Case study: Digital Twin projects launched at Ars Electronica .ART Global Gallery
Earlier in the year, Ars Electronica partnered with. art Domains to launch an online exhibition space for the festival's inaugural 2020 online edition. The gallery, created together with Softspot, offered participating artists an opportunity to exhibit within the festival's umbrella, and make the works seen to a global audience via the online space. In turn, followers of the festival who were unable to attend the venue this year had the opportunity to explore hundreds of creative projects through an interactive experience.
The .art Domains offered the participants also to take advantage of one of their new online solution called the .art Digital Twin. By Creating a .art Digital Twin artists were enabled to capture artwork information in quality and volume that would not be possible with a “traditional” offline certificate.
Below, we outline some of the creative projects that continued to live beyond the festival's duration.
Still from Woman in Blue, by Kat Parker and Caleb Gritsko, 2019
Artists using the Digital Twin include the collective of W. Bartkowski, S. Pepliński, K. Jankiewicz, and K. Nowak. Their work Hello! I know you – I am you is registered under i-know-you.art. As they discuss the future of technology and machine learning, the online experience will give you some food for the thoughts.
The collective is followed by multidisciplinary artist Santiago Carlomagno, who introduced the audience to his work ‘THIS MESSAGE WILL DELATED’ in the framework of the Ars Electronica Global Gallery. His Digital Twin link is: this-message-will-delated.art. The work focuses on ways of communication taking a new meaning in our current moment in history. It highlights how the limits become blurry between technology and the body, one becoming a part of the other as its way of functioning.
THIS MESSAGE WILL DELATED, by Santiago Carlomagno, 2020
Artist Janet Choi’s Digital Twin focuses on her interactive installation titled Flow and can be seen on interactiveflow.art. Expanding on the psychological concept of losing its sense of time and space, it relates to loosing awareness of our surrounding when we are absorbed by what our senses are focusing on, no matter if it is a water flow or the flow of data on our mobile phone screen. This work questions the relationship involving nature, technology, and humans.
Exploring the idea of eco-feminism and post truth, focusing on fertility with her three channels projection installation what-to-expect-when-you-re-expecting.art, which she shows in the framework of Ars Electronica Global Gallery, artist Danielle Dominico is highlighting the perceived advancement that technology have help develop in this area. The projection installation investigates on the current information communication breakdown and the spectator sees 3 different videos; a news media spectacle, the perspective of a woman in labor and a breach scene – all competing for attention and all sharing different information.
Sève Favre introduce us to her interactive artwork Disciplined-Nebula.art, which aims to engage the public in the artistic process. The viewer can become part of the experience and refine the way they are thinking about art and concepts. In her work, she combines a digital, virtual, focus and the physical, real, way to engage with the work, revealing a flow of modification, an artwork that will morph itself each time into something new, something multiple becoming virtual doubles or gifs.
As for Nora Gibson, she registered aria-ng-v.art. Nora is an artist, who describes herself as a visualist using technology to expand the experience of the performing arts. The project she presents here, titled Aria, is an audio reactive piece generated by the data of the theme from Bach’s Goldberg Variations.
Fresh, Hot, Delicious, by Jess Herrington, 2020
With her digital twin Fresh-Hot-Delicious.art, Jessica Herrington introduces the audience of Ars Electronica global gallery to an augmented reality restaurant specialised in digital desserts. As she explains “Fresh, Hot, Delicious offers something that may be missing in this socially isolating time. Despite isolation and distance, this project helps people connect through sharing their digital food experiences.”
Behind the Heyhexx project, three artists are collaborating and working between the physical and the digital world with their interactive social media responsive robot puppet theatre installation. Visit their Digital Twin can be seen heyhexx.art to learn more about how their project combines elements of puppet theatre, robotics, paper craft, real-time interaction, and data analytics.
@heyhexx, by Patsaraporn Liewatanakorn, Sana Yamaguchi and Parvin Farahzadeh, 2018
Juregen Hoebarth has devoted his Digital Twin johnvanhartmann.art to bring us at the center of the exhibition ColorFountainExplosition, an art installation in decentralised metaverse of cryptovoxels by artists Johnvan Hartmann, a contemporary pop & digital mix media artist.
Acting as a subculture of its own “Japanese Idol’’ by Atsuhi Imai range from originals to collaborations with Japanese anime. Describing himself as an illustrator and pencil artist, his Digital Twin can be seen at idol-character.art.
Artist Amy Karle comments, “I use technology as a mirror to the self, to who we are and to who we can become. My work questions and maps the new world of humans merging with technology, and what could be done to shape a more positive future. My Digital Twins that are featured in the Ars Electronica. ART Gallery are The Heart of Evolution?, the-heart-of-evolution.art 2019, Biofeedback Art, durationalperformance-biofeedback.art 2011, and The Body and Technology: A Conversational Metamorphosis (series), the-body-and-technology.art 2017. The works examine material and spiritual aspects of life, opening visions of how technology could be utilized to support and enhance humanity. The projects probe how exponential technology and interventions could heal and enhance the body – and even alter the course of evolution.”
The Body and Technology: A Conversational Metamorphosis, Amy Karle, 2017
She continues, “I’ve exhibited with Ars Electronica in person in the past and am delighted to exhibit in the new online arm this year. Ars Electronica has always been on the cutting edge of sharing new media art and this year’s online exhibition is no different. It’s not just about presenting representations of artwork online, a number of the works featured are best presented online as digital or online is the original medium.“
Many initiatives to show gratitude to front line workers have popped over the past few months and it is exactly what the Kasimov family has done with their Digital Twin the-hope.art. An AR experience, which they created as part of the Ars Electronica .ART Global Gallery, and a continuation of the widely popular #FlowersForMedics initiative since March. The AR component to the piece enabled anyone with an iOS device to experience the work safely in the comfort of their home!
Using technology to create her work, Siheun Kim introduces the viewers to enlivening-sequence.art, an interactive installation portraying dynamic, contingent, and blurring phenomenon between humans and machines. Entangled, the relationship between humans and machine are part of the today ecosystem. The utilisation of robotic approaches and computational programming, it generates a randomisation of the sensory experienceand is inspire by the movement of sea snails that inhabit the rocks of the beach.
Based on Malevich’s original 1915 Suprematism composition, Nick Koro highlightsunrealized ideas about the new world through a series of digitally vandalised Suprematisminstallation for his digital twin ar-suprematist-composition-2.art which is taking advantage of the post celebration of the 100 years of the original work.
Gisela Nunes, in collaboration with Paulo Almeida, present us her Digital Twin touch-the-heart.art, a Web-based interactive art. This ever changing piece, adapts itself to the cycle of night and day, of the spatial location provides a real time experience which reflects on how our experience changes our perceptions and perspectives on the world.
Terra Infirma, by Ella Ordona, June 2020
For Ars Electronica Global Gallery, artist Ella Ordona takes her inspiration from a sentence her father said during his last day in the hospital. Her digital twin, terra-infirma.art., re-imagines what the experience of an hospital room could be by incorporating concepts of geo-physiological and ritual. Interactive, surreal and including organic touches and audio component, it explores the shortcomings of the current healthcare industry for immigrants and how the experience of being cared for and listen to far away from home could be modify to become more pleasant.
Artist Director Kat Parker is a Digital Twin enthusiastic and she registered three;womaninblue.art, katparkerscroll.art, katparkerspin.art Working in tandem with cinematographer Caleb Gritsko, the three artworks are part of the Moving Paintings: (un)still life Series. The first one, Woman in Blue, explore the notion of auto portrait and is inspired by several pieces in the National Gallery in Washington. The second one Scroll,shows the action of scrolling down a social media feed to consume posts, images, and news, focusing on the action itself and not the means. Finally, Spin, shows the motion of a ceiling fan and like the entire series explores the hypnotic appeal of everyday objects and the frustration of uncompleted actions.
Registering novamrem.art as his Digital Twin, Fabin Rasheed explore how traditionalmodes of painting are translated to a digital alter-ego using Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence. His project compels the viewer to question itself on traditional creations ways and the place of technology into creativity and future more of expression.
Still from Novamrem, by Fabin Rasheed, 2019
Artists Park Syemin, Kim Seoyeon & Ahn Kihoon have created re-re-re.art their Digital Twin which ask the question “Is this art or spam?”. The multimedia project further questions the mean of production and dissemination in the digital world after all “If digital artworks are endlessly copied, shared, and ultimately exposed without the viewer’s consent, is this not spam?”
Visual artist Claudia Vásquez Gómez, with her Digital Twin object-2dpn42k9.art introduced us to Cada viaje es un viaje | every travel is a travel her 6100 km journey from St-Petersburgto Moscow to Omsk and back to Moscow on which she went on before the Covid 19 lockdown. The final work was edited in quarantine while in Santiago, Chile adding another layer of reflection on travelling and current limited travel conditions.
With her Digital Twin, still-life-no-i-chrome-sphere-gravity-and-light.art, digital artist Pastel White explores the notion of reality, its vulnerability to manipulation, its ability to deceive and ultimately, the possibility of its transformation into an altogether new reality.
Still Life no. I (Chrome Sphere, Gravity and Light), by Pastel White, 2020
At the cross section of archeology and contemporary art, Peirui Yang’s Digital Twins stratigraphic-variants-peirui–yang.art, showcases his research project which expresses digitally the variants of stratigraphy by extending the concept of stratigraphy. It records everything and is everchanging depending of its context whether it is the prehistoric era or the digital era.
Hasaqui Yamanobe has registered is Digital Twin hasaqui.art, working toward a refreshing the notion of Laocoön as first introduced by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in the 18th century. Yamanobe is currently working across the fields of art theory, criticism and machine learning, and is working on figuration and its consideration utilizing the Convolutional Neural Network.
Finally, Jing Zhou, an artist whose work is at the intersection of visual design, interactive installation, data visualization, animation/video, and fine arts introduced us to through-the-aleph-a-glimpse-of-the-world-in-real-time.art. This time laps video draws the connections between individuals and the global environment, Earth and outer space, eternity and time, and art and science and is inspire by Jorge Luis Borges’ short story “The Aleph” (1945).
The listed above projects were only a few highlights from the diversity of talented artists exhibited within Ars Electronica .ART Global Gallery that ran between the 9th and 31st of September 2020.
You can learn more about the solution here
User browsing through the curated pavilions of the gallery, 2020