Please join us on Saturday, August 24, at the Beall Center for Art + Technology at UC Irvine for the opening of "Future Tense: Art, Complexity, and Uncertainty."
8/24 Event Schedule
Opening: 2:00 - 6:00 P.M.
Artist Panel: 4:00 P.M.
Artists: Ralf Baecker, Chico MacMurtrie, Lucy Solomon (Cesar & Lois), Laura Splan, Hege Tapio
Moderators: David Familian & Jeff Barrett
Beall Center for Art + Technology
712 Arts Plaza
Irvine, CA 92697-2775
949-824-6206
Curated by David Familian as part of Getty's PST Art: Art & Science Collide, the exhibition includes new works by Chico MacMurtrie as well as works by Ralf Baecker, Cesar & Lois, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Julie Mehretu, Fernando Palma Rodríguez, Clare Rojas, Theresa Schubert, Laura Splan, Harrison Studio, Hege Tapio, Gail Wight, Carolina Caycedo, David de Rozas, and Pinar Yoldas.
Future Tense: Art, Complexity, and Uncertainty will feature MacMurtrie/ARW’s most recent project, Dual Pneuma, a soft-robotic performer evoking a humanoid body with four limbs that allow for a transition from quadrupedal to organic form and motion. Composed of inflatable, high-tensile fabric muscles, the artwork is capable of assuming a wide range of human, animal, and insect-like positions.
MacMurtrie is additionally developing a series of ceramic works cast directly from the soft-robotic figure. Compressed air will be channeled through the ceramic sculptures to produce whistling sounds, sonifying the artwork in reference to the water and wind-based huaco instruments of early Mesoamerican cultures.
MacMurtrie and his team will present an exceptional performance of the inflatable Dual Pneuma robot and various sonic elements of the Dual Pneuma terracotta sculpture during the opening. Scroll down for more info about the exhibition.
About the exhibition
Evolutionary biology, meteorology, ecology, neuroscience, and robotics are just a few examples of the complex systems that artists engage within the exhibition Future Tense: Art, Complexity, and Uncertainty. Complex systems are dynamic, uncertain, and unpredictable. They are characterized by chaos, feedback loops, self-organization, and emergent behavior. Future Tense features both emerging and established contemporary artists who utilize the concepts of complex systems in traditional media and new technologies such as computer modeling, robotics, and data visualizations. This includes existing work by Ralf Baecker, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Julie Mehretu, Clare Rojas, and Theresa Schubert, as well as new works by Newton Harrison, Chico MacMurtrie, Lucy HG Solomon & Cesar Baio collective, Laura Splan, and Gail Wight, commissioned for this exhibition by the Beall Center's Black Box Projects artist residency program.
Dual Pneuma is made possible with support from the UC Irvine Beall Center for Art + Technology, Creative Capital, and Getty. The software development was supported by Bill Bowen and Michael T. Tolley, Ph.D., Associate Professor at UCSD's Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Bioinspired Robotics and Design Lab, along with his graduate students Shenglin Yan and Allyson Chen. Additional support was received from R. Luke Dubois, director of the Brooklyn Experimental Media Center at the N.Y.U. Tandon School of Engineering, and his graduate student Checo Cadena. MacMurtrie collaborated with Fabricio Cavero, a Ph.D. candidate at U.C.I., to sonify the terracotta sculptures and with Hugo de Souza Kolsky, an M.F.A. candidate at Cooper Union, on inflatables and clay.