Vernissage + sound performance
Exhibition: Autopoietic Encounters
What explains these robots' perceived noncompliance to these principles? What are robots anyway? Are they machines without autonomy, merely a product of different cultures' impulses to find “safe” ways to play God? Are they replicas that fulfill a human fascination with an animated artificiality that emerges from our obsession with our self-image? Or are they simply an outcome of the human wish to be liberated from labor and engage in more pleasurable desires? In this exhibition, we ask these questions from a perspective that aims to facilitate our audience's encounters with artificial embodied agents in the context of autopoiesis.
Artists
Fashion and Robotics
Fashion and Robotics is funded by the FWF PEEK Programme for Arts-based Research (Project No.: AR 611) and realised by the University of Art and Design Linz in cooperation with the Johannes Kepler University Linz.
The team members resemble the interdisciplinary approach combining fashion, robotics and microorganisms to develop ideas contributing to a more sustainable fashion practice.
Team: Christiane Luible-Bär (Univ.-Prof. Fashion and Technology), Johannes Braumann (Univ.-Prof. Creative Robotics), Werner Baumgartner (Univ.-Prof. Biomedical Mechatronics), Agnes Weth (Medical Technical Assistant), Emanuel Gollob (Researcher), Amir Moradi Bastani (Researcher), Miriam Eichinger (Graduate Researcher), Katharina Halusa (Graduate Researcher)
Instagram: @fashionrobotics.at
Website: https://fashionrobotics.at/
Artwork concept:
This research explores the aesthetic and environmental potentials of growing whole bacterial cellulose (BC) garments with membranes and robotics. The experiments were conducted with Komagataeibacter Xylinus, an aerobic microorganism metabolising oxygen and sugar to bacterial nanocellulose threads. On a visible hierarchy, these nanocellulose threads form a homogenous cellulose pellicle at the edge of nutrition liquid and oxygen. Using air-permeable membranes allows us to shape the nutrition liquid oxygen border and direct the cellulose pellicle growth three-dimensionally. In our small-scale experiments, we grew sweater-shaped objects within ten and 20 days of incubation.
Based on these preliminary results, we started experimenting with robotic BC growth setups to program garment features locally and gradually. As of today, growing whole bacterial cellulose garments still bears limitations regarding costs, clean room standards and scalability. Nevertheless, mastering those challenges could offer fashion segments an option to cut down the fashion production chain, enable three-dimensional parametric garment designs and therefore lead to a more sustainable and individualised garment production.
Kate Davis
Kate Davis is a multimedia artist based in London, working across photography, moving image, and installation. She holds an MSc in Digital Anthropology from University College London and a BA (Hons) in Commercial Photography from Arts University Bournemouth. Kate has a research-led practice, taking a stylised and experimental approach, which often incorporates a feminist perspective. Understanding the impact modern technologies have on human interaction and intimacy provides the central motivation for her work. She is interested in investigating and documenting the implications and consequences of emerging technologies from the fields of AI, robotics, and virtual reality for future intimacies and the self.
Instagram: @kaydikatx
Project statement:
Kate Davis has been studying and engaging publicly about the development of *sex robots since 2015 and this became the motivation for her acclaimed project, Logging on to Love. The project is an ongoing multidisciplinary series, exploring the ethical implications of robots and artificial intelligence companions in the domains of love, sex, and relationships. Kate aims to open a dialogue beyond the studio and into public life, and to raise awareness of an issue that has become increasingly topical in a society where non-traditional relationships are on the rise. Logging on to Love invites the viewer to consider whether sex robots and artificial intelligence companions could be a desirable or effective substitute for human-human relationships, and whether they should.
*Sex robots are largely ‘glorified’ sex dolls powered by artificial intelligence and modelled on hyper-sexualised and unrealistic representations of women (and men), often seen in pornographic material. Until more recently, these artefacts have been categorised as something more than just for “sex” – they are being reimagined as companions for human beings. Sex robots can be fully customisable, both internally (personality) and externally (appearance) and be designed to the wants and needs of the buyer, who have the power to eliminate any ‘undesirable’ characteristics. Customisable features can include body type; breast size; skin tone; hair style/colour; eye colour; makeup style; pubic hair; and vaginal style, as well as voice (accent) and personality type.
Sound performance: orbh
robota, forced labour. rabota, bondage.
orbh, proto-indo-european, slave/servant.
or
orbh, change sides.
this last interpretation is the concept for my/our composition.
as a musician and composer I am used to being quite in control
of the tonal product in my doings. quite, yes. 90-95%.
there’s always a chance, as one says. 5-10%.
for this work, orbh, I will switch sides with the software I
usually work with. these tools allow me to automate things
on a large scale by now. commands that are supposed to be
to my helpful advantage. bud for now I’m not using these
advances just for 5-10% like chance. this time I’ll take over
chances place and give the software the freedom of 90-95%
of control. my main tools will be the on/off buttons and volume
faders. if one or the other software is not flexible enough
for diverse tonal outputs, I’ll use fx software to interfere.
the output of this sound work will never be the same
if played, or better said, triggered more than one time.
a recording will only state the moment of action and never
stand for „this one and only“ composition.
in the end I hope
you, the listener
and we, the software and I
enjoy the work.
Artist
beat
https://beatspichtig.bandcamp.com
https://open.spotify.com/album/6MltZ9155Grfu5S8Va8oco?si=IT2L4TEqSLuYFyCpBBtNbA
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