[-empyre-] FW: December OPEN TOPIC: Send us your recent exhibition, project, book, or research news

[B. Bogart]

Hello All!

Looks like I've been following empyre for 13 years! For twelve of those
years I've focused my generative art practise on machine learning
methods, particularly unsupervised "clustering" methods. This decade of
practise lead me to some deep thinking about classification and
boundary-making as a foundational process of cognition and subjectivity.
I'm currently enamoured by Barad's Agential Realism due to our agreement
on the primacy of boundary-making.

I'm currently working on two projects, and blogging my process; I'm a
participant in "Leaning Out of Windows"
(http://leaningoutofwindows.org/) and I'll be showing in Vancouver a
collage constructed from ~130,000 fragments (whose boundaries are an
emergent result of the interaction of an algorithm and source
photographs of beam-lines at the TRIUMF particle accelerator) organized
according to colour and orientation similarity by another machine
learning algorithm. My production blog (most recent to oldest) is
available here: http://www.ekran.org/ben/wp/category/production/loow/

I'm also well into a two year project that involves situating my
practise between painting and media art. The project involves two
components; in "Machines of the Present Consume the Imaginations of the
Past" I use machine learning to "decompose" images of paintings from the
Western Canon, resulting in emergent compositions that destroy
boundaries in the originals while maintaining the distribution of
colours. The "Zombie Formalist" is a self-contained wall-hung art
generator that creates unique colour field paintings with an emphasis on
Hard-Edge (as a backlash against the soft GAN aesthetic) steered by
attention from audiences on social media and in person. This project was
recently introduced in the Machines issue of Full Bleed
(https://www.full-bleed.org/consumptionandthemachine). My production
blog (most recent to oldest) is available here:
http://www.ekran.org/ben/wp/category/production/mpcip/

*Bio*

Ben Bogart is an adisciplinary artist working with generative
computational processes (including physical modelling, chaotic
equations, feedback systems, evolutionary algorithms, computer vision
and machine learning) and has been inspired by knowledge in the natural
sciences (quantum physics and cognitive neuroscience) in the service of
an epistemological inquiry. Ben has produced processes, artifacts,
texts, images and performances that have been presented at galleries,
art festivals and academic conferences in Canada, the United States of
America, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, Turkey, Finland, Germany,
Ireland, Brazil, Hong Kong, Norway and Spain. Notable exhibitions
include  solo shows at the Canadian Embassy at Transmediale in 2017 and
the TechLab at the Surrey Art Gallery in 2018. He has been an artist in
residence at the Banff Centre (Canada), the New Forms Festival (Canada)
and at Videotage (Hong Kong). His research and practice have been funded
by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the
British Columbia Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts.

Ben holds both master’s and doctorate degrees from the School of
Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University. During his
master’s study (2006–2008) he began an artistic inquiry of machine
learning and developed a site-specific artwork that uses images captured
live in the context of installation as raw material in its ‘creative’
process. In his doctoral work (2009–2014) he made “a machine that
dreams” that is framed as both a model of dreaming and a site-specific
artistic work manifesting an Integrative Theory of visual mentation
developed during his doctorate. Ben’s recent work involves building
Machine Subjects that appropriate and reconstruct popular cinematic
depictions of artificial intelligence. He is currently embarking on a
two year project funded by the Canada Council for the Arts developing a
body of work applying machine learning methods to image-making situated
in painting history.

Ben is of settler ancestry and lives and works on the unceded
traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̍əm (Musqueam), Sk̠wx̠wú7mesh
(Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations,
also known as Vancouver.

Ben

On 2019-12-02 5:22 p.m., Renate Ferro wrote:
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> 
>     2019- The end-of-the year on -¬empyre-
>     
>     Dear Subscribers, 
>     It is unfathomable to me that today we begin our last discussion of 2019.  We celebrate our seventeen-year history and its subscribership of 2252 members strong who come from many professions including artists, writers, theoreticians, technologists, academics, and more.  
>     
>     While we ordinarily conduct formal discussion we are introducing an OPEN month on -empyre- this month. You are invited to share your current research, projects, and exhibitions. Share a bit about where you teach or work.  Additionally, post your current short biography. We not only invite those of you whose voices we have heard most recently but also those of you who are new members, who have never posted, who are more comfortable lurking.  
>     
>     We invite each of our subscribers to post directly on our site
>     empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>     PUT YOUR NAME IN THE SUBJECT HEADING.
>     
>     Should you have an image you want to post we do have a Facebook Page
>     https://www.facebook.com/groups/empyrelistserv/
>     
>     And a TWITTER feed as well
>     @empyrelistserv
>     	
>     More soon. 
>     Renate
>     
>     
>     Renate Ferro
>     Visiting Associate Professor
>     Director of Undergraduate Studies
>     Department of Art
>     Tjaden Hall 306
>     rferro at cornell.edu
>      
>      
>     
>     
> 
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