The Body is the Interface
Kite, Interspecifics
Past event
- Price
- $25*
- Genres
- Art, Music
- Season
- Fall 2024
- DATE
- NOV 2
- TIME
- SAT, 8:30 PM
- RUNTIME
- Approx. 80 minutes, with intermission
- COUNTRY
- Oglala Lakȟóta, Mexico
- Program
- Download Program Notes (PDF)
Join the conversation in the REDCAT LOUNGE
About
A double bill of performances by Oglala Lakȟóta artist Kite (Music, BFA ‘14) and Mexico City-based collective Interspecifics brings together machine learning technologies, sound, the body, and Indigenous cosmologies.
For Wičháȟpi Wóihaŋbleya (Dreamlike Star), Kite performs with a custom computer that translates her body movements into experimental sounds and video by means of two hair braids she manipulates. Kite performs scores she has translated into Lakȟóta visual language, derived from the dreams of women and two-spirit community members, who consider dreaming as a sacred epistemological practice. Using her own body as an interface, each of Kite’s movements trains the machine learning software encoded with a Lakȟóta data set.
Interspecifics presents Meta Sincronía 1.0, a live sonic and visual composition with a feedback processor that follows rhythms and synchronizations of the human heart. Three performers outfitted with a heart-rate monitor interface with automated ceremonial leather drums—inspired by Rarámuri instruments. Beats synchronize between humans and machines, fluctuating from chaos to unison.
Join Chief Curator and Deputy Director, Programs, Daniela Lieja Quintanar, and Assistant Curator, Talia Heiman, for a walkthrough of the exhibition All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace in the gallery at 7:30 PM.
The Body is the Interface is part of the program for All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, and curated by Daniela Lieja Quintanar with Talia Heiman.
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace is part of more than 60 exhibitions and programs presented as part of PST ART. Returning in September 2024 with its latest edition, PST ART: Art & Science Collide, this landmark regional event explores the intersections of art and science, both past and present. PST ART is presented by Getty. For more information about PST ART: Art & Science Collide, please visit pst.art
about the artists
Kite
Kite (Dr. Suzanne Kite) is an Oglála Lakȟóta performance artist, visual artist, and composer raised in Southern California, with a BFA from CalArts in Music Composition, an MFA from Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School, and a Ph.D. in Fine Arts from Concordia University, Montreal. Her scholarship and practice investigate contemporary Lakȟóta ontologies through research-creation, computational media, and performance, often working in collaboration with family and community members. Recently, she has been developing body interfaces for machine learning-driven performance and sculptures generated by dreams, and experimental sound and video work. Kite has published in The Journal of Design and Science (MIT Press), with the award-winning article, “Making Kin with Machines,” co-authored with Jason Lewis, Noelani Arista, and Archer Pechawis. Kite is a 2023 Creative Capital Award winner, 2023 USA Fellow, and a 2022-2023 Creative Time Open Call artist with Alisha B. Wormsley.Currently, she is a distinguished artist in residence and assistant professor of American and Indigenous studies at Bard College and a research associate and residency coordinator for the Abundant Intelligences (Indigenous AI) project.
Interspecifics
Interspecifics is an international independent artistic research studio established in Mexico City in 2013. Their research has focused on utilizing sound and artificial intelligence to investigate the emergence of patterns, ranging from biosignals and the morphology of various living organisms, to potentially offer a form of nonhuman communication. With this aim in mind, they’ve curated a collection of experimental research and educational tools called Ontological Machines. Their work is deeply influenced by the Latin American context, where the conditions of precarity foster creative endeavors and traditional technologies intersect with cutting-edge production methods. Their current lines of research explore “the hard problem of consciousness” and the close relationship between mind and matter, where magic appears to be fundamental. Sound remains their interface to the universe.
credits
Exhibition Curator: Daniela Lieja Quintanar
Performance Program Curators: Katy Dammers, Daniela Lieja Quintanar, and Edgar Miramontes
Assistant Curator: Talia Heiman
Technical Director: Adam Matthew
Exhibition Designer: Adalberto Charvel
Graphic Designer: Ella Gold
Publication: REDCAT/East of Borneo
Project Director: Joao Ribas
