Art & Science Master's Project Exam Presentation

Invitation to join the next Art & Science Master’s project exams presentations on 24 January 2024 from 09:00 to 13:00. The exhibition of each graduate’s work will be open on several days thereafter and within the framework of AAA.

Mehrere Standorte: Oskar-Kokoschka-Platz 2, 1010 Wien / Vordere Zollamtsstraße 7, 1030 Wien / Georg-Coch-Platz 2, 1010 Wien

VZA 7, 4. OG, B13
09:00 | Els van Houtert | I give the door a nod – Oh porous membranes…
2023, Skulptur, Installation
Exhibition: 25–31 Jan, 10:00–18:00
Performance times: 26 Jan (18:00), 27 Jan (12:00)

A flexible ritual, a mundane encounter.
What you see is a timestamp in an ongoing (re)search for everyday relationships with ‘things’. By phenomenologically studying how I encounter the mundane, material world around me—switching a light-switch, taking a sip of tea, sitting against a wall—I look for a sense of rootedness in everyday life.
When I go ino water, we work together and exchange. We melt at some places.
My body is my main medium. The ‘things’ I encounter are my research-partners. Or should I say, sometimes we become one and the same thing?
I am not capable with my mind to recognize or describe what is exchanged, or changed. But I sense it with my body. I know that we share, for this moment, more than usually. I trust that marks are left, memories are activated, remade.
www.elsvanhoutert.nl

VZA 7, 2. OG, Flux 2
09:30 | Irene Zluwa | Wiener Papierblüten
2023, Kunstbuch und Installation
Exhibition: 25–31 Jan, 10:00–18:00

Das Buch Wiener Papierblüten führt mittels handgeschöpfter Papierbögen durch die Standorte von Pflanzen in einer Stadt. Jeder Bogen repräsentiert dabei einen Typ von grüner Infrastruktur im urbanen Raum.
Die einzelnen Stationen des Rundgangs werden von erläuternden Texten begleitet, die Informationen zu den (Lebens-)Räumen, den verwendeten Pflanzen und dem Herstellungsprozess der Papiere bereitstellen. Zusätzlich ist jedem Kapitel ein assoziativer Gastbeitrag zugeordnet, der zum weiteren Nachdenken und Träumen über das Thema „Pflanzen in der Stadt“ anregen soll.
Im Ausstellungsraum zum Buch bewegt man sich durch einen Blätterwald, der zum Begreifen der Papiere einlädt.

VZA 7, 1. OG, Brücke
10:00 | Eugénie Desmedt | Shake it gently. Vier Erfahrungen der Zufälligkeit
2023, Kunstbuch und Installation
Exhibition: 25–31 Jan, during opening hours of University

Can I ask you a random question?
Kann ich schreiben, ohne zu ordnen? Shake it gently. Vier Erfahrungen der Zufälligkeit erkundet den Zufall durch eine Flut von Lärm, Information und Möglichkeiten bis hin zu Orten zwischen Vertigo und Euphorie. Ich lasse mich aus der Reserve locken, lasse das Fallen zu.
It makes you nervous when you can’t control it.
eugenie.at

OKPS, 4.OG, B2
11:00 | Lindsey Nicholson | Something won, something lost
2023, Installation
Exhibition: 25–31 Jan, during opening hours of University
Liminal disorder creeps across the lattice and breaklines entangle – building and destroying collective memory as a continuous selfsculpture.
Becoming and also being no more.

OKPS, 3. OG, B3
11:30 | Ruben Gutzat | Do rubber trees dream of the rainforest?
2023, Videoprojektion, Installation
Exhibition: 26–27 Jan, 11:00–19:00

What is it like to be a rubber tree?
I measure each leaf of Betty and Bossi and observe their growth. I touch their slightly wooden stems and the large mid-vein of Bossi‘s youngest, somewhat succulent leaf. Betty‘s leaves display subtle hues of white and pink; one leaf bears a scar, burnt from unfiltered sunlight after having grown up in a greenhouse.
Is there an ultrasonic outcry from Betty when a leaf is removed?
I use my two vegetal companions, Betty and Bossi, as models to investigate an otherworldly consciousness.
In doing so, this work examines scientific practices and the moral and ethical considerations of keeping houseplants. It documents a reconnection with natural realms from which we are constantly alienating ourselves.
rubengutzat.com

OKPS, 3. OG, STAR 5
12:00 | Naoki Matsuyama | Stuck: The Deep Inertias of Large Language Models and How to Digress
2023, Installation
Exhibition: 26–27 Jan, 11:00–19:00

Large Language Models (LLM) have exploded into public attention after the release of ChatGPT. Astronomical amounts of resources are now being plunged into researching and developing these technologies that are touted to bring a revolution, causing a pandemic of fear and hype. Despite this sense of standing on rapidly shifting ground, however, LLMs suffer from deep inertias. They operate within sticky historical obduracies caused by systemic, commercial, and ideological entanglements with extractive propensities. Moreover, their outputs are increasingly used as data for training, lodging them into a closed loop. LLMs are particularly ill-suited to tackle such challenges because in reproducing generalized patterns interpolated from the data, they muddle the situational and historical specificities, acting as engines of ahistoricity. This study thus invites digression, to veer away from the appointed course, relying on philosopher Masaya Chiba’s interpretation of Deleuze that emphasizes disconnection as an antidote to delusions of connecting everything as data, which immobilize the technologies and those who use it, preventing them from taking shape otherwise.

GCP 1. OG, SR 31
12:30 | Lucie Belle Blanche David | Empty Memory
2023, Mixed-Media-Installation
Exhibition: 26–27 Jan, 11:00–19:00
This work combines historical science with artistic methods to explore the intertwined realms of memory, history and narrative construction; highlighting the bizarre complexity of the subject of history as a science. By exploring the narrative of creating ceramic vessels as a research methodology, the author analyses the non-linear, fragmented nature of the resulting research. This personal narrative resonates throughout the work. This work also compares the science of history to the water that moulds the vessels and weaves the feelers through the concepts of memory, perspectives of historiography and the role of silence in remembrance. By sculpting the vessels, this interdisciplinary research offers a perspective on the shaping and experiencing of historiography. It presents the inclusion of artistic practice by introducing a sculptural space of memory containers in which (alien) beings come to life and wait to be filled with new memories.
lbbdavid.com

All times after the first are “ca.” times.
All works supervised by Univ.-Prof. Virgil Widrich

Commission
Univ.-Prof. Jakob Lena Knebl
Univ.-Prof. Dr.phil. Ernst Strouhal
Univ.-Prof. Virgil Widrich
Sen.Art. Mag.art. Sascha Alexandra Zaitseva