This week, the RIXC Art and Science Festival and Exhibition: Symbiotic Sense(s) will take place in Riga, Latvia and online from October 23–25, 2024. The festival will kick off with the festival exhibition opening at the National Library of Latvia, Riga on Wednesday, October 23 at 18.00, which will include a curator-led guided tour, an introduction to the artists followed by a special evening event at 19.00 – ‘Be My Guest!’ performance by the artist duo ‘Me AndOther Me’ – a special opportunity to become one of five guests at a dinner hosted by artificial intelligence.
Me AndOther Me. Be My Guest!, 2024. Performance at IMPAKT Centre for Media Art in Utrecht. Photo: KakaLee
The next day, Thursday, 24 October, at 18.00, the Deep Sensing exhibition by artists Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits will open at the RIXC Gallery, Lenču iela 2, Riga, Latvia. The immersive installation, previously exhibited in Milan and Taipei, returns to Riga as part of the festival programme, tracking the flow of cosmic particles flying from the Sun to the Earth.
In addition to the exhibitions, the festival programme will also feature the international Open Fields conference from October 23–25, 2024 at the Neiburgs Hotel, Riga, Latvia and online. The festival will begin with the opening keynotes on ecological and regenerative culture and algorithmic art on October 23 by the special guests, art theorist and curator Eric Kluitenberg and artist and media researcher Rosemary Lee. On the following day, the media art researcher and writer Jens Hauser will give a lecture on holobionts – interconnected living organisms – and how this concept inspires performative art practices. The conference will conclude with the launch of RIXC’s latest book, Beyond the Hybrid, which explores hybridity in a contemporary context, from artificial intelligence and digital interfaces to bio-art manifestations.
Exhibitions
Located at the intersection of symbiotic art aesthetics and visionary scientific paradigms, the Symbiotic Sense(s) exhibition explores symbiotic thinking. It draws on biological theories of symbiosis and the concept of the ‘holobiont’ – a complex entity composed of organisms living in close association – as well as early ‘human-computer’ symbiosis and modern ‘sensing machines’. By assessing the role of our senses and exploring the elusive ‘sixth sense’ as an extension of cognition beyond the human – both metaphorically and scientifically – the exhibition suggests that symbiosis defines our existence and that ‘symbiotic sensing’ is essential for our survival. Symbiotic Sense(s) presents works by artists affiliated with the European Media Art Platform (EMAP), as well as renowned Latvian and international artists, exploring the boundaries between human, machine, and nature, and envisioning new forms of sensing and collaboration towards a more symbiotic future.
Mónica Rikić in collaboration with Gema FB Martín. Hipèrbole, 2023
The Hipèrbole artwork by the Spanish artist Mónica Rikić challenges the predominant role of spoken and written language in cognitive expression and human-machine communication. The artist has developed an alternative cognitive machine, built from handcrafted electronics. Dressed in soft clothing, the artwork encourages the audience to perceive them as similar and different, but non-threatening.
Latvian artists Santa France and Sabine Šnē have created new artworks specifically for the RIXC Festival exhibition: Symbiotic Sense(s), which explore the intricate interactions and connections between humans and nature.
Still Life with Fruiting Bodies by Santa France explores the tradition of foraging for mushrooms within a consumer-driven world – mushrooms naturally connect vast underground networks starkly contrasts with the isolation of overconsumption, where individuals grow distant from the origins of their food and environment. Drawing from personal experience of mushroom hunting from an early age and nostalgia for field guide books, the artwork examines how this sustainable practice has become intertwined with modern consumer excess. However, the We Belong to Them by Sabīne Šnē explores trees as one of the shapers of our world – 3D scans of trees are combined with speculative environments complemented by texts that “translate” more-than-human voices for humans. The work focuses on six interconnected scenarios caused by the global climate crisis that impact trees: soil pollution, air pollution, rising temperatures and drought, loss of biodiversity, pest and disease proliferation, and shifts in growing seasons.
Exhibition artists: Tatsuru ARAI (JP/DE), Po-Hao CHI (TW), Santa FRANCE (LV), Sasha LITVINTSEVA & Beny WAGNER (UK/DE), Me AndOther Me / Cenk GÜZELIS & Anna POMPERMAIER (AT/IT), Mónica RIKIĆ (ES), Studio Above & Below (DE/UK), Sabīne ŠNĒ (LV), T(n)C (DE/HU).
The immersive Deep Sensing installation by Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits is the second exhibition of the festival and will be on view at RIXC gallery, Lenču iela 2 from October 24–December 7, 2024.
Rasa Smite, Raitis Smits. Deep Sensing, 2023. MEET Digital Culture Center, Milan
Deep Sensing is an immersive installation that explores how weather and climate data interact with events in our solar system. Virtual point cloud antennas track the flow of cosmic particles from the Sun to the Earth, generating global wind patterns that are interpreted into immersive visualizations and soundscapes using data and recordings from Irbene radiotelescope. RIXC artists strive to push the boundaries of climate science by investigating its correlations with space research while contextualizing these interactions in a socio-ecological and geopolitical perspective. Their immersive multi-sensory experience is an endeavour to make the complex science, impacts, and scale of climate-induced environmental change more accessible to the public.
Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits are Riga (Latvia) and Karlsruhe (Germany) based artists and co-founders of the RIXC Center for New Media Culture in Riga, Latvia, co-curators of RIXC Art and Science Festival, and chief-editors of Acoustic Space. Together they create visionary and networked artworks – from pioneering internet radio experiments in the 1990s, to artistic investigations in electromagnetic spectrum and collaborations with radio astronomers, and more recent “techno-ecological” explorations. Their projects have been nominated (Purvitis Prize 2019, 2021, International Public Arts Award – Eurasian region 2021), awarded (Ars Electronica 1998, Falling Walls – Science Breakthrough 2021) and shown widely including at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Latvian National Museum of Arts, House of Electronic Arts in Basel, Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, most recently at the MEET Center in Milan and ZONESOUND CREATIVE Center in Taipei, Taiwan, and other venues, exhibitions and festivals in Europe, the United States, Canada and Asia.
Conference
Alongside the festival’s exhibitions, one of the festival’s highlights is the international Open Fields conference, which will take place at the Neiburgs Hotel and online from October 23–25, 2024. The conference will bring together more than 50 speakers in Riga and online from 16 European and other countries around the world to redefine the boundaries between self and other, human and machine, natural and artificial, promoting symbiotic thinking, conversations about collaboration and collective action towards a more symbiotic future.
On Wednesday, October 23, at 16.00, the festival will begin with the thematic opening keynotes on symbiosis, intelligent ecosystems and algorithmic art by art theorist and curator Eric Kluitenberg (NL) and artist and media researcher Rosemary Lee (US/PT).
The Dutch theorist, writer and curator Eric Kluitenberg has long focused his research on the increasingly relevant issue of ecological degradation.
The ReGenerate: Designing the Grand Zoöperation keynote talk by Eric Kluitenberg will explore a new ‘institutional design’ for how human and nonhuman life can work together in a structured process. As formulated by researcher and curator Klaas Kuitenbrouwer the Zoöp is an organisation model for cooperation between human and nonhuman life that safeguards the interests of all zoë (Greek for ‘life’). Central within the thinking about this ‘grand zoöperation’ is the idea of new forms of ecological regenerative practices and a nascent regenerative culture – a way of operating in all domains that not only does ‘less harm’, but that directly contributes to improving the ecological conditions and the ecological integrity of a particular site or process: From Net-Zero to Net-Positive. To create a forum and testing ground for the new creative practices that engage with this nascent regenerative culture Kluitenberg will present a new proposal for a new festival for ecological art & design and regenerative culture, focused specifically on the Green Heart region – a green mostly rural core surrounded by the urban agglomerations of the ‘Randstad’ (Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam, The Hague, Leiden).
Artist and media researcher Rosemary Lee (USA/Portugal) focuses on a hot topic at the moment – imaging technologies and how they fit into broader narratives about art, knowledge and the relationship between humans and machines.
The Behind the Algorithmic Image keynote talk by Rosemary Lee will talk about algorithms and their pervasive influence on the production, circulation, and interpretation of images. While novel in some aspects, these recent developments are connected to much earlier, even analog, geometrical, optical, and procedural methods. In this talk, Rosemary Lee will present her book Algorithm, Image, Art, examining the history, processes, and ideas behind the current abundance of algorithms in visual culture. The book looks at how the production of images in terms of algorithmic instructions has shaped images and art, as well as the values used to assess them, drawing connections between the algorithmic forms of visual media we are familiar with today and the precursors from which they evolved.
The first day of the conference, Thursday, October 24, will start at 10.00 with a lecture by Jens Hauser (DE/FR/DK) on Art and the Holobiont: Microperformative Positions Beyond the ‘Individual/Collective’ Binary.
Jens Hauser is a media art researcher and curator who explores the relationship between art and technology, as well as co-creator of the concept for the RIXC Festival 2019: Un/Green. How does the concept of the holobiont profoundly inspire performative artistic practices, by opening up a contemporary perspective on life as a co-operative and holistic phenomenon based on complex relationships between living and non-living entities? Based on the contributions to the forthcoming book Life is Other: A/Biotic Entanglements in Art and Curating, Jens Hauser (the editor) will introduce the fluidity of life across various scales appears through the lens of the holobiont – from microscopic organisms to planetary systems, demonstrating how art can reveal the deep interconnectedness within a holistic and evolutionary perspective, and relate the invisibility of the microscopic to the incomprehensibility of the macroscopic.
The final day of the festival, on Friday, October 25, will start at 10.00 with the launch of the latest book of the RIXC series: Acoustic Space / Renewable Futures, titled – Beyond the Hybrid. Narratives, New Media Experiments and Speculations Touching Art and Science Knowledge Exchange.
The recently published book will be presented by the editors from Aalto University, Lily Diaz-Kommonen and Juhani Tenhunen. The book published by RIXC with Aalto University addresses hybridity’s implications in modern contexts, from AI and digital interfaces to bio-artistic expressions, exploring how hybrid media systems blend traditional and new media to reshape power dynamics and cultural narratives.
Book editors: Lily Diaz-Kommonen, Juhani Tenhunen, Rasa Smite, Raitis Smits.
Conference participants: Jade APACK, Nima BAHREHMAND, Elizabeth BARRY, August BLACK, Yindi CHEN, Oksana CHEPELYK, Pohao CHI, Enrico DORIGATTI, Sabrina DURLING-JONES, Tuçe EREL, Jānis GARANČS, Mariella GREIL, Yoon Chung HAN, Mona HEDAYATI, Susanna HERTRICH, Carolyn KIRSCHNER, Lily DÍAZ-KOMMONEN, Agata KONARSKA, Jakub KOSECKI, Peter KOZEK, Tina KULT, Robert LISEK, Shanhuan MANTON, Jozef Eduard MASARIK, Me AndOther Me (Anna POMPERMAIER, Cenk GÜZELIS), Katherine MORIWAKI, Sebastian MÜHL, Sandris MŪRIŅŠ, Yi Qing NG, Terho OJELL-JÄRVENTAUSTA, Vygintas ORLOVAS, Miguel PAREDES MALDONADO, Chantal T PARIS, Anna PRIEDOLA, Mónica RIKIĆ, Arturo ROMERO CARNICERO, Yan SHAO, Oleksandr SIROUS, Lucie STRECKER, Sabīne ŠNĒ, Juhani TENHUNEN, Gisèle TRUDEL, Svitlana USYCHENKO, Agnes VARNAI, Līga VĒLIŅA, Martins VIZBULIS, Nathan WILLIAMS, Liang XIAO, Anne YONCHA.
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Festival / conference registration (tickets) on Eventbrite. [1]
Price: 36 EUR, Students 50% discount
Entry to the Symbiotic Sense(s) and Deep Sensing exhibitions is free of charge.
Organisers offer free guided tours (in Latvian and English) for exhibitions. Apply by writing to rixc@rixc.org
Festival is produced by the RIXC Centre for New Media Culture.
Festival curators and concept authors – Rasa Smite (rasa@rixc.org) and Raitis Smits (raitis@rixc.org)
Festival producers:
Līva Siliņa – PR and information coordinator,
Agnese Baranova – festival and exhibition producer,
Daina Siliņa – conference coordinator,
Lelde Gūtmane – festival producer assistant.
More information:
https://festival2024.rixc.org/ [2]
http://rixc.org/ [3]
Support: State Culture Capital Foundation, Riga City Council, European Commission in the framework of the project “EMAP Expanded”, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia, Goethe-Institut Riga.
Partners: RTU Liepaja Academy, National Library of Latvia, Neiburgs Hotel, Skaņu mežs.
Media support: We Make Money Not Art, Echo Gone Wrong, Arterritory, Satori.