Amir Baradaran Growing Panes, 1/12

Growing Panes  (2012) is a performance art piece that tests the limits of perception, reality, and belief following the advent of Augmented Reality (AR). Spectacle, nature, art and technology are juxtaposed to query traditional utopian promises of technology. The artist raises the specter of Godot's metaphysical tree by re-planting the tree of knowledge in a terrarium of pristine soil. The artist must shatter the membrane that separates man from that which bringing forth life, reflecting the trauma of progress. Feelings of anticipation, expectation, and disillusionment are parlayed into a deliberation of the hope of technological deliverance. The fulfillment of augmented memory, vision, safety, and reality via technological determinism are examined and literally magnified in the piece. Symbols of empowerment are gifted to the audience, but like Neitzche's Übermensche the spectators must set their potential into action themselves.

 

The Buzzz  (2011) an Augmented Reality (AR) installation piece explores the way technology alters point of view, the drama of progress, and questions the solidity of quotidian phenomenology, knowledge, and visual perception. The Buzzz employs advanced technology in combination with the most primitive mechanisms of visual distortion, the magnifying glass and references tromp l'oeil painting as spectacle embodied by  AR flies. The dissemination of technology that projects virtual additions to the human gaze surfaces the fallacy of objective reality as captured by an apparatus that purports unadulterated representation.

 

The Art & Patronage Summit  is an invitation-only event for patrons, collectors, arts institution directors, curators, academics, artists, diplomats and other influential players involved in culture of and for the greater Middle East, including Turkey, Iran and North Africa. The Summit will enable both individuals and institutions to collaborate in support of the emerging Middle Eastern art scene and to shore up the infrastructural development of the region's art institutions. The Art & Patronage Report, a major three-part research project, the first attempt at cultural mapping of the greater Middle East, region by region, sector by sector, will build the first formal database of artistic production and organizational practices and infrastructures.

 

Amir Baradaran (b. 1977) Iranian-Canadian, New York-based media and performance artist, works in the field of Augmented Reality (AR). Speculative public experiences exploring the philosophical and social underpinnings of technology, authorship and identity are staged using AR technology and concepts. Under the rubric FutARism,  AR is situated as a new installation and performance art medium. Experiential, conceptual and legal shifts are used to explore radical subjectivities, failed utopias, and mysticisms.  Other AR installations include Venice Augmented (54th Venice Biennale, Italy), Frenchising Mona Lisa (Louvre Museum, Paris) and Takeoff  ( MoMA, NY, NY), "Simple as Drinking Water,"  winner of 2011 International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR) video competition, Transient (2010),  video installations placed in New York City taxis (approx. 1.5 million viewers), and  The Other Artist Is Present (2010), a guerrilla performance  at MoMa, NY, NY. Published in Art in America, Forbes, ARTNET, ARTINFO, BBC and NPR. BA (2004) McGill University, Montreal, Canada, MA (2008) Concordia University, Montreal, Canada.