Digital Animalities: Mapping

Curated by Giovanni Aloi and Matthew Brower
Curatorial Assistant Seb Roberts

John B Aird Gallery, Macdonald Block, 900 Bay St, Toronto

October 30 - November 23, 2018

Julie Andreyev and Simon Lysander Overstall, Jonathon Keats, Ken Rinaldo, Lou Sheppard, Donna Szoke, Neozoon, Gwen MacGregor

Digital Animalities is part of a SSHRC-funded research project entitled “Digital Animalities: Media Representations of Nonhuman Life in the Age of Risk” led by Jody Berland of York University.

Digital Animalities is a two-venue exhibition of artworks exploring human animal interactions in an age of risk. Digital technologies have been reshaping human understandings of animals and transforming the possibilities for human-animal relations. Artists have been at the forefront of exploring these challenges, using the languages and forms of artistic practice to stage, explore, and intervene in these emerging situations. These works present a range of approaches to the themes. They offer models for understanding new possibilities provided by new technologies, critiques of implicit tendencies in the workings and organizations of these technologies, and classifications and frameworks for orienting ourselves to these new possibilities.

Loosely organized under two major tendencies presented in the works, the two venues present complementary experiences of the evolving space of animality in contemporary digital culture. At the John B. Aird Gallery, the theme of Mapping brings together works that suggest how new cartographies organize and orient us. At the CONTACT Gallery, the theme of Rendering brings together works that reveal digital technology’s ability to scan and re-assemble aspects of reality.

Brochure