Parallel residencies have been awarded for projects to take place at Mars College in Bombay Beach, California. The residencies will run simultaneously during January through March 2023.

Residents will be on-site participating alongside other Mars College community members, associating virtually with Thoughtworks employees globally to support their project ambitions.

Joaquín Fargas: “Speculative Futures”

The first award will support Latin American based Joaquín Fargas under the “Speculative Futures” track, designed to empower urban communities through research done in the desert.

As an artist and industrial engineer, Fargas integrates biological materials and technological media centered on possible or utopian proposals related to life, its preservation and the interrelationship between living beings and the future.

For the last 20 years Fargas has worked at the crossroads of art, science and technology, creating work including site specific installations, performances and technologically-sound speculative works which examine an era of climate crisis.

In his Rabdomante project, Fargas’ robots comb desert areas, capturing drinkable water produced as a byproduct of solar energy generation. In his Biosphere project, miniature ecosystems are posited within small encapsulated spheres, capable of producing food via bioponic crop generation.

To learn more about Fargas’ work and project at Mars, read the announcement on our website.

The Eden Community: “Creative AI Infrastructures”

The second residency has been awarded to the community at Mars developing Project Eden, under the “Creative AI Infrastructures” track of the open call.

Eden is an infrastructure of AI entities, semi-automated bots and web applications which interact through text-to-image or text-to-text media generation systems.

This award brings together Eden’s technical platform creators, artists, and plug-in software developers to create an artist-centric platform enabling work with visual representations and tools in artificial intelligence.

The award allocates financial resources to the Eden project, including the possibility for team members and artists to interact with and gain support from the international technical and creative community of Thoughtworks.

Sponsoring a democratized, non-hierarchical collaborative facilitates new possibilities between toolkit creators and the artists who use these developing technologies.

To learn more about the Eden community read the announcement on our website.

The Martian Experience

Mars College is a nomadic educational program, R&D Lab and residential community in the desert area of Bombay Beach, California. Artists will arrive in Southern California in preparation for their time in the desert at the end of 2022.

Thoughtworks Arts partnership with Mars College enables facilitated remote access to Thoughtworks’ global community of technical and creative professionals during residencies. The residencies will take place on-site in the Bombay Beach desert from January 1 through to March 31, 2023.

To learn more about Joaquín Fargas, The Eden Community and Mars.College residency, read our recent announcement blog.

CNMAT Welcomes Olivia Ting as Artist-in-Residence

Olivia Ting, who began her CripTech residency at Thoughtworks Arts in spring 2022, was awarded the prestigious UC Berkeley Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) residency for fall 2022. CNMAT is dedicated to multidisciplinary research and the creative use of sound.

CNMAT is dedicated to multidisciplinary research and the creative use of audio - bringing innovation to new and traditional sound and performance spaces.

During her CripTech residency at Thoughtworks Arts, Olivia is exploring the parallels between spatiality and movement, sign language, film, gesture, haptic intimacy and orchestral conducting. Her project focuses on tensions between sonority, ocular interpretation, and meaning based on her life long experience navigating environments of disruptive hearing. This new work will result in a mixed media, multi-model installation in 2023.

While in residence at CNMAT she will continue developing a sonic design environment and spatial/haptic translations of her audiovisual installation work with UC Berkeley professors Edmund Campion and Luke Dzwobczyk.

Learn more about Olivia Ting and her residency with CNMAT in our recent announcment blog.

Volumetric Society & Hardware Hack Lab Host: Garden For Drowning Descendants

Volumetric Society and Hardware Hack Lab co-hosted a Meetup at Thoughtworks NY on Wednesday, November 16th. Artist Eva Davidova and creative technologist Sidney San Martin gave a demo and a brief introduction of the interactive, mixed reality installation Garden For Drowning Descendants, recently exhibited at Harvestworks.

A discussion on the collaborative aspects of the piece explored the conceptual and complex interplay between the hardware, software and human interaction factors of the multi-player experience. Sidney San Martin talked about the customized code and innovative solutions he developed during both the prototyping and implementation phases.

The event explored a simple framework one could use including terminology, audience interaction, and creative development solutions. It promoted, supported, and facilitated the participation of everyone towards the creation of virtual worlds melding entangled with the physical.

To sign up for future events visit the Volumetric Society Meetup page.

Presentations

Ellen Pearlman presented DANCEDEMIC IN A PANDEMIC on November 6th at NowNet Arts Conference 2022 in conjunction with Advanced Computational Science (IACS), Stony Brook University, NY, and the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), Stanford University. On October 8th Ellen presented in Riga, Latvia at the RIXC Open Fields Conference “Splintered Realities” – sharing her preliminary research on “Language Is Leaving Me” concerning AI and epigenetics. Ellen took part on a panel at MetaLabHarvard at Harvard University on October 3rd. She joined a diverse group of opera practitioners and scholars discussing the transmedia flow of opera, and how it pivoted the presentation of performance mediums during the pandemic.

News from Past Thoughtworks Arts Residents

Nouf Aljowaysir has developed a short film and visual diary, Ana Min Wein, with the support of Somerset House and PATH-AI. Nouf’s film launched on Thursday, Dec 8th, on Somerset House’s curated online platform for art, ideas, and the artistic process. Nouf will also be featured on Somerset House’s podcast series, The Process, where she will speak more about her work.

Gloria Damijan performed in a concert demonstration at NowNet Arts Conference 2022: Network Arts Stage: Artistic, Technological, and Social Strategies, on November 6th.

Catie Cuan is working with Everyday Robots to map individual joint velocities onto musical tracks played through robots. As a result, the robot makes music as it moves. The aim of this experimental project is to help make general-purpose robots more legible and relatable.

Andy Slater and Olivia Ting’s Crip Tech Incubator residency with Leonardo/ISAST and Thoughtworks Arts received a feature in Inside Philanthropy. The article, Six Trends in Arts and Culture for Funders to Watch lists the incubator as #2: Technology is becoming integral to the future of the arts.

Heather Dewey-Hagborg’s biopolitical hyper-realistic 3D-printed masks are currently on view at SFMOMA San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and featured in Forbes. Read about Heather’s DNA portrait sculptures and how they challenge the justice system.

Updates from Art-A-Hack™ Alumni

Tyler Parker has been cast in the Blue Hill Troup for the April 2023 performance of The Pirates of Penzance, or The Slave of Duty.

Kate Sicchio’s paper, Towards A Framework For Dancing Beyond Demonstration, was published by ACM Digital Library. The paper is about human/robot performance and presents a prototype framework for developing real-time human-robot performances and applications.

Sadah (Espii) Proctor is starting a new position as Projections Instructor, at Apollo Theater Academy.

Heidi Boisvert gave a virtual talk for BioArt Talks at CBIS, on April 1st, 2022, at her alma mater, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Center for Biotechnology, the ARTS department & the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, and The Sanctuary for Independent Media’s NATURE Lab. She detailed her current research methods and emerging insights from the Limbic Lab and discussed how these findings have informed her works in bio-adaptive, networked dance, and mixed reality theatre performances.

Eva Lee presented at The Wellbeing Summit For Social Change in Bilbao, Spain, June 1 – June 3. Eve spoke at Hearing a Who: Dr. Seuss, the Nature of Mind, and Intelligent Technology on February 16th at the Through A Different Lens: Innovation Lab Lecture Series, Fairfield University College of Arts and Sciences Innovation Lab in partnership with Quick Center for the Arts. Eva recently received an Official Selection from Cannes Short Film Festival 2021 and NewFilmmakers NY Festival 2021 for her short animated film, Sojourner.

Publications

Ellen Pearlman: Is There a Place Where Human Consciousness Cannot Go? - HumanTies and Artificial Intelligence, European Commission, NoemaLab. “DANCEDEMIC” in a Pandemic: A New Networked Reality - Journal of Network Music and Arts, Stony Brook University. AI Comes of Age - Performance Arts Journal (PAJ), MIT Press, Dance for Transformation: “DANCEDEMIC” AlumniTies, Medium. Cyborg Arts Co-Lab: Interdisciplinary Collaboration Enriched Through Art-A-Hack™ Practices -Art Hack Practice: Critical Intersections of Art, Innovation and the Maker Movement, 1st Edition, Edited by Victoria Bradbury and Suzy O’Hara, Routledge Publication. The Resurgence of Russian Cosmism - Performance Arts Journal(PAJ), MIT Press.

Blog Posts

• CNMAT Welcomes Olivia Ting as Artist-in-Residence by the Residency Team
• Hardware Hack Lab Reopens with Unwired Dance Special Performance by the Residency Team
• World Premiere of h0t club’s Freeicecream.network: May 7th by the Residency Team
• Director Ellen Pearlman Receives Fulbright Scholar Award by the Residency Team
• Dilate Ensemble and Sarah Weaver of NowNetArts: In Conversation by the Residency Team
• Andy Slater Receives United States Artist Award: UNBOUND by Residency the Team
• Dilate Ensemble Presents CATENA at CounterPulse: Livestream by the Residency Team
• Climate Action Projects Showcase: Art-A-Hack and BeFantastic 2021 by the Residency Team
• Olivia Ting and Andy Slater Awarded Leonardo/ISAST CripTech Residencies by Residency Team
• Thoughtworks Arts at Ars Electronica Festival 2021: Co-creation Containers by the Residency Team
• Network Improvisation Residents Share Projects at CounterPulse Festival by the Residency Team
• “h0t club” & Dilate Ensemble Awarded Network Residencies by the Residency Team
• CripTech Incubator: Thoughtworks Arts Partners with Leonardo/ISAST by the Residency Team
• ClimateAction.tech Receives Prix Ars Electronica Award for Digital Humanity by the Residency Team
• Rashin Fahandej Receives Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction by the Residency Team
• Art-A-Hack Announces Open Call On Climate Action: BeFantastic Together by the Residency Team
• How We Created a GPT-2 AI “Sicko” Chatbot for a New Media Opera by Ellen Pearlman & Jonathan Heng
• Deepfakes MasterClass: Thoughtworks Arts and Baltan Labs by the Residency Team
• Thoughtworks Arts Presents at Bozar Labs in Line With STARTS Prize 2020 by the Residency Team
• New York Times Features Catie Cuan’s Project With ThoughtWorks Arts by the Residency Team
• Life During (and After) Covid-19 - Artistic Strategies and Breakthrough Responses by the Residency Team
• Confronting the Unknown: Art & Technology Research for Service Design by the Residency Team
• Dancedemic World Premiere at Battery Dance Virtual Festival by the Residency Team
• Welcoming Our New Residents to Thoughtworks Arts Residency by the Residency Team
• Showcase of Art & Emerging Technology Projects at Thoughtworks Germany by the Residency Team
• A.I. Brainwave Opera Has World Premiere at the Estonian Academy of Music by the Residency Team
• Rachel Uwa Shares the Origins of Her Berlin Art and Technology School by the Residency Team
• Ellen Pearlman Presents at U.S. Fulbright Alumni Exchange Seminar by the Residency Team.
• Ellen Pearlman and Rashin Fahandej Selected for ZERO1 2020 Incubator by the Residency Team
• Karen Palmer Exhibits at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York by the Residency Team
• Rashin Fahandej’s Residency Project Exhibited at ICA Boston Biennial by the Residency Team

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