We are very excited to introduce the two selected artists for the “Residències Hìbrides: small embodied data”. The evaluation and selection process was conducted by a committee composed of all Axolot.cat members, along with the artists Alicia Champlin and Glen Fraser as external contributors. It has been a very challenging task as we received around 25 proposals all with a high and diverse artistic quality.
Due to their alignment with the Hìbrides themes, as well as their viability and relevance, the two selected artists to develop their projects in collaboration with Axolot.cat during November 2024 are:
Aizhan Saganayeva
MA student at Interface Cultures, based in Linz, Austria. Her research line is on exploring the philosophical/ontological and decolonial aspects of language within media art practices. Right now, Aizhan is researching the topic of voice/speech authenticity and voice cloning/synthesizing tools in relation to identity and self-perception.
“Sorry, ancestors!” Performance with custom neural network.
No surprise that our digital experiences are directly connected with the algorithms and the language it was trained on. Since non-Western languages are not commonly used for training the datasets, we might see the lack of information in the digital environments of those territories. In our project we will train Kazakh language datasets to reflect on the topic of domination of the Russian language until now since the collapse of the Soviet Empire within the global imperialist discourse that we see in the disbalance of big and small language datasets.
We want to create a situation where the performer engages in a dialog with their digital twin – chatbot. The avatar is generating speech with the help of a custom dataset s and on the voice of a performer. We are interested in how we can think of an effective counterculture in this case, if instead of being in confrontation with the dominant cultures, we build a poetical dialog with the small language datasets and postcolonial studies could be poetically merged?
This project is co-authored with Anna Kin, almaty-based research-driven artist, manager of cultural projects and language enthusiast. Currently working in the field of socially engaged art, photography, performance and new media. Explores the traces of the Soviet Empire through the languages and cultures of the peoples of Central Asia, Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. The artistic method includes the practice of caring and solidarity. The artist enters into a dialogue with people through various mediums – happenings, workshops, total installations.
LOTTA STÖVER
Lotta Stöver is an emerging artist in the fields of media, technologies and research. Her works engage with phenomena and matters as they converse, align, disobey, transform, de/transition and mutate along with (new) technologies. Through processes of poetic engineering, digital imaging methods, writing, and involving data and matter in an embedded and embodied manner, her artifacts pose questions about (social) norms implied by natural and technological environments. Her work forms around this materially thinking-with the social domain of technologies, resulting in observations, critique, queer alternatives and utopian proposals.
https://lotta-stoever.net/
“Local Positioning System”. Immersive experience.
Draws together strands of research on the history of GPS and various ways of technologically-mediated emplacement of humans in a more-than-human world. Through poetic engineering, custom electronics and an artistic research around maps, GPS and embodied data, the project attempts to generate an immersive experience into the local eco/geo/techno/bio/helio/psycho/medial networks.
We are excited to welcome both artists to the Residències Híbrides program and look forward to getting to know their work more closely in our space. Their processes and projects will be showcased during the Híbrides Encounter from November 28th to 30th, 2024.