IAC in collaboration with HiS

We are pleased to announce the awarded project for Immersive Call#2. Out of many strong proposals the jury unanimously decided to select the one by Honey Biba Beckerlee. She proposes an adaptation of her art installation; ‘Cu in Circuit’, about the use of copper in computer memory and copper’s ability to contain technological, bodily and planetary memories, thus creating a gaming aspect to an installation that enact entanglements between bodies, minerals and technology.

Beckerlee addresses the paradox between a broad cultural understanding that the internet is fundamentally immaterial and to enter Cyberspace or Virtual Reality is to enter a realm of pure ideas that left the material body of the world behind, when in reality it is based on massive consumption of raw materials, with dire consequences on every level in the process. Or as the German sound artist and professor Christina Kubisch put it during Immersive Days#2 here at IAC last year: what is sold in as “the Cloud” are in fact enormous hellholes of server halls, dark and thundering of electronic noise. Beckerlee´s proposal aims not only at investigating how immersive technologies reproduces notions of immateriality in the way we make and communicate through them, but also to what potentials might we find in them to tell differently. She describes how “each pattern in the Cu in Circuit installation contains rich narratives about the role of copper in technology, geology and biology” and how these can be unfolded in a game-like setup using augmented reality. “Each weaving will be a level in the game where the protagonist/player can take a similar role and enact copper electrons that swim through all the wires.”

Artist Biography

Honey Biba Beckerlee is interested in how visual art can challenge the idea of a coherent objective reality, such as notions of originality, individualism and anthropocentrism as well as concepts from classical physics’ such as cause and effect, linear time and objectivity. She is currently in the final year of her Practice based Ph.D. between Århus University and The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen. 

The jury

The jury of the Immersive Call on public immersion was composed as follows:

Hedvig Jalhed, Interim director at IAC                                                                                          Margot Edström, Artistic supervisor at IAC                                                                                      Lars Kristensen, Senior Lecturer in Media Arts, Aesthetics and Narration, University at Skövde                                                                                                                                            Thomas Oldrell, Director of Skövde art museum

Next main activity will be a programme around the gathering Immersive Days #3 at the end of November 2023, in which also Honey Biba Beckerlee will participate. 

Visit Honey Biba Beckerlee’s homepage here.

Image 1: Honey Biba Beckerlee, Cu in Circuit, 2019. Installation view, Digital Matters, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, 2022. Photo by David Stjernholm / Image 2: Honey Biba Beckerlee, SOLAR, 2022. Detail, Digital Matters, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, 2022. Photo by David Stjernholm / Image 3: Honey Biba Beckerlee, Swarming / Swimming, 2022. Detail, Digital Matters, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, 2022. Photo by David Stjernholm