Category: PHASE 1

The consequences of Internet browsing

Keywords: social impact, technology, arts as a way to communicate

Who?

Joana Moll, artist and researcher who critically explores topics as techno-capitalist narratives, internet materiality, surveillance, social profiling and interfaces.

What?

How many trees are needed to absorb the amount of CO2 generated by global visits to google.com every second? Moll answers this question with an artwork that addresses the impact we generate on the environment with our Internet browsing through Google. The artist explores visual strategies that allow making visible the invisible and tries to show the repercussions that our online activity has in a supposedly interconnected world. She interprets complex data and translates it into a graphical visualization that aims to encourage critical action and thinking in an understandable and accessible way for all citizens.

The visualizations aim to encourage critical action and thinking.

Why?

This artwork based on the internet aims to raise awareness of our actions, mainly about the environmental impact of our Internet browsing via Google by interpreting complex data and translating it into comprehensive graphical visualization that aims to encourage critical thinking in an understandable and accessible way for all citizens.

Results

Through visual design the artist explores strategies that seek to activate critical reflections and actions on the use we make of digital communication technologies, showing through graphic representations complex cause-effect relationships that are established between human actions and our natural environments and mediated by the digital world.

This project is closely related to CO2GLE:
http://www.janavirgin.com/CO2
another work by the artist in which she makes visible the amount of CO2 generated every second in global visits to google.com.

Sources

Moll, J., 2016. About DEFOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOREST. [online] Janavirgin.com. Available at: http://www.janavirgin.com/CO2/DEFOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOREST_about.html [Accessed 25 March 2022].

Moll, J., 2016. DEFOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOREST. [online] Janavirgin.com. Available at: http://www.janavirgin.com/CO2/DEFOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOREST.html [Accessed 25 March 2022].

Exploring new ways of expression

Keywords: creative process, idea exchange, arts to STEM

Who?

CERN in Geneva, Corporación Chilena de Video y Artes Electrónicas (CChV) in Chile.

Artists Chloé Delarue & Patricia Domínguez.

What?

This project connects one artist from each of the two countries for a dual residency, to research and explore new expressions in connection with fundamental science. Both Switzerland and Chile are home to some of the most singular scientific instruments in the world, dedicated to understand the origins and the evolution of the universe.

During their residencies, the artists explore the scientific sites, their extraordinary locations and scale – both laboratories and observatories – to develop new expressions in their artistic practices, and to further incorporate them into art productions. In this unique exploratory residency, the artists collaborate with and receive support from scientists and engineers, as well as the staff of the host research facilities.

Why?

This case aims to explore the diversity of physics and the sciences of the universe and how these fields of research may inspire innovation in the arts. Created in 2019, the goal of Simetría’s main goal is to foster further developments on the dialogues between science and arts, reflecting about the research at remote locations and at laboratories and observatories.

Dedication to understand the origins and the evolution of the universe.

Results

The main results of the work of the two artists is to see multiple perspectives and explore the field of science and develop in co-creation an art production, the collaboration between the two countries helps to understand the origins and the evolution of the universe by the facilitation of scientists and researchers.

Born in 1986, Chloé Delarue produces installations (sculpture, video and sound) under the TAFAA acronym, standing for Toward A Fully Automated Appearance, a combination of several installations, which the artist calls “environments”. These environments are elements of the re-composition of a more or less abstract body. Once these elements overlap, they create a sort of spectrum, a material and immaterial flow of information. After a first MAMA degree in 2012 from Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Art – Villa Arson in Nice, she continued her studies at HEAD-Genève in the Fine Arts Master in 2014.

Patricia Domínguez, born in Chile in 1984, focuses on tracing relationships of work, affection, obligation and emancipation among living species in an increasingly corporate cosmos. Her studies include a Master’s degree in Studio Art from Hunter College, New York (2013) and a Certificate in Botanical Illustration and Natural Sciences from the New York Botanical Garden NYBG (2011). She is currently the director of the ethnobotanical platform studying the healing cosmologies of native plants, called Studio Vegetalista.

Sources

Corporación Chilena de Video y Artes Electrónicas. 2021. Las artistas Patricia Domínguez (Chile) y Chloé Delarue (Suiza) son seleccionadas para participar en la segunda edición de Simetría | Corporación Chilena de Video. [online] Available at: https://cchv.cl/las-artistas-patricia-dominguez-chile-y-chloe-delarue-suiza-son-seleccionadas-para-participar-de-la-segunda-edicion-de-simetria/ [Accessed 25 March 2022].

An event that brings curious minds together

Keywords: future designs, social impact, idea exchange

Who?

Ars Electronica Linz GmbH & Co KG consists of the operational divisions Ars Electronica Festival-Prix-Exhibitions, Ars Electronica Center, Ars Electronica Futurelab, AE Solutions and Corporate Services

What?

The Futurelab is a laboratory and atelier for future systems. As the think-and-do tank of the Ars Electronica, it always places humans at the center of research, considering the social aspects of technological developments such as artificial intelligence, robotics, media architecture, interactive technologies, new aesthetic forms of expression or swarm intelligence and their effects on the future of society. At the interface of art, technology, and society, it creates visions, which are realized for the public, together with partners from fields of business, culture, research, and education.

Why?

The Ars Electronica Futurelab networks and discusses the methods of creativity and technology to accompany this development shaping future trends and visions. It develops new concepts for an autonomous future society in an inspiring field of tension between disciplines and transnational cooperation.

Calling up to social participation and responsible creativity.

Results

With tangible future visions and artistic explorations it is humanizing technologies and novelizing cultural experiences, calling up to social participation and responsible creativity. All concepts and designs for the future are the result of many successful collaborations with art and culture, educational institutions, industries and businesses.

The first Ars Electronica began in 1979. Twenty international artists and scientists gather at this new “Festival for Art, Technology and Society” in Linz to discuss the Digital Revolution and its possible consequences. The Ars Electronica is small, but groundbreaking.

The initiative came from Hannes Leopoldseder, director of the Upper Austria regional studio of the Austrian Broadcasting Company (ORF), who is passionate about everything that has to do with the future. Together with electronic musician Hubert Bognermayr, music producer Ulli A. Rützel and cyberneticist and physicist Herbert W. Franke, he lays the foundation for a festival that will become the world’s largest and most important of its kind.

The Ars Electronica Futurelab is a laboratory and atelier for future systems.

The network and team of international artists and scientists in the Ars Electronica Futurelab comes from a wide range of disciplines and is concerned with the development and evaluation of technological innovation. Transdisciplinary research is a proven method to create new future approaches, possibilities, and inspirations and has become a multiplier in the process of developing new social and cultural conventions. The Ars Electronica’s laboratory for innovation and sustainable change pushes the boundaries of what is possible day after day, taking a joint step to the future.

Sources

Ars Electronica Futurelab. 2021. About Ars Electronica Futurelab. [online] Available at: https://ars.electronica.art/futurelab/en/about/ [Accessed 25 March 2022].

How to learn science and maths through music?

Keywords: arts to STEM, music and science, arts as a way to communicate

Who?

Led by Herbie Hancock and the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz. Supported by the US Department of Education and UNESCO.

Designed by New York University Music Experience Design Lab.

With the contributions in the curricula development of experts affiliated with Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of California Berkeley, University of Massachusetts, New York University, San Francisco State University and Johns Hopkins University.

What?

Visual strategies that allow to make visible the invisible.

This project aims to bring response to the need of encouraging students to acquire skills and knowledge in STEM subjects by applying creative thinking. A digital repository that provides free and interactive tools for learning mainly science and mathematics concepts through music-based methods. The initiative has developed play-based games, apps and video interfaces, as well as engaging curricula, developed by professionals from the academia and private sector specialised in scientific, technical, educational and musical disciplines.

While the content is primarily aimed at 4 to 8-year-old children, a stage considered crucial for acquiring this knowledge, other resources can be found both for elementary and higher education students, as well as curricula resources for teachers.

Why?

The aim of this project is to apply creative thinking to the learning of scientific and mathematical knowledge among students from elementary, middle and high schools. All concepts (arithmetic, geometry, logarithms, fractions, ratios, etc.) are approached through engaging ways using music-based methods (rhythm, scratches, grooves, beats, sound waves, etc.).

Results

To highlight a few tools: the EcoSonic (Ecology/Sound) Playground project, where children collect and then work with reusable materials to design, build and play large social musical instruments using STEAM-integrated curriculum materials to guide the process of making and playing, or Groove Pizza, a digital tool to create grooves using mathematical concepts such as shapes, angles and patterns.

Technology acts as an intermediary interface between musical, mathematical and scientific concepts through a set of interactive games, apps and video tutorials accessible for free and aimed both at students and teachers. All of them promote learning through play, experimentation, practical action and collaboration.

Sources

Hancock Institute of Jazz. 2021. Math Science and Music. [online] Available at: https://hancockinstitute.org/education-program/math-science-music/ [Accessed 25 March 2022].

MathMusicScience. 2016. MathScienceMusic. [online] Available at: https://mathsciencemusic.org/#/ [Accessed 25 March 2022].

Artwork can sharpen medical diagnostic skills

Keywords: medicine, STE(A)M training, art to sharpen observation skills

Who?

Professor Emeritus of Dermatology, M.D., Irwin M. Braverman, Yale School of Medicine.

The course first started in 1998, the study was published in 2001 at Yale School of Medicine.

What?

Students are given 15 minutes to observe an assigned painting individually and gather as much detail as possible. As a group, they discuss what may be taking place in each painting based on their observations. 18th and 19th century British paintings are perfect for the exercise as many of the them tell a story about a real historical event, but like a patient with unexplained symptoms, they often contain ambiguous or contradictory information. What is most important in this exercise is the gathering of details.

Why?

The students replied they had considered themselves to be adequate observers before the workshop.

In 1998, Professor Braverman noticed that dermatology residents were not describing what they saw on patients as thoroughly as they should. They had predefined values of what was important to describe, instead of describing everything they saw.

Results

The course teaches not to automatically interpret but to really observe: physical diagnosis requires more than a glance. When asked what have they learned about themselves as observers, the students replied they had considered themselves to be adequate observers before the workshop, afterwards they realized they were looking at things superficially. The course had helped them learn to look at the world, and their patients, more in depth.

The observational skills training workshop was developed for first-year medical students. It is an exercise in visual training that gives the students an opportunity to look at something foreign to them early in their medical careers. It can be compared to the examination of a patient: The exhibit hall is the examination room, and the painting become the patient. According to a study published in JAMA: the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2001, the workshop improves students’ abilities to pick up important details by almost 10%.

Sources

Peart, K., 2001. Artwork Can Sharpen Medical Diagnostic Skills, Yale Researchers Report. [online] YaleNews. Available at: https://news.yale.edu/2001/09/04/artwork-can-sharpen-medical-diagnostic-skills-yale-researchers-report [Accessed 25 March 2022].

Yale School of Medicine. 2014. How looking at paintings became a required course in medical school. [online] Available at: https://medicine.yale.edu/news/yale-medicine-magazine/article/how-looking-at-paintings-became-a-required-course/ [Accessed 25 March 2022].