A Sensorium exhibition for The Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA)
![Poster for Re[new]all exhibition. Lists contributor and artists names, sponsor logos and exhibit opening 30 Sept 2021](https://sensorium.ampd.yorku.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/17/2021/09/renewall8_final_small.jpg)
About the Re[new]All Exhibition
SLSA Annual Conference 30 September – 2 October 2021.
EXHIBITION LINK to Mozilla Hubs (Room Code: 458499).
The exhibit is viewable in a web-browser or with a VR headset.
How to enter on computer:
Click the link to hubs
Click “Join Room”
Change your name and pick and avatar (optional)
Click “Enter Room”Basic computer controls:
Arrow keys or WASD to move around
Click, hold and drag left/primary click to look around or use “e” and “q” to turn
How to enter on VR:
Click the link to hubs on your computer
Click “Enter on Device”
Go to or hub.link in your default browser
Enter in the room code seen on your computer screen into your headset
Point and click on “Join Room” in your headsetBasic VR controls:
Left controller thumbstick to move around
Right controller thumbstick to turn
More detailed controls: https://hubs.mozilla.com/docs/hubs-controls.html
The exhibition Re[new]All is held as an inaugural partnership between Sensorium and the Stamps School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan. The project is an exhibition in virtual space that provides a cultural context to the public health crisis that we have all experienced this past year. The presented works are diverse and focus on artists that are marginalized, or approach topics of marginalization in their work, such as digital artworks and stories that explore the interconnections between Anishinaabeg ontologies and microscopic imagery, and others that explore Asian Futurist Diasporic aesthetics. The exhibition is also supported by other academic units such as VISTA, YCAR, Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies, Betaspace and the AMPD Makerspace.
Re[new]all explores the creative ecologies of matter and energy. The exhibition begins from a position of discomfort, of the sensory (dis)pleasures of our virtual modes of existence to explore themes of creative worldbuilding, virtual scenographics and adaptation within the renewed hybridity of online/offline environments. Hosted entirely in purpose-built Mozilla Hubs 3D “rooms,” the project features work by artists and researchers affiliated with Sensorium: Centre for Digital Art and Technology at the School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design (AMPD) at York University (Toronto).
Click here to read a longer curatorial statement.
Curated by : Melanie Wilmink, Ian Garrett and Joel Ong
Hubs design: Justine Katerenchuk
Additional support: Simon Lynch
Artists:
Patrick Alcedo
Tyler Graham and Jocelyn Graham
Racelar Ho, Dragon Zheng, & Zhi’ai Chen
Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning, Mary Bunch, Mariel Belanger, Hodari Newtown, Lydia Johnson, and Shelby Payocyoc
Ella Morton
Taien Ng-Chan and Carmela Laganse
Michael Palumbo and Kavi (Ilze Briede)
Jonathan Scott
Dan Tapper
Jane Tingley
Exhibition-related events
Thursday 30 Sept 2021 @ 7pm EDT
Michael Palumbo / EXIT Points #19
Watch the performance on Twitch: www.twitch.tv/exitpointsmusic
Exit Points is a monthly free improvisation performance series. Performers are arranged into one of two ensembles, each performing a 35-minute improvised set. For the third set, all performers are joined by guests from the audience, and everyone rearranges themselves into new groupings for a series of 5-minute pieces.
All times Eastern Daylight Time
7pm: Introductions & pre-show
7:30pm: Ensemble One
Brigitte Bardon’t – Radios
thispatcher – Modular Synth, Voice
Kavi – Touchdesigner Visuals
8:10pm: Intermission One
8:30pm: Ensemble Two
Esin Gunduz – Voice
Megan Kyle – Oboe
Nnja Riot – Synths, Vocals, Instruments, Samples
9:10pm: Intermission Two
9:30pm: Switchemups Set
Featuring everyone + guests!
10:30pm: Show ends. Hard out.
Produced by Michael Palumbo in collaboration with the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts; Sensorium Centre for Digital Arts and Technology; and the School for Arts, Media, Performance, and Design.
Technician: Gabrielle Couillard
Event Links:
Facebook Event: www.facebook.com/events/1473163266383761
Performance Stream: www.twitch.tv/exitpointsmusic
Series Info: www.palumbomichael.com/exitpoints
Instagram handles: @thispatcher @EsinGunduzComposerPerformer
@SensoDiVoce @listenlisse @kristeljax @dyingbutfine
hashtags: #exitpoints #freeimprovisation #freeimprovisationmusic #electroacoustic #electroacousticmusic #experimentalsound #performance #concert #exitpointsmusic #switchemups #twitch #beautiful #goodlisteners #wearheadphones #bringheadphones #improvisation #improvisedmusic #music #show #experimentalmusic
Friday 1 Oct 2021 @ 5pm EDT
Curatorial Tour with Joel Ong & Ian Garrett
The tour starts on Zoom and may include components in Hubs.
Join co-curators Joel Ong and Ian Garrett for a curatorial talk and tour of the Hubs environment. The talk will feature an overview of the exhibition concept, introduction to the space, and a selection of artists will be available to talk about their work.
Saturday 2 Oct 2021 @ 7pm EDT
PERFORMANCE: Dan Tapper “Floating Earth”
Attend the performance on Zoom.
Join us for the closing night celebrations of the SLSA conference, featuring a performance by Re[new]All artist, Dan Tapper (Chimeric Spaces).
Floating Earth is an audiovisual performance deconstructing and manipulating a series of 3D objects that carry nostalgic value for the artist. The performance consists of three choreographed improvisations that touch on themes of home, memory and belonging. The source material is collated and curated from ongoing material research into digital place building and how abstracted everyday imagery can cause strong emotions bordering on the sublime. Floating Earth will consist of a combination of live and pre-recorded footage presented as a live stream from the Array Space.
Watch a trailer for “Floating Earth” here (35 second length):
About the Artists & Artworks
MAIN SPACE
Centre for Margins, a performative research-creation collective [Carmela Laganse, McMaster University and Taien Ng-Chan, York University] – “Suburban Asian Living Room in Off-White and Beige” (2021).
Direct link: https://hubs.mozilla.com/TM9Ue3r/re-new-all-main-space
Room Code: 458499
In her book “Minor Feelings,” the poet Cathy Park Hong distinguishes between the major, spectacular emotions of racial violence, and the ambient, everyday kind of racial experience that is more difficult to see. Carmela Laganse and Taien Ng-Chan (as Centre for Margins, a performative research-creation collective) trace some of the sources of their own dissonant minor feelings back to their memories of growing up in the extremely white suburbs of the Canadian Prairies, steeped in 1970s and 80s western popular culture that emanated regularly from after school television. The sonic element plays with tv show theme songs and sounds of everyday objects, abstracted and remixed in a way that speaks to the experience of looking back and seeing how growing up in the Asian diaspora has shaped their adult selves.
Carmela Laganse: www.carmelalaganse.com
Taien Ng-Chan: www.soyfishmedia.com
ADDITIONAL ROOMS
Patrick Alcedo – “They Call me Dax” (2021)
Direct link: https://hubs.mozilla.com/G6uWgHH/re-new-all-they-call-me-dax
Room Code: 839072
Main space directions: Find this work at the sliding door near the dining room table.
Patrick Alcedo is Chair of and Associate Professor in the Department of Dance. Among his academic recognitions are an Early Researcher Award from the Government of Ontario and the 2019 President’s University-Wide Teaching Award. His latest film THEY CALL ME DAX, a short documentary on a 15-year-old, female student trying to survive as a ballet dancer, will have its European premiere at the Cannes International Independent Film Festival. His other latest work, A WILL TO DREAM, a feature-length documentary about intersecting lives of underprivileged dancers in Quezon City, will world premiere at the inaugural San Diego Filipino Film Festival. Watch this video to learn more about Dr. Alcedo.
Please also read Dr. Alcedo’s Positionality Statement for this exhibition.
Tyler Graham and Jocelyn Graham – “Blink and Squint: This Missing Colours” (2021)
Direct link: https://hubs.mozilla.com/PkrpoXe/re-new-all-blink-and-squint-this-missing-colours/
Room Code: 999341
Main space directions: Find this room on the coffee table near the Atari.
Blink and Squint: The Missing Colours is an interactive piece cyber theatre devised to be performed on the VoIP platform Discord. It was created by brother-sister duo Tyler and Jocelyn Graham, largely inspired by one of their favourite childhood video games, Super Mario 64. In this performance, participants use the text and voice-based channels of a private Discord server to explore the Grassy Hills, the magical lands where the Eyeball Brothers, Blink and Squint (played by Tyler and Jocelyn Graham), reside. This exhibit is held in the Forbidden Caverns, a level designed to be played in a livestream as part of this Discord-based performance.
Racelar Ho, Dragon Zheng, & Zhi’ai Chen – “No Money, No Talk, No Body I Talk” (2021)
Direct link: https://hubs.mozilla.com/xE59SBG/re-new-all-no-money-no-talk-no-body-i-talk
Room Code: 378987
Main space directions: Find this room outside the house on the highest platform.
“No Money, No Talk, No Body I Talk” is a long-term collaborative effort between Racelar Ho, Dragon Zheng, and Zhi’ai Chen. It contains a disorienting, disordering, non-linear, chaotic, irrational, and self-contradictory space-time, presenting an imaginative-based, self-reflective image of the past, present, and future relationship between humans and machines. This universe stems from pre-human time-space to post-human time-space: prehuman era, modern time, contemporary, self-reflection & imaginary rebirth, and imaginative utopia future.
Machines are objective, material objects that exist in the physical world. The randomness in these films is similar to the default setting of the labelling algorithm in A.I. philosopher. We saw the mechanical graphics themselves. The mechanical eye sees all. It is a human organ that is closer to reality. The “weak” fear that this objective observer will eventually objectify them, and an immoral organisation fears its insatiable quest for reality. The problem of others’ minds is humans versus machines, natural intelligence versus artificial intelligence. How can we tell if “others” share our mind and consciousness by observing their actions, discourses, and other emotional expressions? Any object that comes into contact with us has a somatic body. We will never know how “others” feel or sense, but only the outcome of their experience, which we can only capture and observe.
This work presents a unification of the experience in somatic and non-somatic body image-rhetoric. These random, fractional, and even conflict discourses roam between different subjects. It is not a comprehensive and satisfactory expression but a complete identity experience.
Racelar Ho: www.racelarho.com
Dragon Zheng: www.dragonzheng.com
Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning, Mary Bunch, Mariel Belanger, Hodari Newtown, Lydia Johnson, and Shelby Payocyoc – “Emerging from the Water” (2021)
Direct link: https://hubs.mozilla.com/87hdgVC/re-new-all-emerging-from-the-water
Room Code: 866661
Main space directions: Find this work above a painting near the sofa.
Emerging from the Water: In this microscopic pluriverse, shorelines vibrate with other-than-human potencies. From undulating broken shimmers, song, and rhythm, we emerge, and cross over to an electrifying embrace. This evolving storytelling world, created by Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning (Queen’s, Philosophy and Cultural Studies, Anishinaabe) and Mary Bunch (York, Cinema and Media Arts) is populated with contributions by graduate student artists, including Syilx performance artist Mariel Belanger (PhD, Queens), Hip Hop Artist Reuben Hodari Clarke [Hodari Newton] (MA York), Cree Environmental Scientist Lydia Johnson (MES Queens), and Media artist Shelby Payocyoc (BFA York).
Individual Credits:
“Emerging from the Water Pluriverse” by Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning and Mary Bunch
Emerging from the Water traverses a microscopic habitat, where the shoreline vibrates with mnidoo potencies. This pluriverse is populated with interactive other-than-human agencies. From undulating broken shimmers, song, and rhythm, we emerge, and cross over to an electrifying embrace. We slip along ephemeral shores between burgeoning stories, infinitesimal landscapes, soundscapes and cellular modulations. Tiny orchestral chambers ignite, flow together, and rift apart. Micro-universes veer off in every direction, vocal cords rubbed raw from calling us home. This VR work is an extension of “Earth Diver,” a research creation project that brings together Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning’s theory of mnidoo-worlding and Mary Bunch’s research in Extended Reality (XR) worldmaking. Earthdiver project is a partnership with Native Women in the Arts (NWIA). Thanks to our funders, NWIA, MITACS, Bodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology and Access to Life (SSHRC Partnership Grant), VISTA: Vision Science to Application and the Canada Research Excellence Fund.
This evolving immersive storytelling world, created by Manning and Bunch, is populated with curated contributions from the following artists:
“Flying Fish Threshold” by Shelby Payocyoc
“Origin Stories” by Mariel Belanger
This image and interpretation of a Sqilx creation story by Belanger, with sound design by Hodari Newtown, is a result of a long list of collaborators including Skirt imagery inspired by captikwl “Arrows to the Sky” story, construction by Florence Fred. Dr Shawn Brigman maker of Salishan Sturgeon Nose Canoes, Clair Dibble drone footage on the Columbia River at the confluence of the Spokane River. #SqilxwWoman. #SalishanSturgeonNoseCanoes
“Water is Alive” by Hodari Newtown and Lydia Johnson
This sound and video work by Hodari Newtown was developed in conversation with Cree Environmental scientist Lydia Johnson and her work with Spirit of the Water, an environmental justice project focused on the waterways of Treaty 3 Territory. The words and voice of Anishinaabe Elder Mona Stonefish are featured. Original 360 video footage was contributed by Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning.
Ella Morton – “Kajanaqtuq” (2020)
Direct link: https://hubs.mozilla.com/ZwF8uBe/re-new-all-kajanaqtuq/
Room Code: 850893
Main space directions: Find this room on the dining room table.
Ella Morton is a Toronto-based artist and filmmaker. Her practice has brought her to projects across Canada, as well as in Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Finland. She uses experimental analogue photographic processes to capture the sublime and fragile qualities of remote landscapes. This work comes from her project, The Dissolving Landscape, a series of mordançage photographs and a short film that examine climate change in the landscapes of Canada and Nordic Europe. The project asks the question: what are we losing, in terms of our spiritual connection to the land, as the climate rapidly changes? www.ellamorton.com
Michael Palumbo and Ilze Briede [Kavi] – “Grains of Universe” (2021)
Direct link: https://hubs.mozilla.com/mxA6awk/re-new-all-grains-of-universe
Room Code: 525732
Main space directions: Find this room outside the house on the lowest platform.
In “Grains of Universe” lies a three-dimensional mobile matrix and looping two-dimensional fixed media. Spectators fly through the body of the geometric form, intersecting very short fragments of the looping audio, which, when triggered, are recombined into new sequences, effectively producing concatenative synthesis.
Ilze Briede [Kavi] is a multimedia artist interested in applying Mixed Reality and the Internet of things to investigate worldmaking and co-creation amongst humans and non-human entities.
Michael Palumbo (BFA, MA) is a musician, teacher, and developer. His PhD research focuses on electroacoustic music creation using software version control systems. www.palumbomichael.com
Jonathan Scott – “Extract 22 : Index | Slides | Room” (2021)
Direct link: https://hubs.mozilla.com/xJFywMj/re-new-all-extract-22-index-or-slides-or-room
Room Code: 137037
Main space directions: Find this room above the sign with praying hands.
When does a fragment of a whole become the whole in itself? In this piece Jonathan Scott extracts fragments from his larger project, titled “Devolved Sculpture”, and rearticulates them into the form of an annotated slide show. Made in collaboration with a diagrammatic entity named Kommis, Scott employs a conceptual dérive through the dense landscape of words and references that speak to Devolved Sculpture from its periphery. In his recent PhD dissertation, Scott examined the production of subjectivity and elaborated the fictive processing of information as an essential mode of learning within art academia. The artwork for this exhibition is an encounter with a disjunctive moment this approach facilitates. www.jonathanscott.info
Dan Tapper – “Chimeric Spaces” (2021)
Direct link: https://hubs.mozilla.com/mpTupzQ/re-new-all-chimeric-spaces
Room Code: 698201
Main space directions: Find this room outside the house on the middle platform.
Dan Tapper is an artist and creative technologist interested in the intersection between information and experience. His current projects include building sonic VR environments and using machine learning to create new forms of divination. Chimeric Spaces builds on a series of works seeking to create strange and immersive 3d environments. These environments are created through converting everyday objects and scenes into 3d models and then using custom code to break apart and reconstitute these digital replicas into something new and unexpected. In this iteration of Chimeric Spaces three objects are combined in a variety of states of distortion and completion to create a form of abstract 3d collage of point clouds and distorted textures.
The Chimeric Spaces project: www.chimericspaces.com
Jane Tingley – “Foresta-Inclusive” (2021)
Direct link: https://hubs.mozilla.com/RgUoVvk/re-new-all-foresta-inclusive
Room Code: 601283
Main space directions: Find this room to the left of the piano.
Jane Tingley is an artist, curator, and Assistant Professor at York University. Her studio work combines traditional studio practice with new media tools – and spans responsive/interactive installation, performative robotics, and distributed sculptures/installations. Foresta-Inclusive uses digital technologies to sense, explore and interpret the hidden experience of trees and their environment. This project is comprised of two parts: a networked sculptural sensor hub and in-gallery installation. The networked sensor-hub is installed unobtrusively onto the trunk of a tree equipped with eight ecosensors with which to collect live data from the environment. This data is then sent to an Internet of Things platform, which can be harvested and materialized in an exhibition. www.janetingley.com
Biographies of the Exhibition Team
Melanie Wilmink (co-curator)
Melanie Wilmink holds a PhD in Visual Art & Art History from York University. Her research focuses on on the inter-connectivity between spectatorial experience and exhibition spaces, and art and technology, which through her independent curating practice including the Situated Cinema project (Pleasure Dome, 2015), and as Curator in Residence for Sidewalk Labs Toronto. She is the co-editor of the anthologies Sculpting Cinema (2018) and Landscapes of Moving Image (2021) with Solomon Nagler. www.melaniewilmink.com
Ian Garrett (co-curator)
Ian Garrett is Associate Professor of Ecological Design for Performance at York University; Producer for the US/Canadian company Toasterlab; and director of the Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts, a think tank on sustainability in arts and culture. He maintains a design practice focused on the integration of ecology, technology and scenography. Recent work includes The Right Way at the Venice Biennale and The Stranger 2.0 at the Columbus Centre in Toronto with DLT Experience ; Groundworks with Dancing Earth, Rulan Tangen and collaborating artists from Pomo, Wappo, and Ohlone communities; The locative audio project TrailOff with Philadelphia’s Swim Pony which brings focus to the trails in watershed areas of Philadelphia through geolocated immersive media and new writing. www.ianpgarrett.com
Joel Ong (co-curator)
Professor Joel Ong is a media artist whose works connect scientific and artistic approaches to the environment, particularly with respect to sound and physical space. Professor Ong’s work explores the way objects and spaces can function as repositories of ‘frozen sound’, and in elucidating these, he is interested in creating what systems theorist Jack Burnham (1968) refers to as “art (that) does not reside in material entities, but in relations between people and between people and the components of their environment”. Professor Ong is the PI for an AIF-funded pan-faculty Makerspace where he is working on incorporating cutting edge digital fabrication into faculty curriculum across AMPD and the Director of Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts and Technology. www.arkfrequencies.com
Justine Katerenchuk (Mozilla hubs designer)
Justine Katerenchuk is a Toronto based theatre practitioner with a BFA in Performance: Production & Design. She has recently been exploring different avenues of XR performance through her capstone work at school and other recent projects. Worldbuilding, designing and stage managing in Virtual Reality has been most of her work this year. She is interested in continuing to explore different types of art that can be uplifted or discovered through new technologies. When she isn’t behind her keyboard or VR headset she freelances in general technician work around the city. www.nodenonsense.ca
Simon Lynch (digital design support)
Simon Lynch is a Toronto-based artist, technician, and educator specializing in digital fabrication. He is the Technology Coordinator at York’s AMPD Makerspace, a member and instructor of the Toronto Tool Library Makerspace, and a former member of the Toronto Maker Festival organizing committee.
