TRANSFER Download Installation GIF from Thoma Foundation Art House in Santa Fe, New Mexico

ABOUT THE GALLERY

TRANSFER was founded in 2013 to support artists making computer-based artworks, with solo exhibitions of experimental media art. In 2016 the gallery shifted to focus programming on solo shows from women refiguring technology in the Brooklyn-based gallery, and began traveling a new virtual exhibition format called the ‘TRANSFER Download’.

In TRANSFER’s first five years, the gallery produced over 60 exhibitions of experimental media art in NYC and abroad, including international exhibitions, pop-ups and art fairs. In 2019 the gallery relocated from Brooklyn, New York to Los Angeles, California.

TRANSFER is independently owned and directed by Kelani Nichole.

TRANSFER is pleased to announce a special presentation at Christie’s Rockefeller Plaza in conjunction with their ART + TECH Summit on AI from June 25–28, 2019.

TRANSFER Download is an immersive exhibition format showcasing simulation artworks, including virtual reality, video games, algorithmic art, video and experimental media. This selection of artworks curated for Christie’s ART + TECH Summit presents a critical response to AI, and the ideologies of Silicon Valley that are driving its development. The exclusion of non-conforming bodies, the problematic indexing and categorization of values, and the obfuscation of labor are all issues amplified by the emergence of artificial intelligence.

The widespread emergence of artificial intelligence has produced a context in which our world is increasingly automated, calling into question fundamental aspects of the human condition.

The artists in this selection interrogate the boundaries between freedom and agency, alienation and belonging, and labor and automated workforces to reveal the politics of power and social stratification at play. Together, the works reveal the implications of the limited ‘Artificial Intelligence’ increasingly shaping our world today, and offer alternative ideas about the nature of intelligence.

Featured Artists: LaTurbo Avedon, Claudia Hart, Lawrence Lek, Eva Papamargariti, Theo Triantafyllidis, Alan Warburton.

TRANSFER Download is an immersive exhibition format showcasing simulation artworks, including virtual reality, video games, algorithmic art, video and experimental media. The artworks in this selection are available for collection in a variety of formats. In addition, the TRANSFER Download is available for commission, and can be custom-architected to present in any space. For an inventory of works available please inquire with the director@transfergallery.com

FEATURED ARTWORKS

LATURBO AVEDON – Fortune Teller, 2019

The Fortune Teller introduces a simulated junction between antique methods of prediction and the coming waves of machine intelligence. Avedon reflects on the mystical boundary of a told future, something seen as chance, control, or declared variables.

LaTurbo Avedon is an avatar and artist originating in virtual space. Their work emphasizes the practice of nonphysical identity and authorship. Many of the works can be described as research into dimensions, deconstructions, and the explosion of forms, exploring topics of virtual authorship and the physicality of the Internet.

LAWRENCE LEK – Farsight Corporation (Launch trailer), 2018

Farsight is proud to present our launch trailer that seamlessly encapsulates our worldview, ethos, and aesthetic. In the words of our CEO, “The best way to predict the future is to create it. The age of AI is just beginning. This is the dawn of the AI economy and the start of the automation revolution. Entertainment is the future of wealth. Because today, labour isn’t working. Automation will lead us to our dreams. AI will enable us to master the future.”

Lawrence Lek is an artist, filmmaker and musician working in the fields of virtual reality and simulation. He creates site-specific virtual worlds and speculative films using game software, 3D animation, installations, and performance. Often rendering real places within fictional scenarios, his environments reflect the impact of the virtual on the politics of creativity.

EVA PAPAMARGARITI – Liminal Beings, 2019

Liminal Beings explores the concept of automaton and the different anthropomorphic forms and functions embedded within its ontology. Automata, since ancient times, have been standing on the verge of two states, developing machinic and human characteristics simultaneously – in reality, and in the collective consciousness. They are trained to execute and learn respective actions and procedures, thus creating an uncanny, awkward state, trapped in limbo between diverse conditions of existence.

Eva Papamargariti’s work delves into issues and themes related to simultaneity, the merging and dissolving of our surroundings with the virtual, the constant diffusion of fabricated synthetic images that define and fragment our identity and everyday experience, the symbiotic procedures and entanglement that take place between humans, nature and technology.

ALAN WARBURTON – Primitives, 2017

Primitives explores the rudimentary AI that governs the digital bodies deployed by crowd simulation software. It uses custom motion capture data to expand the parameters afforded to these armies of ‘digital extras,’ who are so often pre-programmed to march, fight and die in the climactic scenes of CGI blockbusters.

Alan Warburton is a multidisciplinary artist exploring the use of software in contemporary culture. His hybrid practice feeds insight from commercial work in post-production studios into experimental arts practice, where he explores themes including digital labour, gender and representation, often using computer-generated images (CGI).

THEO TRIANTAFYLLIDIS – Seamless, 2017.
Sound design by Diego Navarro

Seamless is a live simulation of bio-mimetic robots and wild animals cohabitating in a landscape of limited resources, continuously negotiating the boundaries of their habitation. The competing systems, each programmed to act according to its own set of rules and values, are locked in an endless (re)negotiation of their environment, deconstructing and retopologizing the ever-changing terrain and its inhabitants.

Theo Triantafyllidis is an artist who builds virtual spaces and interfaces for the human body to inhabit. He creates expansive worlds and complex systems where the virtual and the physical merge in uncanny, absurd and poetic ways. These are often manifested as performances, virtual and augmented reality experiences, games and interactive installations.

CLAUDIA HART – Alice: A Machine for Thinking, 2019. Music by Danielle DeGruttola, Audio Mix by Edmund Campion

Alice is a machine for thinking: a virtual chamber for repose and contemplation. In her algorithmic ‘queering’ of Alice in Wonderland, Hart mashes 3D animation, motion-captured ballet and music improvised live in VR. Her multi-channel video composition feeds-back the virtual and the live, blending them together in a liminal, uncanny mix.

Claudia Hart works with issues of representation, the role of the computer in shifting contemporary values about identity and the real, and questions ideas about what might be considered “natural.” Her project is to feminize the masculinist culture of technology by interjecting emotional subjectivity into what is typically the overly-determined Cartesian world of digital design.

PRESS CONTACT ## director@transfergallery.com