DYSCORPIA 2.1

ANIMATED

DIGITAL

ARTISTS: Jason Abma, Hailey Brancato, Megan Beland, Kairu Fan, Erin Gee, Beverly Hood, Danielle Imara, Alicja Habisiak-Matczak, Liz Ingram and Bernd Hildebrant, Marilyn Langevin and Thomas Fenton, Sydney Lancaster, Kevin Liang, Veronika McGinnis, Gabriel Esteban Molina, Oksana Movchan and Gary James Joynes, aAron Munson, Darian Goldin Stahl, eryn tempest, Becky Thera, Joan Greer, Sourayan Mookerjea and Tegan Moore.

Machine Unlearning by Erin Gee

In Machine Unlearning, the artist offers a neural conditioning treatment by whispering the unraveling outputs of an LSTM algorithm to the viewer. The combination of machine learning and ASMR draws parallels between autonomous algorithms and the autonomous functions of the human body.

Machine Unlearning (Excerpts) by Erin Gee

In Machine Unlearning, the artist offers a neural conditioning treatment by whispering the unraveling outputs of an LSTM algorithm to the viewer. The combination of machine learning and ASMR draws parallels between autonomous algorithms and the autonomous functions of the human body.

To see the full version please on the title above.

Time-lapse of the 25 Days by Megan Beland

Megan chose a place in a forest where tall grass and weeds dominated the landscape and staked out an area with pegs and rope that was 66 inches square. Megan trimmed the grass and raked the ground, manipulating and putting her mark on the environment. During this time of Covid and isolation, the project took on additional meaning. While people are confined to their homes and restricted to online contact, the natural world outside continues on without us. Without our interaction with it and a reduced impact on it, the environment is thriving. It is evident that the environment does not need us but we can’t survive without it.

chaotic bodies: touch data space by Sydney Lancaster

Sonified amino acids & protein folds reveal patterns: avenues for a vaccine? Visualizing connections. Touch, now absent. What is the body’s role, now? Does access to technology & vast amounts of data contribute to making sense of a world replete with chaotic events? Or does it compound isolation and chaos for individual bodies?

Chaotic Bodies: Touch Data Space by Sydney Lancaster

Sonified amino acids & protein folds reveal patterns: avenues for a vaccine? Visualizing connections. Touch, now absent. What is the body’s role, now? Does access to technology & vast amounts of data contribute to making sense of a world replete with chaotic events? Or does it compound isolation and chaos for individual bodies?

Looking closer at the nature of all things, might we see paths outside the inherited mental frameworks that leave us at the mercy of our minds. Further back and faster. Created for Dyscorpia 2.1 Remote Exhibition June 18-19, 2020 https://www.dyscorpia.com/ Music - "Equivalent 2" by loscil Images by aAron Munson

Further Back & Faster by aAron Munson

Looking closer at the nature of all things, might we see paths outside the inherited mental frameworks that leave us at the mercy of our minds. Further back and faster.

Les Arbes qui nous Prennent//The Trees that hold us by Eryn Tempest

Les Arbes qui nous prennent is an experimental dance film that explores the nature of embodiment in terms of fragmentation, trace, mutation, and decay. The work reimagines the body as an unfamiliar landscape whose discovery evokes notions of space travel and alien visitation.

Les Arbes qui nous Prennent / The Trees that Hold Us by eryn tempest

Les Arbes qui nous Prennent is an experimental dance film that explores the nature of embodiment in terms of fragmentation, trace, mutation, and decay. The work reimagines the body as an unfamiliar landscape whose discovery evokes notions of space travel and alien visitation.

Drifting Logbook 01 by Kevin Liang

Through these explorations of drifting in an urban environment, Kev Liang ponders the vague notion of bodied presence in the face of technological dependency. How is our perception of space and time altered due to these uncertain living conditions coupled with our own biases and traumas?

Drifting Logbook 01 by Kevin Liang

Through these explorations of drifting in an urban environment, Kev Liang ponders the vague notion of bodied presence in the face of technological dependency. How is our perception of space and time altered due to these uncertain living conditions coupled with our own biases and traumas?

Nowhere To Run by Danielle Imara

Nowhere To Run refers to the frustration of being alone, or worse, trapped in unhealthy and unsafe domestic environments during the Covid-19 Lockdown 2020. Reflecting the surreality of the crisis the legs are in constant motion yet cannot travel. They are purple with stasis. They are disembodied and bruised. They are cut off, dehumanized in a world turned upside-down. They are an itch, an urge to move, to run, to go somewhere, when there is nowhere to go. These are secret interior responses, that can’t be shared via Zoom, phone calls or letters.

Nowhere To Run by Danielle Imara

Nowhere To Run refers to the frustration of being alone, or worse, trapped in unhealthy and unsafe domestic environments during the Covid-19 Lockdown 2020. Reflecting the surreality of the crisis the legs are in constant motion yet cannot travel. They are purple with stasis. They are disembodied and bruised. They are cut off, dehumanized in a world turned upside-down. They are an itch, an urge to move, to run, to go somewhere, when there is nowhere to go. These are secret interior responses, that can’t be shared via Zoom, phone calls or letters.

Still Life by Hailey Brancato

Time seems to pass in a non-linear fashion, feeling distorted and surreal (while ultimately slipping away quickly and quietly.) Clutter starts to build up over time as we are confined to our homes; our private spaces become something entirely different. Smaller, nest- like environments within our larger living spaces develop, with everything within arm’s reach.

Tactile Transmission by Darian Goldin Stahl

Tactile Transmission by Darian Goldin Stahl is a digital short using prints from her artist's book that animate the significance of touch between humans and rodents between the middle ages versus today: rodent bodies that once transmitted disease are now the bodies that will manifest a vaccine.

Tactile Transmission by Darian Goldin Stahl

Tactile Transmission by Darian Goldin Stahl is a digital short using prints from her artist's book that animate the significance of touch between humans and rodents between the middle ages versus today: rodent bodies that once transmitted disease are now the bodies that will manifest a vaccine.

Gabriel presents Trip I - Hasta La Vista. This video is an exploration of technology and its function as a mediator of experience. Shot with a smartphone, the camera moves along the screen and photographs become animated. Simulating the eye of the viewer passing along the landscape. The shifting colours bordering the central video place central natural imagery literally in the artists hands, and the bedroom window view puts the viewer in the perspective of the artist and speaks to their combined role as artist and viewer, consuming their own creation as a sort of Ouroboros. The audio tracks are a combination of sound from various locations including Iceland, Chile, and Gabriel’s own backyard visible through the window.

Trip 1 - Hasta La Vista by Gabriel Esteban Molina

Gabriel Esteban Molina is concerned with the influence of technology on our perception of the natural world. Inspired by alternative culture, quantum physics and esotericism in the 21st century, Gabriel's work explores the unintentional phenomena resulting from the interactions of different visual devices and how they relate to the natural processes which underlay our universe. By experimenting with the physical interactions of different cameras and displays, Gabriel focuses attention to the materiality of the screen and playing with the tension between real and virtual, analog and digital, and traditional and contemporary.

Untouchable Spaces by Alicja Habisiak-Matczak

Untouchable Spaces is a series of charcoal drawings in which Alicja Habisiak-Matczak depicts the spaces of airports, train stations, underground staircases which normally are extremely crowded and noisy, full of constant motion. Suddenly all these corridors, halls and staircases became still and empty. The rails, knobs, which we normally touched almost unconsciously, now more then ever become a symbol of invisible danger, in a way they became untouchable... 

Wake Up, Star Seed by Veronika McGinnis

Veronika McGinnis has been building world's which allow her to explore reality through altered states of consciousness. Although, despite these interventions, Veronika is ultimately pulled back into reality through an embodied relationship to physical pleasure and human suffering. Through the use of induced trance and meditation, Veronika experiences visions which come to the surface of her mind. Wake Up, Star Seed is a physical expression of her inner thoughts. It explores a stream of consciousness in the hopes of achieving mindfulness through magick; while processing guilt and loss.

Mask by Kairui Fan

With the rapid onset of the pandemic, the emergence of new protocols and measures have effectively changed our routine norms. Social distancing has not only physically isolated us, but emotionally isolated us. People are afraid of socializing – they no longer greet each other, they move around each other in unusual ways, they avoid people who wear masks – the threat of contracting COVID-19 has dehumanized our social relationships. In this durational work, Kairui Fan repeats the action of layering masks on his face. Kairui Fan expresses how isolation has restricted and regulated the way Kairui navigates relationships with others and the world, both physically and emotionally.

Mask by Kairui Fan

With the rapid onset of the pandemic, the emergence of new protocols and measures have effectively changed our routine norms. Social distancing has not only physically isolated us, but emotionally isolated us. People are afraid of socializing – they no longer greet each other, they move around each other in unusual ways, they avoid people who wear masks – the threat of contracting COVID-19 has dehumanized our social relationships. In this durational work, Kairui Fan repeats the action of layering masks on his face. Kairui Fan expresses how isolation has restricted and regulated the way Kairui navigates relationships with others and the world, both physically and emotionally.

Yearn by Marilyn Langevin and Thomas Fenton

are classmates in the Bachelor of Fine Arts program at the University of Alberta. As studio mates they came to appreciate each other’s energies, ideas, and works. This collaborative project was their way to stay connected during COVID-19 isolation. This work is about yearning, aching for touch –that human connection that transcends all of the ways in which we try to emulate it. Now more than ever, seclusion weighs heavier on us. We seek reconnection.

Yearn by Marilyn Langevin and Thomas Fenton

Marilyn Langevin and Thomas Fenton are classmates in the Bachelor of Fine Arts program at the University of Alberta. As studio mates they came to appreciate each other’s energies, ideas, and works. This collaborative project was their way to stay connected during COVID-19 isolation. This work is about yearning, aching for touch –that human connection that transcends all of the ways in which we try to emulate it. Now more than ever, seclusion weighs heavier on us. We seek reconnection.

Into The Garden We Go… by Oksana Movchan and Gary James Joynes

Movchan’s 2019 acrylic diptych entitled “That, that is not a Man” and “That, that is not a Woman” (exploring male and female energy) has been re-imagined in this short film work. Placed in nature and superimposed into an ambient video painting, new oscillations occur when combined with Joynes’ slow-art sound and video composition sensibilities.

Into The Garden We Go… by Oksana Movchan and Gary James Joynes

Movchan’s 2019 acrylic diptych entitled “That, that is not a Man” and “That, that is not a Woman” (exploring male and female energy) has been re-imagined in this short film work. Placed in nature and superimposed into an ambient video painting, new oscillations occur when combined with Joynes’ slow-art sound and video composition sensibilities.

Immobile Choreography by Beverley Hood

Immobile Choreography is an installation using video projection, 3D prints, LED light and audio. The installation focuses on the potential of imaginatively materialising the body through the FFC-MRI process and apparatus; which makes immaterial our material bodies. The project poetically re-imagines the physical experience of and movement within the parameters of the scanner apparatus; what would this movement might be and how this relates to the effect of the magnetic resonance imaging process on our bodies.

Bernd Hildebrandt and Liz Ingram frequently work together on projects involving a variety of media. Source material is most often generated from a particular place/lake/stream in the boreal forest of Alberta. Recent works attempt to heighten awareness of our inextricable and fundamental oneness with the natural environment, and of the precious and elemental aspect of water to all life forms. In this piece Liz’s MRI brain scans, her body, her breathing, and a flowing creek unite to humanize a technological and somewhat alienating event recently experienced by her when undergoing amazing gamma knife brain surgery.

Breathing Resonance by Liz Ingram and Bernd Hildebrandt

In Breathing Resonance, Liz Ingram’s MRI brain scans, her body, her breathing, and a flowing creek unite to humanize a technological and somewhat alienating event recently experienced by her when undergoing amazing gamma knife brain surgery during the COVID-19 lockdown.

The Upload III (Loop) by Jason Abma

Jason Abma’s work explores the fabricated, virtual world created in the future, by the fictional corporation D.I.S. TECH. Digital Imprint Storage Technology has enabled the upload of humans into this endless realm in an attempt to defeat our mortality. Abma’s paintings, prints, and animations intend to explore the morality of technology and its influence on what it means to be human in our digital era.

The Upload III by Jason Abma

Jason Abma’s work explores the fabricated, virtual world created in the future, by the fictional corporation D.I.S. TECH. Digital Imprint Storage Technology has enabled the upload of humans into this endless realm in an attempt to defeat our mortality. Abma’s paintings, prints, and animations intend to explore the morality of technology and its influence on what it means to be human in our digital era.

Anxious Days by Becky Thera

It is hard to write what I feel”

Sir Ernest Shackleton, South 

Joan Greer, Sourayan Mookerjea, and Tegan Moore 2020 Seed time is composed of memory-storage, dispersal, pyriscence, imbibition, respiration, light, mobilization, sprouting, growth, and regeneration through which negentropic common-being creates a place for Earth-bound lifetimes, giving wisdom, taking care and creating common wealth. Past, present and future non-extractivist seed-communication points towards deep energy transitions to slow futures. The possibility for delinking from the toxic waste economy may be searched for here. [ID: Video of a Milkweed plant focusing on the bursting seed pods, in negative. A poem scrolls across the bottom of the screen like a stock ticker. The title of each poem appears in the centre of the video changing as each poem cycles through. Text: Memory-storage Protecting, enduring, holding spring in speck, mote, nut and drum through the orbit of our nearness to the soil singing the shrouds of life into tillage and the harvest weight of day-break. Returning difference, possible futures’ pasts. So the forest knows how to be there. Dispersal Whether sailing, afloat, riding, or just passing through hot animal entrails of field and forest, seeds chart our mineral planet into grounds, paths, bournes, quarters, beds, nests, cradles . . . Pyriscence Deep in the swidden earth, seeds are negentropically sparked. “It is by avoiding the rapid decay into the inert state of 'equilibrium' that an organism appears so enigmatic…” (Schrodinger) Flying under the radar of probability, seeds make their move against the arrow of time, always in the nick of time. Flecks of bound energy that creates a heaving sea of grass for all creatures to crawl forth and walk upon the midden of being here. Imbibition Here’s to all our dear friends, so glad to have you over, gathered at this late hour and at last! To health! To the fertile earth! And to our pregnant feasts forever! Respiration The law of the jungle is actually give and take. Breathe in, breathe out. Is how we belong to the common wealth of negentropic seed time. We the living are always together a plenitude, so long as . . . the clouds still gather us in their melt. Take this, plant this, give this. Get this? Mobilization A-statistical metabolic microprocessors pick up and carry the chanting until the dance breaks out. Seeds are molecular media with which the medical soil remembers our stricken sun. So the seed sutras teach us to learn them, find them, collect them, plant them and give them. While the seed plugs together its grid.

Seed Time: Sister Plantings for Regenerative Energy Futures by Joan Greer, Sourayan Mookerjea and Tegan Moore

Seed Time enables us to think of the human and more-than-human body ecologically, as process in the web of life. In its current COVID-time iteration, the nucleic video-poem cycle of Seed Time holds traces of a former embodied and intermedia whole. Seed time is composed of memory-storage, dispersal, pyriscence, imbibition, respiration, light, mobilization, sprouting, growth, and regeneration through which negentropic common-being creates a place for Earth-bound lifetimes, giving wisdom, taking care and creating common wealth.

A short animation exploring the limits of the body within the context of screen mediated relationships.

Me: I Miss You by Jane Eyre Jordans

Me: I Miss You is a short animated video that explores the limits of the body within the context of screen mediated relationships.

Jane Eyre Jordans is an emerging artist whose work has dealt with themes of intimacy in the digital age, subject object relationships and identity, the body, space, sex and sexuality, and critical mixed race theory.

Control and surveillance systems are expanding and are using artificial intelligence to learn human behavior. Fan-sofa-laptop-pot-table-drinking water-light-book-cellphone-movie-watching a movie-speaking-dressing up-eating-talking-photo frame-bathing-carpet-internet-watering flowers-looking outside-washing dishes-brushing-sleeping-... For the past six months I had a camera set up in my apartment that recorded every movement using its motion detection feature.

Pose of a Person by Siavash Naghshbandi

Control and surveillance systems are expanding and are using artificial intelligence to learn human behaviour. Fan-sofa-laptop-pot-table-drinking water-light-book-cellphone-movie-watching a movie-speaking-dressing up-eating-talking-photo frame-bathing-carpet-internet-watering flowers-looking outside-washing dishes-brushing-sleeping-... For the past six months I had a camera set up in my apartment that recorded every movement using its motion detection feature.

A dual channel video that speaks to mass surveillance and the asymmetry of citizen-state dynamics on the one hand, and the pandemic tipping us towards a global economic crisis thanks to inefficient corporate governance on the other. As such, the generative ‘virus-poem’, initiates a dialogue with the first channel through the mediation of ‘the train platform’, here a metaphor, gesturing towards the dystopian gap between hefty corporate investments and injection of funds into vital services such as healthcare that, within the context of the pandemic, is pushing us to the edge of social, political and economic disaster.

How the World fell in Between the Cracks

How the World fell in Between the Cracks is a dual channel video that speaks to mass surveillance taking on a new meaning during the pandemic and the dystopian gap between hefty corporate investments and injection of funds into vital services such as healthcare that is pushing us to the edge of social, political and economic disaster. Mona Hedayati is an Iranian-Canadian artist particularly interested in visual-verbal hybrid investigations exposing systems of power. Hedayati has exhibited and presented on her work internationally and across Canada and her practice has been supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and BC Arts Council.