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ZOOVEILLANCE

February 18 - May 5, 2024

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Zooveillance Calendar

The first signs of creative, symbolic and abstract thought in humans can be seen in zoomorphic imagery dating back millennia. The earliest drawings and scratchings reveal tools and technologies involving rituals or the hunt. Animals flourished as potent symbols declaring socio-political, behavioural and environmental conditions…or suggesting ideas related to power, freedom, place, rational thought, ritual & belief and morality.

ZOOVEILLANCE reflects the paradox of recent, technological advancement through the mediated observation of animal behaviour. Three extraordinary works by Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Mat Collishaw and Marco Barotti were created after extensive and collaborative scientific and technological research. They reflect concerns around the evolution of two formidable, hyper-transformative technologies, rooted in the 20th century and now blossoming in the 21st...Artificial Intelligence and Social Media.

There is a poignancy to these apparitions; the reactive apes, conditioned pigeons and a critically endangered, northern white rhino. The ritualistic and confined animal behaviour suggests an uneasy or dysfunctional association with each surveilling technology. None of the animals may be separated from its host; all are bound to their technology in some way. Only one animal actively resists; ironically it is the species closest to us.

Each work encourages us to reflect on the paradox of technology; such tremendous potential (vs) unsettling narratives, observations, data and social inclinations. They attest to a digital world increasingly restructured and governed by social media and artificial intelligence. Like the proverbial Canary in a Coal Mine, each work functions as a sort of advance warning system; collecting, monitoring and forecasting our future.





PUBLIC RECEPTION + ARTIST TALK

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 17
1:00pm - 2:00pm Artist Talk - Marco Barotti - Ballroom Main Floor
2:00pm - 4:30pm Exhibition Opens
Cash Bar
Free - All Welcome

ARTIST TALK (Virtual)
International Women's Month
Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg
Friday, March 8
10:00am - 11:00am PST
Request a Link or Visit the Events page on our website

ARTIST TALK
Mat Collishaw
Late April/May
Request a Link or Visit the Events page on our website




Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg

The Substitute, 2019

Paired video installation (projector and screen); 6 min 18 secs.

On March 20, 2018, headlines announced the death of Sudan, the last male northern white rhinoceros. We briefly mourned a subspecies lost to human desire for the imagined life-enhancing properties of its horn, comforted that it might be brought back using biotechnology, albeit gestated by a different subspecies. But would humans protect a resurrected rhino, having decimated an entire species? And would this new rhino be real?

The Substitute explores a paradox: our preoccupation with creating new life forms, while neglecting existing ones. A northern white rhino is digitally brought back to life, informed by developments in the human creation of artificial intelligence (AI). Based on research from AI lab DeepMind, the rhino performs as an artificial agent, an autonomous entity that learns from its environment. A life-size projection, 5m wide, shows the artificial rhino roaming in a virtual world, becoming more “real” as it comprehends the limits of the space.

Production Credits
Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg (Johanna Just, Ness Lafoy, Ioana Man, Ana Maria Nicolaescu). The Mill (Art Director: Adam Parry; Executive Producer: Jarrad Vladich; Senior Producer: Kelly Woodward; Animation Supervisor: Paul Tempelman; Animators: Kieran Jordan, Maxime Cronier, Kevin O’Sullivan, and James Hickey; Unreal Developers: Roberto Costas, Mark Dooney, Haydn Roff, and Ed Thomas; Model and Rig: Andreas Graiche and Daniel Weiss). Sound: Chris Timpson, Aurelia Soundworks.

Link to the Work

© Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg Ltd. Courtesy the artist

Image
The Substitute

Image Credit: Installation view of The Substitute in ‘The Lost Rhino’ at Natural History Museum, 2022. © Trustees of the Natural History Museum London

Biography

Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg is a multidisciplinary artist examining our fraught relationships with nature and technology. Through artworks, writing, and curatorial projects, Daisy’s work explores subjects as diverse as artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, conservation, biodiversity, and evolution, as she investigates the human impulse to “better” the world. She experiments with simulation, representation, and the nonhuman perspective to question our ongoing societal fixation on innovation over preservation despite the environmental crisis.

Daisy spent over ten years experimentally engaging with the field of synthetic biology, developing new roles for artists and designers. She is lead author of Synthetic Aesthetics: Investigating Synthetic Biology’s Designs on Nature (MIT Press, 2014), and in 2017 completed Better, her PhD by practice, at London’s Royal College of Art (RCA), interrogating how powerful dreams of “better” futures shape the things that get designed. She read architecture at the University of Cambridge, was a visiting scholar at Harvard University, and received her MA in Design Interactions from the RCA.

In June 2023, Daisy won the S+T+ARTS Grand Prize – Artistic Exploration for her experimental interspecies living artwork Pollinator Pathmaker with commissioned Editions currently on view at LAS Art Foundation at Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, Serpentine, London and at the Eden Project, Cornwall. The Jury said: 'As Pollinator Pathmaker continues to blossom, it serves as a vivid illustration of the crucial role of innovative exploration at the intersection of art, ecology, and technology can play in tackling key ecological challenges'..

Daisy exhibits internationally, including at MoMA New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, the National Museum of China, the Centre Pompidou, and the Royal Academy. Her work is held in private and museum permanent collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, Therme Art, and ZKM Karlsruhe.

Daisy is a resident at Somerset House Studios, London, and opened her first American solo exhibition at the Toledo Museum of Art in 2023.

Artist Contact
Artist Website

Mat Collishaw

The Machine Zone, 2019

Acrylic, Aluminium, Electrical Circuitry, servo motors, Steel

This work is inspired by the historic behavioural experiments of American psychologist B.F. Skinner (1904-1990) which explored the idea of random reward. Skinner’s work has been widely referenced in relation to the algorithms which drive interactions on social media, tapping into a subconscious primal side of the brain which is involved in motivated behaviours, thus exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. Skinner’s ‘operant conditioning chambers’ demonstrated that random reward created a kind of constant uncertainty that then encouraged a behavioural loop. Skinner’s ghost has persisted into the modern day, a quiet spectre among our statuses, likes, comments, and shares.

Link to the Work

Image
The Machine Zone
The Machine Zone

Images courtesy of the Artist

Biography

Mat Collishaw is a contemporary artist based in London. A key figure in the first generation of Young British Artists which emerged from Goldsmiths’ College in the late 1980s, he participated in their first exhibition Freeze (1988) and has since exhibited widely internationally. Throughout his 30-year career, Collishaw has worked across photography, video, sound, and sculpture, often combining media in immersive, multi-part installations to build layered narratives. Blurring the lines between seduction and repulsion, observation and exploitation, reality and artifice, his work questions how we perceive and are influenced by the world today through images, and modern technology. Collishaw’s works have been exhibited in numerous museums and are represented in many public and private collections globally, including: Tate (London, UK), Somerset House (London, UK), Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (Birmingham, UK), Galleria Borghese (Rome, Italy), Pino Pascali Museum Foundation (Polignano a Mare, Italy), Bass Museum of Art (Miami, USA), The Brooklyn Museum (New York, USA), Museo di Roma (Rome, Italy), Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris, France), Museum of Old and New Art (New South Wales, Australia) Olbricht Collection (Berlin, Germany)

Upcoming solo exhibitions include:
All Things Fall, The Bomb Factory Foundation Marylebone, London, UK (April – May 2023)
Mat Collishaw, M77 Gallery, Milan, Italy (June – July 2023)
Mat Collishaw, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, Turkey (Sept 2023 – July 2024)
Mat Collishaw, Shirley Sherwood Gallery, Kew Gardens, London, UK (Oct 2023 – April 2024)

Recent solo exhibitions include:
The Machine Zone, Tatintsian Gallery Dubai, UAE (2022)
Equinox, Terra – The Sustainability Pavilion, Expo 2020, Dubai, UAE (2021-2022)
The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, St Nicholas’ Church Korenmarkt, Ghent, BE (2020-2021)
Mat Collishaw, Djanogly Gallery, Lakeside Arts, Nottingham, UK (2020-2021)
The End of Innocence, Fundació Sorigué, Lleida, ES (2019-2020)
The Nerve Rack, Ushaw College, Durham, UK (2019)
Deep State of Rapture, (with Mustafa Hulusi), Page Gallery, Seoul, KR (2019)
Dialogues, Presented by Fundació Sorigué, Villanueva Pavilion, Real Jardín Botánico, Madrid, ES (2019)
The Grinders Cease, Blain|Southern, Berlin, DE (2018-2019)
The Mask of Youth, Queen’s House, Royal Museums Greenwich, London, UK (2018)
Standing Water, Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague, CZ (2018)
The Centrifugal Soul, Castle Howard, Yorkshire, UK (2018)
Thresholds, National Science and Media Museum, Bradford, UK (2018)
Thresholds, Yapı Kredi Kültür Sanat Yayıncılık A.Ş, Istanbul, TR (2018)
Night Hunter, Robilant + Voena, St. Moritz, CH (2018)
Albion, Gary Tatintsian Gallery, Moscow, RU (2018)
Thresholds, Somerset House, London; Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham; Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire, UK (2017)
The Centrifugal Soul, Blain|Southern London, UK (2017)
Fountains Relief, Fountains Abbey & Studley Royal, North Yorkshire, UK (2016)
Mat Collishaw, The New Art Gallery Walsall, UK (2015)
In Camera, Library of Birmingham, UK (2015)
Black Mirror, Galleria Borghese, Rome, IT (2014)
This Is Not An Exit, Blain|Southern, London, UK (2013)
Mat Collishaw, Bass Museum of Art, Florida, US (2013)
Mat Collishaw, Pino Pascali Museum Foundation, Bari, IT (2013)
Mat Collishaw: Afterimage, Arter, Istanbul, TR (2013)
Magic Lantern, The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK (2010)

Recent group exhibitions include:
London Calling. British Art Today. From David Hockney to Idris Khan, Fundación Bancaja, Valencia, ES (2021); UnNatural History, Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry, UK (2021); Fairy Round, Tate Britain, London, UK (2020-2021)

24/7 A WAKE-UP CALL FOR OUR NON-STOP WORLD, Somerset House, London, UK (2019); Silences, Musée Rath, Musée d’arts et d’histoire, Geneva, CH (2019); Fire: Flashes to Ashes in British Art 1692-2019, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, UK (2019); Le Laboratoire de la Nature, Le Fresnoy, Tourcoing, FR (2019); In the Shadow of Forward Motion, Zabludowicz Collection, London, UK (2019)

Through The Looking Glass, COB Gallery, Camden, London, UK (2018); Beyond 2001, Espacio Fundación Telefónica, Madrid, ES (2018); Enchanted Garden, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, UK (2018); NGORONGORO II, Lehderstrasse 34, Berlin, DE (2018); Il Terzo Giorno, Palazzo del Governatore, Parma, IT (2018)

J.F.Millet, retrospective, Millet – USA, Palais Beaux-Arts, Lille, FR (2017); We Are Not Alone, Athr Gallery, Jeddah, SA (2017); Enjoy (curated by Danilo Eccher), Chiostro del Bramante, Rome, IT (2017); Dominion, New Media Gallery, New Westminster, CA (2017); Nature Morte, Contemporary artists reinvigorate the Still-Life tradition, Guildhall Art Gallery, London, UK (2017); Mirror Mirror, Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts (MUDAC), Lausanne, CH (2017); Luther and the Avant-Garde, Altes Gefägnis, Wittenberg, DE (2017); Nature Morte, Contemporary artists reinvigorate the Still-Life tradition, Muzeum Narodowe, Wrocław, POL (2017); Creating the Countyside, Compton Verney, Warwickshire, UK (2017); Glasstress, Boca Raton Museum of Art, Florida, US (2017); Naturalia (curated by Danny Moynihan), Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, US (2017)

Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda, IE (2016); On the Origins of Art, Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Hobart Tasmania, AU; Les Photaunales 2016: LOVE STORIES, Beauvais, Le Quadrilatere, Paris, FR (2016); Ron Arad’s 720°, Singapore International Festival of the Arts, The Meadow, Gardens by the Bay, Singapore, SG (2016); Festival of Images, Vevey, CH (2016); Curtain Call, Roundhouse, London, UK (2016); Daydreaming with Stanley Kubrick, Somerset House, London, UK (2016); Sculpture in the City, London, UK (2016), I Prefer Life, Weserburg Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Bremen, DE (2016); Nature Morte, Contemporary artists reinvigorate the Still-Life tradition, Konsthallen-Bohusläns Museum, SE (2016); A Weed is a Plant out of Place, Lismore Castle Arts, Co. Waterford, UK (2016); SerpentiForm, Museo di Roma, Rome, IT (2016)

Na wspak (ciała i ogrody), 9th Biennale of Photography, Arsenal Municipal Gallery, Poznań, PL (2015); SUBSTANCE (2015) Timothy Taylor, London, UK (2015); L’inconscient pictòric (the pictorial unconscious), Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC), Barcelona, ES (2015); In Search of the Miraculous, Newlyn Art Gallery, Penzance, UK (2015); SNAP, Art at the Aldeburgh Festival, UK (2015); Nature Morte, Contemporary artists reinvigorate the Still-Life tradition, Hå gamle prestegard, NO (2015); Gallery of Wonder, Northumberland; Woodhorn; Powburn; Spittal; Falstone; Alwinton; Newcastle, UK (2015); Glasstress 2015 Gotika, Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti, Palazzo Franchetti, Venice, IT (2015); NGORONGORO – Artist Weekend, Studiobuildings, Lehderstrasse, Berlin-Weissensee, DE (2015); “The time … and there was time”, from Helga de Alvear Collection, Fundación Helga de Alvear, Cáceres, ES (2015); Rack ‘em Up: British Contemporary Editions 1990 – 2000, Shapero Modern, London, UK (2015); The Omnivore’s Dilemma: Visualized, University of Connecticut Contemporary Art Galleries, Mansfield, UK (2015); How to Construct a Time Machine, MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, UK (2015)

Fashion and Art, Bass Museum of Art, Miami (2014); Back to Eden, Museum of Biblical Art, New York (2014); Victoriana, The Guildhall Art Gallery, London (2013); GLASSTRESS:White Light/White Heat: Contemporary Artists & Glass, collateral Event of 55th Venice Biennale, Venice (2013); About Caravaggio (curated by Anna Imponente), Museo Tuscolano – Scuderie Aldobrandini, Frascati Rome (2012); 720°, as part of Ron Arad’s Curtain Call Project, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem (2012); Made in Britain, Contemporary Art from the British Council Collection, Benaki Museum, Athens (2012); Out of Focus: Photography, Saatchi Gallery, London; Otherwordly – Optical Delusions and Small Realities, Museum of Arts and Design, New York (2012); The 12th International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, TR (2011).

Collishaw’s work is in several public collections including; Arter Foundation, Istanbul, TR; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, AU; Artphilein Foundation, Vaduz, LI; British Council Collection, London, UK; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, FR; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, IT; Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna, Turin, IT; Hiscox Collection, London, UK; Hortensia Herrero Foundation, Valencia, ES; IMMA, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, IE; Manchester City Art Gallery, Manchester, UK; Marguiles Collection at The Warehouse, Miami, US; Murderme, London, UK; Museum Huis Marseille, Amsterdam, NL; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, US; Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Tasmania, AU; National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, UK; Olbricht Collection, Berlin, DE; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, US; Fundació Sorigué, Lleida, ES; Tate, London UK; The David Roberts Art Foundation, London, UK; Zabludowicz Collection, London, UK; 21c Museum, Louisville, US

Artist Website
Artist Biography
Artist Bibliography

Marco Barotti

APES, 2022

Kinetic Sound Sculpture

For more than 30 years, we have seen the Internet gradually seeping into every cornerof our lives. The digital evolution enabled innovative networks designed to connectvirtually everyone and everything including machines, objects, and devices. As a result,the amount of data we produce is growing at a staggering pace, and with it comes theincreasing concerns about sustainability, privacy, surveillance, and cybersecurity.

"Apes are our closest relatives and are commonly seen as a symbol of our evolution”. 

The work takes us on a metaphorical exploration of our digital evolution, by navigatingthrough the topics of cybersecurity, data consumption, surveillance capitalism,disinformation, behavior modification, and energy demands. It investigates the benefitsand dilemmas that the new digital transformation brings to our society. Raisingquestions as, how can we avoid a rebound effect? Will progress, higher speeds, andhigher data volumes not simply encourage us to consume, spend, travel, use andstream even more? How can we ensure that the new possibilities don’t exacerbate theenvironmental threat for our planet and how can we grow the muscle of cyberresilience as a society?

We, humans, have made great progress in inventing smart systems which aresupposed to think and design a better future. Are we, as a society, ready to act asintelligently as the machines we created? Can the new digital evolution guide ustowards a respectful and sustainable cohabitation with our fellow humans, the planet,and other species?

APES is a collection of kinetic sound sculptures resembling primates. They are madeout of recycled WI-FI sector antennas. These devices are usually installed on rooftopsin our cities. The sculptures are driven by algorithms showing dynamic counters of dataconsumption and cyberattacks: from Facebook likes, Google searches, tinder swipes,internet energy consumed and emails sent, to the adverse cyber events happening inreal-time. The data is analyzed and translated into sound. Based on the idea ofSurveillance Capitalism and behavioral modification through data appropriation, theAPES are programmed to move with predictive patterns dictated by the various namesappearing on the screens. These motions are accompanied by evolving soundscapesgenerated by a granular synthesizer driven by the data flows. When the counters hitcertain key numbers, the sculptures release sonic events composed by an AI trained todeep fake the calls of real apes. These sonic events are modulated in real time by thedata speed and diffused as a quadraphonic audio experience using the body of theAPES as a resonating chamber.

The exhibition displays the kinetic sound sculptures as well as audio and videointerviews collected during the research with scientists and experts associated with theproject.

Credits:
“APES by Marco Barotti, was created during the art-science residency“RE:SEARCHING IT SECURITY” at Cluster of Excellence CASA, in collaborationwith STATE

Software programming Marco Accardi / Anecoica Studio
 Assistant Design Xueqi Huangfu
Deep fake research and production Lea Schönherr, Joel Frank
Cyberattacks API research implementation Endres Puschner
Digital Wellbeing, inputs Asia Biega
Bitcoin electricity consumption, inputs Veelasha Moonsamy
Tecnical advisor Benjamin Maus
External eye Anna Anderegg
Photos and video Xueqi Huangfu

Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German ResearchFoundation) under Germany's Excellence Strategy through the Cluster of Excellence“CASA - Cyber Security in the Age of Large-Scale Adversaries” (EXC 2092) and BBK-Projektbüro NEUSTART

Supported by Pina, Izis Festival, Ars Electronica, Loop Space Seoul

Travel and transport are supported by Berlin Senate Department for Culture andEurope
CASA team Angela Sasse, Asia Biega, Alena Naiakshina, Lea Schönherr, JoelFrank, Endres Puschner, Annika Gödde, Veelasha Moonsamy, Thorsten Holz, EstridSørensen, Gregor Leander, Markus Dürmuth, Tim Güneysu, Christof Paar, KonradRieck, Philipp Markert, Peter Schwabe, Patrick Schulte, Vladislav Mladenov, FedericoCanale, Barbara-Henrika Alfing, Pascal Sasdrich, Johannes Tobisch, Paul Staat

Thanks to Christina Hooge, Victoria Domke, Angela Joseph, Sarah Möller, BenjaminLehmann, Johannes Winterhagen, Yena Young, Marco Canevacci, Danilo Rasori,Dennis Malyska, Eurotruss

Link to the Work

Image
APES
APES

Images courtesy of the Artist

Biography

Marco Barotti is a Berlin-based media artist creating kinetic sound interventions in natural and urban environments. His work merges audio technology, consumer objects, and waste into moving sculptures triggered entirely by sound. The primary focus of his work is to create a “tech ecosystem” that plays with resemblances to animals and plants, serving as metaphors for the anthropogenic impact on the planet. Through his work, Barotti aims to make people aware of environmental and social issues.

Barotti has been awarded the NTU Global Digital Art Prize (Clams) the Tesla Award (Swans) and the Delux Colour Award (Sound Of Light).

His work has been exhibited internationally at Ars Electronica (Linz), Saatchi Gallery (London), Science Gallery (Melbourne), Futurium (Berlin), Polytech Festival (Moscow), Zer01ne, (Seoul), Fact (Liverpool), Wro Art Center (Wroclaw), Isea (Montreal), ARCAM Architecture Center (Amsterdam), silent green (Berlin), Dutch Design Week (Eindhoven), NTU (Singapore), among many others.

Artist Website 

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