Gold Award Winner 2019

Refik Anadol, Efsun Erkilic, Raman Mustafa, Kian Khiaban, Ho Man Leung, Nicholas Boss, Toby Heinemann, Kerim Karaoglu, Kyle McLean, Steffan Klaue, UCSF / Neuroscape Lab Members, Adam Gazzaley - Melting Memories

“Melting Memories” is a series of digital artworks that explore the materiality of remembering by offering new insights into the representational possibilities emerging from the intersection of advanced technology and contemporary art. Comprised of data paintings, augmented data sculptures, and light projections, the project as a whole debuts new advances in technology that enable visitors to experience aesthetic interpretations of EEG data collected on the neural mechanisms of cognitive control.
Light is the major element in the experiment, used to blur and interconnect the boundaries between the two realms actual/fictional and physical/virtual. It signifies the threshold between the simulacrum space created by the projection technology, and the physical space where the viewer stands. Through the presented framework, the experiments intends to question the relativity of perception and how it informs the apprehension of our surroundings. Rather than approaching the medium as a means of escape into some disembodied techno-utopian fantasy, the project sees itself as a means of return, i.e. facilitating a temporary release from our habitual perceptions and culturally biased assumptions about being in the world, to enable us, however momentarily, to perceive ourselves and the world around us freshly.