Happy summer everyone, we are back with a new episode! My guests today are Dave Murray-Rust, Myriam Bleau, and Nien-Tzu Weng who are all currently working on and finishing up residencies at iii.

Dave, in his creative practice, engages with interactions between people and technology through installations and performance. His pieces layer together physical phenomena and animate electronics to create experiences, exploring questions of agency, voice, interface and correspondence. He is an Associate Professor at TU Delft working in human-algorithm interaction - exploring the messy terrain between people, data and things through a combination of making and thinking. 

Myriam is interested in the performative, both as a codified cultural manifestation, and as an embodied reenactment of symbolic systems through human and non-human agencies, including machine learning. Her hybrid practice explores porous spaces between the physical and the virtual world, between the natural and the synthetic. She is is a composer, digital artist and performer based in Montréal.

Nien-Tzu is curious about the relationship between movement and new media practices, and plays with the balance between reality and fantasy. She uses light and multimedia in order to play with perspective, perceiving performance as a process of transmitting dialogues between inner and outer space, where presence and image builds multiple, overlapping conceptions of time. She is a Taiwanese-Canadian interdisciplinary dance artist and lighting designer based in Montreal.

We talk about their current projects and some previous ones, machine learning, agency, interfaces, using sound and light in different ways, and the pervasiveness of technology. Listen on to hear more about what it’s like to have a speaker in your mouth, whether it’s fair to say the machines really understand or learn, and if machine learning really feels like an optimisation not. This was a great conversation and we found so many overlaps between all of their work which allowed room for a lot of reflection. If any of the themes mentioned above spark your interest, make sure you give this episode a listen. :)

Dave Murray-Rust - http://dave.murray-rust.org/

Myriam Bleau - http://www.myriambleau.com/

Nien-Tzu Weng - https://www.nientzuweng.com/

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iii is an artist run, community platform supporting new interdisciplinary practices linking performance, technology and the human senses. Arising from the ArtScience tradition of The Hague, iii strives to balance technological innovation, theoretical reflection and human experience. iii contributes to international developments in the field of Art, Science & Technology, functioning both as a cultural incubator supporting research and creation, and as an agency connecting creators to a broad audience via a wide (inter)national partner network.

https://instrumentinventors.org/