The Culture of Technology

Robert Chambers on Art, Ancient Plants and New Technologies

At the AIRIE Nest, an art gallery inside the Visitor Center, we meet Robert Chambers to explore his exhibition titled Serepens. AIRIE curator Deborah Mitchell and two environmental scientists who’ve inspired his new body of work are here, too. Botanist Warren Abrahamson has been researching the saw palmetto for forty years. Hilary Swain directs the Archbold Biological Station, a center dedicated to research and conservation in the South Florida watershed.

Turning Analog Technology Into Sound Sculpture

Egyptian artist Magdi Mostafa’s interactive environment for the 2018 Dakar Biennial of Contemporary African Art turns the sounds of analog technology into an aesthetic force. Acting like tiny radio receivers, his handmade electronics make audible the otherwise silent electro-magnetic fields emanating from today’s myriad digital devices. He exposes the reverberations of energy emission and loss in our battery powered, wi-fi connected contemporary communications.

Drone Starlings in the Night Sky: Studio Drift on Nature and Technology

Today, we take you to the intersection of nature, art and technology to meet Amsterdam-based artists Ralph Nauta and Lonneka Gordjein of Studio Drift. They design their creative applications of new technology to make us question the lines we draw between humanity and nature, chaos and order. Presented during Miami Art Week 2017, Studio Drift’s flying sculpture made of 300 lighted drones was especially provocative and poetic. The artists leave us believing in the unexpected potential for technology to feel natural.

ORLAN on Art Tech

Surrounded by her books, sculptures, paintings and photographs, we talk about ORLAN’s evolving relationship with technology. In a cultural space that excludes women performers, the artist inserts her animated avatar using an augmented reality application. The application is embedded in a set of photographic portraits that feature ORLAN wearing different opera masks. Viewers with the app can watch the avatar perform in front of the portraits. ORLAN intends to keep evolving in her practice, adopting new technologies that allow her to openly explore and comment on the status of women.

Regina Frank on Performing at the Intersection of Art and Technology

Regina Frank is a German artist now living in a seaside village just outside Lisbon. She talks about social, cultural and environmental issues that interest her and how her performative installation projects explore the tension between analog and digital media.