We spoke to both the director of Scorpios and the artists of the exhibition, Random International and Sougwen Chung, about Evolving Perspectives, the Encounters program exhibition running at Scorpios from July to September 2024
Interview: Merve Akar Akgün
Scorpios Bodrum. Fotoğraf: Georg Roske
The Encounters programme, now in its second year, builds on the success of the inaugural edition in 2023. That year featured Turkish AI artist and director Refik Anadol in collaboration with the Yawanawa Indigenous communities of Brazil’s Amazon, attracting over half a million attendees, raising $1.5 million for the preservation campaign and generating $3 million in artwork sales.
Agota Czumbil
Project/Label Manager Encounters & Scorpios Music
The renowned beach concept and creative gathering place Scorpios has its new place in Bodrum and makes collaboration with HOFA Gallery. Your summer cultural arts program, Encounters is started. What is the story behind this project?
Encounters was born in 2023 as an exploratory project and cultural initiative aimed at bringing together contemporary artists, musicians and the public through a series of live performances. It was inspired by the desire to expand and redefine Scorpios’ signature beach experience and informed by co-founder Thomas Heyne’s personal interest in the fields of art and technology. As the name suggests, the initiative is all about facilitating thought-provoking encounters between creatives from different fields. With a strong focus on the intersection of technology and nature, last year, for example, Encounters hosted newly commissioned works of art by a selection of six contemporary artists who collaborated with eight musicians. The program is curated by HOFA Gallery and hosted by Scorpios.
Scorpios Bodrum. Fotoğraf: Georg Roske
Running for four weeks, the program will feature immersive installations in Scorpios' new purpose built multicultural temple, a ritual space designed to inspire contemplation and creative experimentation. You think that the unique environment of Scorpios will merge ancient local knowledge with visual art and offer visitors an opportunity to engage deeply with the artists' visions. This is amazing. How do you think art transforms venues? What is art to you and how you reflect your vision into this program? (Including the choice of the partner as well as artists…)
We are interested in the kind of art that puts different ideas and sensitivities in conversation, raising new questions about ourselves and the world around us. Among other things, the idea is to encourage conversations and collaborations with unexpected results. There is a lot of beauty and energy in this. The Ritual Space makes the perfect backdrop and container for this kind of work. The monumental, structure and signature design ignite contemplation, while welcoming different types of practices.
Art becomes a popular bridge between many disciplines and I think it’s creates a very enriching environment. And how it is when it comes to commercial concerns? Do you think art could stay neutral even if it’s in a lavish Mediteranean sanctuary?
As Thomas Heyne, co-founder of Scorpios, notes, the nature of hospitality and luxury environments is changing: "These places are growing up, and so are the tastes of those spending time here. The very idea of luxury is changing". By making space for immersive installations and panel talks, Scorpios is exploring notions of community and wellbeing that go beyond traditional beach and wellness experiences to encompass art and creative exchange. This shift is an opportunity for guests to broaden their experience at Scorpios—unwind but also connect with the views of pioneering artists, and leave feeling inspired. At the same time, Encounters welcomes people beyond the Scorpios community and may be enjoyed for free, upon reservation.
Random International
Random International
Random International is an art collective known for creating innovative works that explore the intersection of art, technology, and human perception. You are particularly renowned for your immersive, interactive installations that often incorporate digital technology to engage viewers in unique ways. What motivated you about summer and Bodrum, Turkey for your art?
First of all, the location (by which we mean the very room at the Scorpios compound in which we get to show the work) was an immediate motivation. What a beautiful analogue space to work in! Then the way the project evolved was very organic and more of a dialogue between Elio and his team, Scorpios and the studio is always motivating. To work with partners that are aligned with the studio’s lust for experimentation… Overall, When Tomorrow Comes at Scorpios gave us the opportunity to develop the wider eco-system that the algorithm that is at the core of the generative interactive work lives in. We have been busy all summer breeding a collection of hundreds of different digital and printed art works that are celebrating different aspects of the mother work and we can’t wait to launch the entire suite together!
The famous Rain Room (2012) installation where visitors can walk through a field of falling water without getting wet, as the water automatically stops wherever a person is detected was an unforgettable experience. This piece highlights their interest in human interaction with technology and the natural world. Another notable work of you is Living Room (2022), which explores the choreography between humans and machines. Your art often challenges the boundaries between the viewer and the artwork, making the audience an active participant in the experience. What would Scorpios visitor should expect from your artworks?
When Tomorrow Comes is in many ways a response to the ritual qualities of the very space it’s shown in; as a species, human kind has not yet created many physical rituals that help us engage with all the weird (and possibly soon superior) other kinds of intelligence that we see emerging at the moment. So we might as well try to familiarise ourselves with tomorrow’s strange new entities, which is what we are playing with in the work we present here. We feel that our encounters with third kind of (artificial) intelligences will be very different from what we expect, and we also believe that it’s going to be a different kind of experience entirely once we are engaging with physically embedded forms of intelligence. That’s where we pick up the conversation in building an emotional playful prototype for those encounters and an entire suite of beautiful collectibles to memorise the experience.
How do you balance your art with commission works? What is your perception of independent art?
There’s no difference for the studio…all our work is self initiated, and most of the work is brought to life together with partners - be that an institution, a gallery, a collector or any other commissioning entity.
What is your perception of independent art?
In a time where attention is hyper-commodified, asking people to give theirs to our work is something we are very conscious of, grateful for and try to honour by creating the most unconditional experience of the art itself for our audiences.
If the art itself is in fact independent is something to argue about…the experience of the work however should be!
Sougwen Chung
Sougwen Chung. Fotoğraf: Alex-Kwan
Your unique ability to merge traditional art techniques with advanced technology sets you apart in the contemporary art world. Your work not only challenges the boundaries of creativity and authorship but also sparks important conversations about the role of technology in our lives. By collaborating with machines, your art offers a glimpse into the potential future of human-robot relationships, making you one of the most forward-thinking and influential artists of our time. What motivated you about summer and Bodrum, Turkey for your art?
It has been many years since I've been in Turkey to perform -Istanbul was and continues to be one of my favourite cities. While I've not visited Bodrum yet, I'm eager to visit and absorb its atmosphere for the first time.
For me, art is ritualistic and relational – a process of continuous creation and re-creation, like seasons coming and going. Sharing the world of the work through performance is a gift. It's a way to keep the process of making constantly in-flux; shaped by where we share and the traces it leaves. Like seasons coming and going. All rituals, old and new, are vital forms of world-building.It's been the joy of my life to create worlds within my work, to be able to set my own trajectory for my creative and technical curiosities. Part of what I believe is that the borders between what we call traditional and what we call advanced should be fundamentally challenged, and reinvented. Tradition, like technology, is relational. That which is called traditional art has so much to say about our current moment, and advanced technology is often steeped in a complex history. The radical physicality of art movements like the Gutai collective in post-war Japan and the history of cybernetics that informs how we use technology today. These inspirations are all laden in my work with robotics, biosensors, machine learning and spatial data.
If my childhood self learned of what I do every day in my life now, they would have never believed it. A lot of what I do now is shaped by my early life. I learned musical instruments and drawing at a young age alongside code and digital culture. To an extent they were one and the same, to me. They were and they still are. There is something unique to that period of life: That childhood mental porosity. Sometimes it's called innocence or wonder That I've been thinking about lately.
How do you envision the evolution of your collaborative relationship with D.O.U.G. (Drawing Operations Unit Generation) in the next decade, and how might advancements in AI and robotics influence the direction of your artistic practice?
In the past 10 years of drawing with D.O.U.G. has been a journey – challenging the concepts of authorship, agency, collaboration and control through artistic engineering and creative expression. The project grew from what could have been simple robotic automation into something more – I feel like we’re just getting started. It started with breaking the idea of what a robotic arm was meant to do. I like to say that Artists are good at breaking things. And from that, we can change, grow, and reimagine new possibilities...
Looking ahead, I’m excited about continuing this journey, particularly with the incubation of R.O.S., a project inspired by research into xenobots and bioengineering and bombyx mori silk fibroin as a bio-conductor. I’m inspired by engineering as growth, as dynamic as a living ecosystem. This project, along with the development of the Flora Rearing Agricultural Network, represents the next phase of my work—exploring the intersections between robotics, nature, and art. These endeavors are a continuation of the same ethos that drives my work with D.O.U.G., but they also open new avenues for exploring the potentialities of nature and technology.
I've been thinking about this quote by Giles Simondon “"One of the great myths of modernity is the robot metaphor, a machine that is untouchable and self-oriented. A robot does not exist, it is not a machine, as much as a statue is not a living being, but only a product of imagination, of fictive fabrication, and of the art of illusion."
It resonates with me because it is about unlearning what you know about machines in order to engage in a deeper understanding about machines. Like the saying by Robert Irwin goes “Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees”.
Your work often explores the interplay between human creativity and machine intelligence. In your view, what are the ethical implications of co-creating art with AI, and how do you navigate the balance between human input and machine autonomy in your projects?
The term "AI" is often misunderstood or oversimplified. What do we mean when we invoke a term like "AI?" Certainly, there is no such thing as a single "artificial intelligence" because there's no such thing as a single "natural intelligence". In my work, I build machine learning systems, AI systems, that comprise a suite of technologies that can be explored in myriad ways.
My work with D.O.U.G. has been about deepening my engagement with my own data -- about my drawings, environment, and my own meditation in the form of brainwave states. Through creative expression the work explores different modes of criticality, communication and subjecthood. Caution should be exercised when flattening the term AI as the reality is often far more complex, provocative, and true.
It’s essential to avoid flattening the concept of AI into something monolithic or simplistic. Instead, I approach AI systems as a way to engage in an embodied dialogue between human and machine—a dialogue that challenges our preconceived notions of cybernetics and subjecthood.
The hope is that through art we can collectively navigate the prevalent questions of our time regarding technology, philosophy and society with the criticality, creativity and the care they deserve.
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