What happens when high and low, humans, ECOcyborgs, synthesizers, microphones and high-heels come together? Find out at the closing performance of our Bot Like Me symposium. Alex Murray-Leslie from the always re-invented Chicks on Speed promises an eclectic, electric night, blurring the lines between media, art, music, fashion and performance. The evening begins with San Francisco-based Forlove and takes place amongst !Mediengruppe Bitnik’s Ashley Madison bots for our exhibition.

Admission is complimentary to attendees of our Bot Like Me symposium on the growing intimacy and emotional relationships between humans, algorithms, and smart machines.

A limited number of performance-only tickets are available here, which offer access to our exhibition “Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures, Lol” and both musical acts, but not to the symposium.

Program

7:30pm – doors and !Mediengruppe Bitnik exhibition open

8 – 9pm – Forlove (Jasper Speicher) performance

9 – 11pm – Alex Murray-Leslie (Chicks on Speed): ECOcyborg DJperformance

Performances

Alex Murray-Leslie (Chicks on Speed): ECOcyborg DJperformance



Alex Murray-Leslie mixes high and low, street and elite to create a trans-genre crossing, temporal drag, ecofeministic, cyborg pop dj performance. Murray-Leslie is co-founder of the artband Chicks on Speed, and researches and makes sounding foot-wearables. She is currently Artistic Director of Wearable Technology at Mobile World Congress. Alex has exhibited and performed internationally at cultural institutions and biennale’s such as MoMA, the Whitney Biennial, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia; ArtSpace Sydney, Australian Pavillion Vernissage; 56th Venice Biennale, Centre Pompidou, Paris & Turner Prize, Tate Modern, London and ZKM, Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe.

Forlove

Forlove is San Francisco’s Jasper Speicher in an underground electronic sandbox of synthesizers and microphones. His sound is a moving target, with introspection, texture, and body movement always at its center. Specializing in deeply authentic and retro-touched music for physical dancing and mental drifts, Jasper conceived Forlove as a solo project after time spent playing in a number of Bay Area bands. Jasper studied engineering, sculpture, and computer music at Brown University, started playing in bands, and now takes a personal and deeply felt approach to electronic music. He invites you to come dance with him.

Exhibition

swissnex Gallery’s exhibition Desperate times call for desperate measures, lol by !Mediengruppe Bitnik personifies gigabytes of chatbot script data from the hack of adult website Ashley Madison. The hack of the dating website revealed that virtually no human women were present, and that 75,000 female chatbots were created to fuel the illusion of casual sex opportunities to millions of high paying men subscribers. The artists rebuilt 51 San Francisco fembots for the swissnex gallery to explore these human-bot relationships. Does it matter that users are chatting with bots and not humans? Why? How did the system work? How was trust built into it? Were these relationships ‘fake’ or ‘real’?

Photo: Myleen Hollero