Potential Realities and Perspectives: Dreams, (Mental) States and (Electronic) Sheep

June 29, 2019July 8, 2019 | Yours truly

The Italian director Federico Fellini’s movies were based on his own dreams, and as part of a Jungian psychotherapy with the psychoanalyst Ernst Bernhard.

In the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The American author Philip K. Dick questions realities and perspectives from the machines in a dystopian science fiction novel.

It seems that the (virtual, augmented and mixed) contemporaneous realities are about to join the fiction. The main question for the current talk observes the different typologies of realities, being in dreams, pathological, from machines or computers. This will be explored through the work and research of an artist and a neuroscientist.

Michael Gaebler / Cognitive Neuroscientist

Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in the Neurology Department’s Mind-Body-Emotion group and the MindBrainBody Institute.

Biography

Michael Gaebler studied cognitive and neurosciences in Osnabrück, Montreal, Paris, and London, before he completed his PhD at the Charité/Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. In his research at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, he investigates how mental processes (i.e., thinking and feeling) are neurophysiologically realized. To this end, he also combines virtual reality with measurements of brain activity.

Abstract

The mind is situated, that is, mental phenomena depend on an organism’s interaction with the environment. I will discuss why virtual reality (VR) can help the cognitive and brain sciences and present own projects, in which we use VR in neuroscientific and clinical investigations. I will also mention previous work with depersonalization-derealization disorder patients, for whom the real world feels unreal or dream-like.

Mert Akbal / Artist and Researcher in Neuroscience

Saarbrücken Art School and Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in the Neurology Department’s Mind-Body-Emotion group and the MindBrainBody Institute.

Biography

Mert Akbal explores as a cognitive artist phenomena from cognitive science field. He teaches and researches in two institutions: Academy of Fine Arts Saar in Saarbruecken and Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Berlin. His works are presented on diverse platforms such as by ZKM in Karlsruhe, Prix D’Arts Robert Schuman, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Kunsverein Ulm, Amber Art and Technology Festival in Istanbul, IEEE in Boston, ISEA 2016 in Hong Kong and ISEA 2018 in Durban.

Abstract

I follow my curiosity to observe, understand and question cognition and consciousness through visual art. I aim to reproduce dream image and experience in artistic media in order to explore them as models of conscious experience. I will present some of my current works at the intersection of art and science.

Paulo Bruscky / a Legendary Brazilian Artist (in Portuguese)

April 24, 2019October 8, 2019 | Yours truly

The works developed by this artist span over 40 years of research and includes important ones proposed as performances, mail art, brainwaves experiments and poetry among others. Paulo Bruscky discusses these during an interview in Recife.

Interview by Luca Forcucci / 22 November 2018 in Recife

Paulo Roberto Barbosa Bruscky (Recife, Pernambuco, 1949). Artista multimídia, poeta. Na década de 1960, inicia pesquisa no campo da arte conceitual, e a partir de 1970 desenvolve pesquisas em arte-xerox. Em 1973, atua no Movimento Internacional de Arte Postal, sendo um dos pioneiros no Brasil nessa arte, e no ano seguinte lança o Manifesto Nadaísta. Organiza duas exposições internacionais de arte postal no Recife nos anos de 1975 e 1976, sendo esta última fechada pelos militares brasileiros. Realiza 30 filmes de artistas e videoarte entre 1979 e 1982, e começa a produzir videoinstalações em 1983. Cria, em 1980, o xerox-filme com base em sequências xerográficas. Com a Bolsa Guggenheim de artes visuais recebida em 1981, reside por um ano em Nova York. Nesse ano, expõe na sala especial sobre arte postal montada na 16ª Bienal Internacional de São Paulo. É editor de livros de artistas e mantém em seu ateliê no Recife importante coleção de livros e documentos sobre arte contemporânea, entre eles correspondência com integrantes dos grupos Fluxus e Gutai. Em 2004, seu ateliê é integralmente transferido do Recife para São Paulo, sendo remontado em uma das oito salas especiais da 26ª Bienal Internacional de São Paulo.

b. 1949, Recife, Brazil | lives and works in Recife, Brazil

Paulo Bruscky’s work reflects a simultaneous engagement with both the Brazilian artist’s local framework of Recife and a global network, which he documents in artist’s books, performative projects, and photographs. Associated with Fluxus, and a key participant in the international mail-art movement, he investigates meaning through action, collage, installation, film, and poetry. Produced during his first trip to New York as part of a Guggenheim Fellowship and in collaboration with Daniel Santiago, Air Art Proposal of Composition of Colored Clouds in the Sky of New York (1982) is one of a series of classified ads published in Brazilian and other newspapers that advocate absurd or impossible situations.

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Jorge Antunes / a musical visionary maestro (in Portuguese)

April 19, 2019October 8, 2019 | Yours truly

From his early experiment while studying violin and physics in Rio de Janeiro
to his exil in Argentina, Netherland, Paris and more during the difficult Brazilian period in the1960-1980s, Antunes collected a number of prizes for his exceptional compositions. He embarks us in his journey.

Jorge Antunes interview by Luca Forcucci / 20 November 2018 / Recife / Brazil

Jorge Antunes formou-se em violino, composição e regência. Em 1961 se destacou como precursor da música eletrônica no Brasil. Realizou estudos pós-graduados na Argentina, na Holanda e na França. Foi Professor Titular na Universidade de Brasília de 1973 até 2011 quando se aposentou. Obteve vários prêmios nacionais e internacionais. É membro da Academia Brasileira de Música. Suas obras são publicadas por Salabert, Breitpkof&Hartell, Gerig, Ricordi, Sistrum, Billaudot e Suvini Zerboni.

Escritor

Sua produção literária é vasta, embora pouco conhecida. A divulgação de seus poemas, crônicas e outros escritos tem se restringido à inclusão em algumas coletâneas, livros coletivos e jornais e revistas. Em 1998 a editora Hemisfério Sul, de Blumenau, publicou seu livro de literatura juvenil A Morte do Arco-Íris. Em 2001 ganhou o primeiro lugar no concurso de contos da Revista Poiésis. Em 2006 recebeu menção honrosa no Concurso de Contos Yage, em Salzburg, na Áustria.

Artista Plástico

Participou dos Salões Nacionais de Belas Artes, do Salão de Abril no MAM e dos Salões Nacionais de Arte Moderna. Partindo do princípio de que “o grau de recepção de uma mensagem artística é proporcional ao número de sentidos usados na recepção”, criou obras as quais denominou “arte integral”, pelo apelo direto aos cinco sentidos, inclusive o paladar. Emprega assim os diferentes recursos audiovisuais e cinéticos, além de odores, elementos gustativos e possibilidades táteis.

JORGE ANTUNES

was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1942. He completed his musical studies at the University of Brazil: violin, composition and conducting. From 1961 he stands out as a precursor of electroacoustic music in Brazil and begins research in the field of the correspondence between sounds and colors.

He took postgraduate courses in Buenos Aires, Paris and Utrecht, studying with Ginastera, Kröpfl, Gandini, Koenig, Bayle, Reibel and Schaeffer. From 1973 he is a full professor at the University of Brasilia, having retired in 2011. In 1976-1977, he completed his doctorate at the University of Paris VIII under supervision of Daniel Charles.

Antunes works with electroacoustic music and computer music, but his instrumental production is very great. Its scientific production is also vast, with articles published in several specialized journals and annals of congresses. He has published five books on techniques and theory of contemporary music.

Their scores are published by Suvini Zerboni, Billaudot, Breitkopf & Hartell, Durand and Sistrum. In 2002 he was appointed Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication. In 2012 Antunes received the Ibermusicas prize. In 2013 he was a resident-composer at CMMAS, Mexico. In 2014 was done, in Brasilia, the world premiere of his new opera “A Cartomante”. In March of 2017 was done the world premiere, in São Paulo, of his new opera “The Mirror”.

Phill Niblock: the life of a living icon in experimental intermedia

April 18, 2019October 8, 2019 | Yours truly

The artist evokes is journey into photography, films and music, and the technology he used over the years for each discipline. Moreover, he talks about his loft in New York where concert of ‘new’ music took place through Experimental Intermedia organization.

Phill Niblock / Interview by Luca Forcucci – May 21st 2018 / Berlin

Phill Niblock (b. 1933, USA) is an artist whose fifty-year career spans minimalist and experimental music, film and photography. Since 1985, he has served as director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation for avant-garde music based in New York with a branch in Ghent, and curator of the foundation’s record label XI. Known for his thick, loud drones of music, Niblock’s signature sound is filled with microtones of instrumental timbres that generate many other tones in the performance space. In 2013, his diverse artistic career was the subject of a retrospective realised in partnership between Circuit (Contemporary Art Centre Lausanne) and Musée de l’Elysée. The following year Niblock was honoured with the prestigious Foundation for Contemporary Arts John Cage Award.

Salvador de Bahia / 29.11.2018

November 22, 2018April 19, 2019 | Yours truly

Address and Register

Laser Nomad Salvador

French theatre theorist and writer Antonin Artaud was probably the first person to coin the term ‘virtual’, in The Theatre and Its Double (1938). He compared alchemy with theatre by declaring that both are visual arts, which don’t convey their end. Both theatre and alchemy are fictional in the sense they are immaterial, but they always make allusions to the material. Alchemy is frequently mentioned by the historians and the philosophers when refering to the history of chemistry.

Laser Nomad Talk in Salvador proposes a dialogue exploring points of contagion between art and science, understood as fields of symbolic production, implied in worldviews and submitted to social, political and economic contexts.

If, on the one hand, science as a mode of production of hegemonic knowledge has served as a basis for legitimizing the most diverse epistemicides perpetrated by the colonial expansion project, art, on the other, has been consumed by an avid market ignoring ritual dimensions, where healing, care and aesthetics are indissociable aspects of the same whole.

How to think of models and interfaces, which reconsider the magical and mythical origins that are at the root of both of them? Which epistemologies and cosmovisions can we bring to this conversation?

CHAIRED BY: Luca Forcucci

Bárbara Carine Soares Pinheiro

Graduated in chemistry from Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) , Master and PhD mestrado e doutorado em teaching, philosophy and history of science UFBA/ UEFS. Currently Professor and vice director of the Institute of Chemistry UFBA.

Paola Barreto

is an audiovisual artist an researcher trained as a filmmaker. She has a BA in Film Studies, a MA in Aesthetics and Technology and a PhD in Interdisciplinary Poetics at the School of Visual Arts at Rio de Janeiro Federal University. Between 2014 and 2015 she was a visiting scholar at the Flusser Archiv at the Berlin University of the Arts. Her theoretical and practical production is based on analog and digital video circuits, media archeology and hybrid systems, unfolding in installations, interventions and science fiction. As a filmmaker she has received awards in Oberhausen and Buenos Aires and has exhibited her films at the Havana, It’s All True and São Paulo festivals. Her video interventions and installations have been exhibited at Festivals such as Live Performers Meeting, Rom; Vorspiel/ Transmediale, Berlin and Eletronika BH, Belo Horizonte. She lives and works in Salvador as a Professor at UFBA, and has been designing video circuits for film, theatre, performance and exhibitions since 2002.

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Recife / 19 November

November 9, 2018April 19, 2019 | Yours truly

Address / Register

laser Recife

Perception is a topic of increasing importance due to the evolution of artificial in intelligence, augmented and virtual reality. Does this mean that artificial intelligence lead to artificial perception ? These technologies will and are entering our life deeper everyday in many fields. The idea of patterns of perception is central indeed. However do artificial perception/intelligence have illusions ? Philip K. Dick already asked if Androids would dream of electric sheep. For the second edition of LASER Nomad, the project lands in Recife, Brazil. Laser Nomad will explore and tackle perception. The topic is broad indeed, and we will frame it through art, music, computer science, anthropology and museology by inviting two major figures of art from Brazil, and two scientists.

CHAIRED BY: Luca Forcucci

9am – 12pm Laser Nomad Talks

Paulo Bruscky

Paulo Bruscky was born in 1949 in Recife, and received his BA in journalism at the Universidade Católica de Pernambuco, Recife, in 1978. Bruscky’s work reflects a simultaneous engagement with both the local artistic framework of Recife and a global network, which he documents in artist’s books, performative projects, and photographs. A key participant in the international mail-art movement and associated with Fluxus, he investigates meaning through action, collage, installation, film, and poetry.

Jorge Antunes

Avant-garde composer Jorge Antunes is known as the man who pioneered electronic music in Brazil. During the ’50s and ’60s, he studied the violin, conducting, composition, and physics, and as a result of the latter wrote his “Cromoplastofonias” series. Starting in the late ’60s, he worked in electronic studios in Buenos Aires (with Alberto Ginastera (link is external) and Umberto Eco, among others) and Paris, with Groupe de Recherches Musicales (with Pierre Schaeffer (link is external)). He served as a professor, studio director, and orchestra conductor at the University of Brasilia. Over the years, he founded the Chromo-Music Research Studio and the new music ensemble Group of Musical Experimentation. In his compositions, Antunes has explored the relationship between sound and colors, flavors and odors (in “Ambiente I”), and ‘commented’ on work by Claude Levi-Strauss with a percussive performance art piece. He has won several awards including the International Tribune of Composer’s UNESCO prize twice in the ’90s.

Alexandro Silva de Jesus

Adjunct Professor of the Department of Anthropology and Museology of the Federal University of Pernambuco and member of the Research Ethics Committee of the same institution. Holds a Bachelor’s degree in History from the Olinda Higher Education Foundation (1999), a Master’s in History from the Federal University of Pernambuco (2003) and a PhD in Sociology from the Federal University of Pernambuco (2010). Research interests encompass relationships between science and technology, politics of patrimonialization and museology in postcolonial spaces. His work problematizes, on the one hand, the policies for culture developed in spaces of decoloniality, and, on the other, the relations between scientific research and ethics.
Sofia Galvão

Sofia Galvão has a technical background in Electronics, a degree in Computer Engineering and a Master’s Degree in Computer Science. In her work with technology, she developed an interactive object for the exhibition Silence of the Form, by the sculptor Corbiniano Lins, and guided works by Oi Kabum students! School of Art and Technology. Conducted several workshops in different contexts: Construction of Digital Musical Instruments (National Science and Technology Week), Musicality and Technology (Agreste Academic Center UFPE), Low Cost Technologies and Gambiarras for Interactive Applications (Recife Summer School) and Lab of Textile Electronics – Stitching Sounds (SESC Belenzinho). She is part of MusTIC – Research Group on Technology and Design of Products and Experiences for Education, Arts and Entertainment. Coordinated a collective exhibition of the results of a series of artistic residencies that took place during the past year in the context of the MOVEMENTES project, a research in art and technology.
Yuri Brusky

is a sound artist and researcher, doctoral student in sociology at the Federal University of Pernambuco/UFPE. Has a master’s degree in communication from the UFPE. Develops artistic investigation exploring intersections between noise, language and everyday practices. Maintain since 2010 the label Estranhas Ocupações, through which releases records, publications and organizes concerts. Co-creator of the sound art and experimental music festival Rumor and the seminar and artistic residence program (Entre) Lugares Sonoros.

5 – 7pm Concerts

Jorge Antunes

Ballade Dure, Electroacoustic piece (1995) 20’30”

Miró Escuchó Miró, for piano, electronic sounds and images (1998) 17’40”

Piano: Mariuga Antunes

Luca Forcucci

B(L)(E)(E)(N)DINGS, Live electronic and images (2018), 35’00”

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Cape Town / 18-20 June / Bowed Electrons

Image | May 24, 2018April 19, 2019 | Yours truly

Contemporary electroacoustic music formed from the sound of wind rushing through invasive alien trees on Western Cape farmland. A composition inspired by the humble pencil. The uhadi bow in the environment of live electronica. A musical consideration of HAL 9000, the sentient computer from Stanley Kubrik’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. These are only some of the musical creations on show at the inaugural Bowed Electrons electroacoustic music festival, hosted by the South African College of Music at UCT.

The South African College of Music, in association with Leonardo Journal’s Laser Nomad project, is pleased to host the inaugural Bowed Electrons electroacoustic music festival. This event will feature full performances and in-depth discussions of recent electroacoustic compositions by some of the leading figures of the South African contemporary music scene.

Bowed Electrons will feature performances of works by resident composers Neo Muyanga, Meryl van Noie, Cara Stacey, Mpho Molikeng, Cameron Harris, Dimitri Voudouris, Miles Warrington, Maxim Starcke, Pierre-Henri Wicomb, Brydon Bolton and Luca Forcucci. These composers will also present daytime sessions on their works and compositional techniques. Those sessions will be augmented by contributions from resident musicologists Prof. Efthymios Papatzikis, Dr Barry Ross, and William Fourie. Specialist performers include Prof. Mzikantu Plaatjies and Frank Mallows.

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