Transparency Machines explores the relationship between technology and the subtle forms of violence which – based on their invisibility, social acceptance, and apparently harmless incursion into all areas of social life – come to define culture and interpersonal relationships, as well as power structures. From different points of view, four audiovisual programs will question the role of technology, and more specifically technological images, in the digital context and within the paradoxes of the technosphere: visibility and invisibility, transparency and opacity, control and optimization, utopia and dystopia.

Program 1. The Quantified Body

The program explores the relationship between man and machine through biotechnology, biometrics and recognition technologies. A study between emotion and artificial intelligence through a bodily dialogue between humans and robots (Daria Martin) and an empathetic choreography between a security guard and a healer through an optic device, joining organic matter with digital matter (Nadav Assor). The approximation 21% oxygen chemical structure needed in the atmosphere for the existence of human consciousness (Ursula Biemann). The quantification of an individual’s vital functions using technologies that employ a select, preprogrammed number of parameters to detect an illness and design the treatment – in neuroscience (Eva Zornio) and surgical robotics (Yuri Ancarani). A contemporary experiment on how the retina works following the instructions in the treatise Ophthalmographia, from 1623, by the doctor Vopiscus Fortunatus Plempius (Sarah Vanagt and Katrien Vanagt).

Soft Materials, Daria Martin, 2004, 10 min, United Kingdom, no dialogues, digital file (transferred from 16 mm film)

Da vinci, Yuri Ancarani, 2012, 25 min, Italy, no dialogue, Blu-ray

Feelers (Esotropia II), Nadav Assor, 2012, 16 min, United States, English, subtitles in English

Twenty One Percent, Ursula Biemann and Mo Diener, 2016, 20 min, Switzerland, English

Le système miroir [The Mirror System], Eva Zornio, 2015, 17 min, Switzerland, French, subtitles in English

In Walking Hours, Sarah Vanagt & Katrien Vanagt, 2015, Belgium, 18 min, no dialogue, text in English and French

Photo: Soft Materials, 2004 © Daria Martin (Maureen Pauley, Londres)

Acknowledgements

Argos, Bruselas
Isabella Bortolozzi Galerie, Berlín
Maureen Pauley Gallery, Londres
Ultraviolet Media, Bucarest
And all the artists