Culture

12-10-2010

“AR – Artistic Research”

A collaboration between Siemens Stiftung and The MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT)

“AR – Artistic Research” is a project that explores artistic methodologies and forms of inquiry at the intersection of art, science and technology. The project operates as a critical studies and production based laboratory, connecting the arts with an advanced technological community. It aims for an indiciplinary exchange and mutual enrichment. Contemporary artists raising scientific issues in their artwork exchange ideas with scientists. AR unfolds in multiple formats distributed over the academic year 2010-2011. It includes a series of public displays lectures and classes at MIT’s recently inaugurated Media Lab Complex. Artists from Argentina, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, and the U.S. whose practice is positioned at the intersection of art and science are invited for short research residencies, interactions with students and faculty and to contribute in a variety of interventions.

AR is an ambitious educational endeavor. It complies with the mission of the Munich based globally active Siemens Stiftung whose cultural activities develop and realize exhibitions of contemporary art with a strong thematic focus on emerging issues in the fields of education and artistic disciplines. ACT as an academic and research unit was founded to emphasize both knowledge production and knowledge dissemination, artistic research and transdisciplinary collaboration and therefore is an ideal partner. Together Siemens Stiftung and ACT may provoke a deeper understanding of the basics of human invention and innovation from an artistic point of departure.

The first chapter in AR which started on November 17, 2010, features a selection of photographs and videos by the Hungarian artist Attila Csörgö, on view until February 23, 2011, in the lobby of the recently inaugurated Media Lab Complex. Csörgö’s work explores the relationship between the notion of time and geometry, and follows in the footsteps of his compatriot György Kepes (1906-2001), an influential artist, MIT Institute Professor, and founder of the MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS). Rarely seen in United States, Csörgö received the Nam June Paik Award in 2008. (Paik himself was a fellow at MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies in 1987.)

AR is co-curated by Ute Meta Bauer, Associate Professor and Director at ACT, and Thomas D. Trummer, Curator of Visual Arts, Siemens Stiftung. For this project, Trummer is an ACT Visiting Scholar at MIT.

First Intervention

ATTILA CSÖRGÖ – About the artist

The work of Hungarian artist Attila Csörgö is concerned with one of the oldest questions of logic and philosophy, the relation of being and time. In his work Csörgö explores Platonic solids and their relationship to classical symmetry. In Plato’s dialogue of “Timaeus”, a deity is confronted with the chaotic character of things. Governed by benevolence, the demiurge arranges the cosmos by ascribing geometric relations to the four elements – earth, air, water and fire.

The tangible world is subordinated to these ideal elements. Within this strict ontological hierarchy, nature then belongs to the realm of “becoming” and cannot rely on the consistent structure of reason and mathematics.

In Csörgö’s interpretation of “Timaeus”, the geometric representation of the world is in constant change. Objects are neither solid nor stable. Instead the so-called primary matters start to animate and shift into one another. The result is a paradox. Elements of “being” convert into ones of “becoming”. Time starts to intrude into geometry. As Csörgö presents visual stages of these movements, two pyramids open their volume and melt into a cube. Faces, edges and vertices change. Csörgö doesn’t use rendering or computational devices. Instead, he reconfigures the moving elements with traditional, pre-digital-age materials like sticks, strings and small electric motors. Csörgö’s work confirms that even ideal structures can be rendered as physical objects and staged in a perpetual transition.


AR – Artistic Research
1st part: ATTILA CSÖRGÖ
November 17, 2010 – February 23, 2011
Mon-Fri, 10am-6pm

The Media Lab Complex
75 Amherst Street
Cambridge, MA 02139-4307, USA

The MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology operates as a critical studies and production based laboratory, connecting the arts with an advanced technological community. “AR – Artistic Research” reflects the mission of ACT as an academic and research unit emphasizing artistic practice as knowledge production and dissemination. http://act.mit.edu

The Siemens Stiftung, a nonprofit foundation under German civil law, was founded in the fall of 2008 by Siemens AG. The foundation works with projects to strengthen civil society particularly in Africa, Latin America, and Europe. In the US, Siemens Stiftung pursues AR, the “Artistic Research” project since October 2010 – a cooperation with ACT the MIT program in Art, Culture and Technology with ongoing accumulation till the end of the spring semester in 2011. This initiative goes along with the longtime involvement in fostering education programs in maths and natural sciences that are particulary provided by Siemens Stiftung globally, also in the US.

The aim of Siemens Stiftung is to make a long-term contribution to reducing poverty and improving education. The foundation operates in three areas: It supports enlarging basic services and improving social structures; initiates educational projects; and contributes to strengthening cultural identity. The Siemens Stiftung works in close cooperation with local and international partners as well as in alliance with the other Siemens foundations established by Siemens in Argentina, Brazil, France, Colombia, and the United States.