An event at Harvestworks on Governor’s Island, focusing on sound art and new media works-in-progress from the Flux Factory community. We will consider how being part of a group of socially engaged artists working as a collective contributes to the development of creative technology practices.

Roopa Vasudevan

“Slow Response” is an ongoing series in which I laboriously attempt to render working quick response (QR) codes through a variety of materials, methods, and configurations. In each code, I attempt to re-create a process that is typically done within milliseconds by computational systems; the techniques I use take much, much longer than that.

Unlike computer-generated codes — and maybe contrary to the intent of the format — the QR codes I create are fickle, inconsistent and do not always scan. They also often contain technical imperfections due to distractions, miscounting/miscalculating, and other errors that can only be described as human.

The series, as a whole, addresses the ubiquity of these digital artifacts that never quite seem to fit within everyday life or appeal to our aesthetic standards, yet have so quickly engendered automatic responses and expectations from those who regularly use mobile devices. 

Dario Mohr

This is a recorded conversation regarding the spiritual practices of West Africa that I had with brothers from Nigeria that I traveled across West Africa with. This took place during a personalized tour with Ucomeafrik tour company. It was an honest conversation I had as a First Generation Grenadian, U.S. citizen, visiting West Africa (Ghana, Benin, Togo and Nigeria) to learn about my Akan and Ga tribal ancestry. I would consider myself agnostic with pantheist beliefs, and they (Confidence and Evans) practice a version of Christianity with some Vodun beliefs. I struggled to find videos, podcasts and articles online answering the questions that I had regarding ancestral West African spirituality, and found this to be an important conversation. My hopes are that it answers some questions and that people of African descent may have but don’t have the opportunity to ask about. I was blessed to have had the opportunity to meet these men and hope that it expands other’s understanding of West African spiritual practices. 

Lee Tusman

During the pandemic I have been creating experimental interactive autobiographical stories presented within game engines, websites or computer operating systems. These works use my own drawings, audio recordings and writing, stitched together with custom software I write that makes them ‘playable’ in a manner similar to a video game in an attempt to create new forms of poesis and personal narrative. Despite my emphasis on writing code, my background in zinemaking, collage and electronic music production drive the aesthetic in ways that feel more beholden to DIY arts cultures than the current crop of Machine Learning-driven artworks.

In my current body of work I am designing autonomous generative systems to present abstract narratives, dream diaries, and new unfolding simulations. In these works, a story is presented non-linearly. They appear as abstract animated stories where even I the creator are uncertain what may happen next. There is a tension in these two different ways of working between finding new and surprising narratives and the ‘authentic’ and personal, and a risk of algorithms to produce ‘sameness’ that permeates most AI-driven artworks. 

Amelia Marzec

All That Is Seen And Unseen examines the relationship of queerness and Catholicism within the Central/Eastern European diaspora. It includes a series of sculptures based on roadside shrines, such that one would find in liminal spaces where people need to feel protected, like at the edge of a marsh. Ironically, these are often situated in rural areas of Poland that are present-day LGBT-free zones. The sculptures contain an electronic communication system which broadcasts stories collected from the community. I also include software for projection mapping, where imagery based on traditional Slavic papercutting techniques is generated and projected onto churches. The images depict women’s bodies, weapons, and pre-Christian symbols. 

Heidi Neilson

Remote Magnetometer is a quasi-replica of an actual magnetometer scientific instrument on the NOAA-NASA geostationary weather satellite GOES-16. Remote Magnetometer is in a sense paired with the actual magnetometer instrument in near-real time, expressing here on earth the data collected by the satellite instrument in orbit.The satellites we place in Earth’s orbit are in essence our robot avatars—we experience alien, deadly, distant orbital space through their sensor-based eyes, ears, and skin. This project is intended to convey the reality and activity of a particular sensor instrument aboard an operational satellite to have a way of directly sensing-by-proxy what it detects: the energy of the Sun and its interaction with the Earth’s protective magnetosphere. The project mission is to inspire an appreciation for infrastructure systems we rely on and the protective nature of Earth as a whole for life.

Full artists Bios are here

RSVPs on Facebook on the event