Plenary sessions aim to be a temporary habitat open for the confluence of Xentities—ideas, methods, debates, approaches, and possibilities that are yet to come. Participants share their stories in these sessions and evolve their ideas, sketches, and accounts of their current artistic endeavours. Each session is a shared experiment in rethinking and reimagining the meridian that converges our thoughts through techniques of the body, referred to as "Xentities."
In meetings designed to realise individual and group projects, we test generative, interactive and network systems that challenge the boundaries of instrument design, strive to foster transdisciplinary and performative work and unlock transindividual potential.
In "Embodies the Coder's Space," four key dimensions are investigated: Code Space explores the symbiosis between code and coder. It delves into imagining and creating the tactile coding environment that emphasises fluidity across various worlds. Generative Space engages with the philosophical and psychological aspects that tie coding actions to sensorial and spiritual experimentations. Performing Space critically investigates coding as an artistic practice, heightening diversities and modulating the borders between code, culture, body technology and artificial lives. Lastly, Collab Space probes into the micro-political practice inherent in coding, exploring how it is both a personal focus and a societal act of care, connecting psychical and social individuation.
The colloquium will feature workshops and seminars and motivate individual art projects that foster transdisciplinary collaboration for inventive generative outcomes.
Part I: 10-12h Embodies the Coder's Space
Part II: 12-14h Space for Tinkerability
Space for Tinkerability!
We will explore intelligences of bodies in multiple forms:
Invite artists working with robots as guests & collaborators
As a case study, we will develop a network of small, interacting nodes that use long strings installed in the corridors of the Medienhaus to communicate acoustically. Each node connects to >2 wires by listening and transmitting.
We will invent behaviors for the nodes: How do they interpret what they “hear”? How do they transform this “information” and what do they tell their neighbours about it? How do the wires themselves modify, filter, influence the transmission of these acoustic streams?
In Hybrid Systems, we focus on the HW side of the project: physical installation and tuning of the wire channels, and the points of transduction between the mechanical and the electrical/digital domain.
Summer term ‘22 is a time of numerous opportunities for GenComp to present a diverse range of works, which may well make up for all the public events/gatherings lost to pandemic conditions in the past 4 semesters.
Our calendar is already filled with ca. biweekly dates, ranging from prominent UdK events initiated by the president’s office to a full day of radio art by S4NTP for the EU Cultural Capital Esch/Luxembourg, to FutureVoices revivals and cozy concerts.
In Hybrid Systems, we take our time to prepare for all these events in all their variety of conceptual, artistic & technical questions.
Sferics are natural VLF (very low frequency) radio waves caused by lightning strikes in the Earth's athmosphere. Alvin Lucier describes them as "signals - resonant clicks and pops, called tweeks and honks by scientists - [which] occur in the audible range of humans and may be picked up by antennas and amplified for listening. They are best received at night, far from power lines. Occasionally, certain sferics get caught on and travel long distances along the magnetic flux lines around the earth, producing whistlers, downward-gliding signals which may last up to two or three seconds."
We will build long loop antennas and take them on day and night time excursions to different locations around Berlin to listen to these signals and other electromagnetic waves.
The semester assignment includes creating an antenna and the work on maps indicating sounds that were discovered along the way. The maps may serve as sound archives or as scores for listening walks, performance or story telling.
The final presentation will take place during the weekend of S4NTP performances on Sunday June 23 (to be confirmed).
schedule: ON FRIDAYS
first session: May 24 at 12h in GRU 111
COURSE DATES
MAY 24 + 31 + JUNE 7 + 14 + 21
- depending on weather forecast -
2-3 day time sessions 12-16:00
2-3 night time excursions 22:00-2am
+ final presentation on Sunday June 23 (to be confirmed)
please register via email
“器Qì“derived from Daoist philosophy. In today's social context, 'Qì' becomes a community of human bodies and machines. It symbolizes both a technological entity and an inherent component of the human form. In the age of the Anthropocene, where technology has ascended as a planetary force influencing every aspect of our lives, intriguing questions arise. How does our body respond when subjected to rapid and profound technological changes? Does the vessel of flesh gradually approach its limits, teetering on the brink of collapse, or does it find itself immersed in euphoria?
In this Block Seminar we will be collaborating with parts of the Butoh Workshop, try how to hack distances, surfaces, bodies, and binaries as X-Self, analyzing, visualizing, and deconstructing power structures, while ensuring that happiness hormones are released even in virtual connections. We will feature game engines and motion capture as primary creative frameworks to shape a new perspective of the cosmos and translate the human bodies into the environment. Through practical work with advanced VFX, lighting, motion tracking and audiovisual interaction, you will gradually integrate the personal aesthetic experience. Discover how to present new progressive communities in the digital realm and combine utopian research on pleasurable interfaces with the playful exploration of digital tools. The final project will be shared through various distribution formats. On the last day of the seminar, you will present your Final Projects/Processes.
10:00-17:00 3rd Nov.2023 (Friday)
10:00-17:00 14th Nov.2023 (with Butoh workshop)
10:00-17:00 17th Nov.2023 (Friday)
10:00-17:00 08th Dec.2023 (Friday)
The Intensive Butoh Improvisation Workshop With Yuko Kasekiis a 3-day intensive physical work experience and a generative dialogue with and based on Yuko Kaseki's approach to butoh methods. It takes improvisation performative perspectives, tailored for the Time-Based Art with Contemporary Technology Class, experimenting with the notion of performing the Transindividual Self through the performative bodies, including our physical bodies and its Umwelt, as well as the information systems, machines, and codes.
The workshop strives to provide the students with tools and handcrafts, imagination and pragmatism, spontaneity and planning, structure and chaotic freedom.
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WORKSHOP DETAILS:
One ongoing focus point in this three-day workshop is Following Yuko Kaseki's continuous research with various physical training methods such as Noguchi gymnastics, elements of Tai-Chi Dao-yin, Butoh methodology, and dance improvisation. The workshop starts with finding the core of our body (Tanden) and deep listening to the meridians connected variants of the Inner- and in relation to the Outer. Direct physical attention to other bodies, objects, spaces and data will stimulate and enhance physical imagination, attention and retention and help accumulate a vocabulary of performing the trans individual self with contemporary technology.
13 nov 2023 Vocal laborynthorium - Anne Wellmer
14 Nov.2023 Utopian Pleasurable Interfaces - MengXuan Sun
15 Nov.2023 Code Embodied - Bruno Gola, Echo Ho
yuko kaseki https://www.cokaseki.com/