TE:AR #2: Digital Mirrors
Wann
Wo
In the 1960s, Andy Warhol blurred the lines between art and technology, and Factory became a magnet for explorers, creators and builders from all walks of life. In the spirit of this legacy, Factory Network launched TE:AR - a postdisciplinary series of happenings where boundaries between art, technology and human experience dissolve through shared exploration.
Through Digital Mirrors, we turn Factory Mitte's underground gallery into a platform of critical inquiry. What aspects of our relationship with technology urgently call for our attention? As tech corporations and AI systems increasingly shape and interpret our daily lives, how do we maintain our autonomy and agency? When algorithms read our expressions and affects, what new forms of intimacy and control materialize and how might these reshape our collective future? How can communities and networks become active forces in not just reimagining but actively shaping these emerging dynamics?
Featuring installations by Tabitha Swanson, Orhun Mersin & Yagmur Uckunkaya, and Portrait XO, the evening unfolds as an experiential journey. Through emotion-responsive interfaces and human-AI interactions, each work creates space for personal reflection and critical thinking. The exhibition includes a live performance where dance and music become part of the dialogue. Following the installations, artists join for an intimate conversation exploring these themes, flowing into a live DJ set that transforms our questions into rhythm.
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18:30Doors Open
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19:00Smile to Play, The Performance
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19:30Moderated Conversation
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21:00DJ Set
Tabitha Swanson is a Berlin-based multi-disciplinary designer, creative technologist, and artist. Her practice includes 3D, animation, augmented reality, digital fashion, graphic design, and UX/UI.
Commercially, Tabitha has worked with brands including Vogue Germany, Nike, Highsnobiety, Reebok, Origins, and others to create beautiful work in the creative tech and design sphere.
Artistically, her work is used as a form of therapy, often composing questions rather than answers, and trying to faintly touch the unseen edges of human existence. Much of her practice revolves around exploring thresholds, diametrically opposed elements, spirituality, playful mirth, realms of discovery, while researching hauntology, recursion, echos, and theology.
She has exhibited at Miami Art Basel, Fotografiska, and Transmediale, and presented her debut short film, My Right, at the Venice Film Festival.
Orhun Mersin, also known as Kekik, is a Berlin-based drag artist and AI researcher. With a background in contemporary dance and computer science, their artistic work is a mixture—an intricate ‘soup,’ per se—of new media, informatics, movement research, and contortion.
Currently part of the research platform New Practice in Art and Technology at UdK and TU Berlin, they explore the convergence of engineering and art practices, all through the gender-glitched lens of drag.
Yağmur Uçkunkaya works with AI, art, and sound to investigate their intersections and implications. She completed her studies in Medieninformatik at TU Berlin and FU Berlin.
During and after her studies, she worked at a creative AI agency, contributing to projects that integrated AI technologies into artistic practices. Currently, she is pursuing a Master’s degree in Design and Computation at UdK Berlin and TU Berlin.
Her recent projects focus on creating intimate multimedia works that critically explore the role of AI tools in shaping personal experiences and societal narratives. Her recent work has been featured at the Ars Electronica Festival and Frankfurt Biennale.
Portrait XO (she/they) is an award-winning multimodal artist and independent researcher. She received the Jazzki Award by ELBJAZZ in 2023 and has been recognized for her work with AI audio pioneers Dadabots, including winning the VUT Indie Awards 2021 and Eurovision AI Song Contest 2020.
Her AI audiovisual art developed through residencies at NEW NOW FESTIVAL, BBA Gallery, and Factory Berlin x Sonar+D. Founder of SOUND OBSESSED, she facilitates a community of hybrid artists for exploring computational creativity and human-machine collaboration. Her latest research in data sonification and AI audiovisual album ‘WIRE’ critiques biases in AI and its impact on creativity, identity, and ecology. Her latest project premiered at MUTEK Montreal and Gray Area Festival, ‘The Cost of Connection’ – an audiovisual performance with sonified data from The UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals.