Digital Prayer

Kristina Tica

Digital Prayer is an award−winning project of the art+science AI Lab national selection for 2020; it is realised in collaboration with the Mathematical Institute of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, under the mentorship of Dr Miloš Milovanović. What is presented here is an art & science concept dealing with the application of one of computer vision methods aiming at generating an image, whose visual product resembles an Orthodox icon. Generating pixels through the use of machine learning techniques, a relation has been established between the canonical structure of the Orthodox icon and the image artificially created through a computer program. A computer program was created and a database of about 4000 digital reproductions of Orthodox icons was collected, based on which the computer learns to create a completely new image. Directing algorithmic processes to generate the language of the icon, two visual interfaces intersect — the virtual world of a digital image and the traditional handcrafted Orthodox icon. Our needs, answers to questions, moral codes, and impacts are today kept within a virtual more so than within a spiritual space. The image that we see is just a visualisation of the code and information data in the background, which leads us to the analogy proposed by Boris Groys: “The digital image is a visible copy of the invisible image file, of the invisible data. In this respect, the digital image is functioning as a Byzantine icon — as a visible copy of invisible God.”

Kristina Tica has a BA in painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Arts, Bel- grade, and an MA in the area of digital arts from the Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, Belgrade. She participated at several study programmes in London, as part of the Central Saint Martin, UAL, and Slade School of Fine Art, UCL. She exhibited her work at numerous group exhibitions locally and abroad, and has so far realised one independent exhibiting project. She realizes her art projects in the domains of painting, video art, ambient installations, and generative new media art. She resides and works in Belgrade.

Scientific mentor: Dr Miloš Milovanović, Mathematical Institute of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts

Collaborators on the project
Software development: Miloš Trifunović
Audio installation: Marija Šumarac
AI mentor: Dr Uroš Krčadinac, Faculty of Media and Communication, Singidunum University
Technical support: Jacques Laroche, Faculty of Media and Communication, Singidunum University

Aerosonar

Ana Todosijević, Marija Šumarac, Ana Anastasov

Aerosonar is a spatial audio installation which displays air pollution on a macro level in the micro environment of the exhibition space, at the same time emphasising a human impact on air pollution. The musical composition of the installation allows the air pollution to be experienced largely through the sense of hearing, which is otherwise not the case. Human impact on the installation itself and alternating spatial conditions result in changes in the musical composition, which make visitors aware of their impact. Musical composition is created through the sonification of downtown Belgrade air pollution data, having each selected air pollution parameter correspond to a sound. Visitors’ impact is recorded based on their behaviour in the space of the installation. Each impact is recorded by the movement sensors, and this impact is then translated into a function which modifies the original air pollution com- position. Visitors experience the installation space through a mutual relationship of the air pollution parameters, as well as through their personal relation to the same parameters.

Ana Todosijević Architect and researcher focusing on the mutual connection and relationship between architecture, living systems and technology. Ana is one of the founders of the Bio2Arch, an association which gathers scientists, artists and everyone else who would like to explore the intersection of art and science through the experimental method. Bio2Arch focuses on the application of biological organisms in architecture and the discovery of conceptual solutions to ecological problems, as well as the reconsideration of the relationship between biological species and the environment.
bio2arh.org

Marija Šumarac Sound designer, composer, trombone player, and sound artist. She graduated with a BA from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, Department of Sound Recording and Design, where she is currently doing her MA studies. She worked at the Electronic Studio at Radio Bel- grade. She received the Neda Depolo Award, granted by Radio Belgrade’s second channel for creative contribution to radio expression. She was one of Serbia’s representatives at the Prague Quadriennal 2019. Her work includes live performance, radio, and film compositions, audio dramas and installations. She is also a member of various orches- tras and jazz bands.
soundcloud.com/marija-sumarac

Ana Anastasov Sound designer and composer. She graduated with a BA from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, Department of Sound Recording and Design, where she is currently doing her MA studies. Ana is engaged as a demonstrator in the Radio Drama Directing course at the Faculty. She is also a member of the Youth Board of Kolarac where she participates in creation of science and art programs. At the end of last year, her composition Exolvuntur announced the “Piano Sky #2” compilation, published by the Pop Depression Records. ana-anastasov.com

Collaborators on the project
Software development: Aleksandar Kilibarda
Development of the scientific concept: Dr Bojan Kening

AI/VI

Dr Aleksandar Bulajić, Ana Popović, Isidora Pejović Blagojević, Dr Maja Maksimović, Sunčica Pasuljević Kandić

Play the game

AI/VI is an interdisciplinary pilot project dedicated to the development of artificial intelligence and its roles in modern society. It is created as a pervasive mobile game that uncovers AI, and the accompanying problematics. The aim is to put players in the position where they would question human and algorithmic ways of making decisions and their future consequences: how do we understand artificial intelligence and relate to it; what direction do we want it to take; how do we transform and shape together ourselves in the process of its creation and consumption?
Mapped locations in Belgrade downtown represent particular topical stations which problematise dynamic relationships in the creator-AI-user system, their functions, limitations, symbolic and practical potentials. Players continually build their relationship with AI, determining themselves with their choices and the reality they go through. Through the game and with it, they can uncover their path. This uncovering continues during picnic discussions, designed as a place to exchange lived experiences. It’s a space to delve deeper into the touched on problematics, and have the public actively engage in further developing the game.
AI/VI is designed by a team of professional experts from various fields gathered around a shared question — how are humans and artificial intelligence being shaped and transformed through their mutual relationship, communication, and use?

Dr Aleksandar Bulajić is an Assistant Professor at the Andragogy Department, Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade. Currently, his research focuses on the cognitive aspects of functional illiteracy and on other elements of visual perception significant to literacy. Further professional development, Aleksandar acquired at The Center for Cognitive Science, Technical University of Kaiserslautern. He is a member of the Andragogical Studies journal editorial board, and part of the team several (inter)national research projects.

Ana Popović is a theatre director, theatrologist and educator from Belgrade. She is a founder of the award-winning theatre organisation Threepenny (2015) as well as the Visual Anthropology Center (2018). She is the creator of the Young Theatre Experts (2016, 2019), a programme for the development of children and youth theatre audiences. Currently, she is a doctoral student of the transdisciplinary art and media studies at the Faculty of Media and Communication, Singidunum University.

Isidora Pejović Blagojević is a visual artist from Belgrade. She graduated with a BA at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts (Camera Operator), and an MA in New Media Studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts, where she is currently a doctoral student and Teaching Associate. In her artistic work, she engages in the relations between humans and society, humans and nature, as well as artist’s relations towards societal norms. She conducts her research through various digital media, with a special focus on video games and generative art.

Dr Maja Maksimović is an Assistant Professor at the Pedagogy and Andragogy Department, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade. Currently, her research encompasses intertwining of educational, activist and artistic engagement. She is a member of the European Society for Research of the Education of Adults board, and associate on projects within the International Society for Education through Art. She is one of the editors of the book Engaged Art Education.

Sunčica Pasuljević Kandić works at the Department of New Media Art, Academy of Arts in Novi Sad. In her work, she connects research, curatorial, pedagogical and artistic practices. In a nondisciplinary way, she explores questions of language, communication, collaboration, and identity in the context of our Anthropocene environment and algorithmic management. She organises and produces numerous local and international projects at the intersection of technology, science and art.

Collaborators on the project
Computer programming: Filip Žarković
Graphic design: Ivan Avdić
Dialogue dramaturgy: Miloš Petrik

Nooscope

Dr Vladan Joler and Dr Matteo Pasquinelli

The Nooscope Manifested: Artificial Intelligence as Instrument of Knowledge Extractivism (2020, visual essay)
Nooscope is a cartography of the limits of artificial intelligence, intended as a provocation to both computer science and the humanities. Any map is a partial perspective, a way to provoke debate. Similarly, this map is a manifesto — of AI dissidents. Its main purpose is to challenge the mystifications of artificial intelligence. The purpose of the Nooscope map is to secularise AI from the ideological status of ‘intelligent machine’ to one of the knowledge instruments.
Rather than evoking legends of alien cognition, it is more reasonable to consider machine learning as an instrument of knowledge magnification that helps to perceive features, patterns and correlations through vast spaces of data beyond human reach. In the tradition of science, machine learning is just a Nooscope, an instrument to see and navigate the space of knowledge (from the Greek skopein ‘to examine, look’ and noos ‘knowledge’). This diagram manifesto is another way to say that AI, the king of computation (patriarchal fantasy of mechanised knowledge, ‘master algorithm’ and alpha machine) is naked.

Dr Vladan Joler is Professor at the Academy of Arts of the University of Novi Sad and founder of SHARE Foundation. He is leading SHARE Lab, a research and investigation lab that explores the technical and social aspects of algorithmic transparency, digital labor exploitation, invisible infrastructures, and technological black boxes.
labs.rs/sr

Dr Matteo Pasquinelli is Professor in Media Philosophy at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design, where he is coordinating the research group on Artificial Intelligence and Media Philosophy KIM. For Verso Books he is preparing a monograph on the history of AI provisionally titled The Eye of the Master.
matteopasquinelli.com

Running at Frame Rate

Filip Kostić

Running at Frame Rate is a software which foregrounds frame rate as its core mechanic. It asserts that ‘running at frame rate’ is an economic proposition. The artwork addresses the assumption in gaming and technology that ‘realism’ is the constant and exponential movement of hardware and software towards the photo-real representation of the physical world. In the work, the computer is the main character whose primary goal is to render efficiently while trying to push itself to extreme ends. The software continually remembers its performance and reacts to it − at times optimising itself by taking breaks, resetting, or trying to render better. It is an exercise in world-building through both the pragmatic assembling of the world on screen and the narrative that emerges from the computer’s reaction to the software. It is through this that the work questions the increasingly accurate photoreal representation of the world in games and simulation, without the simultaneous representation of the material realities of said world.

Filip Kostić is an artist and educator living in Los Angeles. His work examines the relationship between the self, the uploaded and continually updating digital-self, and the mechanisms of the apparatus which facilitate the upload. Filip is an assistant professor for the Interaction Design Department at ArtCenter College of Design. Kostić’s work has been shown at Projektwohnung Krudebude in Leipzig, NAVEL, Elevator Mondays, Tiger Strikes Asteroid and Roger’s Office in Los Angeles, at the Springbreak Art Show in New York and at the Wind Tunnel Gallery in Pasadena.
filipkostic.site

Bird Song Diamond
Noise Aquarium

Victoria Vesna

Bird Song Diamond: the acoustic mapping of bird song networks tech (in collaboration with Charles Taylor, bird sounds database courtesy of Jasne Jovićević, 2014-ongoing)
The goal of this project is to understand the language of birds − of course not ALL species of birds, but at least a few, starting with those that have languages that seem complex, and yet manageable. While this has long been a desire, up to now it has not been possible, but with modern advances in computing, in linguistic analysis, and a new-found appreciation of how sophisticated other creatures can be, the grammar (and perhaps meaning) of bird song seems attainable. Each installation is habitat specific and reflects its environment and ecology. For Belgrade, we’ll create an online meditation version, which will be a live networked performance exchanging local bird songs from Los Angeles and Bel- grade. Bird Song Diamond: LA > Belgrade is a reflection on the call and response communication networks during the time of the global pandemic. The artist is joined by composer and sound artist Jasna Jovićević in Serbia, Ivana Dama and Clinton von Arman from Los Angeles and John Brumley from San Francisco.
birdsongdiamond.com

Noise Aquarium
(in collaboration with Dr. Alfred Vendl and Martina Fröeschl, 2019-ongoing)
The ecological crisis is a human crisis. Oceans must not be considered as flat blue surfaces which serve as dropping holes where we can let vanish all our anthropogenic remains. There are vast amounts of organisms that live down there and some suffer pain from our waste and noise. Many are aware of mammals such as whales and dolphins but often ignored is the invisible and the inaudible environment to us that is deeply secluded. Also invisible is the growing volume of micro and nano-plastics that this planktons, at the bottom of the food chain, mistake for food. Therefore, in this installation, we have enlarged 3D scans and animations of plankton to be like whales. The sounds are gathered from various research into noise pollution and spatialized. This is a highly interdisciplinary artist led effort with biologists, chemists, nano-toxicologists and an animator all working together towards a common goal – to raise awareness of this invisible and inaudible realm.
Noiseaquarium.com

Victoria Vesna, Ph.D, Artist and Professor, UCLA Department of Design | Media Arts, Director of the Art|Sci center at the School of the Arts and California Nanosystems Institute (CNSI). With her collaborative installations she investigates how communication technologies affect collective behavior and perceptions of identity shift in relation to scientific innovation. She has exhibited artwork in 20+ solo exhibitions, 70+ group shows, published in 20+ papers, and gave 100+ invited talks in the last decade.
victoriavesna.com