Raitis Smits - Emerging Techno-Ecological Art Practices - the Poetics of Green Energy

Today we are witnessing the transformation process from new media to post media situation which is characterized not only by equality and convergence of different media technologies but also by emergence of new "techno-ecological" paradigm. Artists, like those from the Renewable Network who once were in vanguard exploring digital frontiers, today are among those who are engaged in the quest for a more sustainable future. By working together with scientists and farmers, urban gardeners and rural communities, media archeologists and future visionaries, the artists are bringing to foreground ecological issues, yet staying rooted in new media. Raitis Smits in his lecture will talk about some of his and artists collective RIXC projects which involve creative explorations of some of the former Soviet secret military objects up to the most recent experiments with bacteria fuel cells and how these technology can be approached through the artistic perspective.
Since 2012 RIXC artists, together with scientists, have experimented with MFCs (microbial fuel cells) - a next generation bio-technology, making sonifications of bacterial activity in dark gallery spaces, hosting public DIY workshops on how to build bacteria cells, and installing bio-energy 'power-stations' outdoors in ponds. Bacteria, who live in dirty water, waste, soil, inside of our bodies, that is, everywhere where they can 'eat' organic matter and where there is nearly no oxygen, release free electrons. An artwork Biotricity makes visible and audible the invisible activity of nature which is happening at the bottom of a pond, and which otherwise we can neither see nor hear.

http://rixc.org

http://renewable.rixc.lv

Biography

Raitis Smits is artist, curator and innovator in science and emerging media technologies and founder of RIXC - a Riga based artist collective and center for new media culture (http://rixc.org), curator of Art+Communication festivals, and co-editor of Acoustic Space - a peer-reviewed journal.
He works together with Rasa Smite and their art is long-lasting , process-based, experimental, networked and visionary. Their work includes: 'internet radio' (1997), 'locative media' (2003), 'renewable energy' (2009), 'techno-ecologies' (2011) and 'human-plant communication' (2012).
Raitis Smits also lecture at universities, conferences and festivals in Latvia and Europe on contemporary media art theories and practices. Raitis Smits is an Assistant Professor at the Latvian Academy of Arts, and he will defend his PhD thesis on "New Media Art. The problematics of preservation and representation" in March 2015. Recently together with Rasa Smite he organized the 5th Media Art Histories: ReNew conference in Riga, 2013, and co-curated the large-scale international exhibition FIELDS in Riga in 2014.