Art Session

Boundary Iconology

What images and what objects inhabit the boundary between life and not-life? What if we accelerated only cultural evolution in the game of life? Artificial Life stands at the edge of the kind of technoscientific inquiries that not only produces knowledge or solutions, but as Stanisław Lem proposed, generates existential propositions for which there might be no existing cultural metabolism, no ceremonial script and no protocol of embedding. In Boundary Iconologies, the art exhibition of ALife 24’ we are placing a series of artist’s creations at this boundary.

The thematics of the works in Boundary Iconology range from corrupted cosmotechnical montage, somber arrows buried deep into the eye of the uncanny valley, automatas of intimacy, embodied computations, rocking cradles of xenophilic care and biodiversity injections in urban space. In the show we are exploring how to inhabit the gap between a techno-scientifically formulated phylum of the possible and our anthropo-scalar cultural path-dependencies. How do we steer and nurture our inclination of making and breaking the icons that determine the appearance of this boundary?

Artists
Brandon Tay
Christina König
Cody Lukas & Jonas Jørgensen
Karlie Tsang & Sara Zebulon Riise
Mochu
Philip Ullman

Art exhibition: Monday, July 22nd, at 19:00
Alongside the scientific proceedings of ALife 24’ the art exhibition Boundary Iconology presents six artists negotiating the strange demarcation between Life and non-Life.
Boundary Iconology opens at 19:00 on Monday, July 22nd, and is on display in the ITU Atrium during the whole ALife Conference.

Art Session: Thursday, July 25th, 17:00 - 18:00
In this year’s art session the artist Mochu will make a short performative reading based on his latest book Bezoar Delinquenz (Sternberg Press), followed by an open conversation with curator Mandus Ridefelt and scholar Peter Lewis. How do we understand cultural evolution, algorithmic science fiction and the shivering interfaces between life-forms?

Art Session