ANAT SPECTRA :: Multiplicity 2022 is an artistic and discursive platform inspired by the intersection of art, science and technology.

SPECTRAvision ::

5 Episodes, 5 Worlds, 5 Ways of considering hundreds of propositions from artists, researchers, scientists, technologists and citizens about the futures we are creating and wish to live in.

Visit: spectra.org.au/spectravision

ACCESSIBILITY

ANAT is committed to access and inclusion and we aim to make our events accessible. If you have any requirements please contact us at spectra@anat.org.au or 08 8231 9037. Alternatively, you can indicate your requirements at the check out when purchasing tickets and we'll do our very best to accommodate your needs.

We are proud to work with Access2Arts, in supporting the development of increased access and inclusion for SPECTRA events. Access2Arts’ purpose is to foster an inclusive arts community that develops, embraces and celebrates the unique talents, skills and perspectives of people who are d/Deaf or disabled. In order to create a future where d/Deaf and disabled people thrive within an inclusive arts ecology.

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Episode 1: Assembly for the Future Live from Planet City 2029

Friday 25 March, 10am - 12pm (AEDT)

DIGITAL GATHERING

CONCLUDED :: Ticket holders can view a recording of the event at a link provided on the virtual hub.

Assembly for the Future is a series of participatory gatherings in which the public create new visions for futures that may be realistic, idealistic or utterly fanciful. A multi-platform exploration of futures to come in the era of climates changed, Assembly for the Future transports collaborators, participants and audiences to 2029, when significant impacts on planetary health are causing powerful transformations of our cultural, political and energy systems.

Following a series of provocations from Liam Young, Professor Anne Poelina and Professor Peter Doherty, attendees became Future Makers, applying their imagination to the creation of other, better, futures.

These futures have been crystallised in a series of Dispatches from the Future generated by our Artist-Moderators and all SPECTRAvision ticket holders can access these online via a link from the virtual hub.

Image: Liam Young, Planet City, 2021, A city for 10 billion people.

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Episode 2: Machines Like us,Cells Like Them

Friday 1 April, 10am - 10.30am (AEDT)

ONLINE EXHIBITION

CONCLUDED :: Ticket holders can view a recording of the event via the virtual hub until 11.59pm Friday 6 May AEDT.

If, as some believe, we are moving towards a metaverse in which the natural and digital worlds are more integrated, becoming a new and unified world, then how might our relationships with machines operate to make these worlds better, fairer, and more sustainable?

The integration of the machine into the daily life of the human has rewired our behaviour patterns from the realms of work to sleep to courtship. Machines surveil our movements, track our habits of consumption, produce other machines to act on our behalf, and provide new ways of sensing, feeling and thinking. If we are not, as futurist Ray Kurzweil proposes, becoming one with the machine and evolving into a new species, then we are certainly becoming closer to something other than what we are now.

Exploring this relationship and proposing a multiplicity of expressions and integration, are works by Stelarc, Helen Pynor, Jess Coldrey, Elena Knox, Reggie Ba-Pe, Paul Thomas, Karen Ann Donnachie, Andy Simionato, Kiron Robinson, Catherine Truman, Chris Henschke, Nathan Thompson, Guy Ben-Ary, Matt Cornell, Merinda Davies, Liam Young and PluginHUMAN.

To launch the online exhibition, featured artists will delve into their practice and artworks in a special launch program. Click the image above to watch in full.

After viewing the special launch program you're invited to explore all of the artworks in the Machines Like Us, Cells Like Them exhibition here.

Curated by David Pledger and Nina Sellars.

Accessibility:
Closed captions are available on the recorded launch program on vimeo.

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Episode 3: 36 Ideas to While Away the Winter
Friday, 8 April, 10am - 5pm (AEST)

ONLINE SYMPOSIUM

CONCLUDED (was broadcasted LIVE).

Are there right or wrong ways to navigate relationships with and between our cellular and artificial intelligence? How do our bodies navigate, mediate and corporealize our ever-changing realities? How, for example, is our sense of listening modified and externalized in our mediated world? Does it matter?

Are we already post-Matrix, living in the algorithm? On this day of brain-dancing, conflicting ideas will be proposed and reconfigured. We reckon at least one of them will lodge in your head like an earworm repeating its logic, outrage, challenge, keeping your mind company through the winter months of 2022. Why 36 Ideas? Could be more, could be less. 36 is a poetic number and, when all is said and done, it all comes back to art.

Presenters include Danielle Freakley, Georgia Banks and Jey Han Lau.

Curated by Melissa DeLaney, David Pledger, Zamara Robison and Robert Walton

Accessibility: Live captioning.

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Episode 4: Future Cultures
Thursday 14 April, Available from 10am (AEST)

ONLINE FILM PROGRAM

Available to view until Fri 6 May, 11.59 pm AEST.
This episode is made available via a secure film screening platform. All ticket holders will receive an email from ANAT (Australian Network of Art & Technology) advising them to set up a personalised log in to access this episode.

In the last couple of years, the uncertainty of our futures has never been more evident, more felt, more confronting. However, what if we could all listen to the ancients and feel a connectedness to Country and culture? What if our futures were guided by those whose knowledges of the pasts, presents, and futures were embodied, understood, and known from deep time?

At the heart of this film program are eclectic stories from all over the world, including Canada, America, Greenland, Hawai’i and Australia, that collectively ask, “what if ?” These storytellers come mostly from First Nations people, but some are from other communities of colour who have also experienced the blunt impacts of colonisation and dispossession.

In all their diversity, these films explore the future cultures of humankind and how their survival may be dependent on ancient cultures. Often set against backdrops of mayhem, there still remains a sense of optimism in the works, a message that humans will get through the worst, that culture and nature will provide us with the strength we need for survival and hope. New beginnings are imagined—a message for all of us and the next generation. Short films by Skawennati, Nivi Pedersen , Thirza Cuthand, Helen Haig-Brown, Mitchel Viernes, Ademeyi Michael and Jeff Barnaby.

Curated by Tony Briggs, produced by Damienne Pradier for Typecast Entertainment.

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Episode 5: SPECTRAlive - in-person gathering, Melbourne
Thursday 21 - Saturday 23 April

CONCLUDED :: LIVE EVENT MELBOURNE

Episode 5 is a LIVE event, it’s not online but we left it here so you wouldn’t think we couldn’t count.

Curated by Tony Briggs, Zena Cumpston, Alex Kelly, David Pledger, Nina Sellars

Visit: spectra.org.au/spectralive for more information.

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Episode 6: postscript
Friday 6 May, 10am - 5pm

ONLINE ACADEMIC INQUIRY INTO THE FUTURE

In a series of moderated conversations and discussions, artists and researchers speak to their current projects in the near-shadow of the Multiplicity program. Participants will be asked two simple questions: what am I doing now? and how will it affect what I do next?

These questions will be posed in the frame of individual practice and projects and within the curatorial provocation: how do we, through the intersection of art, science and technology, build a better, fairer, more sustainable future? The last episode of this limited series event will be outward facing and future focussed, seeking to create a better set of questions and acknowledging that some answers may have been found along the way.

Presentations by:
Alinta Krauth; Andrew Goodman, Erin Manning, Lone Bertelsen and Andrew Murphie; Andrew Styan; Deirdre Feeney; Grayson Cooke and Dugal McKinnon; Hannah Hallam-Eames; Jill Scott; Jo Law, Agnieszka Golda and Aaron Burton; Karen Ann Donnachie and Andy Simionato; Kate Little; Matthew Walsh; Nathan Thompson, Guy Ben-Ary and Sebastian Diecke; Paul Boyé; and Rebecca Najdowski.

View schedule with presentation details and presenter bios here.

Curated by David Pledger, Zamara Robison and Robert Walton

Accessibility: Live captioning.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ANAT acknowledges and pays respects to the First Nations peoples of the land we call Australia. Aboriginal peoples are the Traditional Custodians and we recognise their continued cultural, spiritual and technological practices.

We also acknowledge and pay respects to all First Nations peoples beyond Australian shores. As the very first storytellers, we understand that First Nations peoples hold invaluable knowledge and perspectives that are vital in the research, interrogation and development of traditional and emerging technologies, across both our physical and digital realms.

ANAT SPECTRA 2022 is proudly presented by the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) in partnership with the University of Melbourne, Science Gallery Melbourne, together with program partners The Things We Did Next (TTWDNext), Typecast Entertainment, RMIT University and Leonardo.