emotion Tag

AFFECT FLOW

AFFECT FLOW (2022)
Performance at MUTEK Montreal 2023. Photography by Vivien Gaumand.

2022

AFFECT FLOW is a music performance work of approximately 30 minutes that initiates listeners into a state of “non-naturalist emotion”: emotional manufacture as a technology for survival or pleasure. It is a hybrid of electroacoustic music with live-spoken verbal suggestion, an ensemble of live biofeedback created by hardware synthesisers, and song.

In AFFECT FLOW I use psychological hacks borrowed from method acting and clinical psychology in order to move beyond “natural” emotion, playing with biofeedback music paradigms and group participation through folk hypnosis, verbal suggestion, clinical psychology methods, roleplay, song, and textural sounds.

These performance techniques, which I call “wetware,” challenge the authoritarian aura of quantification, transforming biofeedback into a feminist space of posthumanist connection and expression.

The biofeedback performers (up to 10) in AFFECT FLOW are volunteers referred to as surrogates who meet me a half hour before the performance. After a brief musical interlude, I extend an invitation for the audience to join us in guided visualization and hypnosis led by me and my voice. Each surrogate operates a BioSynth, a musical instrument of my design that responds to physiological markers like heart rate, breathing, and skin conductance as a control parameter for electronic sound. The mechanics of the BioSynths are explained clearly, allowing listeners to perceive the shifting mood in the room during the performance through the bodies of the performers. This collaborative interplay of bodies gives rise to affect as an ecological relation, transcending individual subjectivity.

A lightbulb illuminates at the feet of each performer when their signals are amplified. Because I can control the audio outputs of each body via a mixing board, I can highlight solos, duets, trios, and ensemble moments live in the moment.

Credits

Affect Flow (2022)
Music composition and performance by Erin Gee.

Dramaturgy and text by Jena McLean. Poetry by Andrew C. Wenaus.

BioSynth affective hardware synthesizers are an open-source project by Erin Gee. Programming for this iteration by Etienne Montenegro with sonification programming by Erin Gee. PCB design by Grégory Perrin.

Click here for the BioSynth GitHub.

Click here for Tech Rider

Performances:

International Symposium of Electronic Art. CCCB Barcelona, ES, May 2022.

Society for Art and Technology, Montreal CA, July 2022.

Vancouver New Music – Orpheum Annex, Vancouver CA November 2022.

Electric Eclectics Festival, Meaford ON, CA, August 2023

MUTEK Montreal, CA, August 2023.

AFFECT FLOW (2022) at Vancouver New Music, Vancouver.

LEV festival Matadero

My interactive biodata-driven VR work Project H.E.A.R.T. made in collaboration with Alex M Lee will be on view at LEV festival  Matadero in Madrid, Spain from September 24-27, 2020.

 

project heart mousepad preview

ABOUT LEV

L.E.V. (Laboratorio de Electrónica Visual) is a platform specialized in the production and promotion of electronic sound creations, and its relationship with visual arts. It was a European pioneer in this field, and since more than 13 years ago, it tries to converge the natural synergy between image and sound, and the new artistic trends, making special emphasis on live actions.

LEV develops the L.E.V. Festival (in Gijón) and specific, delocalized shows called LEVents. Through both proceedings, the platform reaches its goal: to provide an eclectic, panoramic vision of the current state of creation and all its connections, in an ever-evolving environment. That is why LEV focalizes its work both on international artists that are leaders in audiovisual creativity and local artists, both pioneers and new talents.

 

Artist Project Toronto

?Project H.E.A.R.T. (Holographic Empathy Attack Robotics Team)? (2017) made by Erin Gee in collaboration with Alex M Lee is featured as part of the Telegenic booth at Artist Project Toronto. Our booth is just left of the entrance (can’t miss it) and is part of a sponsored exhibition with six other exciting new media artists.

Much thanks to EQ Bank, Telegenic, Radiance VR, and House of VR for sponsoring and organizing the exhibit. ☠️

 

Review: Akimblog, Canada

The first review for my solo exhibition To the Sooe at the MacKenzie Art Gallery is here!  To the Sooe is on view until April 19th in Regina, Canada.

“Gee delivers the output in ASMR style through role play and a sound performance that leave you both mesmerized and tingling to your core. The sterile white walls and scientific jargon of the exhibition texts should not deter you from this immersive and sensory experience. Gee’s complex communication configurations require your time, patience and an open mind.” -Alexa Heenan, Akimblog

Click here to read the full review

FILE Festival São Paolo

FILE Festival – SESI Arte Galeria

Exhibition Opening June 25, 2019

Exhibition runs from June 26 to August 11, 2019

Avenida Nossa Senhora da Penha, 2053, Ed. Findes, Santa Lúcia, Vitoria – ES – Brazil

I am proud to present my interactive web work Laughing Web Dot Space in São Paolo, Brazil through the FILE Electronic Language International Festival. Laughing Web Dot Space is an online website for recording and listening to the laughter of survivors of sexual violence. The site does not collect any data beyond presence.

I’m encouraged that the curators invited me to show this work in the context of media art in Brazil. Currently, the President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro is known for his anti-homophobic and misogynist statements. He has taunted woman about rape and called women tramps. Under this government, artists have been subject to death threats and intimidation, including calls to dissolve the culture department into education. I look forward to sharing the defiant laughter, hope, joy, and solidarity of Laughing Web Dot Space with the public in Brazil during this very important festival for media art.

Elektra Festival Montreal

Project H.E.A.R.T. (Holographic Empathy Attack Robotics Team) (2017), my popstar/militainment VR game mashup with an affective control interface made in collaboration with Alex M Lee, is going to be featured at the upcoming Elektra festival XX in Montreal!  Look for it this June!

 

Exhibition opening: June 7, 6pm-9pm

Exhibition Dates: June 7-15, 2019

Perte de Signal 5445 Avenue de Gaspé local #107, Montréal, QC H2T 3B2, Canada

 

Click here to check out the full programming of Elektra Festival 2019

Book: Robotic Imaginary

My robotic artwork Swarming Emotional Pianos is featured in image and text on p 131-132 of Jennifer Rhee’s newly published book: The Robotic Imaginary: The Human and the Price of Dehumanized Labor (2018, University of Minnesota Press).  The image above is just a photo of me relaxing with a coffee as I read the first few pages…

This amazing book details AI from a perspective that is driven by emotion and humanity, while referencing the work and the influence of women and poc in a way I haven’t seen before. I found myself constantly thinking: yes, yes as I read the book!

 

From the official description of the book:

The word robot—introduced in Karel Čapek’s 1920 play R.U.R.—derives from rabota, the Czech word for servitude or forced labor. A century later, the play’s dystopian themes of dehumanization and exploited labor are being played out in factories, workplaces, and battlefields. In The Robotic Imaginary, Jennifer Rhee traces the provocative and productive connections of contemporary robots in technology, film, art, and literature. Centered around the twinned processes of anthropomorphization and dehumanization, she analyzes the coevolution of cultural and technological robots and artificial intelligence, arguing that it is through the conceptualization of the human and, more important, the dehumanized that these multiple spheres affect and transform each other.

Drawing on the writings of Alan Turing, Sara Ahmed, and Arlie Russell Hochschild; such films and novels as Her and The Stepford Wives; technologies like Kismet (the pioneering “emotional robot”); and contemporary drone art, this book explores anthropomorphic paradigms in robot design and imagery in ways that often challenge the very grounds on which those paradigms operate in robotics labs and industry. From disembodied, conversational AI and its entanglement with care labor; embodied mobile robots as they intersect with domestic labor; emotional robots impacting affective labor; and armed military drones and artistic responses to drone warfare, The Robotic Imaginary ultimately reveals how the human is made knowable through the design of and discourse on humanoid robots that are, paradoxically, dehumanized.

 

Click here to view more information on the book at University of Minnesota Press

 

Behavioral Matter Workshop Centre Pompidou, Paris

March 15 – 17  2019 :
“Behavioral Matter” : Public research-creation workshop for international participants

I’ve been invited to participate in a big research-creation party at the Centre Pompidou with many fellow digital romantics, post human dreamers and hyper geeks.  I don’t have that many details beyond the fact that I’m in a group concerned with inter-species communications, and that perhaps I can collaborate with others to communicate with pigeons through my emotional biosensors, harnessing the power of our emotional bodies to simulate pigeon coos, squawks and wingflaps.

?

I’m excited to see the great exhibition and also to meet some interesting artist-researchers. Information below en français…

15 – 17 mars 2019 :
“Behavioral Matter” : workshop de recherche-création international et public

Au sein du forum du Centre Pompidou, 12 modules thématiques (machine learning, comportement de la brume, internet des objets, matérialisation de données, microbiotes, impression 4D,…),avec la participation de plus de 70 créateurs, chercheurs, étudiants et étudiants-chercheurs.
Centre Pompidou * Forum, en face de la librairie * 11h-19h
Visites organisées les 16 et 17 mars (inscription sur place), restitution publique dimanche 17 mars à 16h.

Le projet “Behavioral Matter“ est mis en place par EnsadLab, le laboratoire de recherche de l’ École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs
(EnsAD – Université PSL, dans le cadre de l’exposition #LaFabriqueduVivant (cycle Mutations/Créations 3), avec le soutien de la Chaire « arts & sciences » de l’École polytechnique, de l’École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs – PSL et de la Fondation Daniel et Nina Carasso et avec le partenariat du Cluster “Matters of Activity. Image Space Material” de Humboldt State University de Berlin et du fonds PERSPEKTIVE pour l’art contemporain & l’architecture, une initiative du Bureau des arts plastiques de l’INSTITUT FRANÇAIS, soutenu par le Ministère de la Culture et le Goethe-Institut.

Laughing Web Dot Space at Yards Gallery, Chicago. Photo: Micki Harris

Scapi Magazine Chicago

My interactive sound art website Laughing Web Dot Space was featured in a very thoughtful review of the Entanglements exhibition curated by Chelsea Welch and Iryne Roh of Her Environment, and on exhibit at the Yards Gallery in Chicago in January-February 2019.

“Now that we’re all agreed that harassment is no laughing matter, let’s stop by Erin Gee’s #metoo resonant Laughing Web Dot Spacea virtual “laugh-in” featuring survivors of sexual violence. Attendees were invited to don headphones and listen to an overlapping chorus of victims laughing and/or contribute (anonymously) their own laughter. The maxim “Question your laughter”  came to mind, as I thought of both the violent and cathartic valences of joining in laughter. My favorite element of this installation was the way it built in consent, in the form of a STOP button. “

-NOA/H FIELDS

 

For the full review of the show, click here

TFAP@CAA Conference NYC

Rape, Representation, and Radicality |TFAP@CAA: The Feminist Art Project Day of Panels at the Annual College Art Association Conference 2019

Feb 16, 2019 – Feb 16, 2019

New York Hilton Midtown

1335 6th Avenue
Trianon Ballroom
New York, NY 10019

Time: 8:30am – 5:30pm | This event is free and open to the public.

My interactive website Laughing Web Dot Space will be featured as part of the conversations at the Feminist Art Project Day of Panels at CAA 2019.

Digital exhibition on Instagram @rapeandrepresentation

Click here to access the symposium website for schedule and more information on presenters.

Intersectional feminist art has long dealt with the oppressions and violations stemming from colonialism, slavery, and couverture. Rape, Representation, and Radicality is a full-day symposium that will explore sex, power, and justice through intersectional art and activism, academics, and healing. The forum brings academic study, intellectual discourse, and visceral candor together to create a shared space and to demand bodily autonomy.

Rape, Representation, and Radicality will address how sexual assault has affected feminist art practices, and who has power and why. What institutional changes are needed to work towards sexual justice, and how do race and gender impact the experiences and responses within the context of contemporary feminist discourse? The hidden legacy of Women of Color, within the conversation about sexual violence, sexual empowerment, artistic praxis, and art history, must be re-contextualized and revised to be included accurately. The current cultural narrative around sexual violence necessitates re-orientation to include those who are left out of the conversation. This forum will present strategies to understand, rectify, reclaim and move forward towards healing.

Symposium Chairs: 
Christen Clifford (Independent Artist; The New School) and Jasmine Wahi (School of Visual Arts; Project for Empty Space)