Event Blog #3

            For this event, I went to a presentation given by Dr. Vesna. There she showed selected works that were judged at Ars Electronica, a festival that holds a competition which honors specific works. As she is on the panel, she showed us artworks which she herself thought were interesting or caught her eye. I will just go over three of my favorites from her selection of 26.

            The first one that caught my eye was an artwork called the Neurotransmitter 3000 by Daniel de Bruin. It was a ride that was controlled by your heart rate, body temperature, and muscle tension. The ride essentially is a chair you strap yourself into and which turns you upside down and rolls you around. The speed and eccentricity of the ride is determined by how scared you are, as measured by the various electronics. There is then a feedback between machine and man. I feel like the name and ride itself exemplify how the brain functions, how cognition affects the world and the world acts on the brain. The art piece demonstrates how “it is only because this structure, the brain, undergoes interactions in an environment that we can label the ensuing behavior as cognitive” (Varela, Thompson, and Rosch 1991). The artwork brings the brain to life and shows biology in action. The workings of the brain control different physiological responses like heart rate and muscle tension. These in turn control the artwork whose motions reflect brain activity. The artwork then gives environmental feedback to the brain and the brain processes it before giving out more physiological responses and the cycle repeats.

NEUROTRANSMITTER 3000 - a bio metrically controlled thrillride from DANIELDEBRUIN on Vimeo.

            The second piece I really enjoyed was one call The Weather Followers by David Colombini. It is partly a phone app and partly a sculpture. This one really caught my eye because of how interactive the sculpture was made to be. The sculpture itself took metrological data such as wind speed/direction, rainfall, and sunlight intensity. Then the phone app would perform various functions based on weather data like send doodles you make in the direction of the wind or delete photos based on the sun intensity. This artwork helps bring people closer to how weather readings are taken. They are better able to understand the effects of weather because much the functions of their phone are related to weather patterns.

The Weather Followers from David Colombini on Vimeo.

            The final piece that was very interesting was an art piece called The Smell of Data. This was a art piece that combined wireless technology with the scent. A small device is plugged into your smartphone or computer and whenever you visit an unprotected website or Wifi connection, the device releases a scent. This piece was very creative as it allowed you to physically detect when your digital technology was at risk. It allowed you to experience technology and was a creative way of stimulating the senses by allowing one to aromatically experience digital data.

Smell of Data from Leanne Wijnsma on Vimeo.

            All these art pieces were extremely interesting to see as it show the ingenuity of people and their interpretations of art and science. All the pieces presented would bring art and science together in some way allowing you to appreciate science and technology in a very different manner. I would definitely recommend people check out Ars Electronica and the art pieces that were submitted.

References

Borgerink, Kris. "Smell Of Data". Smell Of Data, https://smellofdata.com/. Accessed 10 June 2018.

Colombini, David. "The Weather Followers™". The Weather Followers, https://www.theweatherfollowers.com/d/. Accessed 10 June 2018.

de Bruin, Daniel. "Neurotransmitter 3000 – DANIELDEBRUIN". Danieldebruin, http://danieldebruin.com/neurotransmitter-3000/. Accessed 10 June 2018.

Varela, Francisco et al. The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science And Human Experience. MIT Press, 1991.