current project
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[Exhibition]COMO&HAPPY SCREEN_AUGUST 2017《Exploring》 | ![]() |
2017.08.18 |
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2017. 08. 21 ~ 10. 31 -Exhibition venue & Open Hours
In our time, we no longer install high surveillance towers to observe the others. We simple collect behaviors of the others using digital tools that have become our norms. In the cyber space where the flow of capital is produced, which has also become a culmination of data by itself, the habitual media usage of its users (including every single action that they make) become the subject of analysis. It then becomes the ground on which another capital is produced. As media are optimized for its users, their everyday life becomes more convenient while the amount of data requested to them grows bigger and its density also increases. The side that takes information necessarily comes to possess authority and authoritarian ‘eyes.’ The increase in the discussions around the issue of big brother might be a reflection on such mechanism and response to today’s alarming signal against the situation where the technologies permeating our everyday life have become unconsciously familiar and are taken for granted. How has the way humans perceive the world been changed in this age of fear, possibilities, and wonder of digital technologies that none of us know what it will do develop? And, how will the developed technology of the current moment make the coexistence of humans or humans and machines?
For its presentation in August 2017, COMO&HAPPY SCREEN introduces works by Raven Kwok, which will provide points to imagine the ways through which humans and technology are examining each other. The exhibition presents Big Brothers Are Watching You(2014), an interactive installation that reacts to the movement of the viewers and 1194D(2013), a generative artwork examining artificial life forms.
Big Brothers Are Watching You is an artwork that unfolds a humorous visual experience that concerns the fact that we are under surveillance on the Internet at moments we do not recognize and in domains we do not realize. In this work, the movement of the viewers is tracked by the eyes that surround them. It deals with the issue of the big brother that is currently under fervent debate and raises awareness about the issue. 1194D is an experimental work that examines a number of artificial life forms that self-generate themselves in a geometric space in the digital environment. The work draws its viewers to reflect on the possibility of another life form or creature in the near future that is conceived only through technology. In such ways, Raven Kwok’s work deals with controversial issues around us that live in the age of technology, leading us to examine how humans and technology have been understanding and exploring each other.
‘The image of the future’ is what is usually imagined when we discuss the development of technology. However, such an image already conveys the current time, not the future. In many cases, the future speculated through the present still stays unresolved or conveys dystopian narratives. In other words, the big brother in George Orwell’s 1949 novel 1984 merely changed its outfit and now permeates our surroundings. However, as Orwell’s 1984 ended up raising anxiety and fundamental questions about humanity, many of such contemporary narratives also lead to such questions. It is hoped that the current exhibition provides an occasion to continue the questions – silently yet fiercely, under the sleek surface of technological development of our time.
<1194D>, Created in 2013; Revised in 2017 Generative Art / Audiovisual Installation / 04 min 28 sec / Variable-sized 1194D is one of Raven Kwok’s Algorithmic Creatures, is an audiovisual installation exploring artificial life and self-organization as a series of projects in the field of computer-based generative art. It initially started as a tweak of 115C8, which is also Kwok’s creature based on triangular finite subdivision, and was later developed into an experiment on multiple self-similar geometry-based creatures co-existing within a tetrahedron grid environment. Its name 1194D is the corresponding hex code of its creation date. In 2017, it is further developed and customized into multiple versions, including a three-piece visual installation for Art Center Nabi in Seoul, South Korea. The entire visual structure of 1194D is programmed then generated using Processing/OpenGL(Open Graphics Library). All stages are later composed and exported using Premiere.
Big Brothers Are Watching You is an interactive installation discussing existing and potential surveillance through user’s private data on the Internet in a joking manner. It started as a feasibility test on controlling multiple Windows through Processing and Java’s Abstract Window Toolkit API. Flocking behavior was later integrated., adding a lifelike texture to the Windows GUIs. All Big Brothers appear as seemingly cute Windowed creatures with innocent cartoonish eyes, but continue to stare at the cursor and the movement of the viewers, tracking your cyber behavior for some unknown purposes. In 2017, it is further developed and customized into multiple versions for Art Center Nabi in Seoul, South Korea, including one directly tracking the physical presence of the audience at Art Center Nabi. The entire installation is programmed using Processing and OpenCV.
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〈Big Brothers Are Watching You〉(2014), Ceiling 30,300 x 1,280mm, Pillar(4ea) 1,024 x 6,144mm, LED panel, Interactive Installation, Non-linear
〈1194D〉(2013), 4,104 x 2,320mm, 46' Full HD LCD Monitor(4x4, 16ea), Generative Art, Audiovisual Installation
About the Artist
Selected Exhibitions 2017 .zip Future Rhapsody, Today Art Museum, Beijing, China 2017 Degree Zero of Art: Rational Expression of Abstract Art, Hive Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China 2017 Webster Hall, New York, NY, US 2017 NSEME 2017, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, US 2017 Auralglyphics, CultureHub LA, Los Angeles, CA, US 2016 International Creative Cities Design Innovation Forum, 800 Show, Shanghai, China 2016 POLYCON 2016 Digital Media Design Exhibition, The One Academy, Subang Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia 2016 LOT 613, Los Angeles, CA, US 2015 Dark Matter, A01 BANPO International Art Zone, Xi’an, China 2015 Absolute Infinite Game, A4 Contemporary Arts Center, Chengdu, China 2015 FIBER Festival 2015: The Subterranean, A LAB, Amsterdam, Netherlands 2015 Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, Troy, NY, US 2014 Code Unbound: 2014 International Youth New Media Art Exhibition, LANNG Art Center, Beijing, China 2014 A-EYE 2014: An Exhibition of Art and Nature Inspired Computation, Goldsmiths University of London, London, UK 2014 Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, Troy, NY, US 2013 ECO: Six Bio-interactions Between Algorithmic Creatures, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, US 2013 [radical] Signs of Life, Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, Troy, NY, US 2013 EDF0, Isaac Delgado Fine Arts Gallery, New Orleans, LA, US 2011 Landscape, V Art Center, Shanghai, China 2011 Escape Plan, M50 TOP, Shanghai, China 2008 520×780, China Academy of Art Xiangshan Campus, Hangzhou, China |