TWINS : Richard Kriesche

TWINS [1] by Richard Kriesche (1977) wouldn’t have been a successful work of art if it weren’t for Walter Benjamin’s essay: The Art of Work in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.[2]  Benjamin’s writing serves as a backbone to this miraculous work by Kriesche. Twins is truly fascinating piece for its time. The way it works is based off of a three-way perspective puzzle.[1] The artist asked two identical twins to sit in separate rooms, wear matching clothes and read aloud the book by Walter Benjamin: The Art of Work in the Age of

Mechanical Reproduction.

Ahmed Basiony's 30 Days of Running in Place was first presented at the Why Not exhibition in Cairo in 2010; Basiony performed daily for 30 days in a room enclosed in transparent plastic outside the Cairo Opera House and Palace of Arts - The artist jogged around the room wearing a plastic suit fitted with digital sensors that gathered and wirelessly transmitted data on his movements and physiological parameters - This information was in turn processed and projected on a large screen as an ever-changing visual and aesthetic reflection of the artist’s physical state. As a five-channel installation exhibited at Egyptian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2011, 30 Days was juxtaposed with videos recorded by Basiony during his participation in the January revolution, until he was killed by gunshot wounds inflicted by Egyptian Police snipers on January 28, 2011.

Polygon Playground is a 'dynamic lounge object,' incorporating 3D projection technologies and sensors to detect movement and proximity of people in the room. The physical structure is such that up to 40 people may climb, rest, or walk around it, while sensors cause the 'landscape' to continuously change as as long as there is human presence.

Outerspace is a reactive robotic creature with lifelike interactive behaviour. The robot wants to explore the world surrounding him, or the outer space, exhibiting curiosity and waryness as an aprehensive animal might. A participant may put a hand up to the robot and cause it to pull away, as if surprised at the recognition of another being, then move forward searching for the thing that caught it's attention. The concept that insprired the work was that an object, inherently not living, cannot have emotion. In order to create an emotional object (the goal), first the thing must be aroused, feel, have a emotion; then comes emotional expression. In technical terms, it must read input and display output.

Mez Breeze is a Australian futurist artist, who has explored numerous online identities or better known as ‘avatars’ in the online, virtual reality, and video game community.  Her credentials include degrees in both Psychology and Creative Arts from Australia. Her background has allowed her to probe environments that involve online socializations or encounters within the online gaming environments like ​World of Warcraft, EVE online, and Second Life. She also delves into the social online networks like Facebook. The texts produced by these networks inspired Breeze to create her own type of net poetry. Her awards include the "JavaArtist of the Year 2001", the Newcastle Digital Poetry Prize and an Honorary Mention in the read_me 1.2 Software Art Award.