installations
EERIE ME generation 22
EERIE ME is a series of interactive sculptures that are exploring the relationship between the creation and its creator. They are creatures that embody human and non human appearances.
The artist explores ways to hack and modify toys to become more or less human, giving them personal traits. The creatures dig deep down into the world of uncanniness. The objects themselves do not have yet an intelligence on their own. They live based on the spectators' interactions.
It is a project that comments on the future of technology. Humans are not immortal, but the tales of our desire and obsession with youth and immortality go way back in history. Tales of immortal beings, and of means through which humans too, can cheat death, are part of mythologies worldwide. Great minds have spent lifetimes seeking a cure for death, and today our hopes have turned to digital technologies. The idea is that these technologies may promise us a form of immortality. The future might bring the manifestation that once we shall have the power to retain our consciousness and find a new shell for it to build a new body to trap our ghost in it forever. The artist is trying to add a part of herself, her material past and memories into the toys. The toy as a totem contrived through the artist’s memories, overcomes the limited social perceptions of the toy’s utility and leaves the ghost of these memories for the future, by capturing it in forms from her personal past.
Exhibited:
Solo exhibition EERIE ME GENERATION 22, at IAMAS Japan, Softopia center Gallery 1, Ogaki, Japan 6.12.-8.12.2022
The Uncanny TV
Interactive installation, 2022 Combination of AI-generated animation and video works. With a tongue interface. By pressing the tongue you are changing the TV channels.
“The Uncanny TV” is an interactive installation whereby browsing through TV channels the spectator is invited to discover the mystery of the ghost hidden inside the uncanny imagination of electronic media. The TV channels in the installation are built from AI-generated animation and video works. They bring a deeper investigation into the world of uncanniness. As Ernst Jentsch said: ''If one wants to come closer to the essence of the uncanny, it is better not to ask what it is, but rather to investigate how the effective excitement of the uncanny arises in psychological terms, how the psychical conditions must be constituted so that the ‘uncanny’ sensation emerges.''
Technical support by Žan Rajšek
Exhibited:
Ars Electronica Festival, part of Interface Cultures exhibition ''Crossing The Bridge'' at JKU Linz, Austria 07.09.-11.09.2022
AI&Art Pavilion at Esch 2022 in Luxembourg, 29.06. 22.07. 2022
Link to the Luxembourg documentation:
Power strangers
Barbara Jazbec & Kristina Tica
Programming Žan Rajšek
Sound design Marija Šumarac
POWER STRANGERS is an interactive real-time video and audio installation. It consists of a web camera, projector and a water tank filled with reactive slime. It is based on custom-made face detection algorithm. When approaching the installation, the spectator’s face is traced by a live camera feed. The data received from the camera is processed and projected inside the tank, only when the spectator turns away from the installation, and they are therefore never able to see the projection of their face.
These traced images then lurk behind the spectators, disconnected from them, yet dependent on them – becoming their ghosts. Contemporary ghosts live in the digital data and they generate the power of the automated surveillance systems. Extracting the disembodied virtual presence from its real-life experience, introduces the idea of being haunted by your own ghost – your own digital data. In the context of hauntology and retro-futurism, it aims at presenting the current state of commodification in global surveillance capitalism. The name of the project is a reference to a pop-culture phenomenon that has left an imprint on the 90’s generations, whose youth seems to be the last one to grasp the pre-internet or pre-social media times, therefore the aim of this project is to suggest what comes as a phenomenon of the post-internet world. In this world, the ghosts that exist do not come from a haunted house, they come from our own digital traces. We are all strangers whose ghosts roam around in the world of data, and we generate the power of that world. The more we learn about our power to influence this world, the better rangers for the future we are.
The project was made together with the Ministry of Culture Slovenia and Delavski dom Trbovlje.
Exhibited at Speculum Artium 2021, Trbovlje Slovenia.
Video : https://youtu.be/oHjXbPRmXJ8
Photos by Kevin Blackisotne, Kristina Tica and Barbara Jazbec.
EERIE ME
Eerie me is an interactive sculpture representing a strange creature that embodies the symbiosis of memories and imagination of a Furby and the artist herself. the interaction between the spectator and the sculpture activates the creature in a synergistic relationship. Happy and traumatic memories create a memento that spectators can relate to. At its time of commercialization, the interactive toy Furby was original and technologically advanced and fascinating not only for kids but became a cultural artifact which is still recognizable today. the artist explores personal ways to hack the toy and expand its identity by including parts of her body and personality in a hybrid creation and transcending her life into a new existence.
Exhibited:
2022 Poetics of Obsolescence, Atelierhaus Salzamt , Linz, curated by Indiara Di Benedetto and Gebhard Sengmüller , 10.5. 27.5. 2022
2022 Virtualna zavest , Group exhibition at Gallery Velenje , Slovenia 21.5.2022
2021 Ars Electronica festival, Interface Cult exhibition, Linz Austria, 8-12.09.2021
Photos by Miha Godec and Barbara Jazbec
disapPear
“I prePared a Pear that will help you to disapPear to a Pearlescence Pair of nowhere. How to be invisible by disapPearing? To disapPear of constant surveillance click the Pear and apPear on the square, once you coapPear you will slowly disapPear into air. The Pear will help you with rePairing your imPair. To forget the things you fear; This is how to disapPear. Don't desPair.”
It is a pear interface that makes things disapPear. The project was made for Sankt Interface-The most infamous computer mouse/keyboard contest. (4.12.2020) @SANKT INTERFACE GOES ONLINE
If you missed the event you can watch it at the link below;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQFRaNOOLno&t=11442s
Captured In-Betwixt
Year: 2020
Medium: 360-degree video on VR Headset Oculus Quest, single-channel video installation
Duration: 360-degree video 3'28'' loop, single-channel video 1'49'' loop
Size: single-channel video installation 3 m 52 cm x 1 m 97 cm
Link to the videos: https://tinyurl.com/wfjfnyl
Link to the Degree show: https://www.atomicjungle2020.com/barbara-jazbec
What happens when something that should be virtually made is instead made in the real, physical world? If it is exists in both virtual and real environments, can it still be considered virtual? What is the difference between what is real in virtual reality and what is artificial?
Masks have been used by human beings since ancient times for the purpose of rituals and the embodiment of natural forces. They were, in a way, ancient forms of avatars. In the modern age of technology, an avatar can be a virtually-built body – a mask that grew to encapsulate our entire form. Such avatars are often used as a tool of self-presentation online and in the virtual world, and tell the audience what kind of character is being portrayed. They are a representation of an entity, of a person, of you – in a virtual space. It is something that embodies something else.
In my work I use masks as a transitional tool that enables such role play and identity shifts. I question the power of virtuality and embodiment, how real and immersive the virtual space is becoming and how easily blurred are the boundaries between real and artificial for our brains to perceive. The virtual world in my work is deeply connected to the viewer’s inner world and to their emotions. The viewer is embodied in a body they imagine and the virtual environment causes real emotions all this is built with feelings that are based on the movements of the visual surrounding in the 360-degree video. I try to find this boundary by mixing moving image with a new, immersive 360-degree video – a combination that creates a virtual experience that puts the viewer in the very center of the story, becoming part of the video rather than only watching it. It is, perhaps, the beginning of something unknown.
Still from Single-channel video
Duration: 00:03:25
Year: 2017
VR Goggles
What happens when you are forced to look at something that you can not look away from. Come and participate on a small journey with my VR goggles installation where you can almost smell the fresh forest.
Mediapolist, Tampere Finland - iweek 24-28.04. 2017
Year: 2016
Video installation about Tomorrow's food.
Glass jars filled with various materials. Artifical food vs real food.
Bizzare exhibition in Pietarsaari, FInland 6.5.-26.5. 2016
Inverse
Year: 2015
Public installation in Kokkola, Finland - November 2015
Inverse cave paintings; With this work I want to present this really old technique in a new and modern version. My idea was to present it in the opposite way; in the cave you need to have a light to see the paintings, but here you need darkness to see them. The material I am using is el wire (Electroluminescent wire) .
