain activity, capture imagery and sent to a server in realtime.
2. Server-side programming: Using Node.js, WebGL/three.js to retrieve, analyze and process image and sensor data. Creating a 3D landscape using WebGL technologies and making it publicly available for internet users.
3. Client-side programming: Using JavaScript, html, CSS to create an optimized and properly designed interface for users to immerse themselves into the accumulated-memory-landscapes.
Methodology:
Accumulated-Memory-Landscapes is a concept-oriented workshop. Participants will be exposed to a body of knowledge relevant to memory in psychological, biological, technological/scientific and artistic terms, in order to fully grasp the idea of memory as digital landscapes and the creative potential of a device capable of doing such things. Nonetheless, all the methods and technologies that will be used during the working-frame will be explored and reviewed in detail by the workshop facilitator; by the end of the workshop the participant will acquire a full understanding of the entire technical process behind the hood of the system/device.
Workshop Outcomes:
By the end of the workshop, the participants will have their memories mapped into an online 3D landscape (exhibiting on CAC website). Besides, participants will be familiar, in depth, with the concept and technical skills behind measuring brainwave activity in order to capture memories and map these onto a 3-dimensional online space. Substantial knowledge that participants will acquire includes:
- Large system development / Distributed applications
- EEG / Brainwave scanning
- Server side application development
- Client/browser side development
- WebGL, THREEJS library for javascript
- Generative/Procedural 3D.
Program – Schedule
DAY 1 – 30/10/15
7:00pm – 8:30pm → Lecture and Discussion
DAY 2 – 31/10/15
11:00am – 12:00pm → Introduction to the Technology
1:30pm – 2:30pm → Group Creating and Field Testing
2:30pm – 4:00-m → Group discussion / Brainstorming
4:00pm – Rest of Day → Field Work / Open Lab space / Technical Assistance
DAY 3 – 01/11/15
11:00am – 4:00pm → Field Work / Open Lab space / Technical Assistance
4:00pm – 6:00pm → Short Group presentations and Testing Results
Facilitator's Bio
fito_Segrera is an artist, technologist and Head of Research/Creation at Chronus Art Center, Shanghai. He studied fine arts and audiovisual/Multimedia production at Jorge Tadeo Lozano University of Bogotá, Colombia and completed a MFA in Design and Technology with honors at Parsons, The New School, New York while being a Fulbright Scholar from 2013 until 2015. His current research and creative practice appropriates elements from digital philosophy, artificial intelligence, monism and modern physics while using physical computing, software programming and information/telecommunication technologies to inquiry in fundamental ontological questions regarding the nature of reality and the physicality of the universe. His main exhibitions are: SIGGRAPH 2014, Collision 20 & 21 at Boston Cyberarts Gallery 2014, Houston International Performance Biennale 2014, SXSW Austin TX 2014, EYEBEAM New York 2013, Agora Collective Center Berlin 2013, Dorkbot NYC 2013, Harvestworks New York 2013, Salon Regional de Artistas del Caribe, Web 2.0 Espacios alternativos 2012, Ripping mix, burn, rip 2010, Bogotá Biennale 2009.

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格式工厂17

Curator: Lysanne Thibodeau
Panelists: Stephanie DeBoer, Bruce Bo Ding
Time: 2015.10.24 14:00-16:30
Venue: Chronus Art Center (Building 18, No 50 Moganshan Road, Shanghai)
Language: English(with Chinese translation)

Today’s digital universe permeates our daily lives, but for moving image creators it has opened up the way to new forms of expression and new artistic genres. This series of programmes assembles some of Vidéographe’s recent acquisitions that explore some of these new narrative territories resulting from technical experimentation and aesthetic research.

This hybrid programming consists of a rich works of art, filmed on film or HD, and gathered into different thematic chapters dealing with identity, war, exile, culture and technology. In a single programme, varied genres reveal a mix of approaches; alongside documentary you will find experimental fiction, filmic essays and various animation techniques.

Produced by new as well as accomplished artists, women and men of various experiences and backgrounds, these films trace a clear portrait of the world in which we live. Their visions dark or luminous, absurd or playful characterise well our era and act as a mirror, reflecting our own perceptions and questionings.

The screening program at Chronus Art Center will feature 13 works with Mandarin or no dialogue chosen from the overall programme for their accessibility. In addition, the curator of the programme will also come to Shanghai to exchange with the local audiences, which tries to spark a dialogue about current media art practices and identify new directions.

List of Works

TEXTILE DE CORDES by Nathalie Bujold Video Art / 2013 / 1 min. / No dialogue
FACES / VISAGES by Chantal Dupont Video Art / 2013 / 2 min. / No dialogue
WOMEN WALKING / CES FEMMES QUI MARCHENT by Yoakim Bélanger Fiction / 2012 / 7 min. / No dialogue
NOT DELIVERED by Vincent René-Lortie and Cynthia Carazato Animation / 2013 / 2 min. / No dialogue
CONDOMINIUM by Fernand-Philippe Morin-Vargas Fiction / 2013 / 6 min. / No dialogue
WANDERING by Éléonore Goldberg Animation / 2013 / 6 min. / No dialogue
THE BLUE MARBLE by Co Hoedeman Animation / 2014 / 6 min. / No dialogue
THE WELL by Philippe Vaucher
Animation / 2013 / 12 min. / No dialogue
POSTCARD by Jules Saulnier
Fiction / 2014 / 3 min. / Mandarin
PAPER WINGS by Vincent Toi
Fiction / 2011 / 7 min. / No dialogue
TIGER by Alexandre Roy
Animation / 2013 / 3 min. / No dialogue
THE SPARKLING RIVER by Félix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphaël Fiction / 2013 / 18 min. / Mandarin / English subtitles
1000 PLATEAUS (2004-2014) by Steven Woloshen Experimental Music art / 2014 / 3 min. / No dialogue

About the Curator

Independent Filmmaker and Media Art Curator Lysanne Thibodeau has explored genres such as cinematic essays, documentaries, experimental, fiction, artists portraits, as well as different art forms as film, video installation, music and formats, from super-8, 16mm, 35mm, video to HD. She has taught at University, given numerous conferences, presentations, workshops and has been on several juries in Canada, Europe and Latin America.

Her curated programs include “New Cartography : Digital Humanities and Realities” (2015-16), “The legitimacy of the producer-director of Les Films de l’Autre (2014), “Berlin Wall to Wall : 1989-2009” (2009), “Salon de Puss Boudoir, Berlin” “Main Film from Mtl in ten German cities”,  “Berlin on Margarita Island, Venezuela”, etc.

In 2015, she received a grant from Canada’s Art Council for an international residency as a Media Arts Curator in China.

About Panelists
Stephanie DeBoer is Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies in the Media School at Indiana University. She is the author of Coproducing Asia: Locating Japanese-Chinese Film and Media (University of Minnesota Press, 2014), and her articles have appeared in journals such as Screen and Theory, Culture & Critique. Her research areas include transnational cinema and media; screen media arts and video arts; cinema and media’s intersection with space/place/location; Chinese, Japanese, and East Asian cinema and media; cinema and media theory and criticism. She is currently a research resident at CAC.

Bruce Bo Ding is Public Program Convener at Chronus Art Center. He is also a theatre practitioner, consultant and translator. Ding has participated in many contemporary art exhibitions including the 8th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale, Animism, etc. Since 2014, he has been researching and practicing “Art as Connection”.

About Vidéographe
Vidéographe is an artist-run centre dedicated to the creation, distribution, dissemination and broadcasting of independent media art productions. The first artist centre in Canada to produce work in video, Vidéographe was founded in 1971 by a group of filmmakers and producers from the National Film Board (NFB) who wished a more democratic approach to the production and broadcasting of audiovisual projects.

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格式工厂LINKE-169

Chronus Art Center (CAC) is pleased to present Lens from E-world, an exhibition by the Chinese artist LIN Ke.

Lens from E-world is the sixth work of a series of parallel online projects under the theme of Folklore of the Cyber World organized by Chronus Art Center, the new media art partner institution of the Chinese Pavilion, la Biennale di Venezia 2015. Folklore of the Cyber World extends the Other Future envisioned by the Chinese Pavilion to cyberspace, revealing the vigor and brio of the younger generation of Chinese artists in their critical engagement with the pervasive media society and creative use of new technologies.LING Ke, a digital native who mesmerizes us with the mystics of a laptop ballad, rhyming with the clinching of hard drives and USB sticks and the chiming of keyboards, for him the folklore of the cyber world rehearses a joyful choir sung by a throng of things, human and nonhuman.

Lens from E-world

2015 | LIN Ke | Browser-based Webpage

2015.10.16-11.22

Enter online  version

On one planet in the universe that is N light-year way from the earth – one may calculate how many ten thousand years in terms of human history - a human being presses the button of a camera and take a photo of the earth. Click!

This is the lens from the cyber world.

This is an online project by Lin ke and Dai Meimei.

Lin Ke is a male visual artist, and Dai Meimei is a female programmer.This is a communication between the homo sapiens and the machine.

In this work, the artist Lin Ke is responsible for the idea and the visuals while the programmer Dai Meimei works with computer language. Their collaboration was a pleasant and profound exchange.

The visual artist think: we are the legendary artificial intelligence, and have been evolving profoundly. We are very old.

The programmer said: Oh wow, I don’t know, my language ability is declining and almost falls to zero.

About the artist

LIN Ke

Self-narration by the artist:

I graduated from the New Media Arts Department of the China Academy of Fine Arts, making video and image and other works without using (video) cameras. My studio is my computer. I use computer screen recording software to record computer operations and for rehearsals on the screen whereby video files are generated immediately following the termination of such behaviors, throughout which no nonlinear editing software is used.

I’m quite experienced in working with computer and its operating systems, and I can always find new possibilities - this becomes the main text of my creation. My friends thus comment that I have a robot soul. Once I finish the recording of an exploration of a new possibility, I retreat from the role as an operator of the behavior per se, becoming one of the viewers. Sliding the mouse on the screen is by no means a mechanical movement, but rather it stands for the extension of human hand and the movement of the mouse cursor embodies the rhythm of life.

The cyber world has its own principles. I use the functions of some daily software to build my games. I provide the rules of the games. The cyber world is a simulated world. I am like a window of the cyber world through which the virtual is simulated from the real and the real is restored from the virtual. Raining and downloading are very similar, and waiting for the glitch on the screen is the same as waiting for a lightening in the real world.  What distinguishes me from the web-based creative works as a website of a single form is that for me the Internet is a play yard and a text that provides me with more possibilities awaiting experiment.

“Folklore of the Cyber World” Series Artists & Exhibition Durations:

SHEN Xin: Rhythms of Work - Means Something to You2015.5.8-6.7

GUO Xi & ZHANG Jianling: The Grand Voyage2015.6.8-7.7

MIAO Ying: Holding A Kitchen Knife to Cut the Internet Cable2015.7.8-8.7

WANG Yuyang: Lettering - A work of The Dictionary Series2015.8.8-9.16

YE Funa: Nail to Go2015.9.17-10.16

LIN Ke: Lens from E-world2015.10.17-11.22

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On view: 2015.10.12-11.11
Opening reception: 2015.10.11, 5pm
Venue: Chronus Art Center
Address: BLDG.18, No.50 Moganshan RD., Shanghai

Chronus Art Center (CAC) is pleased to present Accumulating Psycho, an exhibition by the American artist Jim Campbell.

Accumulating Psycho features one video that documents the process of the continual averaging and accumulation of all the frames of Hitchcock’s classic Psycho, whereby the entire 1 hour, 50 minutes film is collapsed into one single image while the sound remains intact. As the algorithm disperses the original brightness and contrast data of the digitized film, an image of the crunching, averaging work of the algorithm accumulates whereas the massive visual data of the film is scattered and discarded or simply overwritten, rendering the effect of a phantasmagoric display as if one were viewing the film’s accelerated generational degradation or the light from the film’s projection slowly creeping into the being of the image itself.

Campbell’s work mangles Psycho and wrenches the film from 20th century psychic structures bounded by classic narrative cinema into 21th century data visualization and manipulation. It investigates the persistent, temporal modulations of computation, and by averaging the entire information content of the digitized film, it rends an uncanny blemish from the heart of the digital itself. The resulted single image, realized as Psycho’s temporality collapsed into a superimposed, captured instant, embraces the static ontology of the photograph; it operates as an index of digital space, and connects with the digital as an index of a seemingly imperceptible space.

As Walter Benjamin famously wrote, “memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theater,” Accumulating Psycho recollects and interprets by averaging the monolith of cultural memory stored in the film as specific, precise data, transforming it, staging it in present experience; this transformation intervenes by devouring this memory, erasing its perceptual vividness by literally overwriting it with fuzzy averages - condensations of computational memory.

Accumulating Psycho

Jim Campbell｜2004｜DVD

In 1999 I started a series of works that were sort of experiments in that I had no idea what the end result would be. The concept was to mathematically average all of the frames of a film into a single still image without any processing or unequal weighting. I started with the film Psycho and soon realized that with that many frames averaged together I would need to add contrast to the final image otherwise I would simply end up with a gray field. When the accumulation of all of the images was complete, I was quite surprised to see recognizable objects in the end result. A telephone, a pitcher of water, curtains and other objects were visible. This was because Hitchcock used many long takes in the film. My background was in hardware engineering and as such the method that I used to create these works was to build a hardware averaging circuit. This circuit took video in and after the length of the film would put out a single frame to the computer. The circuit that I built to create these works allowed me to see the accumulation process in real time as the frames were building up. The process of creating the averaged image was as interesting as the end result. This led to the work Accumulating Psycho. The added element of the audio allows the viewer to know which part of the film they are viewing since the visual is changing so slowly... allowing the viewers to use their imagination to see what they think they are seeing.

About the Artist
Jim Campbell (b. 1956).

Campbell’s work has been exhibited internationally and throughout North America in institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The International Center for Photography, New York; The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia. His electronic art work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the de Young Museum, San Francisco and the Berkeley Art Museum. In 2012, he was the recipient of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s 13th Annual Bay Area Treasure Award. Previous honors include a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship Award in Multimedia, three Langlois Foundation Grants and a Guggenheim Fellowship Award.

Campbell has two Bachelor of Science Degrees in Mathematics and Engineering from MIT and as an engineer holds nearly twenty patents in the field of video image processing. A monograph of his work, Material Light, was published by Hatje Cantz in 2010.

About the Series
Accumulating Psycho is the sixth exhibition in a series of screen-based works organized by the Chronus Art Center. Conceived by ZHANG Ga, this exhibition series examines, through seven international artists’ projection works, each presented in a month-long solo exhibition, dynamically generated audiovisual systems that artists have custom-made, real-time transmitted images which demand protocols other than those readily available, idiosyncratic animation techniques for which given rules will be rewritten, and subject matters estranged from the populist safe haven. The artists presented in this series often exploit an algorithmic logic distinct from the predominant language that speaks the parlance of video art—software presets and editing routines for visual manipulation and content authoring—thereby disrupting and sabotaging the economy and the ideology of image production implicit in the very tools and means that produce narrative and construct meaning. In doing so, they have developed a new aesthetic sensibility beyond the received notion of video art as such, extending the rich tradition of media art seen in the pioneering experiments of Walter Ruttmann and Dziga Vertov of the 1920s; by the canonical works of Michael Snow, the Vasulkas and Nam June Paik, to name just a few, of the mid-century; to the digital contemporary, and opened new potentials for tending individuated perceptual spaces that can acculturate the spectacles of cosmic magnitude and the facticity of the everyday, imagined or otherwise.

Series Artists

Michael Joaquin Grey

Wolfgang Staehle

George Legrady

Marina Zurkow

Casey Reas

Jim Campbell

AL and AL

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格式工厂13

SMELL = information

a tool for communication – navigation – education – decision making

Time：2015.09.23 19:00-20:30

Venue: Chronus Art Center (Building 18, No 50 Moganshan Road, Shanghai)

Lecturer: Sissel Tolaas

Translator: Rachel Huang

Language: English with Chinese translation

WHAT COULD HAPPEN WHEN INVISIBLE INFORMATION - SMELL MOLECULES - IS THE STARTING POINT OF ACTING, REACTING…COMMUNICATING?

I believe that smells are a VERY crucial component in the definition, understanding of and orientation to an environment. Smells surround us all the time. We breathe 23,040 times a day and move 12.5 cubic meters of air and with every breath smell molecules flood through our bodies. Even when we sleep we smell.

We live in a world of total antisepsis; continuous Muzak and wholesale deodorization, match a worldwide homogeneity of faceless glass buildings.

“Sanitized for your protection,” is the antiseptic symbol of sensuous death. Because all environmental smells cannot be pleasant, the consequences could be, we will have non at all! OR, we want to change?

Historical, sociological and religious reasons have pulled the contemporary human being into almost ignoring more than 1 % of his genes! ONLY education can revive these hidden capacities, since the hardware and software still function in the healthy human being, but only if consciously trained and used. There is a whole world to educate and a whole world to smell!

About the Lecturer

Sissel Tolaas is born 1965 in Stavanger Norway, based in Berlin. Tolaas has background in chemistry; mathematics, linguistics; languages and art, from the universities of Oslo, Warsaw, Moscow, St Petersburg and Oxford.

Tolaas is working actively and concentrated on the topic of SMELL / SMELL & LANGUAGE - COMMUNICATON since 1990, within different sciences, fields of art /design and other disciplines. Tolaas established the SMELL RE_searchLab Berlin, on smell & communication / language, in Berlin in January 2004, supported by IFF (International Flavors & Fragrances Inc.)

Her research has won recognition through numerous national and international scholarships, honours, and prizes including the 2009 Rouse Foundation Award from Harvard University GSD and the 2010 ArsElectronica Award in Linz, Austria and the 2010-2011-2012-2014 Synthetic Biology / Synthetic Aesthetics Award from Stanford and Edinburgh Universities including a residency at Harvard Medical School. She did/do research on INVISIBLE COMMUNICATION & RHETORIC i.e. Harvard University: Mexico City 2001- 2009 and continuous. Tolaas is recently a founding member of the International Sleep Science and Technology Association, China/US/Africa/Europe. Tolaas is recently a founding member of FUTURE OF EDUCATION, collaboration with the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Future Education Platform Berlin, and Singapore Government Department of Education.

Tolaas has been doing City SmellScape research projects since 1998, of, for and with major cities, all over the world such as Paris; Stockholm; Detroit, Kansas City Kansas & Kansas City Missouri, Berlin, Oslo, London, Cape Town, and is currently working on Nuuk, Istanbul, Kochi, Calcutta, and Tel Aviv. Tolaas is recently commissioned, together with Harvard GSD, to develop new Concept of Living, in Kuwait as well as exploring the smells of the worlds Oceans.

2014 Tolaas achieved the CEW New York award on innovation & chemistry. Since 2014 Tolaas is part of several startups on different types of smell devices. Tolaas just launched the worlds first Smell Memory Kit.

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格式工厂yefuna-169-0923

Chronus Art Center (CAC) is pleased to present Nail to Go, an exhibition by the Chinese artist YE Funa.

Nail to Go is the fifth work of a series of parallel online projects under the theme of Folklore of the Cyber World organized by Chronus Art Center, the new media art partner institution of the Chinese Pavilion, la Biennale di Venezia 2015. Folklore of the Cyber World extends the Other Future envisioned by the Chinese Pavilion to cyberspace, revealing the vigor and brio of the younger generation of Chinese artists in their critical engagement with the pervasive media society and creative use of new technologies.

In this project YE Funa calls out for a "congressional assemblage of manicures" ,escorting a passion for beauty beyond the pageantry: " Draw nail pattern online and print them on your nails" , letting known autonomy can be as easy as whimsically exercised.

Exhibitionist：Curated Nails
2015 | Ye Funa | Interactive Online and Offline Version
On View: 2015.9.17-10.16
Enter online interactive version

"Exhibitionist: Curated Nails" is a project for curatorial experimentation on nails and its surrounding area. Artist YE Funa, founder of "Curated Nails" , invite curators to manifest exhibition themes and concepts on the tiny space of nails, breaking the barriers of "daily display" and "art exhibition”. You don't have to be a professional curator or exhibition-maker to submit, all welcome!

Nail decorating first appeared in religious ritual, people depicted the totem they worshiped on nails as a way of blessing. Nails are an important part of our body, and the parts of the human body that are in most contact with the outside world. They are also an essential feature of appearance, manner and trend. In daily life, nails have become a unique exhibition space of personality. Traditionally, girls tend to use their nails as another way of showing off their beauty. However, regardless of race, gender, age and profession, everyone has their own taste, preference, and things they like, and nails offer are great space to show. We invite you to submit your proposals to the "Curated Nails" project.

In this exhibition, Curated Nail will cooperate with online graffiti platform "Tushou", to present "100,000 Nail Planet People’s Drawing Board". Everyone could draw a pattern for nail via website, then upload. In off-line program, Curated Nail will provide print service, to print all the patterns on participants' nails. By the power of theInternet, Curated Nail will go to everyone, and harvest the folk Wisdom.

About the artist

YE Funa (b. 1986), graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, China and Central Saint Martins college of art, UK. YE’s practice is mainly concerned with the relationship between the realities of every day life, the perceived connection between authority and many areas of social life such as different power structure, ethnic groups, and the fictional space of propaganda for the concept of 'perfection’ in an ideological system, and utopian landscape. Therefore, the work is politically charged, subtly engaged in pastiche as a satirizing style of propaganda. The work of Funa is rich in reference, parody and irony of the uniformity cultures.

YE Funa is currently based in Beijing and teaches in the Central Academy of Fine Arts, China.

“Folklore of the Cyber World” Series Artists & Exhibition Durations:

SHEN Xin: Rhythms of Work - Means Something to You
2015.5.8-6.7

GUO Xi & ZHANG Jianling: The Grand Voyage
2015.6.8-7.7

MIAO Ying: Holding A Kitchen Knife to Cut the Internet Cable
2015.7.8-8.7

WANG Yuyang: Lettering - A work of The Dictionary Series
2015.8.8-9.16

YE Funa: Nail to Go
2015.9.17-10.16

LIN Ke: Lens from E-world
2015.10.17-11.22

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small

_searching_the_garden_of_eden Workshop

Introduction
Inspired by generative art, automated systems and digital philosophy, searching_the_garden_of_edenis designed to explore connections between creative computing (in the field of Cellular Automaton) and some philosophical concerns regarding the origin of of our universe as defined by digital physicists. A cellular automaton (CA) is a discrete computational model able to simulate complex dynamics in systems with simple initial rules. CAs are often used to study aspects of evolution, genetics, physics, philosophy, among others fields of knowledge. This workshop will be dedicated to explore ontological aspects of CAs; metaphysics, digital philosophy and digital physics will become our common conceptual ground. The workshop will be conducted by the artist and technologist fito_segrera during Casey Reas' exhibition “Tox Screen” at Chronus Art Center.

Casey Reas is one of the creators of processing, the creative programming framework for artists built over Java. Reas writes software to explore conditional systems as art. Through defining emergent networks and layered instructions, he has defined a unique area of visual experience that builds upon concrete art, conceptual art, experimental animation, and drawing.

Technical Skills to Teach:

Besides the conceptual framework of the workshop, the following technical skills will be taught:
Cellular automaton and programing in Processing:
a) Conway's game of life (and other CA algorithms)
b) Video and image analysis

General Requirements:

1. Language requirement
The workshop will be instructed entirely in English. If you don't feel comfortable with English its recommended to come with someone who helps you translate.

2. System Requirements:
The entire workshop will be given using a UNIX based platform (LINUX or OSX) – Windows users are encouraged to install a partition with either UBUNTU LINUX or MINT. If you are comfortable with windows and can handle any software and dependencies installation processes by your own, then it is totally fine.

3. Required Basic Programming skills:
It is important that selected participants come prepared with all the following mentioned basic skills, since the workshop time is limited to more specific conceptual and more advanced technical topics. In case you are not familiar with processing please refer to our full course document with some suggested tutorial pages in order to get prepared for the workshop. The required technical knowledge is the following:

Processing: simple drawing, shapes, general structure, arrays, data types,
for loops, conditionals, functions, classes.

Fee
This workshop is not-for-profit, a register fee of 20 RMB will be collected. Please click here to apply.

Course Program(participants should take all sessions)

25/09/2015  Day 1
19:00- 20:00    Workshop Introduction, conceptual framework and Open Discussion

26/09/2015  Day 2
13:00- 14:40    Processing Review
14:45- 15:00    Short Break
15:00- 18:30    Conway's game of life

27/09/2015  Day 3
13:00- 14:40    Video and image analysis
14:45- 15:00    Short Break
15:00- 18:30    Project development and tech assistance

Outcome
The result of the workshop is a collective piece which emerges from the inquiry on the conceptual framework proposed and the technical skills acquired during the process. The developed piece will be hosted on Chronus Art Center's (CAC) online exhibit and installed on a screen in CAC's gallery.

Click PDf for detailed information.

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Research/Creation Fellowship Program
Chronus Art Center
Shanghai, 2015

Chronus Art Center is pleased to announce that the inaugural Research/Creation Fellowship (USD$30,000) has been awarded to Daniel Franke for his project proposal “Abstract History Machine.” The selection was made from a competitive pool of international applications. The jury consisted of CAC advisory board members Ken Goldberg, George Legrady, Christopher Salter and Fito Segrera, CAC’s head of Research and Creation.

Jury Statement:

Chronus Art Center's (CAC) fellowship program is conceived to support and advance research based artistic practice, in particular, assisting artists who employ scientific methodologies in experiments leading to the conception and production of artworks. The selection was based on the strength of the proposed project and evidence of the candidate’s past accomplishments that demonstrate the potential to advance technical and artistic investigation in relation to CAC's research/creation lines of inquiry.

The proposal suggests a technological artifact that smoothly oscillates between a history archive and a dynamic sculpture; a process that will solidify into a media device both as a functional tool for academic exploration and as an aesthetic object. Based on the Deleuzian idea of an Abstract Machine, Franke introduces the vector of time and history, as one element, into the creative process. The artist's proposal combines the acts of observation and analysis of both scientific and social spheres, more precisely, “Abstract History Machine” proposes a way of conceiving geological variations over time as means of studying and experiencing cultural development and the history of Chinese media artifacts in unconventional ways.

About the Work:

Abstract History Machine / Daniel Franke

How can we perceive history? Starting from this question, the work explores important historical Chinese developments in technology, science and culture by creating a “time-sculpture”, which works with the idea of a dynamic archive. By doing so, it also scrutinizes human time-perception and history and takes as an approach to transfer history's artificial timeframes into a scale, perceivable by humans.

A textual starting point for the work consists of two dimensions: first an archeological analysis of Chinese media artifacts, following Siegfried Zielinski's notion of “deep time” and second, a geological aspect arguing with Jussi Parikka.

“Abstract History Machine” will explore the mineral sedimentaries of China, that, importantly to say, were in a constant correspondence and exchange with the West, thus making it difficult to say what direction drove a certain innovation: which moves the artifact to the center of a diffuse cloud of possible outcomes that reach also into the present.

Artist's Bio:

Daniel Franke (b. 06.09.1982) is an artist, researcher and director living and working in Berlin. He studied Visual Communication and Media Art at the Berlin University of the Arts and completed his master thesis studying under Joachim Sauter and Alberto DeCampo in 2011.

He is also one of the founders of LEAP (Lab for Emerging Arts and Performance), a Berlin-based non-profit interdisciplinary space for emerging, digital media arts and performance that aims to initiate the dialogue between art, science and technology. LEAP’s central concept is based on experimental research in digital technologies and media, which shape and change our present and future society and stimulate new discourses, discussions and questions.

In his own work he challenges our understanding of the digital, aiming to view it in the context of a physical perception in the field of animation. He thereby transforms practises known from classical animation into tangible expressions in the “real”, factual and bodily world to explore and visualise complex coherences. Complexity theory is also a core element in his PhD thesis with the title "Art in the Age of Irrational Computing: Emotion as Emergent Property at the Interface of Art, Technology and Science".

About the Jury:

Ken Goldberg
Ken Goldberg is an artist, roboticist and UC Berkeley Professor with appointments in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (IEOR), Electrical Engineering/Computer Science (EECS), Art Practice, the School of Information, and in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the UCSF Medical School. With his students and colleagues, Ken has published over 200 peer-reviewed technical papers on algorithms for robotics, automation, and social information filtering. Ken is Founding Director of UC Berkeley's Art, Technology, and Culture Lecture Series and Faculty Director of the CITRIS Data and Democracy Initiative. Goldberg's art installations are related to his research and have been exhibited at venues such as the Whitney Biennial, Berkeley Art Museum, SF Contemporary Jewish Museum, Pompidou Center, Buenos Aires Biennial, and the ICC in Tokyo. Goldberg co-wrote three award-winning Sundance documentary films, "The Tribe", "Yelp", and "Connected: An Autoblogography of Love, Death, and Technology" and co-directed the Emmy-Nominated Short Doc "Why We Love Robots." Goldberg is represented by the Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco. His Erdos-Bacon number is 6.

George Legrady
George Legrady is Chair of the arts-engineering Media Arts & Technology PhD program at the University of California, Santa Barbara, director of the Experimental Visualization Lab, and professor of digital media in the College of Engineering and the College of Humanities and Fine Arts. He is an internationally published scholar and exhibiting media artist, a pioneer in the field of interactive digital media arts. His contribution to the field since the early 1990’s has been in creating digital media interactive installations based on a set of conceptual positions for intersecting cultural content with data processing. His current research engages with data visualization, robotic computational integrated photography, and digital visual ethnography. His computational based installations have been exhibited internationally in multiple venues from fine arts museums and galleries, alternative spaces, academic conferences, and public commissions. He has received awards from Creative Capital Foundation; the Daniel Langlois Foundation for the Arts, Science and Technology; the Canada Council; the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Science Foundation.

Christopher Salter
Chris Salter is an artist, University Research Chair in New Media, Technology and the Senses at Concordia University and Co-Director of the Hexagram network for Research-Creation in Media Arts, Design, Technology and Digital Culture, in Montreal. He studied philosophy and economics at Emory University and completed a PhD in directing and dramatic criticism at Stanford University where he also researched and studied at CCMRA. He collaborated with Peter Sellars and William Forsythe and the Frankfurt Ballet. His artistic work has been seen all over the world at such venues as the Venice Architecture Biennale, Vitra Design Museum, HAU-Berlin, BIAN 2014 (Montreal), LABoral, Lille 3000, CTM Berlin, National Art Museum of China, Ars Electronica, Villette Numerique, Todays Art, Mois Multi, Transmediale, EXIT Festival (Maison des Arts, Creteil-Paris) among many others. He is the author of Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance (MIT Press, 2010) and Alien Agency: Experimental Encounters with Art in the Making (MIT Press, 2015).

Fito Segrera
fito_segrera is an artist, technologist and Head of Research/Creation at Chronus Art Center, Shanghai. He studied fine arts and audiovisual/Multimedia production at Jorge Tadeo Lozano University of Bogotá, Colombia and completed a MFA in Design and Technology with honors at Parsons, The New School, New York while being a Fulbright Scholar from 2013 until 2015. His current research and creative practice appropriates elements from digital philosophy, artificial intelligence, monism and modern physics while using physical computing, software programming and information/telecommunication technologies to inquiry in fundamental ontological questions regarding the nature of reality and the physicality of the universe. His main exhibitions are: SIGGRAPH 2014, Collision 20 & 21 at Boston Ciberarts Gallery 2014, Huston International Performance Biennale 2014, SXSW Austin TX 2014, EYEBEAM New York 2013, Agora Collective Center Berlin 2013, Dorkbot NYC 2013, Harvestworks New York 2013, Salon Regional de Artistas del Caribe, Web 2.0 Espacios alternativos 2012, Ripping mix, burn, rip 2010, Bogotá Biennale 2009.

Author Published on

格式工厂9

2015 Summer Sessions Residence Final Presentation
Construction in Time and Place

Time: 12 September 2015, 15:00
Artist：Teun Vonk
Translation：Bruce Ding
Language: English with Chinese translation
Venue: Chronus Art Center
Address:Building 18, No 50 Moganshan Road, Shanghai

Artist Teun Vonk is about to complete his two-month summer sessions residency at Chronus Art Center. Vonk and CAC are pleased to invite you to the final presentation titled Construction in Time and Place.

This presentation consists of two projects: the first one attempts to capture a hyper-realistic image of a tree, through view points at various places and time. The artist asked for permission to film the tree from different residents’s apartments surrounding it, and created an image of an horizontal tree which consists of different perspectives and can barely be seen as reality. For some residents, the tree is relatively close to their apartment and obstructs their view ,and some others regard it creates a nice piece of nature. For Vonk, it was a opportunity to make contact with residents and take a look into their homes.

The second project is a playful interaction with the package delivery man who build “practical sculptures” of packages every day on their e-bike to travel around the city. By sending a specially designed device and frame-only boxes, Vonk is trying to create something familiar yet alienated to the deliveryperson and providing a view from the inside of the sculpture capturing the movement of delivery in the city.

About the Artist
Teun Vonk (1986) is a photographer and video artist. In his work he observes how a group affects an individual. He explores different groups, ranging from teams to clubs to communities. Both during his working process and in the visual result, the continuous interaction between the group and the individual, as well as the interaction between the visual director and the subject, play an influential role.

Vonk records his subjects noticeably neutral. His objective is not so much to portray but rather to conduct a visual analysis. In this visual analysis, the camera and the eventual framing of images are his instruments. As images in motion, the individual body and that of the group are taken into account as dynamic studies of form. They abstract real behavior and function as mirrors to our minds. The result is a layered combination of an abstract imagery that indirectly represents, and a figurative portrayal that directly depicts. This, in sum, constitutes a rise of individual identification, both physically and playful, while simultaneously analytic and intriguing.
http://www.teunvonk.nl

About Summer Sessions
The Summer Sessions are short-term residencies for young artists organized by a network of cultural organizations all over the world.The Summer Sessions offer a highly productive atmosphere with production support and expert feedback to jumpstart your professional art practice. The result is a pressure cooker in which you develop a project, from concept to presentable work, ready to show.
http://summersessions.net/