Vertigo STARTS: Artistic fascinations with supercomputers

2020-05-07

Vertigo STARTS: Artistic fascinations with supercomputers

More and more often, modern technologies are perceived by artists and art creators as a potential inspiration and a kind of artwork material. One of the main goals of the Vertigo STARTS initiative, created under the aegis of the European Commission in Horizon 2020, is to stimulate synergy between artists or cultural institutions, and research and development institutes in the field of IT technologies. Last year’s edition of the program was attended by a conceptual artist from Berlin – Theresa Schubert, who resided at PSNC within the current project.

The effect of the residence entitled “Immersive Minimalism” was the production of a 10-minute digital movie “Always Dead and Alive” in 8K and 4K resolutions with 5.1 surround sound. The project explores ways of perception by creating minimalist video scenarios that challenge our awareness of time and space. By adopting the concept of cellular automats, a set of principles often used to simulate patterns in nature and physical behavior, the team combined research of the evolution of patterns in nature and self-organization of forms with generative video. As a result, surprisingly complex behaviors occur when all 33 million pixels on the screen become alive as individual factors interacting within a fixed network.

Several visits of Theresa Schubert wthin the residence at the PSNC headquarters in cooperation with the New Media Department, gave the artist the opportunity to take a close look at the latest network infrastructure. Fascinated by the specific atmosphere and space of PSNC server room, Schubert additionally developed the concept of the film with the working title “Cave”, combining images of supercomputer halls in CBPIO building with organic forest as a superorganism, based on visual metaphors of computer networks. The material uses the latest technologies of 3D laser scanning and computer graphics as well as high-quality photos in 8K and 4K resolution.

The first results of the artist’s fascination with the latest technologies can be seen on her Instagram profile.