[ISEA2023] Artists Statement: Tobias Klein, Jane Prophet & Kwan Tse — Common Datum

Artists Statement

Exhibition. Goethe-Institut Paris,  May 16 –  Aug 21

Tobias Klein & Jane Prophet are selected ISEA2023 artists

The air we exhale at 37 C, is 100% saturated with water, which is about 44 mg/liter. The average lung capacity of an adult is about 6 liters. When we exhale, that saturated air cools to the ambient temperature, and if the air outside is cool enough it will condense into tiny droplets of water that form a visible cloud. When our breath comes in contact with a cold surface, it leaves visible condensation.

Common Datum is an environmentally reactive, hygroscopic sculpture. A series of suspended vessels continuously absorb the humidity from the gallery – generated through the breath of visitors. Slowly each 3D printed condenser accumulates water that is fed to a set of plants. Even though all vessels are of individual shape and absorb moisture at a different rate, in the end, a common datum is created. A homeostatic balance emerges between visitors and the plant-based life – revealing a hidden symbiotic relationship articulating a material-based interspecies dialogue.

Common Datum combines traditional materials and making processes with digital fabrication techniques. It celebrates novel materials and choreographs environmental reactions and forces, defining a digital craft to disrupt binary relations such as traditional and digital making, or simulations of dynamic and inanimate systems. The work is based on our breath to form a participatory ecological dialogue and exchange.

The glass work was created with the help of Kwan Tse, with the support of her studio, Soekjing Studio.

Curator: Philipp Asbach

https://www.janeprophet.com/common-datum-2020

  • Prof. Tobias Klein is Associate Professor, School of Creative Media, City University, HK. Tobias Klein is an architect and interdisciplinary artist/designer. He generates a syncretism of contemporary CAD/CAM technologies with site and culturally specific design narratives, intuitive non-linear design processes, and historical cultural references. His most recent work, a fully 3D printed dress titled Incunabula was filmed by SHOWstudio London, and exhibited in the 14th Architectural Biennale (2014). The dress is in the permanent collection of the MoMu in Antwerp. At the same time, his work Inversive Embodiment, a 3D printed 4D rotation of St. Paul’s Cathedral wrapping embodied data sets in the form of Magnetic Resonance Image Data, was shown in the Science Museum in London; and a second work Soft Immortality is on show in the Museum for Science and Industry in Manchester. In parallel to the sculptural work, his continuous developing cycle of installation work titled Virtual Sunset was first shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (2011), travelled to the Industry Gallery in Washington DC (2012) and finally was exhibited at the Microwave Festival 2013 at the Hong Kong City Hall. Klein has lectured and given workshops internationally (Cambridge, UPenn, Oxford, UCL) and is the director of the Architectural Association’s Visiting School, Post-Industrial Landscapes. In 2010-12 he was an appointed Guest Professor at the TU Innsbruck Studio 3, institute for experimental architecture. His work is published in AD – Neoplasmatic Design (edited by Marcos Cruz), Digital Architecture Now (by Neil Spiller) and Drawings (by Sir Peter Cook). His current research uses advanced medical visualisation techniques to explore the human body as a new ecology of densities in which the dissolution of its anatomical boundaries allows the rethinking and recreating of it as a new physical/representational territory in constant flux and change. https://scholars.cityu.edu.hk/en/persons/tobias-klein(47d9b010-8a21-4f3d-aea5-05cab6302a3e).html
  • Professor Jane Prophet (UK/US) is a visual artist and theorist working at University of Michigan. Her practice-based research and writing emerges through collaborations with life scientists such as neuroscientists, stem cell researchers, mathematicians, and heart surgeons. She works across media and disciplines to produce objects and installations, frequently combining traditional and computational media. Prophet’s papers position art in relation to contemporary debates about new media and mainstream art, feminist technoscience, artificial life and ubiquitous computing. Her research foci include the apparatus of contemporary neuroscience experiments, and blended online/offline identities via augmented reality and ubiquitous computing. https://www.janeprophet.com
    https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-prophet-15698b7/?originalSubdomain=uk
  • Kwan Tse is an emerging glass artist from Hong Kong https://soekjingstudio.com