In an ever-increasing digital age where modes of technology seep into everyday use, TMRW Gallery operates as a platform at the frontier of innovation. Rooted in the desire to extend knowledge and experience – the objectives of the space are to produce world-class work and promote South Africa as a thought leader. Its core focus is invested is the integration of contemporary art and technology.
Director Ann Roberts describes the space as, “platform agnostic” emphasizing that TMRW Gallery is open to engaging with artists of all disciplines. The contemporary art space pairs both emerging and established artists with technologists who collaborate in actualizing a creative vision. Based on the premise that art guides and dictates the process by pushing the technology, creating a context in which “innovation is exponential.”
The gallery provides artists with access to new technologies including virtual reality, 3D printing, performance and augmented reality. This allows them to explore the medium and incorporate it as an extension of their practice – “tech is just another paintbrush”. Ann notes that “the outcomes need to be flexible” in order to allow for the plasticity of the process.
The not-for-profit space also presents an alternate gallery model, whereby the creation of exceptional work and not salability is the primary focus. However, the space is dependent on sponsorship and brand association. TMRW Gallery also poses an alternative to the ‘White Cube’ space – opting for a far more engaging and immersive environment.
The space promotes an audience-driven experience in which viewers are captivated and engulfed in an imagined reality. This model operates as an opportunity to develop the visual and digital vocabulary of its audience members – making the work intergenerationally accessible. The gallery’s upcoming show exhibits in September, featuring Lady Skollie and Wayne Barker. In the future, the space will also engage with extensive public programming, residencies, as well as group and solo shows.
Watching the contemporary art scene evolve is a little bit like watching a sports game as a complete philistine with no knowledge of the rules. You can’t really tell who the star player is, you’re definitely not sure where the ball is going to go, you have no conception of what is allowed or not allowed, and just when you think you’ve gotten the grips of it, something unexpected happens and it is all upended.
As with so many fields, technology has infiltrated the contemporary art scene. So just as you thought you were beginning to understand the Tracey Emin’s, the Ai Wei Wei’s, the Nicholas Hlobo’s, the Nandipha Mntambo’s, the art world threw you a curve-ball in the shape of the algorithm.
Now I would like to think I am no novice when it comes to art but ask me about coding or Java or (I can’t even think of another word to put here) then I am stumped. As long as I can open my emails and post instastories then I don’t need to know. It is like that time old saying – “If you love something, don’t find out how it is made.” But now, the foreign language of programming is seeping into my perfect little contemporary art comfort zone, and I might need to start learning the rules.
Ellsworth Kelly – Spectrum Colours arranged by chance III. 1951
So as every good writer and researcher in the 21st century does, I went straight to Google (Ironically using its complex algorithms). Google told me that an algorithm was a “set of rules, or a process used in calculations or other problem-solving operations.” I mean if I’m honest, this didn’t help me much. As a society that are more attached to our devices than perhaps could ever have been predicted. Something that has always resonated with me was the video produced in 2015 of Otis Johnson, who had been released from prison after 44 years of incarceration. In this short interview with Al Jazeera, he gets off the subway at Times Square and is immediately bewildered by what he first thought was everyone talking to themselves but turned out to be what we all know to be FaceTime. It was the first moment where I sat and really considered how detached from reality we really are.
Each step on a Fitbit, each 4am tweet, each calorie counted, or song downloaded is being controlled by that terrifyingly foreign language of code. Plebs like myself see 0s and 1s, and lots of disruptive / and ? and * and [ ] – yet the next generation contemporary artist is seeing infinite possibilities.
Screenshot from selected/deleted/populated/isolated – cities in the global south, 2016 by Carly Whitaker
Take Laurie Frick, a New York based artist, who has used various data-trackers to create large-scale representations of ‘self.’ In 2012, using the app Moodjam, Frick tracked her emotions and moods over the course of several days and then created works like the one below as visual articulations of this data. At first glance we see work akin to the mid-century minimalists Sol LeWitt, or Ellsworth Kelly. Closer to home, Johannesburg’s Carly Whitaker’s Selected/Deleted/Populated/Isolated from 2016 uses collected, collated data to consider the representation of ‘other’ and uses Photoshop to disrupt and distort Google map images to create connections between cities in the global south. Each of these examples reflects on how digital data can lead to the abstraction or reorganisation of information.
And so, I ask, has the new artistic tech-evolution redefined the abstract?
Now that the digital age has permeated so much of our daily activity, how do we, as consumers of art, consider its permeation into the galleries? A large part of this new age of art seems to reflect on digital as disruptive. We see the background interfaces of the world wide web or distorted virtual realities – the relatively comfortable spaces of Google, Facebook and Instagram are discarded for the more uneasy abstract depths of the internet. Artists seem to be playing with the very ‘physicality of art’ – algorithms are used to create sketches that seem made of the human hand (See Jon McCormack’s Niche Constructions for example,or more fragmented abstract video works (like those of Casey Reas, or Diego Collado), or play with the developing technologies of virtual and augmented reality (See Blocked Content by the Russian collective Recycle Group or the work by Paul McCarthy and Christian Lemme.
While some of the Western world thinks we still ride elephants in South Africa, our digital artists are in their own way coming of age – spurred on by innovative spaces like the Centre for the Less Good Idea who had a Virtual Reality exhibition last year, and the annual Fak’ugesi festival that celebrates the rise of African digital innovation.
CUSS Group – New Horizons Installation Shot. 2016
Two years ago, I went to the New Horizonsexhibition presented by the CUSS group at the Stevenson, and left feeling bewildered. As one expects when they see life-size pixelated dog statues, couches floating in Dali-esque, virtual waters and photoshopped couples superimposed into neon-blue digitally rendered nightclubs that look like the infamous Avastar (may it RIP). Were they considering the banality of the internet, the superficiality and excess of capitalist culture, the absurdity of digital programmes like photoshop and the constructed ‘realities’ they create, or perhaps they were just commenting on society’s gluttonous consumption of the ‘digital dream.’
Part of what the age of the algorithm means is that the digital is inescapable. Even Home Affairs uses computers these days. And as artists begin to consider the complexities of this omnipresent and opaque technology, we as viewers need to be prepared to confront a new abstract.
CUSS Group – New Horizons Installation Shot. 2016
Many contemporary South African artists are transcending the boundary of the screen or page and using 3D ‘collages’ to juxtapose the virtual with the corporeal. At the Post African Futures exhibition at the Goodman Gallery in 2015, Pamela Sunstrum and Thenjiwe Nkosi created a visual cacophony, Notes from the Ancients, and used installation to contrast the now all too familiar motherboard, with 3D printed masks mirrored on ‘traditional’ African artefacts, murals of mine-dump sand dunes, and defunct technology. This type of disruptive installation makes us constantly try to construct connections, to create some type of linear understanding. Frequently we are left dissatisfied, or with so many ideas spinning in our head we feel dizzy.
Tabita Rezaire’s Exotic Trade of 2017, also exhibited at the Goodman Gallery, considered the erasure of black womxn from the “dominant narrative of technological achievement” (Rezaire 2017) and how much of scientific advancement has capitalised from the ‘availability’ of the black body. The juxtaposition of images from African spirituality, the ‘glitchy’ virtual world, the jarring electric pink gynaecologist examination table, and the omnipotent, frequently ‘sexualised’ or ‘maternalised’ black womxn body are jarring reminders of the darker side of the digital arena. The motherboardby name reiterates the ‘mother earth’, maker of all – but disrupts the notion of the natural by the ubiquitous computer. We are confronted with a maze of imagery, that traverses the boundaries of the body, and technology itself.
As we begin to adjust to a new abstract, I ask – “where to from here?”
Tabita Rezaire – Sugar Walls Teardom, 2016 from Exotic Trade
Alt Reality is a technology studio focused primarily on Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. The studio investigates other technology forms by looking at their ability to move into virtual reality and augmented reality. These technologies include 3D Printing and iOT data to name a few. I had an interview with Alt Reality creative technologist Rick Treweek to tell me more about the workings and history of the tech studio.
Rick has worked in mobile game and app design for the last 15 years as well as 3D printing for the last 5 years and expresses that VR and AR were the next likely steps in his career. Rick tells me that within this space of virtual reality, augmented reality and investigation, a great deal of high-level Proof Of Concepts and Projects is executed. With a love for experimentation and art the tech studio makes time to focus on this sector.
When asked about the kinds of worlds that Alt Reality creates Rick explains that by utilizing AR, VR as well as Mixed reality in amalgamation with one another, they create projects with digital overlays of real worlds in AR and building environments in VR that imitate the real world with the use of 360 cameras. “We often look at developing projects that showcase potentials of how things in the future will look once the technologies have moved away from devices and into wearables like glasses and contact lenses.”
When asked how Alt Reality started Rick tells me that their journey began started 2 years ago in the Tshimologong Precinct Makerspace. “The idea initially came when I bumped into another maker called Phathwa Senene. I was busy working on a 3D Printed VR headset and bumped into Phathwa who had also just been making a 3D Printed set. We decided to look at getting into VR specific hardware and having a background in Apps and Games it was natural to then start looking at what could be done on the software side.” Gareth Steele joined the team while they were on an IBM research project. His talents as an illustrator, designer and Creative Director took the tech studio’s software to another level. With a resilient curiosity in VR Gareth became the Creative Director of the company.
In my interview with Rick he took some time to explain tech terms to me. One of these terms that have become synonymous with tech is disruptive software and, as Rick explains, this refers to technologies that challenge rigid notions of how things should be done. An example of this is 3D Printing that challenges traditional manufacturing methods.
According to Rick a creative technologist is a person with an interest in exploring new technologies with the aim to look at new methods in which technologies can be used. Another term that circulates in the tech realm is Augmented Reality and this refers to technology that overlaps digital data on to actual reality.
When asked about their involvement with the National Maker Movement Rick expresses, “We are part of the Collective involving maker related events nationally as well as teaching skills and technologies from what’s called the 4th industrial revolution. Through conferences, talks and teaching we are exposing these technologies to a larger public audience, sharing what we have learnt to grow the sector.”
The kind of work that the studio produces is based around Research and Development, Proof of Concepts and the exploration of technologies. “We do this mainly within Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and 3D Printing, along with all the new emerging technologies around this sector.” The work that the studio produces is often showcased and utilized during events.
“We develop a lot of software within VR and AR and also develop a lot of hardware to go along with our projects, such as our 3D Printed Handle headsets. We do this through collaboration with people such as Phathwa who is an electronics and 3D Printing Ninja.” With their diverse nature the studio also works on many collaborative projects, art related activities and exhibitions.
Alt Reality has worked with IBM Research Africa, WITS, the Origins Centre, SAP, Jaguar, Accenture and Samsung. “Our main passion falls within the art sector where we are constantly exploring options in this sector and trying to figure out the monetization of this area of work…Currently one of our most exciting projects is working with William Kentridge and The Centre for the Less Good Idea where we are exploring new technologies and their impact on South African Artists.”
Rick states that the vision for Alt Reality includes how they can align research and development through the merging of art and technology. “We have a vision of a technology building within the heart of Johannesburg where we can make this happen. Ideally a building with each floor focusing on new sectors within these fields such as Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality, iOT, 3D Printing, Robotics and AI. Using Art as the main driving force behind the research. Using these new discoveries, we can then look at scaling what we have learnt to make social impact projects and initiatives that could change the face of Africa. We want to show the world that South Africa, and Africa can be a technology powerhouse.”
Alt Reality’s innovation, technical expertise and love for art is pushing the way that art and technology is viewed together. They are no longer regarded as separate entities with the emergence of more and more digital artists, festivals such as Fak’ugesi and Alt Reality the barrier is being knocked down and we are moving into an era of hybridity. Rick’s aspiration to show the world what a powerhouse we are can be accomplished with virtual reality and augmented reality at their fingertips.
