Hunny Bae aka Jose Tong
March 23 – April 21, 2019
Opening Reception : March 23, Saturday 5 – 10pm
DISTRICT GALLERY
Arts Above, 112 West Avenue, 1104 Quezon City, Philippines
In 2014 a British-American scientist and a pair of Norwegian researchers (John O’Keefe, May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. Moser) were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering “an inner GPS in the brain” that enables all creatures to navigate their surroundings. The discovery of Grid Cells elucidates the 1 age-old philosophical question of how the brain creates a neurological map of the space around us and how we could navigate through complex environments.
In the 21st century, we are entering a new age of hyperreality dominated by a deluge of images, an excess of simulations. While automation and machine learning is becoming ubiquitous we ourselves become a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of biology and machine, of social reality and social fiction. We become a producer of simulations. We become disembodied entities—ephemeral avatars incarnated in social apps or gaming whose virtual realities encroach on our daily lives.
This existential reality has its effects too in the realm of architecture and placemaking. Wheeling through the highways of Manila, an endless array of digital adscreens, billboards cover many of the buildings. Alien architectural styles employed by architects do not reflect the vernacular or local history.
Games such as Pokemon Go augments reality with cute collectible creatures scattered across the virtual map of the world. The boundary between the architectural fiction and reality becomes blurred. The simulacra dissolves the specular boundary of hallucinations, the coextensivity between the mental map and the territory.
The subject of Transdimension deals with the artistic investigation on the expanding and shifting urban architectural and cultural identities and examines questions on the ephemerality of personae and architectonic spaces. Mapping Territories In Ephemeral Spaces examines the cognitive spatial map “intuitively” drawn by the Grid Cells whose spikes in neural activity in navigating a space creates a triangular or hexagonal tessellation—a geometric mental map. Using both intuitive and generative strategies, Transdimension marks the boundary between the territory and spatial memory while also mediating the connection of reality with its avatar in the virtual.
Viewing Hours: Wednesday – Sunday, 2pm – 7pm
And by appointment
Contact us: +639175373436
Invite
https://www.facebook.com/events/407487030062963/
