{"id":185,"date":"2012-11-01T22:53:37","date_gmt":"2012-11-01T21:53:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danohara.co.uk\/?p=185"},"modified":"2014-03-17T20:11:34","modified_gmt":"2014-03-17T19:11:34","slug":"virtual-futures-salon-trove-birmingham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danohara.co.uk\/?p=185","title":{"rendered":"Virtual Futures salon @ TROVE, Birmingham"},"content":{"rendered":"

October 24th saw the first of a series of Virtual Futures salon events.<\/p>\n

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Virtual Futures salon @ TROVE, 24 October 2012<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This was a very<\/em> sexy event: held in the TROVE gallery, a very Berlin-style disused warehouse right in the centre of the city, and showcasing some of the strangest and most avant-garde art and thought happening right now.\u00c2\u00a0 Prof. Johnny Golding<\/a><\/strong> from the Centre for Fine Art Research at BIAD, Birmingham City University, introduced the evening, which was organized by the director of Virtual Futures<\/a>, Luke Robert Mason<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I spoke about maps and wiring diagrams, ‘photogenic drawing’, glitch, and (implicitly and probably entirely predictably) the dangers of animism, anthropomorphism, and the god in the machine. Dr. John Pickering<\/a><\/strong> <\/em>from the Psychology department at Warwick University told us about the limitations of AI in military (and other) robots, digging a little deeper into the ways in which our mental constructs conspire to produce sympathy for machines, and bringing some much-needed historical rigour to the current drone-delirium. Sascha Pohflepp<\/a><\/strong> <\/em>gave us selected glimpses of his artworks from the past five years, ranging from his genetically-modified plant visions (created with Daisy Ginsberg) to his simulations of spaceflight weightlessness, which touched a Stelarc-like VF nerve in their evocations of the human body reaching escape velocity.<\/p>\n

The event then marked the return of Orphan drift, after fifteen years, to Virtual Futures and to the UK, when Mer Roberts<\/a><\/strong> <\/em>introduced a screening of the Orphan drift film ‘A Wilderness of Nowheres’: timely, as the Orphan drift book Cyberpositive has just been published in a new edition. Franken Beaumont<\/a><\/strong><\/em>‘s eerie installation artwork sat behind the audience, its mouth moving as if echoing the speakers; Liam Worth<\/a><\/strong><\/em>‘s dynamic ferrofluid sculpture was also on display, as were J.R. Dooley<\/a><\/strong>‘s dancing, dynamic sonic\/visual cellular forms. <\/em>Pat Cadigan<\/a><\/strong> <\/em>capped the evening with a masterclass in story-telling, her apparently effortless facility with verbal imagery giving us all a metaphorical lesson in the proper use of tools.<\/p>\n

But the most momentous statement of the evening was left to Luke Robert Mason, who announced that the Virtual Futures conference will return next year, taking place as a city-wide festival in Birmingham, running from the 25 – 27 October 2013…<\/p>\n

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