2023: res nodus
The participatory exhibition invites the public to explore the implications of technologically mediated somatic practice. Through electrophysiological interfacing (i.e. EEG sensors) visitors are offered an experience of their brainwave data, networked through an audio-visual, scientifically calculated, experience. The immersive installation invites participants to reflect on the social, cultural, economic, and ecological implications of bio-information mined through health applications and personal devices. It asks how big data analytics, automation, and AI, are shaping sensory experience and relationality through a capitalist market of health applications.
Bodies have moved in, and through, myriad perspectives since Decartes’ dualist viewpoint that mind/consciousness was separate from the material body. Today, connectionist models of the mind, a subspecies of Cartesian thought, explain and explore cognitive function through the same lexicon as artificial neural network systems. Our original dualistic approach to the sensing-body, which was enriched by Newton’s three laws of motion, universal gravitation, and the invention of calculus, has culturally informed our understanding of our somatosensory-self. It has fundamentally configured a body-knowledge, passed down through the DNA of our ancestors. From Dualism to Connectionism, we carry our bodies through cultures of the mind that misalign our sensorial experience.
Artistic Director: ashley middleton
Technical Director: Aga Czeszumska
Research & Development: EDGE: Neuroscience & Art, Dr Laura Kaltwasser, Enya Weidner
Generously supported by:
Arts Council England, OpenBCI
CURATOR:
Vanessa Giorgo
ashley middleton
ashley middleton is an artist, researcher, and curator; working in a range of media, including photography, sound, sculpture, and installation. Her multidisciplinary projects explore psyche, soma, quantum entanglement, and the production of world-matter through a posthuman feminist phenomenological perspective. Drawing on inspiration from disparate perspectives - such as those of Katherine Hayles, Astrida Neimanis, Donna Haraway and Karen Barad - her work considers how bodies are assembled in, and through, the intra-connections of matter, molecule, and media. Rhizomatic methodologies, embodiment practices, and cosmic attunements are fundamental to the research and production of her work.
middleton has exhibited at State Studio, Berlin; Inter Arts Center, Malmo; State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg; Photoville, NYC; Rencontres d’Arles, Arles; and Pingyao International Photography Festival, Pingyao. She has been awarded Stiftung Kunstfonds NEUSTART KULTUR Grant (2022), Stiftung Künstlerdorf Schöppingen Residency Scholarship (2021), and the Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grant (2020).
Vanessa Giorgo is an independent curator, facilitator and organiser, currently based in London. Through her projects, she explores topics from a conceptual perspective, aiming to raise awareness on contemporary socio-political matters and to promote the arts on all levels of life. Identifying diverse phenomena, she researches questions via collaborative processes and by utilising theoretical and practical approaches, leading to engaging shows. She considers human interactions and knowledge exchange themselves as art and focuses on fostering alternatives modes of being and creating. Her interests are centred on the concepts of identity, politics and on current societal topics, examined through multimedia exhibitions and prompting from her everyday encounters. Her interdisciplinary training and multicultural upbringing provide her with a wide variety of creative approaches.
She has worked for multiple art fairs and art organisations, such as the Onassis Stegi Foundation in Athens, Art Athina, The Beany House of Art & Knowledge, TOMA (The Other MA), Studio 3 Gallery, And.What.Queer.Arts.Festival, Ugly Duck, The Feminist Library, Crafts Central, Unit 3 Projects at ASC Studios, One Paved Court Gallery, Exposed Arts and other institutions between the UK and Greece. She is currently in the Management group Feminist Library in London and coordinates the organisation's Curatorial Team.
Aga Czeszumska is a scientist-turned-engineer, interested in sensory extension and cross-modal perception. Drawing on her experience in astronomy and experimental nuclear physics, she builds electronic devices to sonically explore the world.