Ivor Diosi

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Ivor is an internationally recognized, award-winning cybershaman and bioalchemist. His main obsessions are identity, the existence of space-time, the emergence of organic life and consciousness. Operates at the intersections of art and science, in the fields of neurocinema, game-art, bio-art, mixed realities, machine vision, artificial life, simulacra, synthetic and virtual entities. Working since 1989 and exhibiting internationally since 1999 at over a hundred new media art venues around the world. Received several of the most prestigious international awards and distinctions and has been noted by a number of highest authority new media theoreticians and curators.

Ivor is the founder of _humane after people_ - an art-science group addressing questions of the future of the human condition and aiming for a machine-unreadable humanity. Their projects strive to be detached from socially conditioned perception and our simian legacy as much as possible, and focus on what really matters: the human being as autonomous conscience in the unvoid.


Key Works

2014 The Qualia Project

The Qualia Project - Interaction
The Qualia Project #008-001 still

Interactive screens with built-in optical face tracking. The artworks react to face movement and gaze - the cyberscapes morph and transform when they feel onlookers' eyes.

Our perception of art is overwhelmingly driven by factors like where a work is displayed and who is viewing it. The evolution of modern art if anything has conditioned viewers to adopt the position that they can and ought to assign an interpretation of their own preference to any and all art. The Qualia project aims to turn this status quo around by empowering the artworks with perception of their own.

Equipped with computer vision technology and a symbolic grain of sentience, the artworks actively observe their observers and change their form and way of presenting themselves in response to their surroundings.

Qualia is a term used in philosophy to refer to individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. It derives from a Latin word meaning "what sort" or "what kind". This unfamiliar term denotes something that could not be more familiar: the ways things seem to each of us, to our particular singular selves. One of the broader definitions is "the 'what it is like' " character of mental states. The way it feels to an autonomous individual entity to have states of feeling pain, seeing a color, hearing a tone.

Instances of human consciousness are unique entities in the unvoid and the Qualia Project artworks choose to present themselves to each according to their own will, to each observer differently. As we continuously construct our own realities through the very act of perception, the Qualia Project introduces a turn of this paradigm, the worx actively instancing unstable, fluxuous, perception-elusive realities, inspired by the sciences of quantum chromodynamics and cellular biology.


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2008-14 molding the signifier (_humane after people_)

molding the signifier 2.0 - ConceptArt 2014
molding the signifier - data flow scheme

Art/Science Augmented Life


90% of the cells in our body do not have human DNA - we are a mere host, a topography, for billions of bacteria and fungi. Much as we're convinced that our brains run the show, all the while our microbiomes alter our drives, desires, and behaviors to support their own reproduction and evolution. Just as biome networks, are complex data systems beginning to have points of view, and forms of agency that are beyond human comprehension? What exactly IS a human in the light of current science and technology? We need a re-definition of intelligence, agency and sentience in ways that go beyond the anthropomorphic.

"molding the signifier" is an interdisciplinary project on the intersections of art, cybernetics, ecology, linguistics and biology. It draws from a wide array of particular fields, including neurolinguistics, theories of consciousness, cell research and the study of mental illness. It offers multiple layers of irony and a discursive, confrontational and emotionally charged approach as to what constitutes (human) consciousness and how we perceive what is human from a perspective that is very sensitive to the problem of “uncanny valley” – language.

"molding” draws from state-of-the-art biochemical theories that approach the body as a functional conglomerate of myriads of previously autonomous biological agents, that we traditionally know and call cells. The body is understood as complex ecosystem into itself, like a microcosmic galactical empire with vast holdings and expanses, with billions of different inhabitants, each interdependent but also fighting for power and influence, with consciousness rising as a consequent emergent phenomenon of this microcosmos.

An important observation is that body-ecosystems occurring in nature have no clearly delineated boundaries, a fact which is very counter-intuitive to our everyday experience of our bodies being “whole” and separate from everything else.

The body-ecosystems are in fact ripe with entry points, permeable membranes of every kind, from the physical to the psychological. Body-ecosystems are every-day at war, fighting invasions of foreign agents – from virii to memes, conducting vastly complex exchanges of biochemical information, and updating their microcodes and along with it its emergent “system database” on the go. But sometimes an invasion is successful, and the foreign virality ends up reprogramming the eco-code to serve its own purposes.

The installation deploys an external biological agent to infiltrate and disrupt the body-ecosystem of a virtual human, resulting in a state that we regular humans can perceive, on the surface, as a mental illness. A well known game character has been chosen to be deconstructed as the actor, as that is how most people today are introduced to and come to know virtual humans. This is in effect intended as a social commentary on a culture that is hungry for simulated experiences, yet is stuck on its own evolutionary conditioning – the problem described as the “uncanny valley”.

Data from a contaminated biologic culture (a mold species growing in a petri dish) are continuously monitored via a digital microscope and measured with a set of bioelectric sensors. This real-time input is gradually interspersed into the neuronal logic that govern facial recognition (of exhibition visitors), and the virtual human visualization/simulation combined with emotion expression and speech synthesis.

The virtual human’s apparent manifestation thus comprises a hybrid bio-electrical/cybernetic system – three virtual eco-bodies in the process of being infiltrated by a biological agent. The system evolves in time – at the beginning, the virtual humans have a reasonably high level of mimetic semblance to humans as we know them – they act as convincing conscious persons, engaging visitors in eye contact and speaking to them. Different emotions appear on the virtual faces, depending on the degree to which the facial recognition likes or dislikes the situation in the room.

These processes are over time slowly disrupted by the growing contamination, resulting in increasing levels of perceived digital madness. Their virtual facial features start to twitch and contort with increasing intensity, and glossolalia (speaking in tongues) gradually phases out comprehensible speech.

2005 ID Engines vert.ego

2003 ID Engines #05 Home Dictate

1999-2001 dingir

1999 ID Engines #00 Das Egoshooter

1996-98 homogene

Awards

Exhibitions

  • 2015 Lumen World Tour Show, Crypt Gallery St Pancras Church, London
  • 2015 "Ivor Diosi - the Qualia Project" Window Galleries, Canary Wharf, London, UK
  • 2015 Lumen World Tour Show, Gallery 5&33 Art’otel, Amsterdam, NL
  • 2014 "Andy Warhol 2015", Pop Art Center Foundation, Prague, CZ
  • 2014 Lumen World Tour Show, New York Institute of Technology, NYC, USA
  • 2014 CYNETART International Media-Art Festival 2014, Dresden, DE
  • 2014 "the Qualia Project" permanent exhibition Gallery39, Canary Wharf, London, UK
  • 2014 "Lumen Highlights", FCA, Canary Wharf, London, UK
  • 2014 Lumen World Tour Show, Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens, GR
  • 2014 Lumen Prize 2014 Opening, Llandaff Cathedral, Cardiff, UK
  • 2014 “FabLab” DOX Centre for Contemporary Arts, Prague, CZ
  • 2012 Japan Media Arts Festival 2012, Tokyo, J
  • 2012 “Ivor Diosi - molding the signifier”, Institute of Intermedia ČVUT, Prague, CZ
  • 2011 “VIDA 13.2 Artificial Life Art” Fundación Telefónica, Madrid, E
  • 2010 “end it now Prime Minister”, massive public participation event, Prague, CZ
  • 2009 “Robots and Avatars” NESTA, with body>data>space, London, UK
  • 2009 amber’09 Festival “(un)Cyborgable?”, Abud Efendi Konağı, Istanbul, TR
  • 2009 “Hallerstein” ASEM Culture and Arts Festival, performance with Kibla, Beijing, CN
  • 2009 “Hallerstein” National Theatre Slovenia, performance with Kibla, Maribor, SLO
  • 2009 Kinetica Art Fair 2009, performance with body>data>space, London, UK
  • 2008 CYNETart_08, Trans-Media Academy Hellerau, Dresden, DE
  • 2008 “Ludic Times” ISEA 2008 Art Camp, Singapore, SG
  • 2008 “PostMe_NewID” ICA, with body>data>space, London, UK
  • 2008 “Virtual Physical Bodies” Centre des Arts Enghien, Enghien-les-Bains, Paris, FR
  • 2008 “Immediate”, performance with CIANT and Kibla, Maribor, SLO
  • 2007 "e-Golems" II Argentinean-Czech Biennial, with CIANT, Buenos Aires, AR
  • 2007 “LILITH” Academy of Fine Arts Prague, with Pavel Smetana and CIANT, Prague, CZ
  • 2007 “Ivor Diosi” CIANT Gallery, Prague, CZ
  • 2007 "E.T.U.D.E." ArtExpress Lamparna, performance with CIANT, Labin, HR
  • 2006 NIVAF Nagano International Video Art Festival 2006, Nagano, J
  • 2006 “runaway” Gallery Priestor for Contemporary Arts, Bratislava, SK
  • 2006 "E.T.U.D.E." Laboratory for Mixed Realities, performance with CIANT, Köln, DE
  • 2006 “Syntapiens – Avatar – Umbot”, performance with Noordung, Ljubljana, SLO
  • 2006 VIPER 2006 Internationales Festival Basel, Basel, CH
  • 2006 “Chlap, hrdina, duch, stroj” Medium Gallery, Bratislava, SK
  • 2005 EnterMultimediale 2 Festival of Art and New Technologies, Prague, CZ
  • 2005 “Arc Nomade” Ecole Superieure D’Art, with CIANT, Aix-en-Provence, FR
  • 2005 "V.I.R.U.S", performance with CIANT, Ballet Preljocaj and Noordung, Prague, CZ
  • 2005 Multiplace IV Festival “bezOBRAZie”, Trnava, SK
  • 2005 “Metro” Gallery Priestor for Contemporary Arts, Bratislava, SK
  • 2004 Images Festival, Toronto, CA
  • 2004 transmediale.04 "Fly Utopia!", Berlin, DE
  • 2003 8th International Festival of New Film and Media, Split, HR
  • 2003 Multiplace 2 Festival, Bratislava, SK
  • 2003 “Constructed Life” ZKM International Media Art Festival 2003, Karlsruhe, DE
  • 2002 “Slovak Photography 1925–2000”, Prague Municipal Gallery, Prague, CZ
  • 2002 "New Media Nation" Multiplace Festival, Bratislava, SK
  • 2002 “Ivor Diosi” Gallery Priestor for Contemporary Arts, Bratislava, SK
  • 2002 Japan Media Arts Festival, Tokyo, J
  • 2001 SVA Visual Arts Museum “New York Digital Salon 2001”, New York, USA
  • 2001 “VIDA Life 4.0” ARCO / Fundación Telefónica, Madrid, E
  • 2001 DMF Digital Media Festival 2001, Quezon City, PH
  • 2001 Slovak National Gallery “Slovak Photography 1925–2000”, Bratislava, SK
  • 2001 6th International Festival of New Film and Media, Split, HR
  • 2001 Metropolitan Museum of Photography / ACA Media Arts Festival, Tokyo, J
  • 1999 "Telecom’99" Palexpo, Geneva, CH

Literature

Books


Articles
  • Denisa Kera, Pavel Sedlák (Curators), "Generation 2.0 at "e-Golems" II Argentinean-Czech Biennial", Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores (Foreign Office) Argentina, September 2007 (English) PDF (Agenda)
  • Václav Macek (Curator), "Ivor Diosi - VERT.EGO", Mesiac fotografie 2005 (Month of Photography 2005), Stredoeurópsky dom fotografie (Central European House of Photography) Bratislava, Online Newsletter, September 2005 (English, Slovensky (Slovak))
  • Annick Rivoire, "Prague en rade", Liberation, Culture Section, Print News, 06 June 2005 (Française) JPG
  • Annick Rivoire, "Coulage de Iconoclastes à Prague", Liberation, Culture Section, Print News, 17 May 2005 (Française)
  • Denisa Kera, Tomáš Pospiszyl, "Teorie joysticku: počítačové hry jako umění 21.století (Joystick Theory: Computer Games as the Art of the 21st Century)", Týden tyden.cz Culture Section, Print News and Website, ISSN: 1240-9940, May 2005 (Česky (Czech)) PDF (no OCR)
  • Michaela Sečanská, "Elektronické umenie na Slovensku po roku 1990 (Electronic Art in Slovakia after 1990)", Katedra dejín umenia a kultúry, Trnavská univerzita, Trnava, Master Thesis, 2004 (Slovensky (Slovak))
  • Mária Rišková (Curator) et al., "New Media Nation. Festival of Festivals" (Catalogue), Buryzone Bratislava, 2003 (English, Slovensky (Slovak))

Links