Film & Video (Film & Video)

One of John Wood and Paul Harrison’s earliest works, Device features Harrison performing a series of actions, assisted by the titular ‘devices’, that use physics to force his body into unusual and uncomfortable positions. Maintaining his signature deadpan expression throughout the video, in one scene Harrison is thrusted into the air by a slowly inflating balloon until only his feet are visible in the frame, while in another he levitates in diving position with the help of a pulley system. Wood uses his body and specially-designed props created by the artist duo to explore the space of the screen in hilarious, and sometimes clumsy or violent, ways.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Combined into a single two-channel HD video, Li Xiaofei’s Ponytail and Chongming Island II are silent portraits of the women assembly line workers at a Chinese kitchenware factory. Close-up shots of women’s heads—most notably of the rear with their hair in the similar updo fashion—and faces occupy the frame amidst a backdrop of a revolving steel conveyor. In lieu of dialogue or humming of the machinery, a ringing score of chimes and bells provides a tranquil soundtrack.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

3-Legged is an early video work by John Wood and Paul Harrison in which they appear with their legs tied together (as one would do in a three-legged race). Wood and Harrison stand together in a narrow alcove built into their studio, dressed similarly in grey long sleeve shirts and jeans. Facing a tennis ball machine that is almost completely out of view, with only the barrel of the machine protruding from the bottom of the frame, they hobble back and forth across the alcove attempting to avoid the tennis balls launching toward them, with varying degrees of success.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

– In which defeated he leaves the scene and the stage is left in search of its scale – Second episode of The Unmanned series, “The Brute Force” reconstructs the minutes following Garry Kasparov’s defeat against the IBM Deep Blue computer on 11 May 1997. A camera with computer-programmed movements scrutinises the elements of an empty setting after the chess champion has left the scene, thus abandoning it to the disproportion of a world without its own scale.

Installation (Installation)

For her telephone sound composition Dial Tone Drone, Aura Satz commissioned a conversation between two old friends, the sound pioneers Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016) and Laurie Spiegel (born 1945). Carried out via iPhone and Skype and prompted by a series of questions from Satz, the pair congenially discuss aspects of drone sounds, which for years have been an important component of their unconventional electronic work, both audio and video. Their interest in drone sounds and use of sustained or repeated sounds, notes, or tone-clusters aligned with Satz’s own interest in alert signals, and the latter’s attempt to forge a new understanding of hypervigilance and emergency through sound as a perceptual trigger of high alert.

Photography (Photography)

Lenora de Barros’s poetics are known for setting in motion an intimate relationship between image and the written word. This was precisely one of the questions raised while producing the photographs that compose Poema , one of de Barros’s first and most iconic visual poems. The work consists of a sequence of six black and white photographs where language acts in a performative movement with the typewriter, forging a connection between word and image.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

This untitled ink and pencil drawing by James “Yaya” Hough is made on what the artist calls “institutional paper”, or the state-issued forms that monitor the daily activities of prisoners, of which, each detainee is generally required to fill out in triplicate. The form used for this drawing details a weekly menu for the prisoners. Hough’s drawing depicts three grimacing figures, riding atop the back of a larger, female figure on all fours.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

– In which an intelligence going back to its place of origin discovers the agony of gods on which it thrives – Seventh and last episode of The Unmanned , “a flood” is set in 1542 as the first conquistadors enter the land later to be known as the Silicon Valley. Mining the colonial past of the region, and entirely generated and edited with an autonomous artificial intelligence system, this film for and by machines only features the return of an intelligence to its place of origin and the death of the animal gods who used to live in it. Closing the series onto itself with a machine trained solely on its first episode (“2045 – The Death of Ray Kurzweil”), it shows the wandering of an inhuman vision trying to revive meaning by recognizing itself on the god’s corpses.

Installation (Installation)

Rossella Biscotti’s “10×10” series investigates the relationship between demographics, data processing, textile manufacturing and social structure. The work observes how demographic records have been modeled through the use of punch cards to program both early data processing machines and automated looms (jacquard). Reversing the process, Biscotti turned to the 2001–2006 census information of Brussels—where she was then based—to create a pattern on these textiles.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

-In which predicting its past it lives working and dies fighting- Fifth episode of The Unmanned , “La Mémoire de Masse” unfolds during the second Canuts revolts in Lyon in 1834. These riots now known as the ‘bloody week’ came as a reaction to the automation of work in the silk industry by the Jacquard Loom and its implementation of the punched card – first historical ‘mass storage’ system allowing the inscription and replication of complex weaving patterns. This inaugurating event in the history of workers emancipation movements of the 19th century is actually the first revolt against modern computation.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

This untitled ink and pencil drawing by James “Yaya” Hough is made on what the artist calls “institutional paper”, or the state-issued forms that monitor the daily activities of prisoners, of which, each detainee is generally required to fill out in triplicate. The form used for this drawing is a request for medical attention. This work illustrates an assembly-line of severed bodies being pumped full of feet and other body parts.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The Unmanned, is composed of several 26min episodes, it is a fictional documentary about the history of humanity faced with technology acceleration. Each episode dramatizes a “singular” encounter between man and machine. Each episode is filmed with a different camera (a preprogrammed machine or a drone).

Film & Video (Film & Video)

– Thisstoryoffriedrichkurzweiliwanttotellit- myselfhowhelivedinthisroomandh – Inspired by the writings of the feral child Kaspar Hauser and told by the young Friedrich, both father and son of Ray Kurzweil, this story unfolds on the microscope images of a blade cutting through metal. Filmed at the scale of a fold of matter, this cut is the axiom on which the first season of The Unmanned rests.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

After Scarcity is a sci-fi video-essay that tracks Soviet cyberneticians (1950s – 1980s) in their attempt to build a fully-automated planned economy. If history at its best is a blueprint for science-fiction, revisiting contingent histories of economic technology might enable an access to the future. Vindicating this other internet , the work presents the economic application of socialist cybernetic experiments as extraordinary to financial arrangements and imaginations of our time.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

False or True No. 3 by Li Gang consists of two components. The first is a machine designed by Li that uses a pump to collect moisture from the air.

Installation (Installation)

This triptych is based on a Tesla whose interior the artist customized on the Tesla website. The width of the work when the panels are closed is the exact width of a Tesla, thus one designed to hold two bodies side by side. In Mexico City the car is used as a social space and, for young people, one not controlled by parents.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

– In which a storm breaks out in a computing division and its simulation is turned inside out – Fourth episode of The Unmanned series, “The Uncomputable” is the story of a failure: the building in the northern plains of Scotland of a giant climate prediction factory by meteorologist Lewis Fry Richardson. This enormous inverted terrestrial globe supposed to host 64,000 women-computers and able to forecast the world weather was never built. Partly shot in a wind tunnel (used for aerodynamics simulation), this episode shows the impossible attempt at building the factory and the collapse of its hypothesis of a global computation.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

This untitled ink and pencil drawing by James “Yaya” Hough is made on what the artist calls “institutional paper”, or the state-issued forms that monitor the daily activities of prisoners, of which, each detainee is generally required to fill out in triplicate. This drawing uses a pink form on which an inmate can list telephone contacts for approval. The drawing depicts two uniformed figures, with backwards feet, berating a figure on a toilet.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Itch explores the relationship between technology and daily human experience with a motorized arm that extends from within the gallery’s wall, moving up and down while holding a projector that shows a desperately scratching pair of hands.

H.2. N. Y Skeleton of the Dump revolves entirely around the performance “Homage to New York” (1960), of the Swiss artist Jean Tinguely (1925-1991), during which the machine built by the artist in the gardens of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) had to self-destruct itself in 27 minutes, but, in the end, it had to be finished off by firemenbeing called in after it erupted in flames. Since the discovery of Jean tinguely’s retrospective at the Tate Gallery in London, in 1982, Michael Landy spent two years researching and sketching (charcoal, oil, glue, ink) from his previous research carried out at Museum Tinguely in Basel, and at the MOMA in New York.

Painting (Painting)

The work of Keith Tyson is concerned with an interest in generative systems, and embraces the complexity and interconnectedness of existence. Philosophical problems such as the nature of causality, the roles of probability and design in human experience, and the limits and possibilities of human knowledge, animate much of his work. Language as a coded system, as a representation medium, but also as something that generates a whole variety of realities also plays a central role.

Installation (Installation)

Peasant Sensation Passing Through Flesh – 3 consists of a massage chair fixed to a wall. With its cushions removed to reveal its internal mechanisms, the chair’s programmed rubbing, kneading, patting, and vibrating motions create a strange sight and soundscape. The work explores the relationship between flesh and machine as they come together through technologically simulated social behaviors, challenging normative ideas about human interaction.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Golia’s Untitled 3 is an installation in which a mechanical device is programmed to shoot clay pigeons that are thrown up in front of a white wall. More than a simple reference to the sport, the work has the disconcerting effect of creating a danger zone in the gallery space. The reference to direct aggression or violence is reinforced by the piece’s rapid pace.