Exhibition
The Power of Surrendering — In between Active and Passive
June 17 (Fri) – July 31 (Sun), 2022
Gallery 9.5（HOTEL ANTEROOM KYOTO）
Qosmo
Nao Tokui, Robin Jungers, Ryosuke Nakajima
In the spring of 2020, foreign tourists disappeared from the city due to the outbreak of the new coronavirus. We also no longer get new perspectives through conversations with random people we meet at a friend’s party or a neighborhood bar. Even a simple decision, such as whether or not to wear a mask, creates a division between those on “my side” and “their side.”
On the other hand, the recommendation algorithms of YouTube and Netflix are constantly presenting us with the “best” content in the online environment. Many of us are acutely aware of how passive we can be in the face of these algorithms.
The recent COVID-19 pandemic and the development of AI and other technologies have strengthened our vector toward optimal solutions by eliminating “heterogeneity” from our lives, but at the same time, they challenge us on how much we should accept heterogeneity.
Against this backdrop, this exhibition will present works that delegate part of their creative process to computer programs, AI, or transitions in the environment that surrounds us.
The exhibition will feature works in which the artist “transfers” their judgments to an external process to explore half a step outside of their imagination and creativity, not to exclude heterogeneity and unpredictability but to accept them consciously. As a result, there is an active passivity (what Brian Eno would call surfing) rather than simply blindly following a computer algorithm.
Tokyo-based Qosmo is a collective of artists, engineers, and AI researchers who aim to contribute to the expansion of human creativity through technology and art. The works exhibited by the members of Qosmo attempt to provide an alternative perspective on the everyday environment and technology that surrounds us through the stance mentioned above.
Taking the idea of “Generative Music” presented by Brian Eno as a motif, the ever-changing expressions created by the artist and the process (AI/environment) that the artist has embraced will transform our sense of time and space.
As the term “Generative Art” seems to be trivialized as a concept that refers to code-based visual expression, we hope that this exhibition will cause you to reconsider the nature of generativity and the meaning of consciously surrendering oneself to external processes.
With sincere respect to Brian Eno
June 2022
Nao Tokui, Director of Qosmo
Access
Gallery 9.5
HOTEL ANTEROOM KYOTO
7Aketacho Higashi-Kujo Minami-Ku Kyoto,
601-8044 Japan
tel: +81-75-681-5656
fax: +81-75-681-5655
[Google Map]
Music event
Surrender – The Ecstasy of Surrendering to Sound
@Kyoto CLUB METRO
July 18 (Mon / Holiday), 2022
18:00 Open
Ticket: ¥2,500 Drink not included *Advanced ticket with benefits
Nao Tokui｜AI-Generative Live
AOKI Takamasa｜DJ
Daito Manabe｜DJ
Synth Sisters｜Live
Ken Furudate｜DJ
aluca｜DJ
Robin Jungers｜VJ
Ryosuke Nakajima｜VJ
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SPEKTRA | VJ
Installation view
Robin Jungers, 64 Memories of Noise
Audiovisual Installation | 2022 | Monitors, Speakers, Computer
64 Memories of Noise is a continuous symphony of sounds generated from environmental noise. As it is fed new audio recordings from mundane locations in Kyoto and around, the setup behaves like an observation instrument, turning brief sound fragments into a granular, sensory texture made of many data points.
Rather than the content of these organic recordings, it’s the complexity of information that they hold that is used as a source of interest. In technical terms, we call noise what holds no information: when no human speaks and no bird sings, noise remains the signature of a perfectly chaotic environment, where no intentional communication is perceptible.
By focusing on this aspect of sound, the installation attempts to reproduce the unnoticed patterns of silence and disorder in common soundscapes, and turn them into a lasting collection of abstract memories.
Ryosuke Nakajima, Suspended Identity
Audiovisual Installation | 2022 | Cameras, Displays, Speakers, Computers
This work depicts two AIs communicating with each other through the process of identification/differentiation. Each AI tries to identify/differentiate itself from the other by acquiring/analyzing the other’s image through the connected camera, learning information, and changing its own internal state.
The identification process attempts to generate an image that imitates the other, while the differentiation process attempts to generate an image that differs from the other. When the process of identification progresses and the change in the internal state decreases, the process of differentiation starts. When the differentiation is sufficiently processed, the identification process is restarted. This constitutes a feedback loop in which both parties attempt to identify/differentiate themselves from each other.
The image captured through the camera includes another AI, the other person, and at the same time, traces of the past self captured by the other. This creates a state in which the other is both the other and the self, and the self is both the self and the other, and the boundary between the two gradually fades away.
Nao Tokui, Musical Ambience: Ambience for a Hotel
Sound Installation | 2022 | Microphones, Speakers, Computer
Slow down. Focus. Surrender to here and now.
Musical Ambience: Ambience for a Hotel is the first of a series of sound installations created under the theme of “listening to the environment like music.”
In this installation, the environmental noise in the venue is captured through microphones and converted into musical sound through AI real-time timbre transfer models. Then, the transferred sound is played back from the speakers and caught again through microphones. This feedback creates a unique soundscape with multilayered depth.
Listen carefully to the sound that emerges, changes, and disappears here and now. How does our awareness of the environment change, when the ordinary sounds of daily life, the faint sounds we make, are transformed into something more than noise and less than music?
Produced by Qosmo
Supported by HOTEL ANTEROOM KYOTO
Equipment Cooperation: FRM Co., Ltd.