The contemporary moment is one of unprecedented transfiguration. A constant tug of war where institutions, communities, interests, and most importantly, individuals coincide in an undulating state of deformation and alteration. Those boundaries that defined our movements and occupations have blurred to the point of non-existence, facilitating an amorphous space for constant activity. Shopping for winter clothes while attending a lecture, replying to business emails at the dinner table, or participating in job training while taking the subway, the established limits of social and personal spaces are expunged, and with that, so are the boundaries of the individual. And while this shapeless chimeric reality in its unparalleled distraction and discontinuity demands the individual’s utmost awareness and participation, it continues to expand its disciplinary practices to every crevice of daily life. The punch clock is now next to the bed; better wake up, sunshine!
Nothing is ever finished anymore, and no one is ever done with anything—the corporation, the educational system, the factory, and the household subsist in a simultaneous state of coexistence. And it is at the dawn of this new day of bewildering complexity and anomalous virtual convergence that I ask from you, from you the eternal surveilling gaze, from you my mentor, my peer, my adversary, and my friend: the audio seems to be working, but can you see my screen?
EXHIBITION ARTWORKS
Art & Technology exhibition
Trans-Species Skins is a themed art exhibition exploring skin as a metaphor and substance that transcends species categories. Skin is the multilayered and multipurpose organ that shifts from thick to thin, tight to loose, wet to dry, across the landscapes of bodies and machine interfaces. Natural and artificial skin responds to heat, cold, pleasure and pain. It lacks boundaries and flows seamlessly from exposed surfaces to our internal cavities real and virtual. It is a self-repairing, semi-permeable surface, with inner layers that are flush with nerves and glands, sensors and chips. New tools allow artists, designers, and engineers to look at a new emerging organicism that takes shape across the surface of the grown and manufactured. Skins can modulate meaning, touch, function and can provide feedback and change with light and heat. Flexible membranes embedded with sensors and materials are bent, impregnated, or inflated to become structure. Re-skinning allows deceit; the non-living can approximate life, and the living can appear otherwise.
