Session #5: 13 July, 19:30 – 22:00 CEST (online)
With: KEIKEN
In this session we will be exploring (ecological) worldbuilding through character creation. KEIKEN will give an introduction in digital methods (such as CGI, scanning and simulation technologies.)
Keiken are offering an open and resourceful conversation, somewhere in between workshop and lecture, that will provide an insight into the technical process and conceptual development of their CGI avatar and character creation. Although less of a practical session, the conversation aims to share the different tools, methods and approaches that Keiken use for artists/practitioners with some, little or no experience of CGI. They will introduce a range of both open source and industry standard softwares that can be utilised whilst also discussing the inherent problems of digital character creation, such as encoded human biases. They will also touch upon the world building structures they establish in their artworks to create a Metaverse of interconnected worlds, stories and characters.
Keiken are a collaborative practice, co-founded by artists Tanya Cruz, Hana Omori and Isabel Ramos in 2015, who frequently work with multiple collaborators. Based between London and Berlin, they come from mixed diasporic backgrounds (Mexican/Japanese/European/Jewish). They are building a collective shared space of virtual worlds, a Metaverse. Keiken, the Japanese word for experience, create speculative worlds, using moving-image, CGI, gaming software, installation, virtual and augmented reality, programming and performance to merge the physical and digital. Their work simulates new structures and ways of existing, exploring how societal introjection governs the way we feel, think and perceive. Recent exhibitions include: How will we live together?, Russian Federation Pavilion, 17th Venice Architecture Biennale, Venice; Pieces of Me, Transfer Gallery, Online; The Artist is Online, Koenig Galerie, Decentraland; E-motion Graphics, Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2021, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Tokyo (2021); The Time Complex, Yerevan Biennial, Online; Augmented Empathy, FACT, Liverpool; The Metaverse Womb, 3hd 2020, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin; Ghosts & Apparitions, Sheffield Doc Fest, Online; Metaverse: We are at the end of something, Mira Festival, IDEAL, Barcelona; Sessions, Block Universe, Online; How to Make a Paradise, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt, The Eternal Network transmediale 2020, Haus der Kulturen der Welt HKW, Berlin (2020); Image Behaviour, ICA, London; Jerwood Collaborate!, Jerwood Arts, London (2019).