Eclectrc Panoptic teases back layers of cognition, reflecting New Zealand born artist Johnson’s interest in science fiction, alternative universes and the slippery nature of perception and reality.
Comprised of a suite of drawings, tessellating patterns and virtual reality technology, the exhibition becomes a bridging portal into another realm. The installation takes its genesis from the psychomagic group rituals conceived by the visionary filmmaker and comic book writer Alejandro Jodorowsky; and the technological themes of Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel ‘Dune’. Concealed within the space is ‘Ixian Gate’, a virtual reality artwork that can only be experienced through an Oculus Rift headset, plunging participants into the dystopic world of her drawings.
New Zealand underwear company, Thunderpants have launched their latest ‘colour me’ range – underwear and clothing covered in mushrooms of all shapes and varieties. For every pair of the fungi filled Thundies sold throughout April, one dollar will be donated to SAFE, Save Animals From Exploitation, NZ’s leading animal advocacy organisation. Designed to unleash customers creative side these organic fair trade undies can be custom coloured to create a one-off unique pair.
Since 1932 SAFE has been defending animals against cruelty and abuse and making significant improvements to the lives of animals by raising awareness, challenging cruel practices and changing attitudes. SAFE is a non-profit charitable organisation funded by the good will of the community.
The launch of this design also coincides with Thunderpants leap into trading solely online as they cease to wholesale to over 80 retailers throughout NZ and Australia from 1st April 2018. A decision made by the company in order to meet the ever growing demand for these awesome undies, while still remaining ethical and NZ made.
Image: Joanne Cannon playing a ‘Serpentine-Bassoon’. Photo courtesy the artist.
Musician and sound artist Joanne Cannon will work alongside Dr David Sly at Swinburne University’s Clinical Technologies Laboratory to construct and evaluate a physical #holophonic #audio system, drawing upon recent software modeling, that will enable intimate and highly articulated localisation of sound sources and, potentially, real-time interaction during live performance.
Image: Bio scaffold: orchestrating the growth and degradation of living organisms. Photo courtesy the artist.
Architectural artist, Natalie Alima, and Monash University’s SensiLab Director, Professor Jon McCormack, will explore ways of controlling and orchestrating biological materials and organic chemistry, using #robotic intervention, algorithmic design and advanced digital fabrication, in order to advance the potential for living and breathing inhabitable designs.
During the first decades of the twenty-first century, the proliferation of life as a generative possibility has become marked by the spectre of #death, closure, denial and ends. Ours is an era of precarity, extinction, militarised inequality, a seemingly boundless war on terror, the waning legitimacy of human rights, a rising consciousness of animal cruelty and consumer complicity in killing and suffering, and the global closure of decolonial and socialist windows of emancipation. Artificial intelligence and post-human technology-flesh interventions have become sources of existential threat to be secured against, rather than means of freeing, or otherwise expanding life. Mbembe (2003) first developed the notion of necropolitics in relation to ‘assemblages of death’, zones where technology, economy and social structures bind together to reproduce patterns of extreme violence. Following Foucault, he envisaged a distribution of the world into life zones and death zones. While we can readily identify zones of life and death on these terms, the imaginaries of death have increasingly colonised life zones.
This conference seeks to embrace this moment in history in all its roiling complexity, challenge, and specificity. It asks what accounts for this current interest in the spectre of Death in the anthropological imagination? What sorts of life—social, cultural, technological, creative—emerge in spaces pregnant with death and other life-ending spectres? What new horizons of fear, hope and possibility emerge? What kinds of new social formations, subjectivities and cultural imaginaries? What social and cultural forms might an affirmative biopolitics, where the power of life is regained from the spectre of death, take? What new strategies of engagement, activism and refusal?
This year, the AAS encourages the submission of proposals for three types of formats. The Call for Panels and roundtables is now open and will close at 23:59 AEST (GMT/UTC + 10:00) on 7 May. The Call for Labs and the Call for Papers will open on 21 May.
