Studio – Page 11 – VITAL CAPACITIES

This is a screen shot of the utopia. An island with many flying coins and dog meme gifs. There's a bridge connect the island to somewhere. A bank in the center of the island, but a gigantic coin behind it. — Doge island

This team on 5.28 choose the scenario: island.

This is a simple island, but the land is limited. So every decision needs to be made precisely. Since the island is so boring, you will need to create a vision that will keep people staying. Such as religious, cult, gambling… etc.

Here’s the utopia, they built an utopia with capitalized cult “doge coin”. Instead of growing their own food and water, they choose a capitalism route. The island is covered by meme gif, that sort of strengthen the cult feeling of the utopians.

This is a screen shot. The other angle of the island. You can see a middle size billboard in the center of island. Behind it is the bank and gigantic coin. — Surprised they have a billboard in the center, old school business compared to crypto.

This is the screen shot. Inside the bank on the island. There's several dog meme gif floating and part of that gigantic coin. — Inside the bank

This is the screen shot. The dog meme gif. It's a Shiba Inu with cute eyes looking at you. — The cult

This is a screen shot. From the other angle, with several red mushrooms... it's kind weird looking. Kind of have this idea of cult... — Mushrooms…

This is the screen shot. The other angle from the island to see through the bridge, you can also see a red small barn besides it. The barn is using for store food I guess... on top of the bridge is more dog meme gifs... — A bridge to somewhere and a barn to save food…

This Utopia is created by “A Train to Utopia” workshop participants, the name of the participants were display in the utopia tower. To access it please contact me.

Interview with resident artist Laura Lulika

by Laura Lulika

Jamie Wyld (Vital Capacities’ director): Thanks for being part of the Vital Capacities residency programme! Can you say a little about yourself and your work, perhaps in relation to what you’re thinking about doing during the residency?

Thanks for inviting me. I am a sick and disabled artist, researcher and community cultural worker. My practice challenges the preconceptions of what it is to be sick and disabled. It acts as a reminder that sick and disabled bodies are actively political even in states of what might look like physical inactivity to someone who is able. In reality, ‘resting’ isn’t really rest if you don’t have a choice.

Interview with resident artist Seo Hye Lee

by Seo Hye Lee

Jamie Wyld (Vital Capacities’ Director): Thanks for being part of the Vital Capacities residency programme! Can you say a little about yourself and your work, perhaps in relation to what you’re thinking about doing during the residency?

My name is Seo Hye Lee and I use the pronouns of she/her. I am a South Korean artist based in Somerset, UK. My practice revolves around the use of illustration, sound and installation – I like to explore the nature of sound and, in particular, the boundaries between listening and hearing. I frequently use my experience as a deaf person with a cochlear implant as a starting point to create my works. Being both a hearing and a deaf person has provided me valuable insight into accessibility in daily life and it has motivated me to challenge the notion of listening.

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.

A Train To Utopia

If Utopia does not exist, can we still get there? Some say it’s just an idea, we can adapt it to our thinking. Some believe it’s in the future. Some Japanese comic picture reincarnate to an unknown world. I am your train conductor. All Aboard!

*This is a workshop to give the idea of the history of utopia and how to adapt the utopia thinking. The train won’t wait, please be on time.

All passengers must RSVP aboard: https://forms.gle/CStAWQRpNVNbz4Gh7

Trip time: approx. 1hr

Conductor: Tzu-Huan Lin

Passenger: 24 Utopians

Three trains are running, pick your slot below. Each train only has 8 seats.

Train Options:

5/28 11:00am US, 4:00pm UK, 7:30pm India, 11:00pm Taiwan

5/29 11:00am US, 4:00pm UK, 7:30pm India, 11:00pm Taiwan

5/31 11:00am US, 4:00pm UK, 7:30pm India, 11:00pm Taiwan

*Please note you will need your computer and it needs to be a not bad one.

Get your tickets before it’s too late.

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’

03 Building Utopia on Hubs for workshop

https://youtu.be/ZpVUucBNXA0

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 Interview with Vishal Kumaraswamy

Words in white capital letters say: “They closed around my head and with a golden sword shaved it;” The background is dark blue, reminiscent of an early evening sky. An unidentifiable black shape is in the bottom right corner - it looks like the shadowy silhouette of treetops. The image is a still frame from an artist moving image work by Vishal Kumaraswamy called "your dataset must die" made in 2021. — Vishal Kumaraswamy, *your dataset must die*, 2021 (still image from video)

Jamie Wyld (videoclub & Vital Capacities’ director): Thanks for being part of the Vital Capacities residency programme! Can you say a little about yourself and your work?

Vishal Kumaraswamy: Hi, my name is Vishal Kumaraswamy I’m a Bangalore based Artist & Filmmaker. Within my practice, I work across AI, text, video, sound and performance and I look for points of convergence between Caste, Race & Technology. My works a by weaving speculative narratives & counter-mythologies in multiple Indian languages around themes of Artificial Intelligence, Gender & Labour.

02 The Beginning: Two video works in the past two years that related to this project #Utopia #Satellite #Displacement

I’ve been working on this project for the past two years, during the time I made two videos that related to the subject. As I mentioned before, I couldn’t digest the subject into one simple work.
The Journey begins at the end of 2017 after I finished a project called “The Yellow Snake Is Waiting”. As usual, I look inward to see what is that thing I want to express in the form of Art. I started to paint. I painted some sea turtles and artificial satellite

Acrylic painted three sea turtles.

Acrylic painted artificial satellite.

◐◒◑◓ 6 months past ◴ ◵ ◶ ◷

In 2018 during my 6-month residency at Trestle Art Space, I was thinking about the relationship between sea turtles and artificial satellites. 20000 miles under the sea caught my eye, one of the main character Captain Nemo, he lost his family back to his hometown now he traveled the underworld took it as his land. This reminds me of the idea of Utopia, my journey from Taiwan to the United State. My research shifted from artificial satellite to Utopia…

Intro

by Katarzyna Perlak

A person lies on a bed wearing pink and black leopard skin leotard and leggings, and black fishnet top beneath, also wears black gloves and boots. They have a pink wig and cap on, their face is covered by tight dark pink curls falling from beneath the visor of the cap.
Metallic bronze and clear balloons are piled on the right side of the bed and hang in the air. Golden twisted ribbons hang from the balloons. 2 disco balls also hang from the ceiling. A red chiffon sheet covers a white bedsheet, which the person lies upon. — Katarzyna Perlak, Happily Ever After, 2019 (video still) – find out more

Hi, my name is Katarzyna Perlak, welcome to my virtual residency studio.

I am a London based artist of Polish origin. My practice centres around video, and performance. I have also expanded my work to incorporate textiles, sound, sculptural elements and modes of installation.

I engage with intersectional narratives concerning migrant, queer and women’s histories. Autobiographical experiences often form the starting point, which I then expand into inter-subjective dialogues, tapping into ideas of collective memory, shared vulnerabilities and desires.

Landscape [Design & Development]

by Clifford Sage

The initial plan was to create a loop map in order to represent the continues endeavour we find our selves in searching and freeing fish. But over the residency period I pursued on an end goal. That end being the Tree of life!
In older versions of tuner we have been deprived of Vegetation, leaving a more sterile approach. But this has been hard as I love trees. And now with this new reincarnation of Tuner and its updated water system allowing the ability of more vertical landscapes (rather than water line dependent), evolves for more irregular and hopefully interesting environments.

A New Dawn: Morning Song

by Jaene Castrillon

In 1989 a monumental event shaped me and everything I believed in, that event was the Tiananmen Square massacre. Even though I was only 13 years old, my whole worldview shifted and I understood Democracy to be a fight that we must each take up the fight for. It wasn’t a given, it wasn’t a “right” in the traditional sense of the word, it was a privilege that many fight and die for.

Since then I’ve been a protest person. I protested with my fellow Hong Kong people for Tiananmen and I continued to do so in Canada when I moved back at 16 for many years. Even with disability I have tried to continue protesting in various movements like the Idle No More movement.

I used to think I was the odd one out. My family steadfastly loyal to the motherland and the party line, I thought something was different about me but when I saw the sea of people around me with candles and lights… I knew that the passion of protest was in my blood as someone of Hong Kong heritage. I have always seen my people as fierce fighters.

Flash forward to the various Hong Kong protest movements such as the umbrella movement, the anti extradition protests and so forth going well into 2020. It makes me swell with pride that we have this solid tradition of standing up for what we believe to be right.

Originally Mourning Song was a complicated installation tableau with layering and multiple channels. As we built this piece around the education to the width and depth of accessibility in mind it organically became something different. As I continued to approach the project in a prayerful and ceremonial way, a different project slowly manifested into and installation portrayed through a short film.

What started as a “mourning song” as I felt the grief and sadness of watching the HK Protests become marginalized by history as Tiananmen Square massacre was, I continued to research and clarify to myself the ideology around the project. One of the questions that surfaced was what was the core message of this piece and I realized it was rooted in the feelings of hope not grief. I found sounds I captured and birds to enable a natural flow for background, communicating the hopefulness of this piece. The soundscape is punctuated by a winter soundscape barely noticeable during the protest sign tableau.

While I feel helpless and mournful about the state of the affairs in Hong Kong, especially as a Hong Konger in Canada, especially with the serious allegations coming out of Hong Kong, such as suicide cover ups for police murders/blinding of medics/journalists; elicit a state of mourning for the future of Hong Kong and our youth. At the same time, I am steadfast in this being hopeful and the stirrings of new beginnings, the fire lit from decades ago in Tiananmen Square. From the thousands of Tiananmen Square Protests there has blossomed millions who came to the Hong Kong Protests. And while tyranny may have it’s moment in history, there is always a hopeful future as the younger generation continue to fight for the people’s liberty.

These prayers I encapsulated by recreating an Ancestor Altar featuring a serene Kuan Yin (Goddess of Mercy), trying to mimic the street altars I grew up with my Grandmother in Hong Kong. Like the festival of Ching Ming I offer a feast to my Ancestors honoring theses prayers of hope, resilience and protection. Joss sticks, candles, offerings of meats, sweets and rice wine show my reverence for tradition of these prayers.

Thinking about the mantra from Turtle Island’s Indigenous uprising “Water is Life” and the Hong Protests mantra “Be Water” I am reminded of the resilience and the strength of Hong Kongers, like water, can overcome anything. I created a tableau of Hong Kong Protest signs that were dearest to me to document this monumental moment in history as someone who believes fervently in the new future. The youth have shown us that they are capable of leading us to the future and as long as our youth live, then hope never dies and like water we continue to flow into a future free of tyranny, free of walls and surveillance and assimilation. A future where our diversity is celebrated. Until then I present to you “Morning Song” a celebration of hope and new beginnings while honoring the heart of Hong Kongers across the globe.

The moose doesn’t strike any emotion.

by Damien Robinson

Although most recently I’ve been focusing on creating the residency risograph prints, this post returns to the idea of context as a fundamental factor in untangling lipreading, typographic and AI errors. Lipreading is often like completing a giant freeform crossword puzzle; filling in one set of clues reduces the parameters for the next set, and the next. Context enables you to instantly discard broader variables and zoom in on the most likely possibilities. Working with BSL/SSE interpreters does the same thing; while “vignette” and “finesse” will create almost identical lip patterns, the BSL interpretations use completely different hand shapes and movements.

Lipreading is physically impossible with masks, but there’s also loss of facial expression giving tone & context. But there are still contextual clues; where are you, what’s happening around you?

The same issues seem to be occurring with AI transcription; I examine the context in which errors occur to try to work out what the most likely interpretation is. This is a real challenge as you’ve a tiny amount of time to expend before the conversation moves on – with possibly another set of mangled meaning to decipher. The last work I’ve made looks at this mental juggling by using the risograph duotone process to “correct” mangled AI using proofreaders marks, to represent the two simultaneous thought processes. That work will be in the residency exhibition, but here’s a few puzzles for you to be going on with.

“The moose doesn’t strike any emotion.”

“The perfect cinnamon.”

“I know there is a framework for achieving Oswald by doing do command Libra.”

Division

The symbol of 'division' built with 'Polished Blackstone Slab' is in the foreground. A cow stands on the left side of the symbol while the other stands on the right. They confront and stare at each other. — The symbol of ‘Division’ outside the virtual space of Cattle Depot.

DIVISION: a disagreement or difference in opinion, way of life, etc., especially between members of a society or an organization (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary)

Example sentence:
• Online users see social media as both a cause of and solution for societal division.

Negation

The symbol of 'negation' built with 'Polished Blackstone Slab' is seen against a setting sun in a red sky. Cattle Depot is tinted in red. A cow is in the far background watching the sunset behind the glass grid. — The symbol of ‘Negation’ outside the virtual space of Cattle Depot.

NEGATION: the exact opposite of something; the act of causing something not to exist or to become its opposite (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary)

Example sentence:
• This political system was the negation of democracy.

POWER

A giant panda sits on the symbol of 'power' built with black 'Polished Blackstone Slab' outside Cattle Depot. The panda is eating green bamboo greedily. A few cows can be seen scattered in the background around the other symbols, oblivious of the panda. Cattle Depot is on the left of the symbol, the glass grid structure is on the right. — The symbol of ‘Power’ outside the virtual space of Cattle Depot. A giant panda is sitting on the symbol and devouring bamboo.

POWER: political control of a country or an area (Oxford Learner’s Dictionary)

Example sentence:
• The present regime has been in power for more than 70 years.

Charge

The symbol that represents the physical concept of ‘Charge’ from the Dutil-Dumas message.

The symbol of ‘Charge’ outside the virtual space of Cattle Depot. A peaceful herd of cows gather near the symbol.

CHARGE: an official claim made by the police that somebody has committed a crime (Cambridge Dictionary)

Example sentence:
• Peaceful protesters were charged with rioting.

Mass