Hyphen-Labs is an ether based design duo, led by Ece Tankal and Carmen Aguilar y Wedge that explores absurdities, fantasies, and coincidences at the intersection of technology, art, science, and the future. Charting a path between the profound and the absurd, their work offers reflections upon the relationships between digital platforms and the physical world and how art can be used as a tool of intervention and immersion.

With backgrounds in architecture and engineering Ece and Carmen use emerging technologies not solely as tools but as societal apparatuses to organize our species in alternative ways to rework the boundaries of materiality and imagination.

Hyphen-Labs live and work in London, Vancouver and San Francisco.
www.hyphen-labs.com

The project “I (will) destroy(ed) you…to protect you” by Liva Dudareva explores the entanglement between the birth of ecosystem ecology and tests of nuclear weapons conducted in the U.S between 1945 and 1992 in order to open up a discussion about the future ecologies. Ecosystem ecology is a science that looks at the ecosystem as a whole, and explores the processes and relationships between its living and non-living parts.

The pioneer of ecosystem ecology Eugene P Odum was employed by the Atomic Energy Commission to study the environmental effects of the fallout. With the help of radioactive isotopes, some of which were new in nature and thus easily traceable, he was able to explore different processes vital for the sustenance of ecosystems, for example flows of energy and matter. He borrowed at the time cutting edge concepts from cybernetics, system theory and computer modelling in order to develop the theory of ecosystem ecology.

Dudareva is interested in how we can utilise the specific mineral examples and larger narrative of ecosystem ecology being born at the Atomic Energy Commission (USA), and the irreparable consequences of the air borne nuclear tests on every single organic and inorganic body inhabiting this planet to think about the future of living systems.

A digital atlas containing maps juxtaposing the territories of fallouts with borders of indigenous lands, ecosystems, climatic zones, fault lines, economic indicators, and new fictional boundaries will serve as a prologue to the proposed project “I (will) destroy(ed) you…to protect you”. Working with the idea of how borders are constructed, by whom and for whom, the atlas will challenge the human drawn lines across different territories.

Along the atlas a series of digital and ceramic sculptures will highlight specific geological creations of atomic tests and their socio-economical, political and cultural significance in order to imagine the future of Earth’s ecosystems.

More information coming soon.

Jazmin Morris's project "Don't touch my hardware" is an exploration of the borders between software, hardware and the body. As modern product design is becoming minimalist and streamlined, this project pays tribute to the Barbie TV's and Hot Wheels computers that were around in the 90's and creatively questions how hardware can enhance our relationship with modern technology.

Morris will speculate on the future of human-computer interaction with a focus on centering identities that have historically been marginalised in technology and inviting an element of play back into design and technology. Play is a key word throughout this project; expect satire, audience participation and references to gaming and gaming culture.

For this project, Morris is influenced by alternative game controllers and hardware and will blur the lines between game design, product design and web design. The terms 'De-growtth' and 'Protopia' have been at the centre of Morris's research in recent years, this project will question how we can draw from existing knowledge and technologies to generate new ideas and explore how hardware can assist in developing a better, or at least more playful tomorrow. 

A POCAS (POCAS Organización Cooperativa de Auto-Servicio)" is a fictitious store that appropriates characteristics of the viral model of self-service convenience stores (7-Eleven, OXXO, Extra) that relentlessly populate Mexico City but subverts their capitalist neoliberal logic with a mutualist one to imagine a new type of post-capitalist store.

POCAS draws inspiration from the commons, counter-economics, agorism, platform cooperativism and cybernetics.

A POCAS store would enable person-to-person forms of economic activities in a setting that is self-governed and collectively owned by its members. The aim for POCAS is to de-commodify basic goods like water, food, clothes, hygiene products and simple medicine so that members of a POCAS can provide these to one-another.

But a POCAS can have other multiple simultaneous use-cases like becoming an accelerator for cooperative enterprises, a place for communities to share infrastructure and a space for social coordination, among others.

While POCAS is a speculation, its components are not fictitious at all. Fiction is used only as a way to articulate a potential configuration of technologies and practices that are existing today. The result of the project will be a website that describes the functioning of a POCAS store through different digital artifacts like diagrams, 3D models, images and a series of interviews with practitioners of the fields POCAS is inspired by.

Darsha Hewitt’s art practice is situated across new media and sound and largely grows out of material based experimentation with obsolete technology. She make electro-mechanical installation, hand-made electronics, video, drawing and photography.

Her practice takes an adventurous hands-on / media-archeological approach, where hidden systems within technology are de/re-mystified as a means to trace out structures of econo- my, power and control embedded throughout western culture. In its deconstructed form, the everyday technology that society throws away exposes the confounding ways that humans treat one another and how we engage with ecology.

Her artwork is presented internationally, with recent exhibitions at the Hong Kong City Hall (CH), Halle14 – Centre for Contemporary Art (DE), MU Artspace (NL), The Museum of Art and Design (NYC), Hartware MedienKunstverein (DE), Gaitée Lyrique (FR), Ottawa Art Gallery (CA), Modern Art Oxford (UK), The CTM Festival Berlin (DE) and WRO Media Art Biennale (PL). Within Germany, she was the recipient of an International Production Stipend from The Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art and held a fellowship at the Berlin Centre for Advanced Studies in Arts and Sciences at the University of the Arts in Berlin.

Alongside her art practice, she has worked as an a guest Professor in New Media in the Visual Communications department at Kunsthochschule Kassel and in New Media/Sound at Karlsruhe University of Art and Design. Her contributions to do-it-yourself technology communities are internatio- nally recognized – her workshops and how-to videos have been profiled by technical forums such as the Chaos Computer Congress and Make: Magazine.

Darsha Hewitt lives and works in Berlin.

Pseudo Holographic installation, website, digital animation library

Body Presents is a library of full-body motion capture animations by and with Nadja Buttendorf, that offer alternative designs for digital bodies in virtual worlds. The animations can be downloaded for free and used copyright-free for your own 3D projects.

Motion capture is a process in which body movements are stored digitally and in three dimensions. The movements can be transferred to a digital avatar in real time. In most cases, the movements are recorded by professional dancers and performers who can move particularly well and expressively.

But what happens when bodies move only minimally and lie around on the couch or are depressed? Nadjas' work is about the different valuation of body positions in an economically oriented class society. On the one hand, many people spend a large part of their working hours sitting in front of a computer, while on the other hand, the body lying around is valued less.

Positions are also valued differently in terms of income: while a rich person is read as cool when lying around, a poor person is called lazy.

https://bodypresents.nadjabuttendorf.com/

“Be? Here? Now?” examines the nature of the human hybrid existence emergent in the technological age. The central divide in contemporary discourse on this topic has a tendency to file into one of two factions that function in opposition — the wish for a total technological detox, and the willingness to commit fully and naively to the world of innovation.

Through a collection of resources assembled into a single website, “Be? Here? Now?” speaks to the emergence of mindfulness culture, specifically the emphasis it places on being ‘present’ at the level of consciousness and what this means for interpersonal relationships when being physically present is no longer the single mediator of emotional proximity. Since mindfulness constitutes a central aspect of this project’s interest, it is through the esthetics of mindfulness that these topics will be examined, specifically forms of meditation and relaxation techniques. The design of the website will be inspired by kitsch 90’s and early 00’s web pages, which also happens to be the style of many mindfulness websites to this day.

The title of the project “Be? Here? Now?” is in reference to Be Here Now — a founding book on mindfulness by Ram Dass that has both been called ‘seminal’ and a ‘counterculture bible,’ as well as being so liked by Steve Jobs that it inspired him to visit India in search of his own guru.

Work in progress for BE? HERE? NOW?

Who is not familiar with the last-minute shopping in the duty-free zone before departure or simply strolling through the range of products on offer? In this case, however, we are on our way to the teleport to immortality. What is on offer here should give us a foretaste of the technical paradise of the future that lies beyond: „Mind Uploads“, „Cryonics“, „Whole Brain Emulation“ as well as elevation to the algorithmic cockaigne are part of the range on offer.

Olsen‘sproject puts a special focus on a human-machine relationship that is associated with artificial intelligence (AI). This builds on techno-prophecy, data religion or information monism and is linked to a quest for control and a complete power of disposal over humans and ultimately death. The protagonists of these computational immortalization movements, are aiming everything at the technical paradise of the future. In the present day they have at least one main pillar in the IT-branch and areas that are classified as AI.

Fascinated by questions such as ‚How can human experience be mapped in storage media and preserved forever?‘ or ‚How does it feel to live in immortality?‘, the aim of Olsen‘s work is to give a foretaste of what comes afterwards. For example, smells are one of the things that are currently difficult to represent or preserve, store and preserve in digital media when „uploading“. Olsen will examine this and other difficulties in the man-machine relationship and explore them artistically. He plans to further research the immortality fantasies of the protagonists and, through a humorous approach, tickle the feet of the emerging figures of thought.

Taming Of Chance