About the Exhibition
Opening reception: Friday, November 20, 7 - 10 pm
FLUXspace presents its first international artist in residence,
Angelo Vermeulen (Sint-Niklaas, BE), and his site-specific,
time-based project, Corrupted C#n#m#.
Corrupted C#n#m# is an amorphous, process oriented
project which explores new and old media through biological
and digital experimentation via creating symbiosis and synchronicity
between the living and the digital.
The exhibition will consist of several components and a variety
of processes, which will overlap and intermingle during the
project. The experiment/project challenges and investigates
parallels and dialectics between human flesh and digital physicality,
bacterial infection and data corruption, and cinematic and
tangible experience.
Corrupted C#n#m# is an artistic inquiry into the
notion of the material 'body’ in both the digital and
the biological realm. How do we define the relationships between
the natural and the artificial? How do they and when can they
interface?
Laboratory of data corruption:
Vermeulen initiated this project with SoundImageCulture
and FoAM, two arts organizations in Brussels, with an experiment
in which he colonized digital media with biological organisms.
With the concept of glitch-art in mind, the following question
arose:
Can the growth of organic life on digital media cause visual
glitches to video data?
The source material for the experiment is scientific surgical
footage from instructional medical tapes; this didactic and
raw footage is displaced from its original VHS container through
conversion into a digital file. These files will then be placed
onto different digital storage devices that will be manipulated
and disrupted through various biological processes: bacteria,
fungi, algae, and insects. These processes could cause data
errors in the source material emerging as faulty lines and
pixels, broken images and color shifts, among other artifacts.
The biologically damaged video data will be meticulously
recovered with data forensic techniques, and will then be
carefully examined and displayed to determine the effects
of the bacterial exposure. This physical interaction and experimentation
with the actual digital media invokes early abstract cinema
techniques, where the visual image on the screen was the consequence
of real physical stress and alteration to the film reel. The
project also explores the myth of the immaterial nature of
digital art media and its production.
Bacteriological Map:
Through a performative / ritual process, bacteria
is being collected around the city of Philadelphia by a team
of volunteers, FLUXstaff, and the artist. A map of Philadelphia
will chart the locations each bacterial sample is collected
from. The collected bacteria will then be cultured following
simple instructions from high school science experiments (as
found on YouTube). The city becomes a monumental body from
which its microbial ecosystem will be superimposed on the
digital media, thus making native Philadelphia bacteria act
as the agent which will potentially ‘corrupt the cinema’.
About the Artist
Angelo Vermeulen is a visual artist, filmmaker, biologist,
author, activist, and DJ. His research in ecology, environmental
pollution and teratology informs his art, which includes bio
installations, experimental setups incorporating living organisms
and sci-fi references. His projects include ‘Blue Shift’,
a Darwinian art project in collaboration with biologist Prof.
Luc De Meester, and ‘Biomodd’, a worldwide series
of cross-cultural, symbiotic installations fusing game culture,
ecology and social interaction. In addition to developing
a new experimental cinema project based on biologically infected
electronics at FLUXspace, he currently also collaborates with
the MELiSSA life support division of the European Space Agency.
About the Gallery
FLUX is an artist run organization supporting other
artists through exhibitions, and public programs. FLUX enables
artists to experiment in new practices for the purpose of
advancing artwork, concept and thought. FLUXspace is a subsidiary
of ArtMakingMachine Studios, both of which are located at
3000 N. Hope Street, Philadelphia, PA 19133.
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