Residency update – Page 3 – VITAL CAPACITIES

Vital Capacities resident artist, Seo Hye Lee, was interviewed by lutte collective as their featured artist for August. Lee talks about her work as a deaf artist working with sound, and her time during the residency on Vital Capacities.

Read the interview here: https://luttecollective.com/

[Sound of Subtitles] by Seo Hye Lee (2021), commissioned with University of Salford Art Collection as part of Seo Hye Lee’s residency, can now be seen in the exhibition by clicking here.

Care Work with Melissandre Varin

Thinking about the ways that we formed ideas about our bodies and who had influence, especially in relation to our identities, is always a headfuck. Doing this project has been a reminder of this so I wanted to try to include an action that felt more nourishing, gentle and caring than my other research.

I asked a new friend, Melissandre Varin, who I had met through an online performance workshop, if they would have a conversation with me about these body topics. I had attended Mel’s artist talk and I find the way that Mel speaks about bodies and their own personal experiences to be very candidly honest and at the same time generous and kind.

A white background with black braided hair of different thicknesses overlaid and layered over each other. — Image from Melissandre’s Installation Work

Whole New Worlds – new exhibition

Our latest exhibition by May 21 resident artists, Vishal Kumaraswamy, Tzu-Huan Lin and Katarzyna Perlak. See the exhibition now by clicking here.

Break Time… in resistance of professional hyperability

I’m a professional video artist and my favourite videogame is Diablo.

I have really enjoyed occupying this digital studio space and having a dedicated period of time working on a single project. The support from vital Capacities and Film London has been amazing and I am excited to develop all of my research and tests into something to present as part of the exhibition later this month.

I am battling my own internal ableist voices which are telling me that I could have done MORE, posted more, worked more.. I have been resisting the urge to be professionally hyperable.. (yuck). And in many ways I have failed because I am exhausted.

So now it’s breaktime! If anyone needs me I’ll be in a static caravan on the Yorkshire coast for the week and you can speak to my out-of-office autoresponse until then.

Why Throwing?

by Seo Hye Lee

Scene from Sam Hanna's film "Village Potter"- the person who is wearing white shirt and white apron is throwing a round shape of pottery. There is description of what "Throwing" means - "A mass of clay soon becomes an object of beauty in the hands of a skilled craftsman" in simple white font located in centre of image. Behind the person, there is an image of a brown house with small white framed windows and pointed roof. — Scene from Village Potter produced by Sam Hanna 1946-1947

In this post, I’m going to explain why I am using visual of the ceramic throwing process and hands crafting. In the picture above, the definition of throwing is described as “A mass of clay soon becomes an object of beauty in the hands of a skilled craftsman”- this description resonates with my intention of turning the subtitle into something of beauty, and something that should always be included from an accessibility point of view. On a side note: the word “craftsman” should be changed to craftsperson or maker (unfortunately, some old film archives can reveal archaic gender stereotypes).

Craft videos are fascinating as they frequently show pairs of hands making objects from a shapeless form into something beautiful. For me, this formation presents a parallel between the idea of digitally shaping words into the language of subtitles, exploring its poetic nature. I’d like to thank Will McTaggart from North West Film Archive for the recommendation of the beautiful craft films by Sam Hanna—to view these, this website has a compilation of Hanna’s craft films- the link is here.

As we are reaching the end of June residency, I would like to focus on making a visual connection between videos of hands throwing, crafting, intertitles, and open captions using re-written subtitle language.

17/06/2021

by Linda Stupart

white tattooed body + dense green Summer nettle forest + cell phpone taped to stick + rags, pink plastic and skin and string; butt

in focus giant stinger plant with tiny spikes, white body with pillow case on head and hands up walking through it

It’s coming home… (my review of the Euros opening ceremony)

An image with a white background, black text in a block on the top left and bottom right. Top right is a small image of a virtual performance at the opening of the Euros football league. Performed in a black virtual stadium filled with blue twinkly lights, on a stage are two real human performers, one is a man holding a guitar wearing all black on the left and on the right a man wearing all black playing a piano. Floating above them is the large blue cgi head of Bono, the lead singer of the band u2, he is wearing glasses and his head is made up of small dotty drifting blue and white lights. Bottom left is another blue cgi image of a large group of people stood in rows in the stadium, their are bright stadium lights shining around them, they are all wearing black trousers and baggy tshirts that have a symbol on them of a heart with a cross inside. They looks like some kind of cult. The text reads: In a week when sculpted spam legs run out onto the field in polyester shorts and socks pulled high exchange nervous glances.
When Ronaldo switched coke for water and reminded us once again how valuable these sporting bodies really are.
And the pundit described the socially distanced fever dream flag balloon opening ceremony as 'solemn but celebratory' while an army of blue people with crosses on their tshirts slowly disappeared one by one off our screens like an apocalyptic mass exodus to another planet. When the silver surfer twisted and turned above the pitch to the soundtrack of bono's giant cgi bonce floating above it like an evil spirit, like Casper the friendly ghost's cringelord Dad, our 'post pandemic' overseer, singing 'We are the People', whatever the fuck that means. I thought, it's no wonder I've got a fucking migraine BUT At least football might be coming home and at least it wasn't A Beautiful fucking Day.

Oddy-Body

Someone wearing an unofficial teletubbies costume of the character Po, who is a large round red alien looking type creature with big ears and a circular antennae coming out the top of it's head and a blue square on it's tummy. They are standing at the bottom of a set of stairs in a white hallway. The costume is saggy and mishapen and the face is slightly menacing with wide eyes and a smile. The image has been edited to accentuate the sagginess with a slight swirling all over the costume. White text with a black background in two arches says 'feelin more oddy-body than body-ody' — Po from the Tellytubbies

A long-term enthusiasm of mine is mascot costumes. I have a collection of images on my laptop and phone of my favourites. I especially like Tweety for reasons I will explain in a later post.

Two costumes hung on stands, one is of Sylvester the cat and the other is Tweety Bird. Sylvester is a black cat with white feet, hands, stomach and cheeks. Tweety is yellow all over with an orange beak and big black eyelashes. They are hung in a small fabric cubicle, the fabric is cream coloured. They look creepy and awkward with no human bodies inside them to fill them out. At the top of the image is some white text with a black background which says 'when you both feel more oddy-body than body-ody' — Sylvester and Tweety Bird from Looney Tunes

Artists from across UK join Vital Capacities as artists-in-residence for June 21

Three images in a composite – top left image: a black rectangular lightbox with a white screen has the word what with a question mark written 3 times on it, black pipes leave the box on the left and right sides. Top right image: a white heart shaped balloon has the words stay sick written in the middle. Bottom left image: a collage of green leaves, white daisies with yellow centres, and stripes of yellow and red streak across the image. — Artworks from top left, clockwise: Seo Hye Lee, *What Did You Say?*, 2017 (audio-visual installation); Laura Lulika, *An Ode to Marge (or how i taught myself to speak again by watching the real housewives)*, 2018 (installation photo); Linda Stupart, *Watershed*, 2020 (video still) – images courtesy of the artists.

For June 2021’s Vital Capacities’ residency, we are collaborating with Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network (FLAMIN), Phoenix and University of Salford Art Collection. Working with three artists from across the UK, Seo Hye Lee, Laura Lulika and Linda Stupart.

Across June, artists will be researching and developing new work, with work commissioned in collaboration with our partners. Artists will be experimenting with ideas, developing new projects, and sharing work with audiences. The artists are:

04 ಕಥೆ Kathe (Story) / Dematerialise

a pixelated form of a hand is in the foreground in bright yellow and orange. It is set against a grey checkered background and to its left are an assortment of individual pixels in bright red. Tinges of blue appear throughout the image. — Image still from *Dematerialise* by Vishal Kumaraswamy

As an artist working with experimental technologies, hacking/re-purposing tools to create artistic works I’m often looking for ways in which I can create intimate shared experiences. Even before the pandemic, a lot of my practice was being conducted solely through computer based interactions due to a lack of funding and other resources. This mode of working allowed me to focus my practice towards making accessible works and I began thinking about the language, technology and context accessibility of my works within a larger contemporary art conversation.

Free workshop by Tzu-Huan Lin – A Train to Utopia

A digital collage with a train in the centre of the image. The train is on train tracks coming from the left centre of the image. The foreground and background is made up of a coastal drawing showing boats, green cliffy lands, water, dolphins, people fishing and on horseback. In the left background is a dark brown train station which the train is going towards. Above the train are two black and white flying fish with wings. In the right foreground is a black and white owl-like creature with a long tail, looking down and sitting on a ledge. Above his head, in the background, a sign reads ‘VTOPIA’ in old-fashioned text. In the bottom left corner of the image is a small 3D drawing of a white building on grass with angular block-like boulders. Across the bottom of the image, in large gold text and black emboss, in capital letters are the words ‘A TRAIN TO UTOPIA’.

Digital workshop on Mozilla’s immersive platform Hubs – imagining and building Utopia by Vital Capacities artist, Tzu-Huan Lin

A Train to Utopia is a digital workshop taking place on Mozilla Hubs led by artist, Tzu-Huan Lin. Questionning Utopia’s existence (and if we can create it), the workshop explores ideas related to this unknown but longed for place.

03 your dataset won’t let me thrive / your dataset must die

‘your dataset won’t let me thrive / your dataset must die’ are a pair of video essays that seek to counter the mythologies surrounding Artificial Intelligence datasets & algorithms They are carried out as a comparative study of the works of the Black Beat Poet Bob Kaufman and the Kannada Dalit poet Siddalingaiah whose words (translation) are input into the text based neural network GPT-2. The visual aesthetics of the work are drawn from generative AI imagery of brown faces, creative programming as well as animated representation of the words of each poet alongside text generated by the algorithm. The inability of the algorithm to generate text drawn from sufficient references to Black & Bahujan lived experiences reveal the encoded biases within the dataset and trace their origins to harmful mythologies of Caste & Race.

The works were commissioned by the Mozilla Foundation as part of the Reclaiming AI Futures project for the AI Observatory (https://ai-observatory.in/)

The image is a screengrab from the video 'your dataset won't let me thrive' and contains text laid against a black background with some generative abstract imagery. The text reads 'Abomunists Join Nothing But Their Hands or Legs, or Other Same' — Screengrab from ‘your dataset won’t let me thrive’

The image is a screengrab from the video 'your dataset must die' and contains abstract imagery of an AI generated face set against a dark blue background' — Screengrab from ‘your dataset must die’

02 Subaltern Futurism

Over the last two years, I’ve been developing a theoretical and critical framework titled ‘Subaltern Futurism’. Subaltern Futurism is envisioned as a speculative resource framework for artistic research, practice and the technological education of marginalised. Drawing from anti-caste literature, critical race theory, bahujan solidarity practices among other guiding experiences, it asks if artistic practice can become pedagogical tools to communities that are excluded from regular access to critical discourse around contemporary art & technology. The framework views technology through a sociological lens, as a fundamental right and shared resource. It expands upon Gramsci’s post-colonial notion of the Subaltern as ‘colonial populations who are excluded from the hierarchy of power’ to include the current state of digital colonisation, the shared sites for the digital commons and sections of technology users rendered ‘subaltern’ due to the capitalist pursuit of efficiency. Subaltern Futurism speculates that developing empathic relationships with technology through a range of critical & pragmatic actions can assist in the imagination of radical futures that are diverse, inclusive and conducted from multiple geographies especially arising from the global south and from contexts outside of euro-centric biases of inquiry. By considering a very wide scope at the outset, it is envisioned as a multi-year generative project occurring as various modular forms and widely disseminated within the ethos of open access.

Intro video with Vishal Kumaraswamy

Video introduction by Vishal Kumaraswamy for Vital Capacities

Find out more about Vishal’s work by visiting his studio.

03 Building Utopia on Hubs for workshop

by Tzu Huan Lin

In the past week I tune in with two live streaming, I used hubs to build a 3d space for the future workshop. The workshop is expected to be hold at the end of the residency, somewhere closer to the week of the 20th. The reason to use hubs is that it allows participants to use existing models lively. So during the workshop, they can just create things really fast. Also using the internet as the platform instead of the real world fits the idea of migrant utopia out of physical space into an idea. Although during the workshop I will still ask participants to picture utopia out of the real world. I will play some demo with some of my friends in the next live streaming. I am using this software called hubs from Mozilla, and here you can see I am using its environment building software called spoke.

02 Swaayattate (Autonomy)

The image contains a large eyeball with a pinkish cornea set against a black background.

In 2020, I was able to bring the ideas behind Subaltern Futurism as a speculative framework into my practice through my work Swaayattate (Autonomy). The work is an investigation into the complex entanglements of the synthetic and organic worlds. Taking the form of a bi-lingual trilogy, the films are set inside a computer repair marketplace in Bangalore and examines the nature of human-machine relationships through the contemporary lens of gender, caste and labour. The narrative moves between multiple timelines as the evolution of an embedded neural network references prescient concerns around language, accessibility and justice.

Portions of the script for the films were written in collaboration with a text based neural network GPT-2 Transformer (https://transformer.huggingface.co/) extracting & revealing the extent of encoded biases within this AI model. GPT-2 is essentially a text generator similar to the autocomplete functions on our phones. You can input words or sentences and the neural network generates the next word or sentence using pre trained machine-learning models. Widely hailed as being very close to human speech and syntax, my interactions with the language model has proven this to be highly misleading as they contain encoded biases brought over from the subjectivity of the programmers and its own training data. Chapter 2 ADI, speculates upon this process of transference of social biases into algorithmic ones.

Excerpt from Swaayattate (Autonomy)

01 Thoughts on Race & Technology

There are multiple strands of thought I’m following and working through my findings at the moment. I usually do this by identifying the emotions that certain research materials stir up as I engage with them and then head off on a journey to locate its companions in a way. Imaginations of ‘what else might complement this’ guide how I proceed or retreat and the connections I end up making are often circuitous and serendipitous.

I attribute this to the sense of wonder I have for technology in general and the internet in particular. I have visceral memories of being enamored by the sheer power of being able to access random streams of knowledge that had nothing to do with school work as a kid and I’ve held on to these memories quite strongly. They help me determine when I stop the process of ‘making’ my works and how I determine if I am sufficiently intrigued by the things I create.

01 Interview with Vishal Kumaraswamy