Hysteresis combines a queer performance with a series of video projections obtained by manipulating AI software to produce visual lags, starting from a suite of analog drawings. A visual translation of the concepts of hysteria and hysteresis as abstract as it is flamboyant.
In Hysteresis, the author uses machine learning techniques as a method for visual manipulation of drawings recorded in the database of an AI software. The result is a fluid rift of visual details, projected by Robert Seidl onto the bodily surface of a performer caught in fluid stage movement. Bodily movement often intervenes in the projection’s motility and dictates its meaning. Visual disruption produces semantic anguish upon encountering the hysterical manifestation of an AI, whose visual translation is simultaneously flamboyant, baroque, fluid, and symbolically disparate. (Emilian Lungu)
Robert Seidel (b. 1977) is an artist and curator living in Berlin and Jena. He began his studies in biology before transferring to the Bauhaus University Weimar to complete his degree in media design. His projections, installations and experimental films have been shown in numerous festivals, at galleries and museums such as the Palais des Beaux-Arts Lille, ZKM Karlsruhe, Art Center Nabi Seoul, Young Projects Los Angeles, Museum of Image and Sound São Paulo and MOCA Taipei. In his work he is interested in pushing the boundaries of abstracted beauty through cinematographic approaches, as well as ones drawn from science and technology.