In the age of automation, digitalization, control, and profit-oriented efficiency, art and culture are not reflections of knowledge systems, socio-political struggles, or catalysts of change, but rather means of aestheticizing the system’s agenda. As a result, all the cultures may disappear in favor of a single universal pseudo-culture of consumption and exploitation.
The cultural impacts of this process are intensified when it is enhanced by artificial intelligence models of art creation in which a system produces satisfying and entertaining results in a closed loop. Instead of critical art, this system promotes profitable entertainment without social symbolism, reflections, or signs of activism. Digital art, with all it has in common with artificial intelligence, can be both the first victim and the most powerful tool of this hegemony.
● Would it be possible to find a loophole in this closed system by speculating about possible approaches to digital art, culture, and technologies that draw from other cosmologies, knowledge systems, moral values, and cultural heritage?
● What is the potential of digital art and the post-colonial approach to deal with the hegemony of this modern pseudo-culture?
● How can artists and cultural workers, amidst the pervasive control of tech giants, reimagine the notion of online social presence and collective movements through collaborative efforts and co-creation, fostering transformative actions that challenge the hegemony of these corporations?
Loophole is a virtual reality group exhibition of interactive ecosystems that is developed by XOR Space and Timcheh e.V., and consists of artworks by a group of artists from diverse cultural, ethnic, and technical backgrounds who have worked in search of aesthetic knowledge around the mentioned questions.
It is a collective and transcultural exploration of new narratives and methods to think about digital art and technologies outside the realm of mainstream culture promoted by large corporations. The project is premiered at the Timcheh Festival along with a hybrid (online-physical) panel discussion with the artists about the outcome of the project, their pieces, and creative processes.
Artists
Shanshan Wang
Elhem Younes & Neil Bruce
Sudhir Ambasana
Veronika Batzdorfer & Alec Gordon
Kateryna Repa & Hugo Lioret
Discussion Panel Moderator
Andrew Dryhurst
ART Direction, Technical Development
XOR Space
Production
XOR Space, Timcheh e.V.
The Thinkers Loop by Shanshan Wang
Building on the foundations of my project, I think, therefore, I am, this proposal outlines an endeavor to further explore the profound depths of the role of “thinkers”-the individuals who inhabit this digital landscape and generate the data that shapes the vast canvas of our digital age. This project aims to exhibit a loop where assets, derived from an infinite array of possibilities offered by AI and the Internet of Things (IoT), feed back into the realm of possibilities, thus creating a dynamic and self-evolving digital ecosystem. The structure resembles an abstract representation of the collective digital consciousness, pulsing with the thoughts, desires, and memories of all who inhabit this digital realm.
The Monster Within: a Resonance of a Revelation by Elhem Younes & Neil Bruce
This series is an exploration of intimate thoughts, emotions, or psychological patterns that each one of us might experience throughout life.
The Convoluted Passage <<non-conformity>> by Sudhir Ambasana
The proposed project attempts to bridge the Man-Machine dichotomy by unfolding the enclosure- by complete resistance, disagreement, disobedience, intolerance, and nonconformity as opposed to ‘passivity’ that conforms to the overarching systems of control. The project (re)proposes the position of the subject within this automated framework to derive contingencies in the process of production and further speculation. In the format of a web-based interface (a game), the project would invite the player to be more than a spectator. Within an interior space, the game gets its character and aesthetic stylizing through an automated LSI (linear space invariant) system, composed of inputs and impulse signals curated by the author to device a prompt generator-a language deconstruction/reconstruction model that would put together a story attributing to space as a world-building exercise filled with objects, characters, and interiorities. Scale as a device will become a tool for players to reinstate the whole notion of enclosure by formally scaling up and down objects to further complicate the boundaries between inside and outside by physically navigating in, out, and through these newly formed interiorities. By amplifying the symbolic connotation of objects, in their latent formal language, the part-to-whole relations in making assessments remain the same but scale subverts the domestic identity of an object by giving architectural attributions.
Verisimilitude–Human-Computer Feedback Loops by Veronika Batzdorfer & Alec Gordon
The project aims to bridge the human-computer interaction gap. With the advent of commercial AI applications like GPT-3.5, which largely operate as black-box models, as training weights and parameters are not made publicly accessible, the question arises as to how such algorithms, which become deeply intertwined with everyday operations, such as recommender systems can be shaped by humans in a feedback loop. Many emerging applications are optimised toward accuracy benchmarks, neglecting the explainability of underlying decisions. The present project aims to construct artificial human-like figures whose movements and poses are estimated and traced with a deep learning framework such as MoveNet. The latter relies on human training data and poses the connection of imposing the human moment on the artificial agent.
Teleport by Kateryna Repa & Hugo Lioret
If teleportation could be, what would it look and sound like? We imagined it in the form of a dome arch resonating in space. In this art project called “Teleport”, arches are presented in the form of an embryo that grows in a sonic environment depending on the development and capabilities of new technologies, just like any embryo evolving over time to become an entity in its own space.
Please contact us if you are interested in bringing LoopholeVR to your event, festival, art space, or gallery.