Event Two

About

In collaboration with the Computer Arts Society, Royal College of Art, EVA London and the Luman Art Projects, Event Two is a landmark exhibition for which FLUX have curated a platform for contemporary new media artists. Building on the legacy of Event One, the very first exhibition of the Computer Arts Society at the Royal College of Art 50 years ago, the event will showcase not only original computational artworks from the Computer Art Society’s collection, but also ART IN FLUX, a selection of today’s most radical media artists. The FLUX co-founders, Maria Almena, Oliver Gingrich and Aphra Shemza present ART IN FLUX, representing today’s media arts at EVENT TWO by combining historical aspects of computer art with contemporary arts practices.

Art in Flux is FLUX’s annual exhibition, examining the most important concepts of today’s media art practices and opens this discourse to the wider public. Over the last three years the FLUX artist community have explored these themes together through talks, workshops, community projects and exhibitions such as  Intelligent Matter, Radical Ecology, the Embodiment of Technology, AYAH - Sign and ART IN FLUX 2018. Our program for ART IN FLUX at Event Two highlights key concepts of media art, while showcasing some of today’s most radical contemporary artists.

The FLUX Events’ selection, ART IN FLUX, features an array of creative practices including computation, digital media and new technologies such as VR, AI, EEG technologies, real-time data visualisation and live body-mapping. FLUX Events will feature some of the most revolutionary new media artists working today, with the themes covered including data and privacy, well-being, ecology, misogyny, complex systems and biology. This discourse brings into focus historical questions on the development of technology and computer art, and contextualises some of the themes in The CAS50 Collection and Event One through the prism of contemporary practices.

Aphra Shemza, Oliver Gingrich and Maria Almena, the FLUX co-founders will showcase their own work, which oscillates between sustainable art and light art practices (Aphra Shemza), transformative participatory interactive art (Kimatica) and brainwave art (Oliver Gingrich). The FLUX team will be complemented by key FLUX artists including pioneer of light art Paul Friedlander, Lumen Prize winner Andy Lomas who presents his morphogenetic, generative artforms, and Rachel Ara who raises important and timely questions about gender and power.  Three VR artists compliment the exhibition: Nicola Plant inspects virtual spaces as shared visceral experiences, whereas William Latham’s amorphous, psychedelic creatures point to simultaneously organic, yet digital evolutions of forms. Jon Weinel’s Cyberdream VR depicts ‘hallucinated visions of broken techno-utopian vistas of cyberspace’. 

Cecilia Falkenstrom’s artificial intelligent art pieces raises important questions on the limits of computational art, and human-computer communication. Artists Stuart F. Batchelor and Edward Edmonds will be showing novel forms of code-based art, whereas artist Mark Farid interrogates boundaries of media and privacy by opening up social media to the public. The art collective Analema Group explores visual sound through participatory art practices prompting audiences to discover intricacies in their own voices. This diverse spectrum of artists will be shown side by side with the CAS50 collection, in the historic context of Event Two at the Royal College of Art.  

Furthermore, FLUX presents outstanding screen based work that pushes the limits of creative practices in media arts by artists Heather Barnett, Jake Elwes, Karel Bata, Kristina Pulejkova, Paul Brown, Sean Clark, Tivon Rice and  Zarah Hussain and a workshop program by Stuart F. Batchelor invites audiences to create their own generative art pieces.

Discourse is at the core of FLUX’ activities. At Event TWO, we invite the audience to a talk on invasive media – one of three curated FLUX talks this year. The blurring of lines between artificial intelligence and human thinking goes far beyond the sphere of art and has penetrated all parts of our lives. Artists’ role is to critically question these digital revolutions. This event, curated by Oliver Gingrich will present different artistic practices by Anna Troisi, Boredomresearch, Mark Fahrid, Stacey Pitsilides and Rachel Ara.