ANNA FRANTS VISIONARY DREAMS No. 3292–3296 UNIDENTIFIED OBJECTS

Anna Frants. VISIONARY DREAMS No. 3292–3296. UNIDENTIFIED OBJECTS Multimedia installation in Borey gallery halls. Supported by CYLAND Media Laboratory. December 21–30, 2021

What is “unidentified”? A city madman without identification? Any object of unusual shape? In fact, it could be anything about which we lack sufficient information.

According to Marcel Duchamp, an artist doesn’t necessarily need to create a work of art—they can simply choose an unidentified, unknown, found object, a readymade, and place it in the context of a museum or gallery, thus turning it into an objet d’art.

A character in a Soviet-era film says he’ll attach “a thing like this” to a readymade object, “and it will fly”—becoming an unidentified flying object, even if not in the shape of a saucer. Anna Frants, a new media artist, “attaches” electronic devices or “things” to readymade or repurposed objects. These objects might not take flight, but they will be ready to comprehend the cosmos and explore the chaos.

“Simple Pleasures.” Installation. Cinegraphs, robotics, mixed media. 2021, St. Petersburg. With support from the CYLAND Media Laboratory

Borey Gallery December 21 – 30, 2021

ART DATA: COLLECTING, PRESERVING AND DISPLAYING DIGITAL (Leonardo/ISAST LASER Talks)

Panelists: Christiane Paul , Anna Frants, Lev Manovich, Anne Spalter Moderator: Natalia Kolodzei

Digital, computer, internet, software, and multimedia art forms — from CD-ROM-based multimedia projects to net.art — have been created for many years and have entered the mainstream art world. Milestone exhibitions such as the Whitney Biennial included digital works as early as 2000 and the Whitney Museum’s artport was launched in 2001. University art departments around the world are formalizing digital media programs; textbooks on digital art have been published; conferences around art and technology are thriving; and gradually museums and private collectors are beginning to accession works in digital media into their art collections.

Christiane Paul, Anna Frants, Lev Manovich, and Anne Spalter will address and provide insight on the issues of archiving and conservation, collecting and curating these dynamic and ephemeral works or techniques that rely on digital technology in creative and display processes. How we may balance and set a priority between the data and the appearance, as it may cause unacceptable loss when dealing with a multimedia digital art work. How computational analysis and visualization of massive cultural visual datasets methods and software help us with media collections and digital repository management.

What are general guidelines for museums registrars and installers in terms of technical documentation and display of digital art? What do museums and collectors need to be “technically” prepared to preserve and display artworks? Does the work require any special software or hardware needs? If the work is interactive, how do people interact with the work? What are new formats for exhibitions? What issues NFT (Nonfungible Tokens) and crypto art introduce to the field of art market and collecting?

There are many unanswered questions for a long-term solution for re-displaying and preserving digital art, which require further efforts and research by artists, museum professionals, and information scientists. The Leonardo/ISAST LASERs are a program of international gatherings that bring artists, scientists, humanists, and technologists together for informal presentations, performances, and conversations with the wider public to over 46 cities around the world. The mission of LASER is to encourage contribution to the cultural environment of a region by fostering interdisciplinary dialogue and opportunities for community building.

In September 2020, CYLAND Media Art Lab became the official representative of The Leonardo / LASER Talks in St. Petersburg, Russia, in collaboration with the GROUND Solyanka Gallery and the Kolodzei Art Foundation.

00:00:00 – 00:04:52 – Introduction by Natalia Kolodzei
00:04:52 – 00:17:06 – Christiane Paul
00:17:06 – 00:18:21 – Natalia Kolodzei introduces Lev Manovich
00:18:21 – 00:31:02 – Lev Manovich
00:31:02 – 00:32:21 – Natalia Kolodzei introduces Anne Spalter
00:32:21 – 00:43:22 – Anne Spalter
00:43:22 – 00:44:30 – Natalia Kolodzei introduces Anna Frants
00:44:30 – 00:52:42 – Anna Frants
00:52:42 – 01:19:40 – Discussion

Partners: Leonardo/ISAST, CYLAND MediaArtLab

For further information on LASER Talks, subscribe to http://cyland.org/lab/contact/

LEONARDO Network Newsletter https://leonardo.us4.list-manage.com/

YouTube December 12, 2020

LOVE IN A COLD CLIMATE: RUSSIAN AND UK ARTISTA ‘SEEK TRUTHS’ THROUGH CYBERART

Fake photos, hacking and surveillance are all explored in a major new exhibition bringing together works from Russian and British cyber-artists.

The show, entitled Creative Machine 2, features works from leading practitioners from the CYLAND collective based in St Petersburg and Goldsmiths, University of London.

Against a wider backdrop of negative UK/Russian cyber-relations the show represents seeks to establish “new artistic truths” through the dynamic cultural and technological collaboration between artists from the two countries.

The exhibition, at the St James Hatcham Building on Goldsmiths’ New Cross campus, is open to the public from 10am-6pm, 8 November-18 November 2018.

Curators William Latham and Frederic Fol Leymarie, both Professors in the Department of Computing at Goldsmiths, and Anna Frants and Elena Gubanova, from the CYLAND collective, have selected works which address three main themes.

The three themes are: Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality; machine learning and hacking; and fakes and surveillance. The works on show include VR installations, cyberart installations, video installations, sculptures and Artificial IntelligenceI/machine learning installations.

The free show has been developed by CYLAND and Goldsmiths in partnership with the Hermitage Museum Youth Education Center and the Leonardo Journal (MIT Press).

Professor Latham said: “This show deals with many of the tricky global technological themes in the news today: cyber-hacking, surveillance and fakes, combined with the growing use of Artificial Intelligence in the systems which we all use.

“In this space where any understanding of the truth becomes obfuscated, this exhibition shows how Russian and UK artists are working to produce works of art which harness these technologies to create new artistic truths.”

CYLAND co-curators Anna Frants and Elena Gubanova said: “We’re delighted to be collaborating with Goldsmiths and Co-Hosting Creative Machine 2 by showcasing the works of contemporary Russian artists based in St Petersburg, Belgium and the US.”

Artists showing at Creative Machine 2 are: Marina Alekseeva, Memo Akten, Laura Dekker, Alexandra Dementieva, Jake Elwes, Anna Frants, Alexey Grachev, Sergey Komarov, Elena Gubanova, Ivan Govorkov, Sergey Katran, Parashkev Nachev, Vitaly Pushnitsky, Annie Tadne, Nye Thompson, William Latham, Stephen Todd, Lance Putnam, Guido Salimbeni, Peter Todd, Andy Lomas and Brigitta Zics.