Tag Archives: Ilze Briede (Kavi)

Two art/sci exhibitions, one name: Sensoria from Sept. 16 – Oct. 30, 2022 in Gdansk, Poland and in Toronto, Canada

I got a notice (via email) from Toronto’s ArtSci Salon about Sensoria: The Art and Science of Our Senses 2022. This looks interesting and it is confusing as to which site is hosting which installations/art pieces. It starts nice and easy and then … Here’s more from the notice,

Sensoria: the Art & Science of Our Senses is a multi-site exhibition and symposium that bridges LAZNIA Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA) in Gdansk, Poland and Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts & Technology at York University in Toronto, Canada.

Held simultaneously in both locations, the exhibition and symposium will engage multi-sensory research that revitalizes our sensory connections to our surroundings, through and despite technological tools, networks and latencies.

The exhibition component is co-curated by distinguished curator Nina Czegledy (Agents for Change: Facing the Anthropocene, 2020 & Leonardo/ ISAST 50th Celebrations, 2018) and Sensorium director Joel Ong.  Czegledy brings together an international network of artists and scholars who explore the intersection of art, science and the senses. Sited concurrently in both Poland and Toronto, the exhibition will explore the dissociative potential of contemporary technologies on the senses, treating it not only as a social crisis but also an opportunity for creative play and experimentation. It aims to engage a conversation about the senses from the perspective of art, but also science, incorporating artists that straddle the boundaries of knowledge production in a variety of ways.

The event will be complemented by a workshop by Csenge Kolozsvari.

Kolozsvari brings together somatic practices (crawling side by side, drawing, moving with bags full of water, walking backwards, playing with breath, touching textures, voicing etc.) with the concept of the schiz, cut, or interval, following philosophers Deleuze and Guattari in their book Anti-Oedipus. The aim is to build practices that do not presuppose where bodies begin and end, and to agitate the habitual narratives of bodily borders and edges as solid and knowable.

The symposium leverages the exhibition content as the starting point for more in-depth conversation about the connective aesthetics of everyday sensing and the knowledge-creation potential of artists and scientists collaborating in innovative ways. The socio-political turbulences we have experienced worldwide during the last decade have created unprecedented social and personal strife. While connections are sustained now amongst virtual networks that straddle vast spaces, how might we consider the sharing of intimate senses through smell, touch, and bodily movement as a form of mutual support? The symposium explores questions such as these with keynote presentations by Ryszard Khuszcynski [I believe this is the correct spellling: Ryszard Kluszczyński], Chris Salter and David Howse, as well as roundtables between artists and scientists, and performances by Csenge Kolozsvari and York University’s DisPerSions Lab (led by Doug Van Nort). All aspects of the symposium will be presented with virtual components, so as to allow both in-person engagement in Toronto and virtual presence in Gdansk and elsewhere.

Now for details about the Gdansk portion, from the LAZNIA Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA) event page, (Note 1: This is quite lengthy. Note 2: If you follow the link to the LCCA event page, you may need to click the English language option [upper right hand corner of the screen] and, then, scroll down to click MORE at the bottom of the left text column.)

Dates of the exhibition: 16 September–30 October 2022
Location: CCA Laznia 1 oraz CCA Laznia 2
Curator: Nina Czegledy

Exhibition: September 16-October 30, 2022
Places: Laznia 1 ( Jaskółcza 1) and Laznia 2 (Strajku Dokerów 5), Gdańsk

Opening: September 16, 2022
– time. 19.00 (Laznia 1, Dolne Miasto)
– time. 20.30 (Laznia 2, Nowy Port)

During the vernissage, we provide transport by bus from Łaźnia 1 to Łaźnia 2 and back.

Artists:
Guy van Belle | Karolina Hałatek | Csenge Kolozsvari | Hilda Kozari | Agnes Meyer-Brandis | Gayil Nalls | Raewyn Turner and Brian Harris | Artur Żmijewski

Sensoria, The Art & Science of Our Senses

Curatorial Statement

Nina Czegledy

Introduction

Sensoria, The Art & Science of Our Senses a multi-site project is focused on multisensory perception in the arts and the sciences. The cross-disciplinary initiative explores our sensory world through scientific, social, cultural and scholastic interpretations. The exhibitions, performances and the symposium link LAZNIA Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA) in Gdansk, Poland (1) and Sensorium: Centre for Digital Art and Technology at York University, Toronto, Canada (2) in a cross-institutional and inter-cultural collaboration. The participation of international artists in the exhibition and symposium span the globe from New Zealand to Finland to the Czech Republic and reflect on the effects of recent ecological and socio-cultural alterations on sensory organisms in humans and other species.

We perceive the world through our senses, yet for a long time the senses were treated as independent perceptual modules. Contemporary research confirmed that our senses are fundamentally interrelated and interact with each other (3). Moreover, our perception of visual, auditory or tactile events change as a result of information exchange between receptors (4). The impact of radical changes such as the constraints of the COVID 19 Pandemic caused extensive psycho-emotional stress and has affected every aspect of our life from geopolitics to economies to the arts and sciences including sensory awareness (5). Considering implications of COVID-19 for the human senses Derek Victor Byrne noted that initial work has shown short- and likely longer-term negative effects on the human senses (6). Curatorial reflection of these issues presented in the last years became essential.

The way that we perceive our environment via our sensory systems has been frequently a source of controversy concerning one of the basic characteristics of our existence. (7).

As David Howes observed ”The perceptual is cultural and political, and not simply (as psychologists and neuroscientists would have it) a matter of cognitive processes or neurological mechanisms located in the individual subject” (8)

With the changing notions of the constitution of sentient beings a revision of knowledge – led to a closer engagement with the traditional experience by indigenous peoples. The benefits of Nature on our sensorial being are well known, however it is important to remember that our attitude to, and representation of Nature is always closely linked to political, religious, environmental and social considerations. In investigating sensory awareness the impact of the geographical, cultural and social context on individual sensory perception cannot be underestimated (9).

Curatorial research and development of the Sensoria project since 2019 was aimed to present the theme in an unconventional way. International artist residencies, workshops, presentations and thematically related round table discussions in collaboration with local Polish academic and corporate research institutions were offered before the Pandemic in 2019 and 2020. Strategically, the exhibitions now focus on a “return” to the sensory capacity of the body after the last two and a half years of telematic and virtual modes of communication that have biased the audio-visual spectrums of sensory experience.

While the estrangement of the senses have been exacerbated by technologies in the way media elements have contributed to the dissociation of the senses from one another and a subsequent bias of audio-visual content in our digital and virtual environments, the SENSORIA exhibition adapt what Caroline Jones (10) has described as the “creatively dissociated self”. In her landmark exhibition “Sensorium” of 2006 , she considers the dissociative potential of contemporary technologies on the senses as an invitation to engage in creative play and experimentations around this prospect. In this way, SENSORIA builds on the unique interests of the artists curated around the olfactory, tactile and sonic senses; and explores the tensions of telematic/virtual co-presence over two geographically separate galleries.

The exhibition’s primary goal is to create a broad visibility for the wide variety of art project concerning sensory perception. It aims to engage a conversation about the senses from the perspective of art, but also science, incorporating artists that straddle the boundaries of knowledge production in a variety of ways. In Poland, the exhibition linked established European artists with local Polish ones; the Toronto hub similarly links international artists in the main hubs with local artists. In this way, the exhibition forges networks across continents and ideas, bringing a range of different perspectives together to explore how our globalized world has both linked and disconnected us from one another. In addition, being situated simultaneously in both sites, Sensoria also builds on the unique interests of the artists curated around the olfactory, tactile and sonic senses; and explores the tensions of telematic/virtual co-presence over two geographically separate galleries. Sensoria artists, curated through a collaborative process with the project’s lead curators and team members, have been invited to considered site-specific adaptations of their internationally renowned artworks. In this way, the goal of the project is to revitalize our sensory connections to our immediate surroundings, through and despite technological tools, networks and latencies; and to share in a collective experience and discussion of them. In addition, the symposium component hosted by Sensorium at York University focuses on a “return” to the sensory capacity of the body after the last two and a half years of telematic and virtual modes of communication that have biased the audio-visual spectrums of sensory experience. The constraints of the Pandemic have precipitated our current estrangement from our sensuous surroundings, and with the gradual and tentative reopening of regulations in North America, Europe and the world this Spring, we expect a resurgence in a desire for people to engage once again with the multi-sensory sensorium, prioritizing the senses of smell, touch and taste that have broadly been neglected in collective experience. The Sensoria symposium will feature artists, curators and theorists through a series of keynote lectures, performances and artist panels.

Sincere thanks to the LAZNIA Team, especially Lila Bosowska and Aleksandra Ksiezopolska for our curatorial collaboration in the difficult times of the last three years. Sincere thanks to Ryszard Kluszczyński for advising the Sensoria project.

Respectful acknowledgements to Jadwiga Charzynska Director of Laznia.

Last but not least deepest thanks to Prof. Yu-Zhi Joel Ong for his role in expanding Sensoria into an international cross-institutional collaboration.

Reference

1 LAZNIA Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA) in Gdansk, Poland

2 Sensorium: Centre for Digital Art and Technology at York University (Sensorium) Toronto, Canada. https://sensorium.ampd.yorku.ca/

3 Burston, D and Cohen J. 2015 Perceptual Integration, Modularity, and Cognitive Penetration In: Cognitive Influences on Perception: Implications for Philosophy of Mind, Epistemology, and Philosophy of Action (pp.123-143). Oxford University Press

4 Masrour F, Nirshberg, G, Schon Nm Leardi J and Barrett Emily Revisiting the empirical case against perceptual modularity Front Psychol. 2015; 6: 1676. Published online 2015 Nov 4. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01676

5. Tasha R Stanton, T,R and Spence Charles. The Influence of Auditory Cues on Bodily and Movement Perception. Front. Psychol., 17 January 2020 Sec. Perception Science https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.03001

6. Byrne, V Effects and Implications of COVID-19 for the Human Senses, Consumer Preferences, Appetite and Eating Behaviour: Volume I Foods. 2022 Jun; 11(12): 1738. Published online 2022 Jun 14. doi: 10.3390/foods11121738

7. Mc Cann, H. Our sensory experience of the pandemic https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/

8 Howes, D Architecture of the Senses. https://www.david-howes.com/DH-research-sampler-arch-senses.htm

9 D B Rose Val Plumwood’s Philosophical Animism: Attentive Inter-actions in the Sentient World Environmental Humanities 3(1):93-19

10 Jones C. The Mediated Sensorium. https://citythroughthebody.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/sensorium.pdf

Descriptions of the artworks presented at Sensoria:

Agnes Meyer Brandis Berlin based artist contributes One Tree ID and Have a tea with a Tree“ to the Sensoria exhibition. One Tree ID is a biochemical and Biopoetic Odour Communication Installation The project One Tree ID transforms the ID of a specific tree into a perfume that can then be applied to the human body. By applying it, a person can invisibly wear not just characteristics of the tree he/she is standing next to, but also use parts of its communication system and potentially have a conversation that – although invisible and inaudible by nature – might still take place on the biochemical level plants use for information exchange. VOC and Have a tea with a Tree provides a booking link to a personal video conference with up to 16 trees. The trees will participate in real time. Address for conference booking: www.teawithatree.com. The internet protocol is secured.

Polish artist Karolina Hałatek will present “Ascent” – a large-scale site-specific light installation that embodies a variety of archetypical and physical associations – from microscopic observations, electromagnetic wave dynamics, and atmospheric phenomena of a whirlwind to a spiritual epiphany. Most importantly, Ascent offers a unique immersive experience, that invites the viewer to become its central point, and transforms the perception of the viewer on a sensual level. The light and the fog create a monumental dynamic space that is participatory, the space that opens up a new dimension and directs the attention toward the bodily sensations in the explicit environment. The viewer is free to approach the work according to its own sensual response, but direct interaction can offer the potential to evoke a new perceptual imagination.

Bodylandscapes by Csenge Kolozsvari is a single channel video piece feeling-with the fascial planes (connective tissues) of bodies; thinking them beyond human scales and temporalities, as constantly emerging fields. The camera is a listening device for the softness of skin-talk; a composition of detailed skin-textures and close-ups of body parts that are imperceptibly transitioning into one another, following creases and swellings, creating landscapes in-the-making. The video is a proposition for remembering the ecological ways of our belonging, of other ways of knowing, connecting into the vastness that surrounds us and moves across us, of becoming-environment once again.

Artur Zmijewski a Polish artist asked a group of visually impaired people to paint the world as they see it. The result is compiled in Blindly a video with sound. Some of the volunteers were congenitally disabled; others became blind in their lifetime. In the film they draw self-portraits and landscapes, occasionally asking the artist for instructions or giving verbal explanation for their decisions. Their paintings are clumsy and abstract. It is however not the resulting works but the process of making them that is at the core of the film.

Hilda Kozari leads a 3 hour-long memory workshop with visually impaired participants and Emilia Leszkowicz a local neuroscientist coordinated with the Education Department of LAZNIA. The workshop is focused on, triggering smell memories and discussions of the scents and the memories triggered by them. Tactility is also a theme of this workshop for the visually impaired participants which is conveyed via felt discs in various sizes. From the different sizes of the discs it is possible to form the Braille verbs and messages.

The findings and results of the workshop material to be transferred on the Sensoria exhibition walls. The multisensory installation is accessible for visually impaired visitors during the exhibition. For other visitors for rethinking perception, enjoying the smell and touch of the installation and seeing the Braille signs as spatial, visually fascinating structure. It is hoped that this is an opportunity recognising the visually impaired as active members of the community.

Gayil Nalls from New York city brings her World Sensorium project to Sensoria World Sensorium which was officially part of New York City’s millennium event “Times Square 2000: The Global Celebration at the Crossroads of the World,” where for 24 hours around New Year’s Eve, the peoples and cultures of nations around the world were celebrated through sight, sound, and—with World Sensorium— scent. World Sensorium is a large-scale, transdisciplinary, olfactory artwork comprised of botanical substances formulated by country population percentages into a single global essence. The phytoconstituents are those most valued by humanity since ancient times, plants established through ethnobotanical research and a global survey process with world governments. Discussion of the World Sensorium link between psychology and olfaction, and the phenomena of odor-evoked memory follows. Individuals attending are invited to participate in ‘Experience World Sensorium:Poland “ and have a chance to dive beneath the insightful a fragmentary memoir of their own experience at a future date.

Raewyn Turner & Brian Harris, New Zealand based artists present Read Reed at Sensoria. Read Reed proceeds from the mythological story of the discretion of Midas’s hairdresser who, feeling that he may betray Midas’s trust, dug a hole in the earth and spoke into it whereby he laid his secret, only to have the secret broadcast to the world via the whispering reeds which grew over the hole. ReedRead relates to data misinterpretation, hidden secrets and the desire for vast wealth. The artists are using the story of secrets whispered into a hole in the earth and the inevitable leakage and exposure of secrets as a starting point. Data from any source including reeds swishing in the wind may be formed into letters and words that relate to digital capitalism and the obscuring of knowledge through the unknowns of ambiguity, uncertainty and risk. Both the clandestine nature of pervasive monitoring and the authorization for increasing the scope and breadth of collected information originates with NSA’s aspiration to sniff it all, know it all, exploit it all etc., and is part of creating the conditions for digital capitalism.

Guy Van Belle in collaboration with Krzysztof Topolski and the Gdansk University Choir present Fanfara Gdansk performance using a simple and open setup for the participatory visitors/performers. For centuries the arts were rather interested in the non-human expressions around or communication and phenomena that we faintly or hardly understand. To quote Paul Demarinis “Music is sound to my ears”. The sound score gives an indication of discrete and continuous time, pitches and amplitudes, complexities and silences, some combinatory ideas, etc. in the form of sounds you can listen to, sing/play along with it or counter, imitate and enrich it… The expressivity and performativity aims at providing a real time interpretation of the sound score.

The Fanfara Gdansk performance consists of a backtrack with recorded and computer generated birdsongs, which is transmitted over local FM, and received by the musicians on headsets from their phones, tables, portable radio receivers. All musicians are ‘singing’ along with the birdsongs, but they can also bring additional small handheld objects that produce sound: battery operated electronics; resonating objects, … some megaphones and small amplifiers will be available, but all wearable.
The singers from the choir move slowly in formation together with the additional musicians and participatory audience, towards the entrance of the exhibition. Any single movement from the musicians and the audience influences the position of the others.

There’s more about the Toronto portion of the exhibitions, etc. on York University’s Sensorium Centre for Digital Arts and Technologies’ events page, Note: This is where it gets a little confusing as it seems that some of these artists are displaying the same pieces in two different cities at the same time: World Sensorium has a version in Poland and a version in Toronto; Read Reed is in Poland and ReedRead is in Toronto; I’m not sure about One Tree ID, which seems to be in two places at once,

Courtesy: York University

SENSORIA: the Art & Science of Our Senses is a multi-site exhibition and symposium that bridges LAZNIA Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA) in Gdansk, Poland and Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts & Technology at York University in Toronto, Canada. Held simultaneously in both locations, the exhibition and symposium will engage multi-sensory research that revitalizes our sensory connections to our surroundings, through and despite technological tools, networks and latencies.

Register for the symposium Oct. 4–5, 2022: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/symposium-sensoria-the-art-and-science-of-our-senses-tickets-418241681127.   

The symposium will also feature 2 keynote performances from 12:45pm EST each day:  The Power of the Spill by Csenge Kolozsvari Oct. 4, 2022, and Doug Van Nort Electro-Acoustic Orchestra Oct. 5, 2022. 

EXHIBITION

September 26 – October 14, 2022
Gales Gallery, York University
105 Accolade West Building,
86 Fine Arts Road, Toronto, ON 

Held at the Gales Gallery, the Sensoria exhibition will feature the works:

One Tree ID.  Agnes Meyer-Brandis,
SunEaters.  Grace Grothaus,
World Sensorium.  Gayil Nalls,
Emergent: A Mobile Gallery featuring “The Connection”, Michaela Pňaček,  Roberta Buiani, Lorella Di Cintio and Kavi
ReedRead.  Raewyn Turner/ Brian Harris 
Kinetic Shadows.  Hrysovalanti Maheras 
Marching Choir Guy Van Belle  

The exhibition is also open during Nuit Blanche as part of the AGYU’s Streams” project.

In addition, Csenge Kolozsvari will be leading the Schizo-Somatic Workshop on Oct. 3, 2022. Please click on the hyperlinks for separate registration. 

SYMPOSIUM

SENSORIA: The Art and Science of Our Senses symposium presents keynote lectures, discussions and performances around the connective aesthetics of everyday sensing and the knowledge-creation potential of artists and scientists collaborations. Registration link : https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/symposium-sensoria-the-art-and-science-of-our-senses-tickets-418241681127

Running from Oct. 4–5 (9am – 12noon EST), The symposium will feature keynote lectures by Ryszard Kluszcynski , Chris Salter and David Howse; roundtable discussions by the artists/theorists/scientists Agnes Meyer-Brandis, Gayil Nalls, Rasa Smite, Katarzyna Pastuszak, Grace Grothaus, Katarzyna Sloboda, Raewyn Turner/Brian Harris, Hilda Kosari [a web search suggests that Kozari is a more correct spelling] and Agnieszka Sorokowska.

The symposium will also feature 2 keynote performances from 12:45pm EST each day:  The Power of the Spill by Csenge Kolozsvari Oct. 4, 2022, and Doug Van Nort Electro-Acoustic Orchestra Oct. 5, 2022. 

In addition, Csenge Kolozsvari will be leading the Schizo-Somatic Workshop on Oct. 3, 2022. Please click on the hyperlinks for separate registration. 

Symposium Schedule:

Tuesday, Oct. 4: 9am – 130pm EST
9:00 : Introductions and land acknowledgement (Joel Ong)
9:05 : Introduction from Sensoria Curator (Nina Czegledy)
9:10 : Introduction from LAZNIA (Jadwiga Charzynska, Director)
9:30 : Keynote 1 —Professor Ryszard Kluszcynski
10:30 : Sensoria Panel 1 — Agnes Meyer-Brandis, Gayil Nalls, Rasa Smite, Katarzyna Pastuszak, Grace Grothaus (Discussant)
12:00 :  Lunch Break
12:30 : Keynote Performance 1 — Csenge Kolozsvari [Sensorium Flex Space] + Q&A
1:30 : End

Wednesday Oct 5th 9am – 130pm EST

9:00 : Introductions and land acknowledgement
9:10 : Curatorial presentation  (Toronto curatorial team)
9:30 : Keynote 2 — Professors Chris Salter and David Howse
10:30 :  Sensoria Panel 2 — Katarzyna Sloboda, Raewyn Turner/Brian Harris, Hilda Kosari, Agnieszka Sorokowska, Hrysovalanti Maheras (Discussant)
12:00 : Lunch Break
12:30 : Keynote Performance 2 — Doug Van Nort Telematic Orchestra  [DisPerSions Lab] + Q&A
1:30 : Ending Notes

Description: 

SENSORIA: the Art & Science of Our Senses is a multi-site exhibition and symposium that bridges LAZNIA Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA) in Gdansk, Poland and Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts & Technology at York University in Toronto, Canada. Held simultaneously in both locations, the exhibition and symposium will engage multi-sensory research that revitalizes our sensory connections to our surroundings, through and despite technological tools, networks and latencies.

The exhibition is co-curated by distinguished curator Nina Czegledy (Agents for Change: Facing the Anthropocene, 2020 & Leonardo/ISAST 50th Celebrations, 2018) and Sensorium director Joel Ong, with the support of assistant curators Eva Lu and Cleo Sallis-Parchet. Sensoria explores the intersection of art, science and the senses, bringing together an international network of artists: Guy van Belle, Roberta Buiani, Lorella Di Cintio, Grace Grothaus, Kavi, Hrysovalanti Maheras, Agnes Meyer-Brandis, Gayil Nalls, Michael Palumbo, Michaela Pnacekova, Raewyn Turner and Brian Harris. Sited concurrently in both Poland and Toronto, the exhibition will explore the dissociative potential of contemporary technologies on the senses, treating it not only as a social crisis but also an opportunity for creative play and experimentation. It aims to engage a conversation about the senses from the perspective of art, but also science, incorporating artists that straddle the boundaries of knowledge production in a variety of ways.

The symposium leverages the exhibition content as the starting point for more in-depth conversation about the connective aesthetics of everyday sensing and the knowledge-creation potential of artists and scientists collaborating in innovative ways. The socio-political turbulences we have experienced worldwide during the last decade have created unprecedented social and personal strife. While connections are sustained now amongst virtual networks that straddle vast spaces, how might we consider the sharing of intimate senses through smell, touch, and bodily movement as a form of mutual support? The symposium explores questions such as these with keynote presentations by Ryszard Khuszcynsk [Kluszcynski]i, Chris Salter and David Howse, as well as roundtables between artists and scientists: Agnes Meyer-Brandis, Gayil Nalls, Rasa Smite, Katarzyna Pastuszak, Grace Grothaus, Katarzyna Sloboda, Hilda Kosari [Kozari], Agnieszka Sorokowska, Hrysovalanti Maheras, Raewyn Turner and Brian Harris. All aspects of the symposium will be presented with virtual components, so as to allow both in-person engagement in Toronto and virtual presence in Gdansk and elsewhere. 

The event will be complemented by a workshop byCsenge Kolozsvari.  Kolozsvari’s Schizo-Somatic Session brings together somatic practices (crawling side by side, drawing, moving with bags full of water, walking backwards, playing with breath, touching textures, voicing etc.) with the concept of the schiz, cut, or interval, following philosophers Deleuze and Guattari in their book Anti-Oedipus. The aim is to build practices that do not presuppose where bodies begin and end, and to agitate the habitual narratives of bodily borders and edges as solid and knowable. 

Csenge Kolozsvari’s performance The Power of the Spill is a multidisciplinary live performance working at the intersection of digital and imaginary technologies. It uses live video feedback, algorithmic processes of image (Hydra), sound as well as a movement-choreography informed by somatic practices. This project is a study on visual perception and how it affects our ways of making sense of the world, aiming to create an alternative lens that acknowledges the vitality of objects, a topology that is cross-species, the ways seemingly separate entities are in constant exchange, towards a more ecological way of being. The performance is in collaboration with Kieran Maraj, with original live coding by Rodrigo Velasco. Performance will be followed by a Q&A with the artist. 

Doug Van Nort’s performance The Telematic Orchestra  

The sense of touch (or tactility) is not highlighted in the image for the poster but there are some workshops which incorporate that sense.

I apologize for the redundancies and for not correcting or noting the errors in the various texts and with people’s names.

One final note, York University’s Sensorium Centre for Digital Arts and Technologies was last mentioned here in an October 26, 2020 posting about an ArtSci Salon event.

Toronto’s ArtSci Salon and its Kaleidoscopic Imaginations on Oct 27, 2020 – 7:30 pm (EDT)

The ArtSci Salon is getting quite active these days. Here’s the latest from an Oct. 22, 2020 ArtSci Salon announcement (received via email), which can also be viewed on their Kaleidoscope event page,

Kaleidoscopic Imaginations

Performing togetherness in empty spaces

An experimental  collaboration between the ArtSci Salon, the Digital Dramaturgy Lab_squared/ DDL2 and Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts and Technology, York University (Toronto, Ontario, Canada)

Tuesday, October 27, 2020

7:30 pm [EDT]

Join our evening of live-streamed, multi-media  performances, following a kaleidoscopic dramaturgy of complexity discourses as inspired by computational complexity theory gatherings.

We are presenting installations, site-specific artistic interventions and media experiments, featuring networked audio and video, dance and performances as we repopulate spaces – The Fields Institute and surroundings – forced to lie empty due to the pandemic. Respecting physical distance and new sanitation and safety rules can be challenging, but it can also open up new ideas and opportunities.

NOTE: DDL2  contributions to this event are sourced or inspired by their recent kaleidoscopic performance “Rattling the the Curve – Paradoxical ECODATA performances of A/I (artistic intelligence), and facial recognition of humans and trees

Virtual space/live streaming concept and design: DDL2  Antje Budde, Karyn McCallum and Don Sinclair

Virtual space and streaming pilot: Don Sinclair

Here are specific programme details (from the announcement),

  1. Signing the Virus – Video (2 min.)
    Collaborators: DDL2 Antje Budde, Felipe Cervera, Grace Whiskin
  2. Niimi II – – Performance and outdoor video projection (15 min.)
    (Nimii means in Anishinaabemowin: s/he dances) Collaborators: DDL2 Candy Blair, Antje Budde, Jill Carter, Lars Crosby, Nina Czegledy, Dave Kemp
  3. Oracle Jane (Scene 2) – A partial playreading on the politics of AI (30 min.)
    Playwright: DDL2 Oracle Collaborators: DDL2 Antje Budde, Frans Robinow, George Bwannika Seremba, Amy Wong and AI ethics consultant Vicki Zhang
  4. Vriksha/Tree – Dance video and outdoor projection (8 min.)
    Collaborators: DDL2 Antje Budde, Lars Crosby, Astad Deboo, Dave Kemp, Amit Kumar
  5. Facial Recognition – Performing a Plate Camera from a Distance (3 min.)
    Collaborators: DDL2 Antje Budde, Jill Carter, Felipe Cervera, Nina Czegledy, Karyn McCallum, Lars Crosby, Martin Kulinna, Montgomery C. Martin, George Bwanika Seremba, Don Sinclair, Heike Sommer
  6. Cutting Edge – Growing Data (6 min.)
    DDL2 A performance by Antje Budde
  7. “void * ambience” – Architectural and instrumental acoustics, projection mapping Concept: Sensorium: The Centre for Digital Art and Technology, York University Collaborators: Michael Palumbo, Ilze Briede [Kavi], Debashis Sinha, Joel Ong

This performance is part of a series (from the announcement),

These three performances are part of Boundary-Crossings: Multiscalar Entanglements in Art, Science and Society, a public Outreach program supported by the Fiends [sic] Institute for Research in Mathematical Science. Boundary Crossings is a series exploring how the notion of boundaries can be transcended and dissolved in the arts and the humanities, the biological and the mathematical sciences, as well as human geography and political economy. Boundaries are used to establish delimitations among disciplines; to discriminate between the human and the non-human (body and technologies, body and bacteria); and to indicate physical and/or artificial boundaries, separating geographical areas and nation states. Our goal is to cross these boundaries by proposing new narratives to show how the distinctions, and the barriers that science, technology, society and the state have created can in fact be re-interpreted as porous and woven together.

This event is curated and produced by ArtSci Salon; Digital Dramaturgy Lab_squared/ DDL2; Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts and Technology, York University; and Ryerson University; it is supported by The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences

Streaming Link 

Finally, the announcement includes biographical information about all of the ‘boundary-crossers’,

Candy Blair (Tkaron:to/Toronto)
Candy Blair/Otsίkh:èta (they/them) is a mixed First Nations/European,
2-spirit interdisciplinary visual and performing artist from Tio’tía:ke – where the group split (“Montreal”) in Québec.

While continuing their work as an artist they also finished their Creative Arts, Literature, and Languages program at Marianopolis College (cégep), their 1st year in the Theatre program at York University, and their 3rd year Acting Conservatory Program at the Centre For Indigenous Theatre in Tsí Tkaròn:to – Where the trees stand in water (Toronto”).

Some of Candy’s noteable performances are Jill Carter’s Encounters at the Edge of the Woods, exploring a range of issues with colonization; Ange Loft’s project Talking Treaties, discussing the treaties of the “Toronto” purchase; Cheri Maracle’s The Story of Six Nations, exploring Six Nation’s origin story through dance/combat choreography, and several other performances, exploring various topics around Indigenous language, land, and cultural restoration through various mediums such as dance,
modelling, painting, theatre, directing, song, etc. As an activist and soon to be entrepreneur, Candy also enjoys teaching workshops around promoting Indigenous resurgence such as Indigenous hand drumming, food sovereignty, beading, medicine knowledge, etc..

Working with their collectives like Weave and Mend, they were responsible for the design, land purification, and installation process of the four medicine plots and a community space with their 3 other members. Candy aspires to continue exploring ways of decolonization through healthy traditional practices from their mixed background and the arts in the hopes of eventually supporting Indigenous relations
worldwide.

Antje Budde
Antje Budde is a conceptual, queer-feminist, interdisciplinary experimental scholar-artist and an Associate Professor of Theatre Studies, Cultural Communication and Modern Chinese Studies at the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Toronto. Antje has created multi-disciplinary artistic works in Germany, China and Canada and works tri-lingually in German, English and Mandarin. She is the founder of a number of queerly feminist performing art projects including most recently the (DDL)2 or (Digital Dramaturgy Lab)Squared – a platform for experimental explorations of digital culture, creative labor, integration of arts and science, and technology in performance. She is interested in the intersections of natural sciences, the arts, engineering and computer science.

Roberta Buiani
Roberta Buiani (MA; PhD York University) is the Artistic Director of the ArtSci Salon at the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences (Toronto). Her artistic work has travelled to art festivals (Transmediale; Hemispheric Institute Encuentro; Brazil), community centres and galleries (the Free Gallery Toronto; Immigrant Movement
International, Queens, Myseum of Toronto), and science institutions (RPI; the Fields Institute). Her writing has appeared on Space and Culture, Cultural Studies and The Canadian Journal of Communication_among others. With the ArtSci Salon she has launched a series of experiments in “squatting academia”, by re-populating abandoned spaces and cabinets across university campuses with SciArt installations.

Currently, she is a research associate at the Centre for Feminist Research and a Scholar in Residence at Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts and Technology at York University [Toronto, Ontario, Canada].

Jill Carter (Tkaron:to/ Toronto)
Jill (Anishinaabe/Ashkenazi) is a theatre practitioner and researcher, currently cross appointed to the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies; the Transitional Year Programme; and Indigenous Studies at the University of Toronto. She works with many members of Tkaron:to’s Indigenous theatre community to support the development of new works and to disseminate artistic objectives, process, and outcomes through community- driven research projects. Her scholarly research,
creative projects, and activism are built upon ongoing relationships with Indigenous Elders, Artists and Activists, positioning her as witness to, participant in, and disseminator of oral histories that speak to the application of Indigenous aesthetic principles and traditional knowledge systems to contemporary performance.The research questions she pursues revolve around the mechanics of story creation,
the processes of delivery and the manufacture of affect.

More recently, she has concentrated upon Indigenous pedagogical models for the rehearsal studio and the lecture hall; the application of Indigenous [insurgent] research methods within performance studies; the politics of land acknowledgements; and land – based dramaturgies/activations/interventions.

Jill also works as a researcher and tour guide with First Story Toronto; facilitates Land Acknowledgement, Devising, and Land-based Dramaturgy Workshops for theatre makers in this city; and performs with the Talking Treaties Collective (Jumblies Theatre, Toronto).

In September 2019, Jill directed Encounters at the Edge of the Woods. This was a devised show, featuring Indigenous and Settler voices, and it opened Hart House Theatre’s 100th season; it is the first instance of Indigenous presence on Hart House Theatre’s stage in its 100 years of existence as the cradle for Canadian theatre.

Nina Czegledy
(Toronto) artist, curator, educator, works internationally on collaborative art, science & technology projects. The changing perception of the human body and its environment as well as paradigm shifts in the arts inform her projects. She has exhibited and published widely, won awards for her artwork and has initiated, lead and participated in workshops, forums and festivals worldwide at international events.

Astad Deboo (Mumbai, India)
Astad Deboo is a contemporary dancer and choreographer who employs his
training in Indian classical dance forms of Kathak as well as Kathakali to create a dance form that is unique to him. He has become a pioneer of modern dance in India. Astad describes his style as “contemporary in vocabulary and traditional in restraints.” Throughout his long and illustrious career, he has worked with various prominent performers such as Pina Bausch, Alis on Becker Chase and Pink Floyd and performed in many parts of the world. He has been awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (1996) and Padma Shri (2007), awarded by the Government of India. In January 2005 along with 12 young women with hearing impairment supported by the Astad Deboo Dance Foundation, he performed at the 20th Annual Deaf Olympics at Melbourne, Australia. Astad has a long record of working with disadvantaged youth.

Ilze Briede [Kavi]
Ilze Briede [artist name: Kavi] is a Latvian/Canadian artist and researcher with broad and diverse interests. Her artistic practice, a hybrid of video, image and object making, investigates the phenomenon of perception and the constraints and boundaries between the senses and knowing. Kavi is currently pursuing a PhD degree in Digital Media at York University with a research focus on computational creativity and generative art. She sees computer-generated systems and algorithms as a potentiality for co-creation and collaboration between human and machine. Kavi has previously worked and exhibited with Fashion Art Toronto, Kensington Market Art Fair, Toronto Burlesque Festival, Nuit Blanche, Sidewalk Toronto and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

Dave Kemp
Dave Kemp is a visual artist whose practice looks at the intersections and interactions between art, science and technology: particularly at how these fields shape our perception and understanding of the world. His artworks have been exhibited widely at venues such as at the McIntosh Gallery, The Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Art Gallery of Mississauga, The Ontario Science Centre, York Quay Gallery, Interaccess,
Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre, and as part of the Switch video festival in Nenagh, Ireland. His works are also included in the permanent collections of the Agnes Etherington Art Centre and the Canada Council Art Bank.

Stephen Morris
Stephen Morris is Professor of experimental non-linear Physics in the faculty of Physics at the University of Toronto. He is the scientific Director of the ArtSci salon at the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences. He often collaborates with artists and has himself performed and produced art involving his own scientific instruments and experiments in non-linear physics and pattern formation

Michael Palumbo
Michael Palumbo (MA, BFA) is an electroacoustic music improviser, coder, and researcher. His PhD research spans distributed creativity and version control systems, and is expressed through “git show”, a distributed electroacoustic music composition and design experiment, and “Mischmasch”, a collaborative modular synthesizer in virtual reality. He studies with Dr. Doug Van Nort as a researcher in the Distributed
Performance and Sensorial Immersion Lab, and Dr. Graham Wakefield at the Alice Lab for Computational Worldmaking. His works have been presented internationally, including at ISEA, AES, NIME, Expo ’74, TIES, and the Network Music Festival. He performs regularly with a modular synthesizer, runs the Exit Points electroacoustic improvisation series, and is an enthusiastic gardener and yoga practitioner.

Joel Ong (PhD. Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS, University
of Washington)

Joel Ong is a media artist whose works connect scientific and artistic approaches to the environment, particularly with respect to sound and physical space.  Professor Ong’s work explores the way objects and spaces can function as repositories of ‘frozen sound’, and in elucidating these, he is interested in creating what systems theorist Jack Burnham (1968) refers to as “art (that) does not reside in material entities, but in relations between people and between people and the components of their environment”.

A serial collaborator, Professor Ong is invested in the broader scope of Art-Science collaborations and is engaged constantly in the discourses and processes that facilitate viewing these two polemical disciplines on similar ground.  His graduate interdisciplinary work in nanotechnology and sound was conducted at SymbioticA, the Center of Excellence for Biological Arts at the University of Western Australia and supervised by BioArt pioneers and TCA (The Tissue Culture and Art Project) artists Dr Ionat Zurr and Oron Catts.

George Bwanika Seremba
George Bwanika Seremba,is an actor, playwright and scholar. He was born
in Uganda. George holds an M. Phil, and a Ph.D. in Theatre Studies, from Trinity
College Dublin. In 1980, having barely survived a botched execution by the Military Intelligence, he fled into exile, resettling in Canada (1983). He has performed in numerous plays including in his own, “Come Good Rain”, which was awarded a Dora award (1993). In addition, he published a number of edited play collections including “Beyond the pale: dramatic writing from First Nations writers & writers of colour” co-edited by Yvette Nolan, Betty Quan, George Bwanika Seremba. (1996).

George was nominated for the Irish Times’ Best Actor award in Dublin’s Calypso Theatre’s for his role in Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold and the boys”. In addition to theatre he performed in several movies and on television. His doctoral thesis (2008) entitled “Robert Serumaga and the Golden Age of Uganda’s Theatre (1968-1978): (Solipsism, Activism, Innovation)” will be published as a monograph by CSP (U.K) in 2021.

Don Sinclair (Toronto)
Don is Associate Professor in the Department of Computational Arts at York University. His creative research areas include interactive performance, projections for dance, sound art, web and data art, cycling art, sustainability, and choral singing most often using code and programming. Don is particularly interested in processes of artistic creation that integrate digital creative coding-based practices with performance in dance and theatre. As well, he is an enthusiastic cyclist.

Debashis Sinha
Driven by a deep commitment to the primacy of sound in creative expression, Debashis Sinha has realized projects in radiophonic art, music, sound art, audiovisual performance, theatre, dance, and music across Canada and internationally. Sound design and composition credits include numerous works for Peggy Baker Dance Projects and productions with Canada’s premiere theatre companies including The Stratford Festival, Soulpepper, Volcano Theatre, Young People’s Theatre, Project Humanity, The Theatre Centre, Nightwood Theatre, Why Not Theatre, MTC Warehouse and Necessary Angel. His live sound practice on the concert stage has led to appearances at MUTEK Montreal, MUTEK Japan, the Guelph Jazz Festival, the Banff Centre, The Music Gallery, and other venues. Sinha teaches sound design at York University and the National Theatre School, and is currently working on a multi-part audio/performance work incorporating machine learning and AI funded by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Vicki (Jingjing) Zhang (Toronto)
Vicki Zhang is a faculty member at University of Toronto’s statistics department. She is the author of Uncalculated Risks (Canadian Scholar’s Press, 2014). She is also a playwright, whose plays have been produced or stage read in various festivals and venues in Canada including Toronto’s New Ideas Festival, Winnipeg’s FemFest, Hamilton Fringe Festival, Ergo Pink Fest, InspiraTO festival, Toronto’s Festival of Original Theatre (FOOT), Asper Center for Theatre and Film, Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario (CPAMO), and the Canadian Play Thing. She has also written essays and short fiction for Rookie Magazine and Thread.

If you can’t attend this Oct. 27, 2020 event, there’s still the Oct. 29, 2020 Boundary-Crossings event: Beauty Kit (see my Oct. 12, 2020 posting for more).

As for Kaleidoscopic Imaginations, you can access the Streaming Link On Oct. 27, 2020 at 7:30 pm EDT (4 pm PDT).