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2025
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artistEventExhibitionInspaceTalkOperation Biodegradable: Rethinking Surgical Environments
Operation Biodegradable: Rethinking Surgical Environments
The fascination with Camera Obscura has captured audience imagination drawing people worldwide from Victorian times to present day. The spectacle of entering a dark room through which to witness and actively peer out to the surrounding landscape is both theatrically enticing and technically mysterious. An Obscure Camera develops this form for a 21st-century context through a physically interactive installation. We enter a large dark space and are immersed by a multitude of ornate Rococo frames projected onto the surrounding walls. Each frame contains a close-up view of the live outdoor environment outside of the building. As we walk around, the frames move with us, matching our speed and direction. New subjects enter and pass through the frames as our viewpoint changes. We can scan, track, and follow different features in the outdoor spaces, including its inhabitants, through our motion within the space.
An Obscure Camera gives visitors the agency to physically enact the choices made by ubiquitous AI algorithms that observe, scrutinise, and categorise our every move. In contrast to the minimal actions of clicking a mouse or pressing a key, visitors have to move their whole body through the installation in order to ‘follow’ those outside. In this way, participants not only ‘embody the AI’, but are confronted, first-hand, with the associated ethical and social implications of their choices/actions.
Exhibition Details
Date: Sat – Sun | 19 – 27 April 2025 [Closed Tue 22 April]
Time: 10:00 – 17:00 | Free/Drop-In
Location: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9AB
Material Shadows: Performance and Panel Discussion
Join this event including a performance followed by a panel discussion to hear from researchers at the University of Edinburgh, joined by researchers at Lancaster University exploring embodiment, materialism and technology, as part of Operation Biodegradable exhibition, for the 2025 Edinburgh Science Festival.
This performance has been developed in collaboration with artists and led by Theodore Koterwas, physically interacting with AI in an environment. The set has been built in collaboration with the creators of Shadowplay, Joseph Lindley and Jesse Josua Benjamin, an interactive installation playing with shadows and AI.
The panel discussion will invite researchers and key members of the exhibition to create an open and expansive dialogue around the exhibition themes, inviting audiences to ask questions and share their own comments observations.
Date: Tues 22 Apr 2025
Time: 18:00 to 20:00 | Free/Ticketed (Doors Open 17:30)
Location: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9AB
Register here: Material Shadows: Performance and Panel Discussion Tickets, Tue, Apr 22, 2025 at 6:00 PM | Eventbrite
Operation Biodegradable Late Event
Join Inspace and the Institute for Design Informatics, for Operation Biodegradable an evening reception to celebrate the exhibition, part of the 2025 Edinburgh Science Festival, and to meet the researchers, designers, artists, students and graduates behind the work on display.
Date: Fri 25 Apr 2025
Time: 17:00 – 19:00 | Free/Ticketed
Location: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9AB
Register here: Operation Biodegradable Late Event Tickets, Thu, Apr 24, 2025 at 5:00 PM | Eventbrite
*Please register your seat for the Performance and Late Events. The exhibition is open to drop-In.
For inquiries about accessibility, please contact the DI team at designinformatics@ed.ac.uk or visit the Access webpage for more venue information: https://inspace.ed.ac.uk/venue-access/
Inspace, 1 Crichton Street, Edinburgh