Topographies of Resistance

Topographies of Resistance

Vishal Kumaraswamy, Aarti Jadu, Nancy Mauro Flude

Curated by Priya Namana

Topographies of resistance, locates the poetic in practices that trace geographies of resistance through sense led questions resting between familiar and unfamiliar spaces. It maps linear tangents back to its circular genealogies and regulates a visceral response to lived experiences of inherited and learnt socio-cultural frameworks and algorithms. The textures of the three works  offer insightful internal rhythms that broadly connect to the language of the others.

AARTI JADU

This audio is an excerpt from a sound artwork Embodiments. Embodiments IRL is a multichannel sound work for pathways and wayfinding, designed to reduce the adverse effects of industrial noise creating places to rest and regulate within urban space. This is reflected online seeing the digital platforms, in particular gallery sites, as a public space. Embodiments in this iteration sits in the transience within the website menu just as it’s designed for physical public intervention, as a rupture in the thick noise of the internet and our thoughts.

This project employs Indian sound theories [rāga music] and knowledge systems, drawing inspiration from Hindu temples where architecture and frequencies correlate with the human body.

Accompanying the installation is a creative program (1 + 2 November 2022) of artistic responses to the work, both performative and interactive, as well as facilitated embodied practices at No Vacancy Gallery. Featuring Tina Stefanou, Jordan Lacey, Rohan Rebeiro, Vinod Prasanna, Zoltan Fecso and Mykah DeRose.

This project was co-produced by the City of Melbourne and Testing Grounds for Test Sites Phase 2, with a trace object exhibited at ACCA for Who's Afraid of Public Space? 2021-2022.

VISHAL KUMARASWAMY

your dataset won't let me thrive / your dataset must die'* are a pair of video essays that seek to counter the mythologies surrounding Artificial Intelligence datasets & machine learning algorithms carried out as a comparative study of the works of the Black Beat Poet Bob Kaufman and the Bahujan (lower caste) poet Siddalingaiah. Words from each poet are input into the text based neural network GPT-2 to generate further linguistic iterations and the failure of the algorithm to generate text drawn from sufficient references to Black & Bahujan literature reveal the encoded biases within its dataset. This is assembled alongside the visual aesthetics  drawn from generative AI imagery of brown faces, creative programming & electronically generated sonic textures to trace the origins of encoded biases across multiple machine learning algorithms to the harmful foundational mythologies surrounding Caste & Race.

NANCY MAURO FLUDE

./Nancy_Mauro-Flude<br>../A_Crystalline_Sphere (2022)<br>.../runtime 03.26 provides an insight into why we may need to have a more attentive intimacy with our computing tools and materials. It gestures to  the act of critical thinking about these tools, exploring holistic computing paradigms; how code can speak literature, logic, and maths. The net art work contains different layers of abstraction and links them to the physical world of processors and memory chips as material to ruminate on what new forms might emerge.

By engaging with conceptual discussions around critical media philosophy occur alongside experiential engagement with minimal text-based computing practices. It asserts how we are able to be intimate with our own computers and write poetry with their logic. The rationale that coding isn’t something that just happens behind our screens, emphasises an effective way of absorbing how to embody the materiality of language. The artist acknowledges the digital colonialist practices surrounding the computer, the programmer, the relationship they have with each other, and the environments they create together. Using spatial and narrative metaphors illuminates how meaning is created for us and our machines. The work draws from dance and software studies, digital sociology, ecofeminism and materialist Informatics.