Event #3 Blog

Event #3 Blog

My third event was the Media Art Nexus lecture and screening on May 22nd. This lecture gave the innovative artists Mark Chavez and Ina Conradi the chance to speak about their work and collaborated projects. Their beautiful creations were so impressive, yet the lectures by the two were much more presentations than they were explanations of their inspirations and goals for the pieces, so it was up to viewers like me to decipher meaning in their art and make connections to our course.

Professor Vesna at the lecture

Conradi is an award winning new media artist and associate professor at the Nanyan Technological University in Singapore. Her current project focused on in the presentation is Media Art Nexus started in 2016 as, “a community public art project that aims at providing a platform for exhibiting interactive digital art created by the multidisciplinary community of NTU”(academic profile of Ina Conradi NTU website). The MAN (media art nexus) project integrates collaborations from a myriad of disciplines, including art, science, medicine, and engineering technologies that matches perfectly with the work we are examine in DESMA. This is also in the previous works that she also humbly mentioned in addition to current projects.

For example, the film she directed, “Chrysalis" connects many themes of life and human drives through the visual medium. The film is, “based on an old legend about the butterfly’s struggles to evolve” as a metaphor for the innate human desire to survive and progress (http://chrysalisthemovie.com/). I see a connection between this message and that of Unit 6, Biotech and art. This film is an example of using natural organisms performing biological missions, manipulated or emulated by artists into an art form conveying complex ideas about humans in evolution and existence. I see this film in relation to biotech art as the concepts are integrated in a similar manner, in appreciation of the natural world.

chrysalisthemovie.com/.

Mark Chavez was the second artist, and his works were very similar in content to Ina’s because they have worked together on many projects. Mark is an accomplished animator, art director, and CEO of a game design and production company (UCLA INA CONRADI + MARK CHAVEZ: MEDIA ART NEXUS NTU SINGAPORE). His work also connects in many ways with concepts we have been studying this quarter.

picture I took during Chavez's discussion of AI

One topic discussed and shown in the picture above is Artificial intelligence and dynamic, interactive design in Chavez’s art. He wrote on this topic, stating his intention to incorporate this technology, stating, “the current  focus is on a single real-time 3D character with the design concept encompassing elements of conversational artificial intelligence”(Chavez, 2006). In our course we examined the future possibilities of artificial intelligence in art in Unit 3, Robotics + Art. During this week I watched on TedTalk by Hod Lipson about building self aware robots with the ability to learn and understand themselves (Lipson, 2018). Although Chavez’s work manifests on the visual screen and not a physical robot, both works integrate technology and man made intelligence in new and exciting ways.

Sources:

32, LLC Stage. “Mark Chavez - Mark's Bio, Credits, Awards, and More.” Stage 32, www.stage32.com/markchavez.

Chavez, Mark. “Artificial Intelligence and Dynamic Design: Adaptive Real Time 3D Characters.” Academia.edu, www.academia.edu/491647/Artificial_Intelligence_and_Dynamic_Design_Adaptive_Real_Time_3D_Characters.

“Chrysalis.” The-Grid, chrysalisthemovie.com/.

“Ina Conradi Creative Works.” Ina Conradi Biography, © Ina Conradi 2018. MADE BY PAREL CREATIVE, inaconradi.com/.

“INA CONRADI MARK CHAVEZ: MEDIA ART NEXUS NTU SINGAPORE.” COLLECTIVE BREAD DIARIES: A TASTE OF PROTEST | UCLA Art | Sci Center Lab, artsci.ucla.edu/node/1388.

Lipson, Hod. “Building ‘Self-Aware’ Robots.” TED: Ideas Worth Spreading, www.ted.com/talks/hod_lipson_builds_self_aware_robots.

“NTU: Academic Profile: Assoc Prof Ina Conradi Chavez.” NTU: Academic Profile: Prof Ang Peng Hwa, research.ntu.edu.sg/expertise/academicprofile/Pages/StaffProfile.aspx?ST_EMAILID=INACONRADI.