AI-generated audiovisual project by SIAT researchers to be displayed at outdoor exhibition

An AI-generated audiovisual project created by SIAT researchers and artists professor Steve DiPaola, associate professor Gabriela Aceves-Sepúlveda, alum pr0phecy sun, and PhD candidate Freya Zinovieff is set to be displayed on the City of Surrey's UrbanScreen, Canada’s largest art-dedicated outdoor screen from February 12 to May 1, 2022.

The immersive audiovisual project titled Body as Border: Traces and Flows of Connection conjoins artificial intelligence, poetry, ecology, and the human body. The project uses machine learning algorithms to examine the intersection between the body, technology, and the broader ecological world in which we live.

“Through a randomized, generative digital process, the work draws from bacterial cultures, documentation of the Fraser River, and fragments of poetry to produce a series of composite audiovisual landscape,” explains the Surrey Art Gallery event post. “The resulting images and sounds chart humanity’s impact upon the environment, as well as our own porous relationship with both artificial and natural entities. Exploring the possibilities of these artist-developed technologies, Body as Border: Traces and Flows of Connection invites audiences to see, feel, and sense the world beyond the limits of the ordinary senses.”

Body as Border: Traces and Flows of Connection will be displayed starting a half an hour after sunset to midnight from February 12 to May 1, 2022 at the City of Surrey UrbanScreen at the Chuck Bailey Recreation Centre.

A preview of the exhibition will be taking place on Thursday, February 10, 2022 and will feature Boundless, a program of short films curated by pr0phecy sun and Freya Zinovieff.

The program of short screenings includes the work of graduate students and SIAT Critical Media Art Studio (cMAS) members Hamed Rashtian, Catherine Santos Pearce, and Maira Cristina Castro Mina as well as a new video installation titled White Clouds in Blue Sky by SIAT professors Kate Hennessy and Steve DiPaola along with artist Trudi Lynn Smith.

Film screening schedule:

• White Clouds in the Blue Sky, 2022. Kate Hennessy, Trudi Lynn Smith, and Steve DiPaola
• The Border Between Us, 2022. Catherine Santos Pearce.
• Skip Stop Site Plan, 2019. Jesse Colin Jackson. Digital Video, 2:00 minutes. 
• Studio, 2022. Hamed Rashtian.
• Video Tambadoras, 2022. Maira Cristina Castro