Throughout this course participants will gain a comprehensive understanding of the intersection of technology, art, and posthuman concepts. Whilst understanding the ability to critically evaluate the effects of AI, VR, and AR might have on our future. After the course, and practically speaking, participants will have learnt how to build and produce artistic augmented works on Unity 3D, with hands-on workshops. They will have acknowledged how to guide their individual viewpoints and the theoretical influences, that their works can raise critical questions and opinions on where and how our posthuman reality is shaping for the future, and radically/ethically changing our technological landscapes.
Augmented Futures: The split of reality in our post-human era
Augmented Futures: The split of reality in our post-human era
Splinter your perspectives as we enter hyperreality and ask, in the advent of artificial advancements and technological concerns, is the Future really ours to see?
This course welcomes students who are interested in the technological and posthuman era, and the critical debate surrounding the influx of Artificial Intelligence, Virtual and Augmented reality. Technologies that are now an ever-present influence and manipulation of our daily reality. Online lectures shall give the theoretical and philosophical ground for students to build their digital inspirations and concepts. In Weimar, students will practically learn and develop Augmented Reality artworks that shall be showcased in groups at the Bauhaus Spring Exhibition.
In addressing the hyperreal concepts related to Jean Baurillard’s Simulations and Simulacra, Paul Virilo’s Dromology, to Micheal Foucault's Heterotopia. We shall discuss the critical phenomena that AI is advancing. The effect our cyberspaces are aesthetically having on our pop/sci-fi culture, and how our current reality is strangely competing with itself as its own hyperreal copy. In Weimar, our multidisciplinary practical lessons shall offer students the opportunity to be taught particular programming skills. In which they shall learn how to experiment with Augmented Reality. Students will acquire the knowledge needed for developing AR applications in Unity 3D software, through different workshops dedicated to various AR capabilities such as Vuforia’s Image Target, Face Filters, and ARFoundation’s Environment tracking. This course will only focus on AR development for Android devices and Windows computers.
In conjunction with programming lessons, students will be part of workshops and further group discussions that will address the economic, creative and existential challenges our digitally merged reality is facing. In this course, students will develop AR experiences that critically question, create, and envision a posthuman path where ethics, agency and trust are at the core of technological development and artistic practice, of a future that has already arrived.
NOTE:
This course includes an attendance phase in Weimar from March 14 to March 23, 2024.
This course is designed for those interested in critically exploring the present and future of technology, art, and design, and the concerns related to our posthuman era. We welcome Bachelor's, Master's, and Ph.D, who might be interested in subjects of media, digital, hyperreality, cyberspace, posthumanism, virtual/augmented reality and artificial intelligence. If participants are keen on learning new programming skills related to AR, and are open-minded to engage in discussion about the relationship between human and machine, then this course shall be for them.
Matthew John Lloyd
https://www.matthewjohnlloyd.com/
Born England, UK, 1988
As a Conceptual Artist and Lecturer he gained a BA (hons) Graphic Arts: Illustration at Liverpool John Moores Art and Design Academy, UK (2010) and a MFA Public Art and New Artistic Strategies from Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Germany, (2018). Since 2019, he has been the theoretical lecturer for artistic and critical writing at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. He has been an invited guest lecturer of Speak Now, or Forever Hold Your… (The Voice in Public Spheres), at Fontys University of Applied Sciences, Performing Public Space programme, Tilburg, Netherlands, (2022-23). Currently he is working as an invited artist for the Manifesto’s of Future.Repair.Machine. conferences and events in Eindhoven, Netherlands and Graz, Austria, (2023-24).
He had a solo show at ACC Gallery, Weimar titled, Words Fail Me, (2019), and, You Cannot Hear I? {Buchenwald Forest} is part of the Buchenwald Memorial Former Concentration Camp Permanent Collection, Weimar (2017). He is the award winner of the Stiftung Kunstfond Artist Grant Award, (2022) the Nietzsche-Fellowship, Klassik Stiftung Weimar (2022) and the Bauhaus Essentials 8 Artist Award, (2017). His writings have been published with ArtReview, and The Double Negative, (2023). His work has been commissioned and exhibited with Kunstfest Weimar, (2018), and Desintegriert Euch!, Gorki - 3rd Herbstsalon, Berlin, (2017).
Skills and Focus Area:
Specific focus on theoretical and philosophical concepts of contemporary art, as well as a deep understanding of public and social art. Particular skills in academic and critical writing for artists, architects, and media-artists.
Silvana Callegari
https://silvanacallegari.com
Born, Bogotá, Colombia, 1991
She is a Colombian Media Artist, lecturer, and Extended Realities specialist with an M.F.A in Media Art and Design. She has been Invited as a speaker to the 3rd International Conference on Spatiality and Immersivity, UAM, Mexico in 2020, Suratómica Festival, Bogotá, Colombia.
Her work has been exhibited at the Athens Digital Arts Festival, Greece (2023), Window Wonderland in Toronto, Canada (2022), Latin American Media Art Symposium - S.L.A.M. in Bogotá, Colombia (2021), Arte No Escadao Brazil (2021), +CODE Festival in Argentina (2021), at the 3rd International Conference on Spatiality and Immersivity in Mexico (2020), and A|CERCA del Origen (2020).
She has been a lecturer at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (2021-2022) and the School of Art, Science and Technology CUNA (2021). Additionally, she has given practical workshops about Augmented Reality, New Media, Hyperreality, Posthumanism, and Virtual Agency at the Bauhaus Universität - Weimar (2021) and the Suratómica Festival (2020).