Kaspersky and Laboratoria Art&Science Foundation to hold an international symposium on interconnection of digital art, technology and nature

Woburn, MA – February 7, 2022 – An international symposium, “New Elements”, will be held on February 12, bringing together artists, scientists, philosophers, technology experts as well as representatives from the world’s leading museums and festivals. The aim is to discuss recent trends in science-art and the nature of autographic processes, and to share new perspectives on computational methods. The event will be live-streamed.

The symposium is part of the educational program for the “New Elements” exhibition of technological art, reuniting contemporary art and science and fostering the creation of new artistic forms tailored to our ever-changing technological reality. This exhibition was launched by the Laboratoria Art&Science Foundation in strategic partnership with Kaspersky in November 2021 and will run until February 27, 2022. The upcoming symposium aims to define the limits, objectives and future trends of the science-art movement and bring them to the forefront. It will also reconsider the works presented at the “New Elements” exhibition, which includes the audiovisual installation “ooze”, created together with Kaspersky experts.

The symposium program will include three sessions: “Science-art today: transformation of interdisciplinary communities,” "The Autographic World" and “Computation with Nature.” The event will bring together globally-recognized artists, scientists and leading technology experts. Together with philosopher Mikhail Kurtov (Russia) and artists Ralf Becker (Germany), Thomas Feuerstein (Austria), Theresa Schubert (Germany) and Ilya Fedotov-Fedorov (Russia), the audience will be able to explore the world of emergent computation, cybernetic experiments with chemical and biological phenomena and the counterintuitive behavior of neural networks. Alexander Gostev, Chief Technology Expert at Kaspersky, who is also a technology expert for the “New Elements” exhibition, will be a keynote speaker in the third session of the symposium.

The event will also be attended by Martin Honzik, director of Ars Electronica (Austria); Honor Harger, curator and executive director of the ArtScience Museum (Singapore); Orkan Telhan, interdisciplinary artist, researcher and Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania (USA/Turkey); Anna Titovets [Intektra], new media artist, chief curator and creative director of Cryptography Museum (Russia); Dietmar Offenhuber, curator and Associate Professor at Northeastern University (USA); Tuula Närhinen, artist (Finland); Andrey Glazovsky, glaciologist at the Russian Academy of Science (Russia); Samaneh Moafi, Forensic Architecture’s Senior Researcher and architect (UK); Erich Berger, artist (Finland), and others.

The program will be crowned with a spectacular performance by German artist, Ralf Becker, "The Natural History of Networks / SoftMachine", which aims to provoke new imaginaries of the machinic, the artificial and matter. It is an electrochemical algorithmic performance of the artist and the machine – a custom-built electrochemical experimental apparatus SoftMachine. The central element of the performance is galinstan, a liquid metal alloy, which is manipulated by the artist through a set of electrodes and creates constantly evolving shapes and sounds the real time.

Alexander Gostev, Chief Technology Expert at Kaspersky, declared: "Technology largely determines the development of the modern world and in one way or another it becomes part of the majority of processes, including the arts. Science-art, a dynamically developing trend in contemporary art, is based on interdisciplinary interaction, which is its main feature and strength. The interaction of artists, scientists and technology companies allows us to not only create impressive works but to also reconsider existing technologies and innovate and find new ways for their application. At the symposium we will raise a number of interesting questions at the intersection of science, technology, art and nature. I am sure that our synergy will allow us to come to unexpected conclusions and discover new meanings."

The “New Elements” symposium will take place on February 12 from 12:00 to 20:00 in the Great Hall of the Western Wing of the New Tretyakov Gallery at 10, Krymsky Val, Moscow.

An online broadcast will also be available on the LABORATORIA Art&Science Foundation YouTube channel.

About Kaspersky
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