Fito Segrera | Eyebeam

Fito Segrera is an artist and creative technologist working at the intersection between art, philosophy and technology. Co’Founder and director of Pachanixi CNFT. Segrera’s philosophical and poetic systems investigate our conventional models of cognition and perception, the limitations of Mind and our relationship with the world and ourselves. His current artistic practice attempts to use the rationality of artificial intelligence to lift the veil of the irrational by exposing the errors behind machine learning and cognitive computing systems. Segrera’s installations and sculptures act as instruments for understanding the limitations of human perception and our ideas about the nature of reality.

MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons, The New School in New York, BFA Fine Arts and Audiovisual + Multimedia Production for Universidad de Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano. Fulbright scholar and winner of several international grants for research and creation in the field of new media arts. Director of Research and Creation at Chronus Art Center from 2015 until 2019 where he set up the institutions’ research lab. Visiting lecturer and studio professor in the topics of machine learning and artificial intelligence for artists at the Chinese Academy of fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing, the Chinese Academy of Arts (CAA) and Shanghai School of Visual Arts (SIVA).

His work has been exhibited internationally in festivals and events such as: Open Codes 2 at ZKM Center for Art and New Media in Karlsruhe (Germany), “I am here to learn: On Machinic Interpretations of the World” at Frankfurter Kunstverein in Frankfurt (Germany), “UNREAL: The Algorithmic Present” at HEK House of Electronic Arts in Basel (Switzerland), “Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Computers So Intriguing, So Nonsensical?” at CAC Chronus Art Center in Shanghai (China), Future Intelligence: AI Art at Tank Museum in Shanghai (China), “The 6th Guanzhou Triennial at Guandong Museum of Art in Guanzhou (China), “9th Vladivostok International Biennale” in Vladivostok (Russia), “VARIATIONS” in Paris (France), “PLUNC Festival” in Lisbon (Portugal), “SIGGRAPH” in Vancouver (Canada), “Collision 20 & 21” at Boston’s Ciberarts Gallery (U.S.A), “Huston International Performance Biennale” in Huston (U.S.A), “SXSW” in Austin (U.S.A), “Emoji” at EYEBEAM in New York (U.S.A).

Emoji Art & Design Show (2013)

Curated by Julia Kaganskiy and Zoe Salditch.

The Emoji Art & Design Show surveyed the spread of emoji through popular culture with an art exhibition and Emoji Pop-Up Market.

In today’s visually oriented culture, which increasingly communicates through images rather than text, emoji comprise a kind of “visual vernacular,” a language that conveys humor, ambiguity and personality as well as meaning.

This visual form of communication isn’t necessarily new—from cave paintings, to hieroglyphics, to religious and mythological symbols encoded in traditional painting and sculpture, we’ve been communicating through images since the dawn of mankind—but its dominance in culture today, especially among millennials, seems to indicate a greater shift in our approach to self-expression.

An examination of the emoji zeitgeist, The Emoji Art & Design Show features works of art and design selected through an open call. The works presented cover a wide range of mediums from digital prints, sculptures, video and performance art, tackling themes such as emotional ambiguity, symbology, and visual communication. Works in the show explore ideas rooted in both pop and visual culture—appropriating and inserting emoji into the art history cannon, hypnotic moving images, emoji photo apps, inherent translation difficulties, and a desire for more emoji characters are represented in this exhibition.

Featuring Original Works by:

Genie Alfonzo
Fahad Alhunaif
Kim Asendorf & Emilio Gomariz aka Maadonna
Jeff Baij, Al Bedell, Zoe Gholson & Michael Manning
Man Bartlett & Jacinda Russell
Genevieve Belleveau
Maya Ben-Ezer
Fred Benenson
Mike Burakoff
Zoë Burnett
Cara Rose Defabio
Kwok Pan Fung
Carla Gannis
Jeanette Hayes
Ibon Mainar
Becca McCharen
Ramsey Nasser & Addie Wagenknecht
Liza Nelson
Luciel Perte & Noah Spidermen
Matthew Rothenberg
Arkadiy Ryabin
Fito Segrera & Emilio Vavarella
Kyle M. F. Williams

Opening Reception

Thursday, December 12th, 2013

7:00PM – 9:00PM

Panel and Closing Reception

‘I Have No Words: Emoji and the New Visual Vernacular’

Saturday, December 14th, 2013

3:00PM-5:00PM

TRANSICONMORPHOSIS Performance Schedule:

Wednesday December 18, 12:30-1:30PM

Thursday December 19, 2:00PM-3:00PM

Friday December 20, 2:00PM-3:00PM

TRANSICONMORPHOSIS, (2013)

Mixed media installation and performance. Variable dimensions.

TRANSICONMORPHOSIS is an interactive artwork developed in collaboration with Fito Segrera that proposes an ambiguous and experimental communication system for the near future, the result of a theoretical reflection on the development of new forms of technological communication, their effects on human beings, as well as their political effects. In TRANSICONMORPHOSIS, a conventional chat service hosted on a computer is interfaced with a series of electrodes connected to the face of the artist; on the other side of the exhibition space another computer allows a member of the audience to chat with the artist. The system focuses on facial expressions, and translates the emoticon received through the chat into electrical impulses that force the artist’s facial features to mimic the expression of each emoticon.

If in the future the possibility of face-to-face communication becomes less widely used and written communication becomes crystallized in a series of immutable forms, humans will lose the empathic abilities that today are, in part, reproduced by emoji and emoticons. If humanity fails to invent new metamorphoses, and new emoji, these devices will be diffused worldwide.