Tanja Vujinović: MetaVrt Sphere2 |
Loža Gallery, Koper |
23rd of August 2019 – 20th of October 2019 |
Opening: Friday, 23rd of August 2019, at 8.00 pm

Tanja Vujinović, Carboflora

Tanja Vujinović, Carboflora

Tanja Vujinović, Fountain

Tanja Vujinović, MetaVrt – Sphere2

Tanja Vujinović, MetaSphere2 – Osmosis
For the first time at the Piran Coastal Galleries we have the pleasure to present the internationally renowned artist TANJA VUJINOVIĆ with the exhibition MetaVrt Sphere2 at the Loggia Gallery in Koper. For over twenty years she researched and combined traditional artistic disciplines with new technologies focusing on the impact they have on man and nature. In his work she explores the relationships between human subjectivity, technology and environment. Inspired by scenarios of the past, present and possible futures, she develops hybrid installations as poetic systems for thinking about the world. Her artworks are conceptual, intuitive, encourages us to think and are also a sensory experience.
New projects and works related to the metaphor of the garden are presented at the Loža Gallery. These are visions of the gardens of the future, where bionic systems work in synergy with the natural environment, people and renewed technologies. The artist wrote: “MetaVrt Sphere2 is an ecosystem made up of futuristic machines as proto-forms. These objects a sort of synthetic machine-creatures, are inspired by paleobotany, artificial intelligence technologies, plasma physics and nanostructured materials. Through the virtual world and physical installations I explore the interweaving of the synthetic and the natural. This work connects past and future and intertwine science with mythology. As the title suggests I am inspired by many metaphors related to gardens and their elements. Sphera2 is composed by Karboflora, Fontana, Arbora and Genera. Carboflora is an infinite virtual simulation in which the virtual flora grows in accordance with the movement of the measured values of the pollutants in the air. Fontana cleans the water with plasma and sprays it into the atmosphere. Genera cleans the air with the help of nanotubes. Arbora analyzes the emotional states that are reflected in the voice and generates a binaural sound.
The Carboflora environment tracks the quantities of harmful particles in the atmosphere. Levels of harmful particles affect the quality of life of plants in the virtual system. The properties of the virtual plants are linked to a database that provides data on the current air quality in real time. The virtual environment is inhabited by plants that are an echo of the terrestrial flora of hundreds of millions of years ago, more precisely the plants of the Carboniferous period. The plants, as a kind of proto-forms, reflect the past and the possible future in which emissions of substances harmful to the environment could be limited.
Fountains are often placed at the centre of gardens and parks, they symbolically reflect the historical and cosmological role of water as crucial for life on Earth. Water is sometimes called “the fourth state of matter"; atmospheric plasma is an ionized gas that acts like small lightning bolts. In scientific research, plasma is used for various purposes. Plasma can destroy harmful microbes found in a variety of environments, including water. Plasma water treatment is one of the potential technologies of the future, water treated in this way has a double role: it is an agent of change and a symbol of growth and purity.
Arbora is an old blue tree in the MetaGarden of the Sphere2, it is impregnated with a neural network that recognizes human responses and interacts with them. The three protective structures that accompany the virtual environment of Arbora and Carboflora are inspired by the plants of the Carboniferous. The outer surfaces of some objects are covered with scales, just like the lepidodendron tree, which existed about 300 million years ago. The fossils of this plant ignited the imagination of our ancestors and may even be responsible for the invention of dragons. Arbora perceives the emotions expressed in the human voice. A specially developed and trained neural network decrypts the emotional components encoded in the voice.
Genera is a model of a futuristic indoor air purifier. The photocatalytic air purifier uses the principles of photocatalytic decomposition of organic compounds, bacteria and other potentially harmful substances. Contaminants decompose on the surface of titanium dioxide nanotubes (a photocatalyst that becomes active when illuminated by UV light) that grow on a titanium substrate by an electrochemical process. In MetaGarden's future there may be branch-shaped devices that would keep the concentration of pathogens in the air at safe levels.
MetaVrt is a project that reflects humanity's complex attitude towards its technologically enhanced nature-cultural environment and focuses on a specific problem within each of the installations. Historically the garden, as a protected environment, has established itself as a special space for human contact with nature, for recreation and reflection. Gardens can also be microcosms that temporarily separate a person from the rest of the world and incorporate them into a purely unique plot. As Michel Foucault would say “The garden is the smallest parcel of the world and then it is the totality of the world". One of the possible paths towards the MetaGardens of the future is the co-creation between nature and engineering of the next civilization defined by biomimicry.
Biography
Tanja Vujinović studied design, visual arts and philosophy. She graduated in 1999 from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Belgrade Department of Painting and she studied at the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts with Jan Dibbets. In 2010 she obtained the title of Doctor of Science in the field of Philosophy and Theory of Visual Culture at the Faculty of Humanities in Koper.
Since 1997 his works have been exhibited in important galleries and museums around the world, such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Strasbourg, the Kunstpalast Museum in Düsseldorf, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, the Kunsthaus in Merano, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Istanbul and Ljubljana, the Vasarely Foundation Museum in Aix en Provence, the Künstlerhaus in Vienna. Her work has been presented at festivals such as ISEA2009 in Belfast, Ars Electronica in Linz, Kinetica Art Fair in London, Spor Festival in Aarhus, FILE Festival in Sao Paulo and FILE RIO in Rio de Janeiro.
GROUP EXHIBITIONS (SELECTION): TV transmitters / Surveillance / Image decay, e-flux video rental (EVR), Museum of Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, 2016; UNPAINTED lab 3.0, Kesselhalle MMA, Munich, 2016; MFRU-KIBLIX, Kibla portal, Maribor, 2015; Feedback, Museum of Contemporary Art (MSU), Zagreb, 2014; Password: Graphics, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka, 2014; Kinetica Art Fair, P3, University of Westminster, London, 2011; Are we human? Evolution and Art, Inspace, New Media Scotland, Edinburgh, 2010; Inter-cool 3.0, Hartware MedienKunstVerein (HMKV), Dortmund, 2010; DIVA Station, Gateway to Archives of Media Art (GAMA), Brucknerhaus, Ars Electronica, Linz, 2009; noise = noise, The Foundry, London, 2009; ISEA2009, Waterfront Hall, Belfast, 2009; sound: frame, Kunstlerhaus, Vienna, 2009; Artradio, Cornerhouse Gallery, Manchester, 2007; FILE RIO, Oi Futuro Cultural Center, Rio de Janeiro, 2009; SPOR, Contemporary music and the art of sound, Musikhuset, Aarhus, 2008; Madrid Abierto´07, La Casa Encendida, Madrid, 2007; Euroscreen21, Museum of Contemporary Art, Istanbul, 2005; Euroscreen21, Kunst Palast Museum, Duesseldorf, 2004; A: D: A: P: T Festival, Media for Ruins, Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, 2003; DNArt, Gen. Ethics and Visions, Kunsthaus, Merano, 2002; Birth and rebirth of video art in the Balkans, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Strasbourg, 2005; Visions projected, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Strasbourg, 2001;
SOLO EXHIBITIONS (SELECTION): Universal Objects, Gallery of Science and Technology, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, art + science festival, CPN, Belgrade, 2017; Superohm, Galleria Kapelica, Ljubljana, 2011; Supermono 2/3, Galleria Kapelica, Ljubljana, 2008; Dinamo, Cankarjev dom, Mala Galerija, Ljubljana, 2005; Hardbody, Contemporary Art Gallery, Celje, 2003; Variola Vera / X Project, Skopje City Museum, Skopje, 2001; Deadlock, Kunstfabrik BBK, Wuppertal, 1999; Edgeward, Gallery of the Belgrade Cultural Center, Belgrade, 2001.
Took part in the MetaVrt Sphere2 project: dr. Vid Podpečan, Department of Knowledge Technologies, Jožef Stefan Institute; Jan Kusej; Gaja Boc; Sara Bertoncelj Čadež; Arijana Filipić, Department of Biotechnology and Systems Biology, National Institute of Biology; dr. Gregor Primc, Department of Surface Technology, Jožef Stefan Institute; dr. Luka Suhadolnik, Department of Nanostructured Materials, Jožef Stefan Institute; Maja Koblar, Center for Electron Microscopy and Microanalysis (CEMM), Jožef Stefan Institute; Gregor Krpic; Derek Snyder; Dariusz Andrulonis and Roman Bevc.
A Special thanks goes to: prof. Nadi Lavrač, Department of Knowledge Technologies, Jožef Stefan Institute; Stephanu Doepner, C2; prof. Saši Novak, Department of Nanostructured Materials, Jožef Stefan Institute; dr. Jeleni Guga; dr. Zoran Lj. Petrović, Institute of Physics, University of Belgrade; Lenart Krajnec; Tomot Peru, RogLab and all the others involved.
The MetaVrt Sphere2 project was produced by the Piran Coastal Galleries and the Ultramono Institute and was supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, the Municipality of Koper and the Department of Culture of the City of Ljubljana.
Photo: photo from the author’s archive