Love in a cold climate: Russian and UK artists 'seek truths' through cyberart

Fake photos, hacking and surveillance are all explored in a major new exhibition bringing together works from Russian and British cyber-artists.

The show, entitled Creative Machine 2, features works from leading practitioners from the CYLAND collective based in St Petersburg and Goldsmiths, University of London.

Against a wider backdrop of negative UK/Russian cyber-relations the show represents seeks to establish “new artistic truths” through the dynamic cultural and technological collaboration between artists from the two countries.

The exhibition, at the St James Hatcham Building on Goldsmiths’ New Cross campus, is open to the public from 10am-6pm, 8 November-18 November 2018.

Curators William Latham and Frederic Fol Leymarie, both Professors in the Department of Computing at Goldsmiths, and Anna Frants and Elena Gubanova, from the CYLAND collective, have selected works which address three main themes.

The three themes are: Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality; machine learning and hacking; and fakes and surveillance. The works on show include VR installations, cyberart installations, video installations, sculptures and Artificial IntelligenceI/machine learning installations.

The free show has been developed by CYLAND and Goldsmiths in partnership with the Hermitage Museum Youth Education Center and the Leonardo Journal (MIT Press).

Professor Latham said: “This show deals with many of the tricky global technological themes in the news today: cyber-hacking, surveillance and fakes, combined with the growing use of Artificial Intelligence in the systems which we all use.

“In this space where any understanding of the truth becomes obfuscated, this exhibition shows how Russian and UK artists are working to produce works of art which harness these technologies to create new artistic truths.”

CYLAND co-curators Anna Frants and Elena Gubanova said: “We’re delighted to be collaborating with Goldsmiths and Co-Hosting Creative Machine 2 by showcasing the works of contemporary Russian artists based in St Petersburg, Belgium and the US.”

Artists showing at Creative Machine 2 are: Marina Alekseeva, Memo Akten, Laura Dekker, Alexandra Dementieva, Jake Elwes, Anna Frants, Alexey Grachev, Sergey Komarov, Elena Gubanova, Ivan Govorkov, Sergey Katran, Parashkev Nachev, Vitaly Pushnitsky, Annie Tadne, Nye Thompson, William Latham, Stephen Todd, Lance Putnam, Guido Salimbeni, Peter Todd, Andy Lomas and Brigitta Zics.