What do you say, do or make when the end is nigh? In Conversations at the end of the world, a new piece by Kris Verdonck / A Two Dogs Company for large auditoria, five figures find themselves in an empty theatre space. They have only their bodies, their capabilities and the time that is left to them. Together these five figures, played by Johan Leysen, Jan Steen, Jeroen Van der Ven, José Kuijpers and the renowned pianist Marino Formenti, create a portrait of humankind in the crazy twentieth century – a century in which man’s image has been significantly eroded and whose wounds we still carry with us today. Waiting for the catastrophe that is inevitably coming, or in the midst of it, they welcome the audience to ‘a last evening’. When faced with death, the characters react with boredom, panic, madness, lethargy, nonsense and absurdity. Their absurdity is fed by the crazy logic of the war, ecological disasters, and all kinds of crises. Despite being in shock, they try to understand what is going on outside, and it is this absurd reaction to a cruel reality that lies behind this new project.

A Two Dogs Company/Kris Verdonck
Het Zuidelijk Toneel
Het Theaterfestival
Nederlands Theater Festival
Stadsschouwburg Leeuwarden

The Season’s Thinker, Season’s Composer and Season’s Photographer in a conversation about the cosmos. For centuries people have been fascinated by the immensity and the origin of the cosmos. It is a much-loved artistic and scientific theme. In his seasonal images, artist Dries Segers evokes the beauty and mystery of the universe. Cosmologist Thomas Hertog delves deeper into the scientific side. The musical thread running through this cosmic opening night comes courtesy of Season’s Composer Annelies Van Parys.

Concertgebouw Brugge

FlyAI creates a situation where the fate of a colony of living houseflies is determined by the accuracy of artificial intelligence software. The installation uses the TensorFlow machine learning image recognition library to classify images of live houseflies. As the flies fly and land in front of a camera, their image is captured. The captured image is classified by the image recognition software and a list of guessed items is ranked 1 through 5. Each of the items is assigned a percentage based on how likely the software thinks that the listed item is what it sees. If “fly” is ranked number 1 on the list, a pump delivers water and nutrients to the colony based on the percentage of the ranking. If “fly” is not ranked number 1 the pump does not deliver water and nutrients to the colony. The system is setup to run indefinitely with an indeterminate outcome.

David Bowen
Przemiany Festival 2018

Until 7 October 2018

tele-present water - 2011 draws information from the intensity and movement of the water in a remote location. The wave intensity and frequency collected from the buoy is scaled and transferred to the mechanical grid structure, resulting in a simulation of the physical effects caused by the movement of water from this distant unknown location. This work physically replicates a remote experience and makes observation of the activity of an isolated object, otherwise lost at sea, possible through direct communication.

David Bowen
http://www.123data.paris
https://fondation.edf.com/fr/expositions/1-2-3

Until 16 September 2018

The expanded version of tele-present wind  by David Bowen consists of a series of 126 x/y tilting mechanical devices connected to thin dried plant stalks installed in a gallery and a dried plant stalk connected to an accelerometer installed outdoors. When the wind blows it causes the stalk outside to sway. The accelerometer detects this movement transmitting the motion to the grouping of devices in the gallery. Therefore, the stalks in the gallery space move in real-time and in unison based on the movement of the wind outside.

David Bowen
Azkuna Zentroa

Until 24 September 2018

fly revolver, 2013
 is based on the activities of a collection of houseflies, this device controls a revolver. The flies live inside an acrylic sphere with a target backdrop. As the flies move and interact inside their home they fly in front of and land on the target. These movements are collected via video. The movements are processed with custom software and output to a robotic device that aims the revolver in real-time based on the flies’ relative location on the target. When a single fly is detected the revolver simply follows the movement of that fly. If several flies are in the field of view the software moves the revolver based on the activities of the collective. If a fly is detected in the center of the target the trigger of the revolver is pulled. In this way, the flies are essentially the brain of the device controlling the revolver by determining where it is aimed and when it is fired.

CAFA Art Museum
Beijing Media Art Biennale

Until 22 September, 2018

One person exhibition by David Bowen titled observers and creators at the Cohen Gallery, Brown University, Providence.