TOPOLOGY BEYOND REPRESENTATION: USING GENERATIVE 3D MODELING ALGORITHMS AS A CO-AUTHOR OF ARTISTIC EXPRESSION

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🗓️December 21, 2023 🕒8 pm IST (UTC+2)

📍Online participation via ZOOM

◆LASER Talks in Jerusalem presented by Laser Talks CYLAND◆

Panelists: Galina Bleikh, Anna Emelin, Eugene Kats

Moderator: Daria Kesler

Organisers: INEMEA Association for Culture, Art and Education, CYLAND MediaArtLab

Humans and computers team up to create a “hybrid” art form in today’s computer-driven world. The artist collaborates with the computer as a partner and a co-creator, exploring many visual ideas and unexpected results. By using computer modeling, artists can go beyond traditional artistic mediums and make invisible things visible. This provides us with an entry point to understand complex or intangible abstract ideas, bridging the gap between the conceptual and the perceptible.

For a new media artist, using computer 3D modeling tools, especially generative ones, is a complex process that involves both creative and technical aspects. Mathematical algorithms embedded in 3D modeling software allow us to manipulate shapes, textures, lighting, and more, turning abstract scientific or philosophical concepts into tangible representations. Through 3D modeling, an artist can go beyond traditional artistic mediums and translate the invisible into a visual form. This provides viewers with an entry point to understand complex or intangible abstract ideas, bridging the gap between the conceptual and the perceptible. By creating a metaphorical representation of the unseen and unimaginable, an artist can also evoke an emotional response to abstract scientific ideas.

Galina Bleikh has created the images of “Perelmania. Topology of Bagel” series on the basis of the single public domain photograph of Perelman that is freely available on the Internet. If we create a composition out of several 3D models of “bagels” (tori) and “wrap” them with a map consisting of tiled photographs of Grigori Perelman, we will then create a “Perelman topology” of sorts, where the photographs themselves may be altered beyond recognition by the mapping algorithm.

In this project, the mathematician and his discoveries are merged into one, turning into a symbol of the infinite multidimensionality of the world. The scientist turns into an observer, present at every point of the space he cognizes. On the road to coming to grips with this multidimensionality, some outstanding individuals – geniuses – become guides for the rest of humanity.

SPEAKERS BIOS

Galina Bleikh is a multidisciplinary artist. Her creative expertise spans a rich spectrum of artistic domains, encompassing digital art concepts, 3D modeling, AR and VR, bio-art, video art, generative art, NFT-art and more. At the heart of her artistic pursuit lies a fascination with the profound synergy between the emerging technological reality and its transformative interaction with human experience through the medium of art.

Galina’s creative endeavors extend to collaborative projects, notably in partnership with Elena Serebryakova since 2011. Together, these two artists have created the visionary concept of “The Simulacro-Centric World,” a manifestation of their unique creative approach referred to as “The Hybrid Neural Network Art.” Galina graduated from the Stieglitz St. Petersburg State Academy of Art and Industry (MA). Since 1993, she lives in Jerusalem.

Galina takes part in many exhibitions and art conferences all over the world. Among them: ArtPlatform On, South Korea (2022), The CICA Museum of Modern Art, South Korea (group and solo, 2021), NordArt, Germany (2019), Xposed Gallery, New-York (solo, 2019), Haifa Museum of Art, Israel (2018), Street Art Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia (2018), LA Art Show USA (2013), Artco France Gallery, Paris (solo, 2012), Art Asia Miami (2011), etc.

Anna Emelin, Ph. D. specializes in researching new media art and hybrid forms of culture that intersect art, science, and technology. She explores virtual reality, interactive art, digital media, and artificial intelligence. In her academic work, she analyzes current artistic practices that use modern media, scientific developments, and technology, as well as the ways contemporary art adapts to the changing technological landscape.

In 2015, Anna Emelin obtained her first doctorate from the University of Ivanovo, Russia. Her dissertation focused on the interaction of different languages of knowledge in society and the formation of their hybrid forms. In 2023, she is completing her doctoral studies at Bar Ilan University, Israel. Her research centers around the science art project of Galina Bleikh and Elena Serebryakova, the theme of re-creating the human in their artworks and in new media art in general, as well as the reality and simulacra relationship in digital and physical spaces.

Eugene Kats, Ph. D. is a professor at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He received his MSc degree (1982) in Semiconductor Materials Science and Ph. D. (1990) in solid state physics from the National University of Science and Technology “MISIS”, Moscow. His research interests include studies and development of new materials and devices for solar energy conversion into electricity as well as a history of science connection between science and art. He has published 145 peer-reviewed papers on these topics as well as a popular scientific book and a number of articles on science history and fullerene-like structures in nanomaterials, living organisms, and architecture. Based on the latter activity he has developed and is teaching an interdisciplinary course “Bridges between fine art and natural sciences: cases of fullerenes, polyhedra, symmetry”.

Prof. Katz was awarded the IAAM Medal (by the International Association of Advanced Materials) for outstanding research in the field of New Energy Materials & Technology.

MODERATOR

Daria Kesler is a cross-disciplinary researcher and artist. She works with human and machine-generated texts, sounds, documentaries, and video art. She is interested in using modern technologies to spread empathy towards all the species through the eyes of machines. Daria wants to explore new ways of co-living between technology, human, plants, and animals. Education: Master of Art&Science, ITMO, Saint-Petersburg, Russia, 2021–2023 Major studies in Hybrid (Technological and Bio) Art. Master of Journalism, St. Petersburg State University, Russia, 2006–2012 Technological art, Rodchenko Art School, 2021 (curator Alexei Shulgin) Joint Exhibitions: Mycophobia, Collabo, July 2023 (Israel, Tel Aviv-Yaffo) Gamma Festival 2023 (Russia, Saint-Petersburg) Новая искренность/Novaya Iskrennostj – 2023 (Air Gallery, Festival STAGE, Russia, Saint-Petersburg) Забота робота/Zabota robota – 2022 (Russia, Saint-Petersburg). Participant of Ars Electronica (Feral Automated System: ULTB-1, Posthuman Studies Lab (RU) – 2022 (Linz, Austria), The wrong biennale nº5 – 2021, (Russian pavilion) NeiroTAIL, Immersive show – 2021 (theater center “Cosmos”, Tyumen, Russia), Summer school of The Faculty of Contemporary Art Sreda Obuchenia and Posthuman Studies Lab research platform – 2021 (Russia, Moscow – Viksa), Participant of Ars Electronica – 2020, (Online pavilion “Pangardenia”).