FEAT: Future Emerging Art and Technology

In 2016-2017, Leonardo/Olats participated in the European funded project FEAT (Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme ) in which artists were in residence within FET / Future and Emerging Technologies research consortia with the goal of exploring unconventional ways of thinking, researching, innovating and creating.

One of the outcomes were several articles published in the Journal Leonardo and on the Leonardo/Olats website and republished here.
Full archival website of the project here

– Evelina Domnitch, Dmitry Gelfand, Tommaso Calarco, Trapping the Objectless
Through the epistemological lenses of quantum theory and phenomenological art, the authors describe their collaborative development of several artworks exploring electrodynamic levitation. Comprising diverse ion traps that enable naked-eye observation of charged matter interactions, these artworks question the murky boundaries of perceptibility and objectification.

– Anna Dumitriu, Make Do and Mend: Exploring Gene Regulation and CRISPR Through a FEAT (Future Emerging Art and Technology) Residency With the MRG-Grammar Project
This article documents the artistic research the author undertook for her FEAT (Future Emerging Art and Technology) residency. It describes her collaboration with the MRG-Grammar consortium and the creation of an artwork that involved editing the genome of a bacterium using CRISPR to reflect on issues related to antimicrobial resistance, bio-hacking and control. The article explores the author’s methodology and describes the benefits of longterm embedded residencies to create artworks that are deeply engaged with emerging technologies with a view to enable the public to access the concepts and implications of cutting edge technologies and scientific research, through an artistic lens.

– Kerstin Ergenzinger, Thorsten Schumm, Simon Stellmer, Nubis et Nuclei: A Study On Noise and Precision
This study sets out to explore the perception of noise, as well as the relation towards meaning or information that it might contain, in arts, science and daily life. It is realized as an installation based on a suspended cloud of nitinol drums that create a sonic environment evolving in time and space. The instruments are driven by digital random noise. Roaming freely and listening, visitors become part of an ecology of noise. Exploring the differing regions in time and space, what appears to be noise can shift to a « meaningful » signal. This process of discovering a clear signal in a noisy background holds strong analogies to the scientific search for a nuclear resonance performed in the « nuClock » project.

– Vicky Isley and Paul Smith (Boredom Research), Simulated Despondency for Robots in Distress
It is widely accepted that increased human interaction with natural systems is responsible for complex environmental issues, with most current thinking, centered on the provision of advanced technological solutions. One response emerging from current bio-inspired robotics research, proposes artificial neural networks (ANN) enhanced with the incorporation of artificial hormones for increased performance and efficiency. Here the authors discuss their artistic project concept, developed in collaboration with a bio-inspired artificial life lab, considering the affordance of emotional robotics to develop despondency in the field.

– Spela Petrič & Miha Turšič, Becoming. A(Thing): An Artists’ Perspective on High Performance Computing
The article summarizes the process and outcome of the Future Emerging Art and Technology residency during which new media artists Špela Petrič and Miha Turšič undertook the challenge of understanding and manifesting the artistic potential of high-performance computing (HPC). As a result of the collaboration with FET-HPC the artists developed a concept liberated from the complex computational technicity to underscore the (un)intentional construction of meaning by algorithmic agencies. The performance presents a congress of actors sensing, interrogating and interrupting each other, thereby producing an excess of relation, interpretation and translation. The heterogeneous congress performs an expulsion of imposed (anthropogenic) meaning, substituted by authentic, autogenic sense and non-sense.

– Erich Prem, Truth Emerging From Leading-Edge Art/Science/Technology Interaction
The FEAT initiative organized and studied residencies of leading international artists in European Future and Emerging Technology projects. During the residencies, the artists closely collaborated with engineers and scientists on fundamental research in visionary areas of novel technologies not solely as an artistic endeavor, but also to investigate effects of artistic engagement on technoscience. Effects of the collaboration are visible on many levels including fundamental questions about the technoscientific project objectives, ethical aspects, and the aesthetics of scientific experiments. Interactions also resulted in long-term relations and opportunities for scientists to engage with artists in a shared effort to uncover truth.