“Undeleted” – group exhibition for solo viewing online

undeleted.mplab.lv website displays 6 new media artists works that are made specifically for online art gallery. New artists study how experience of exhibition could be passed over to virtual, individual artist work exposition and which can be considered as authentic experience of mediated communication and machine learning era, considering questions of – what stays, what is left behind and what is worth saving?

Sintija Place takes place in this exhibition with her work “Acousmatic Ecosystem”, which represents “forest bathing” in a domestic environment. Artist work involves tools of technology, such as sound and light, simulating interaction with nature, therefore creating opportunity to keep in subconscious, emotional attachment to the process of nature and life, even if nature in future, how we know it, would fade. It is an invitation to close one’s eyes and experience nature; even though it is a virtual representation of nature, it induces a similar spectrum of emotions, one would experience gazing upon frail spots of sunlight that surmount the leafage of a tree and land softly on eyelids.

A sound art composition (audio play) for headphones by Andrejs Poikāns titled “The Garden” is the second work to be exhibited. It is an exploration of voice as the basis of personal identity and a metaphor for its inherent (un-inherent?) and integral nature – both guarding the stability of democracy and individual sanity. Artist uses machine learning voice cloning techniques to fabricate unspoken speech and to gain vocal sounds, that cannot be produced by an embodied vocal mechanism. This can be achieved by using artificial neural networks, that tend to be labeled in the media as the new technology, which will solve the big social, political and ecological problems of the 21st century. In the age of fake news, computer-generated images and videos, the composition indulges listeners to face fragile states of privacy, by letting themselves be guided by a disembodied voice that eventually leads to a mental space where questions on the limits of commodification can be proposed.

Andra Strautina offers to explore her created Liepaja Pet cemetery archives complemented with a special made sound composition. Dana invites exhibition explorers to go for a 945 km long virtual hike across Spain, offering to everyone transfer her experience that was experienced during this challenging process of creating work. Martins Vejs takes part in this exhibition with a kinetic installation called “Light Train”, but Anja Viksne invites to learn body awareness with immersive technology with guided breathing exercises.

Exhibition organised by Art Research Laboratory (MPLab), ASTE – Art, Science, Technology, Education. Supported by Liepaja city municipality administration, Kurzeme Planning Region, State Culture Capital Foundation, Liepaja University.