Artists and scientists imagine the future world
We Write This To You From the Distant Future is a multi-media exhibition of work by visionary creators in the arts and sciences that focuses on a future world imagined and possible to build.
This exhibition premiered in 2010 and has been featured at the Zero One San Jose Biennial, Tina b. Prague Contemporary Art Festival, the Big Screen Project NYC, MOMENTUM Berlin, Federation Square Melbourne, among the international locations, in a performance on stage at Juilliard at Lincoln Center, and at Google headquarters, NYC for the Digital Art @Google exhibition and public program series in 2010 curated and produced by Nina Colosi, Founder of Streaming Museum.
ARTWORKS
The exhibition title is a line spoken by the narrator in Immobilité (2009), a 75-minute feature length art film shot with a mobile phone video camera by Mark Amerika, with music score by Chad Mossholder. A remix collection from Immobilité opens the exhibition evoking questions – how will a technologically advanced world effect what it is to be human and what is the world with advanced technology to become?
In Michael Najjar’s bionic angel (2006) series (courtesy, bitforms gallery, NYC), creatures in the throes of transformation are a metaphor for inevitable genetic self-creation and possible immortality of the human body.
Mitchell Joachim and Maria Aiolova/Terreform ONE, imagine human adaptation to global climate shifts and designs for transportation, habitat and sustainable living in the urban environment in Fab Tree Hab Village (2009) …
Jetpack Packing (2010)
Blimp Bumper Bus (2008)
Rapid Re(F)Use (2008). Featured above: Green Brain: A Smart Park For A New City, (2006).
Eduardo Kac animates a poetic code/language in Lagoglyphs (2009) that defies interpretation but derives meaning from his bio artwork, Alba (2000), a genetically engineered bunny.
Etoy’s Mission Eternity (2005 – 2016) is a digital cult of the dead for the information society that crosses the boundaries of the afterlife, and challenges the way human civilization deals with memory (conservation/loss), time (future/present/past) and death.
Rose Breathing (2003), an undulating cross-species rose, creates a Zen-like meditation as it rhythmically opens and closes in time-altered human-like respiration. Artist and scientist Andrea Ackerman has created at the intersection of technology, nature, aesthetics and ethics, a work that prophetically signals the inevitable integration of technology and nature.
HD Traffic (2009) by John F. Simon, Jr., is a software artwork inspired by the compositional style of Piet Mondrian, with particular inspiration from Broadway Boogie Woogie and Simon’s love of jazz improvisation. HD Traffic can react dynamically to real-time information streams taken from the Internet, and reflect the pulse of human movement that is embodied in the flow of traffic and other data.
Artful videos document Protocells which UK scientist Rachel Armstrong has been creating in the lab since 2008. This living programmable technology has vast potential for use in diverse ways such as removing environmental poisons, growing a reef under Venice to save the ancient city, and performing microsurgery. Video editing, sound and post-production by Michael Simon Toon. Green World Campaign is a Joseph Beuys inspired global participatory campaign developed by Marc Barasch to bring about the greening of the planet through a program that plants millions of trees worldwide.
American composer, Ed Bilous’ Night of the Dark Moon (2005) underscored the exhibition with a sonified image of a future world.
QUOTES
“Skin has become inadequate in interfacing with reality. Technology has become the body’s new membrane of existence.” Nam June Paik
“It is highly feasible to take care of all of humanity at a higher standard of living without having anyone profit at the expense of another so everybody can enjoy the whole earth.” Buckminster Fuller