DATES:

Exhibition: 31. August to 30 September
Opening:  30 August, 2019, starting at 5pm
Place: Kroepcke Platz Hannover

Hannover Basel

ABOUT

Arthur Clay,  Curator
Organisers: Virtuale Switzerland & Kunstverein Kunsthalle Hannover

iJACKED refers to the intended or unwanted use of third-party electronic data and with new tools of today, it has become a  savvy term in connection with artistic interventions.   In addition to  artists from Asia and Europe who are native to the field of AR, the curatorial team for the project will also offer “boot-strapping” to  artists, giving them the opportunity to create a new or translate an existing artwork using 3D digitisation approaches and to subsequently show the work as part of the iJacked exhibition taking place in select public spaces, selected according to how they blend the virtual with the real and cause an  entanglement between the artwork and the place at which it is viewed.

The Exhibited

As an art genre spawned from 21st century communication technologies, the project is geared to explore tensions between polarities found at cultural, political, and social points of convergence, putting into practice a completely new form of social sculpture. By operating with a high degree of mediating ability at the interface between the private and the public, the iJacked project takes the needed opportunity to reflect on and open up a potentially controversial discourse surrounding the arts and their political and social nature, in order to bring  these  into dialogue with those institutions that strive to structure and shape society but who seem to remain partial to extending a wider notion of art by acknowledging its role in transforming society by the inclusive and not the exclusive.

To achieve this dialog, a selection of artworks will be paired with and  stationed at particular places in the city, which are conducive to sparking the conversation between the acting members of the inhabited space, the artists, and the public.

The Performative

Social sculpture can be defined as interdisciplinary and participatory and giving the nature of mobile communication and the wide spread use of it, the goal of influencing social patterns is easily extended into works linked to a social network via technology. This is not only because the artists behind the works have harnessed the new communication technologies, which are capable of reaching the widest of audiences, but because art that is presented using AR operate as”invisible arts”,  operating in unregulated virtual space and capable of penetrating any real space without hinderance. By making the access to such virtual space through actually staging it as integral part of a performance, it is possible to ignite interests from the public, making clear the evolutionary-revolutionary power of the new and by creating impact within public space that folds back into the virtual by the powers of social media, it becomes capable of dismantling the repressive effects of the old and established and to usher in the visceral character and perpetually renewing character of 21st Century society.

To stage such performances as gates to virtual space, a select group of performers will create a group performance at particular places in the city, which will allow the public to gain access to the AR artworks and to view them as well as to propagate the underlying concepts of  “connectivity” and “inclusivity” at the heart of today;s arts and society
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The Meeting Point

Special attention will be given to the Kunsthalle Faust, which will be given the role of a “meeting point”, which will act as a point of convergence for the artists showing and the visitors interested in the exhibit.  Here, a project under the title “Where the Rain Comes In” will take place in cooperation with the dance company Landerer, exploiting the potentials of photogrammetry and how  dancers can be captured and animated using AR technologies. The production will be housed in the main space of the Kunsthalle Faust and will feature a dialogue between the “real dancers” of the ensemble and their virtual protagonists, offering the public a true sense what modern in dance is defined in this century of electronic communication.  Here, the choreographic friction between the real and the virtual level is additionally communicated to the audience by means of video projection.
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Workshops

The largest public for new technologies is the young and this is because such technologies as AR and VR manifest at the level of the mobile phone – the cult object of youth and the select means of connectivity between them.  For this reason, the iJacked Project reaches out to a younger audience with workshop offerings that allow them to look into and beyond the content and use of their mobile devices and turn them into a looking glass for the new arts. The workshop is participatory and results in an exhibition. This is accomplished by  training participants to create AR artwork through the creation and texturising of 3D objects and also by teaching them how to place the finished artworks  at key places in and round the Kunsthalle Faust using image recognition.  In this manner, the process of using technology to create art, and the experience of exhibiting it in public space brings the concept of iJacking to a younger audience.

Half day workshops taught by accomplished AR artists will be held at the Kunsthalle before and after the opening of the iJacked Project so that a level of inclusion of youth can be accomplished and so that an audience that is trans-generational can be targeted and which will add to the vitality and social relevance of the project.

Access

Access to the works is made possible by scanning QR codes that are placed on diverse media and in diverse forms at all points of the iJacked project. Using a mobile phone and a scanning application, the visitors can scann the codes in and view the works at the places in the city at which they are being exhibited.