Myself and Clive McCarthy were invited to run a workshop as part of Liepāja University’s 7th international New Media art festival ‘iWeek’ 2-7 November 2015 http://iweek.mplab.lv/en/. Of course we jumped at the chance to return and it quickly gave me the idea to combine this with my current MA research, as a way to pose the questions I have been exploring to others in order to see what different perspectives bought and how this could propel the project further.

Our workshop became ‘Human < > Object’:

So we began the long journey to Liepāja on Monday 2 November and after arriving late in the evening we began our workshop preparations on Tuesday. The majority of workshops began on this day in both MPLab and Vecā Ostmala 54 (an abandoned house used by a group in Liepāja to stage events, parties etc and converted this time into the grand base for iWeek), we had a quick look around each of the workshops before a meeting with Santa Valivahina and the International office regarding University of Lincoln’s erasmus partnership with Liepāja University (admin stops for no man).

Our workshop began on Wednesday 4 November in MPLab, our room for the 2 days provided an excellent space for our group to come together and cocoon ourselves away while we explored the concepts surrounding Human and Object. Our workshop participants included a range of nationalities; Dana Rasnaca (LV), Iris van der Harst (NL), Annija Gancōne (LV), Marta Matuzeviča (LV), Kristaps Strungs (LV) and Teotim Logar (LV). Day 1 started with an introduction from Clive and then led into my introduction of the project and the work I had been undertaking as part of my MA practice, culminating in showing the group some of the areas of research I had found inspiring. I posed the questions to the group which included:

• By applying a human form to an object is the object now human?
• Is the human body the defining factor between the human and the non-human?
• Does giving the object a face in turn give that object humanity?
• By flattening out the human body into an object does this take away its warmth?
• Can a human become functional?
• If the body is transformed into having a practical use, does that body therefore become an object?
• Is function purely a defining aspect of an object?

• Does movement give human features an agency they don’t have when the object is just existing as an object?
• Or is the overall effect ‘weird’, evoking an otherness that is neither human or object?

Photo: Valters Pelns

This then led into a group discussion of the questions ‘what does it mean to be human?’ ‘what does it mean to be an object?’ ‘can one exist as the other?’. The students were all switched on and provided some excellent thoughts on the topic that have given me a lot to think about in my own practice:

• Everything is an object, but in order to make it alive it needs a psyche.
• The process of artificial intelligence is producing of something non-human by a human in an act of birth. This is done because those people are attempting to be more human themselves.
• Brains are the only things that named themselves.
• Can we programme love? Humans can love an object, but can an object love you?
• To be human is to have a capacity for speech, or fundamentally communication.

Clive then gave a short tutorial on projection mapping with Heavy M and I gave a short tutorial on my Human Object series, quickly turning Iris into a table with much amusement from the group.

Finally we looked forward to day 2 of the workshop with a day of making/construction and realisation of ideas before the final iWeek exhibition at the end of the week.