The Somatist, the Entropist & the Skeptic

We are all contributors to the way technology works or manifests itself. The fact that we do not fully understand the inner workings of technology systems (the black-box) does not prevent us from trusting the decisions that technology mediates or even makes for us. But should we limit this trust? Should we also accept the errors? To what extent does this collective agency of technology represent us at an individual level? Does the way we position ourselves in this communality have the capacity to determine future situations or technological developments? In other words, can technology be a pretext for speculation about the future, or is it rather an evolutionary process involving variation and selection similar to the natural world?

The Somatist, the Entropist & the Skeptic is an artistic and research-oriented project, at the intersection between art and science. It will unfold in a collective and participatory art installation, actively involving the public in the creative process. The artists – Floriama Candea, Sabina Suru & Andrei Tudose, and Cătălin Creţu try to decipher, along with the public, new ways of relating to technology, while positioning themselves in this connection. The aim of the project is to raise awareness on the responsibility we have in the human-technology relationship, by researching the ability of technologies to be an invisible guide to our behaviors, habits, and physical & emotional states, thus blurring the boundaries between the natural and the artificial world.

The Somatist, the Entropist & the Skeptic project uses several types of technologies, more or less intrusive: machine learning algorithms, generative manipulation of image and sound, computer vision, sensors for recording physiological data (e.g. , EEG, EKG, chemo-sensors) – technologies that have become commonplace, which we no longer pay attention to, but which have the ability to record data (whether images or parameters of our physical or emotional state) and make it visible in unexpected ways. The interaction with the artifacts of the collective installation proposes to guide the public in rethinking the relationship between the individual human agency and that of convivial technologies. The project provides clues about the place and responsibility people have in relation to technology, translating it into a chain of events that generate visual artistic content

The Somatist, the Entropist & the Skeptic offers an innovative approach to artistic collaborative practices by opening them up to the public. By doing so, it undermines the authorial dimension of the creative gesture both through the explored concepts and by means of direct participation of the public in the actual creation of the installation’s components.

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Meet the artists

Floriama Candea completed an M.A. at the Center for Excellence in Image Studies (CESI) in 2016, and a BFA from the National University of Arts Bucharest, in painting. Her practice evolves around both painting and bioart. She is currently researching the use and potential paths of experimenting with new types of media, such as biological living tissue and decellularization or bacterial colonies, as artistic support (e.g.kombucha) and alternative photographic techniques. Alluding to scientific illustrations, her works discretely interrogates the multifaceted relation between segmentation and recombination.Her works often make use of experimental artistic procedures to bring about renditions of image and object morphologies. She challenges the way memory, cognition, perception and taxonomy are set in motion as mechanisms in the subjective relation with the world.

floriamacandea.com

instagram.com/floriama_candea

Sabina Suru and Andrei Tudose work on the border between art, social sciences and technology. Sabina adheres to an object-based approach on analogue and alternative photography, respectively holography, with a background in painting and multimedia, while Andrei has been active for many years in the field of numbers, sociology and marketing. Their projects focus on combining analogue and digital practices, and expanding public involvement and participation in the artistic and exhibition process. They address topics such as instrumented vision, surveillance, private vs. public space, digital identity and objectification, through collaborations with practitioners from various fields, such as scientific research, contemporary dance and music.

instagram.com/sabina.suru

instagram.com/andrei__tudose

Cătălin Creţu has a double-sided background – electromechanical engineering and music. He studied sound art in a master’s degree in Multimedia Composition at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, and obtained a PHD from the National University of Music in Bucharest. His creative profile encompasses works in various genres, from chamber music, choral and symphonic opposites, to electronic music, computer-assisted music, installations, interactive multimedia works, etc. He has published numerous articles and specialized studies as well as authored volumes such as “From the sound of the sinus to the anatomy of the shadow”, “Technological Perspectives in New Music” (2015) and “3 Log I.A. or about the humanization of technology through art” (2019). He is a scientific researcher at the Center for Electroacoustic Music and Multimedia and an associate professor at the National University of Music in Bucharest, a member of the Union of Romanian Composers and Musicologists and executive director of the InnerSound New Arts Festival.

www.catalincretu.ro

Working closely with the artistic team we have Dr. Victor Diculescu – researcher at INCD Materials Physics Măgurele and Cristian Balaș – programmer. They contribute with their expertise, their technical abilities and knowledge on electrochemical biosensors for medical diagnosis and screening and artificial intelligence.

The Somatist, the Entropist & the Skeptic

Download Romanian version of this page (pdf format) here.

The Somatist, the Entropist & the Skeptic is a cultural project co-financed by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund.

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The project does not necessarily represent the position of The Administration of the National Cultural Fund. The Administration of the National Cultural Fund is not responsible for the content of the project or the manner in which the results of the project may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the funding recipient.