Alma Yitzhaki, Barak Ravitz, Latifa Echakhch, Miri Segal, Miroslaw Balka, Naama Tsabar, Sarah Ortmeyer, Shai-Lee Horodi, Sigalit Landau, Yudith Levin, Tel Aviv, 8 December 2018 - 9 March 2019
מוות לשיעורין- Mort à crédit: Alma Yitzhaki, Barak Ravitz, Latifa Echakhch, Miri Segal, Miroslaw Balka, Naama Tsabar, Sarah Ortmeyer, Shai-Lee Horodi, Sigalit Landau, Yudith Levin
Statement – Miri Segal During the past ten years, I have been working as an artist creating new media installations. At the same time, I have been drawing upon my...
Statement – Miri Segal During the past ten years, I have been working as an artist creating new media installations. At the same time, I have been drawing upon my mathematics background (I have a PhD from the Hebrew University in mathematics) to collaborate with scientists in a wide variety of cross-disciplinary research projects. In my installations I use video projections in a sculptural manner. The video acts in the surrounding space to disrupt sensory suppositions about the relationship between the observer and observed, thus the viewer becomes attentive to his/her position which is simultaneously participatory and voyeuristic. A brief description of two of my works – Place de la Bonne Heure and Co-Operation – will give you an indication of the sort of work that I am doing and my artistic directions. In "Place de la Bonne Heure 2005/6" the viewer, a single viewer sits on a chair at the center of the space which serves as a viewing platform. Once the viewer sits, the chair starts revolving. On the back of the chair, adjacent to the viewer's line of vision, a projector screens a video, which moves across the walls. As the chair rotates the viewer voyages between two public squares: the Place de la Bonne Heure in Tel Aviv and the Kalandiya checkpoint (situated between Jerusalem and Ramallah). Sitting there, the viewer undertakes a double journey, like the earth, a simultaneous rotation and revolution. This journey goes to the heart of a complex reality which is political and social but also topographical, seen through a double viewpoint, that of a child (who is part of the video) and that of the viewer. "Co-Operation 2006" attempts to address the mind-body problem as well as the politics of role-playing by service agents in contemporary society. In this work, a human actor personifying an avatar moves around a public exhibition space offering himself to the control of a viewer who sits in a remote and secluded cabin. The viewer can command the actor where to go, what to say, and can see in real-time through the actor's eyes, speak through his mouth and listen through his ears. The mind of the viewer is cumbersomely projected onto the actor; creating all sorts of misunderstandings in the attempt to establish communication between the viewer and his new body. (I made a documentary film about the subject of avatars, “BRB, 2006-2007”. It was shot entirely in "Second Life"). My work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in public institutions including PS1 in New York, the Pompidou Center in Paris, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and the Israel Museum, as well as in private galleries such as the Lisson Gallery in London, Kamel Mennour Gallery in Paris and Dvir Gallery in Tel Aviv. In addition to my work in new media installations, I continue to explore the relationship between art and science by collaborating with scientists and other artists. My research relates both to science and to art. I attempt to bridge between the "two cultures" by creating a hybrid form of cross-disciplinary collaboration where some of the scientific questions are raised by myself. In 2004/5 I directed a physical computing lab at the Israeli Center for Digital Art. At the lab I worked on using electro-cardiogram signals to manipulate sound. Later on, I collaborated with Prof. Nathan Intrator, a mathematician at Tel Aviv University, in a project dealing with the sonification of bio and medical signals. We also gave a graduate seminar on this subject at Tel Aviv University. I am continuing to develop this project together with Profs. Offer Barnea and Roni Shapira from Tel Aviv University. The project, called "Music for the Heart", involves creating the interface and hardware for musical compositions that change in response to the heart beats of the listener. This project, which has several technological implications, especially in the fields of fitness and sport, creates a new platform for musical experimentation. Currently I am collaborating with a cinematographer and a leading professor of computing and future studies from Nottingham University (UK). We are examining radical changes in "the way human beings are" due to technological and scientific developments. It is analogous to Kurzweil's singularity but it doesn't focus on the full scope of the singularity. It rather deals with a much more modest imaginative development. In this project, we are imagining a new technology which is almost feasible today. It involves a non-invasive brain computer interface (BCI) which can be used regularly for daily life. We would like to examine the social and psychological implications of this on the human soul in particular our relationship with our most intimate memories. This examination will be presented in the form in a multi-media installation, partially interactive, that will be exhibited in 2010 in Tel Aviv and later on in Paris. It is supported by the Israeli Film Foundation. Miri Segal, 2009 Satoshi Nakamoto is a psodonym for the creator of the Bitcoin. I was comisioned by Lucie Fontaine to create his portrait. The lenticular print is composed of several images. Moving the eyes from left side to right you will first see the identikit used online as Nakamoto’s portrait, i discovered that this image was created by National Geographic in 2011 to portray the average person on earth. On the right side you see Sharbat Gula, the afghan girl, which is the most famous image from National Geographic. Known to everyone in the west, yet she remained completely anonymous in her own country.