If dreams are the mycelium of the world, and memories the threads from which our collective stories are woven, what happens when your memories are no longer your own? Welcome to the world of UNION.
Following environmental and societal collapse in the year 3000, humans retreat indoors, and touch is forbidden, replaced by virtual intimacy in the cyberworld GAEA. Now, memory becomes the ultimate commodity.
Building upon Nancy Lee and Kiran Bhumber’s 2021 UNION exhibition, this iteration of the project extends the artists’ investigation of surveillance capitalism, cultural memory, and embodiment into a multi-user WebXR space using Mozilla Hubs.
Credits
Created by Nancy Lee and Kiran Bhumber
In collaboration with: Jonny Ostrem, Ian Nakamoto, Yun-Jou Chang
Creators
Photo by Jenn Xu
Nancy Lee
Nancy Lee 李南屏 is a Taiwanese-Canadian interdisciplinary media artist, curator, DJ and cultural producer. Their work stimulates and enlivens space, making a provocative statement about how inescapably interconnected we are with our surroundings. This notion of staging is a constant in Nancy’s work and underpins their projects, from their early work as a filmmaker, through their conception of live events, and into the realms of XR, new media performance and installation, where their art practice continues to coalesce and evolve. Nancy co-founded CURRENT, an intersectional and multidisciplinary initiative, featuring artistic and educational programming. Nancy’s interdisciplinary works have been presented at Cannes Film Festival, SXSW, MUTEK Japan, Berlin International Film Festival, Vancouver International Jazz Festival, and more. They are an XR instructor at IM4 Media Lab at Emily Carr University and artistic mentor at Festival of Recorded Movement.
They also run a DIY studio in Vancouver Chinatown hosting cross-genre shows, workshops and residencies. As a Sundance Institute New Frontier Alumni, Nancy has been collaborating with Kiran Bhumber on a speculative sci-fi exhibition UNION, exploring 3D scanning/printing, XR, and multi-channel sound and video installation. Nancy recently completed a sci-fi writing program at the School for Poetic Computations in NYC and an XR artist residency at Society of Arts and Technology in Montreal.
Photo by Jenn Xu
Kiran Bhumber
Kiran Bhumber ਕਿਰਨਦੀਪ ਕੌਰ ਭੰਬਰ is an Indo-Canadian interdisciplinary media artist, composer, performer, and educator. Her practice considers the mediation of memory through emerging technologies and how the body reinscribes memory into the present. Her work results in constructing interactive installations and performances that examine movement, touch, and performativity. As a composer, Bhumber’s practice centers around multichannel and spatial arrangements and how the choreography of sound can influence the listeners notion of space, time and narrative. Bhumber co-created Telepresence, a VR performance presented by Western Front, and was a composer and sound designer for Tidal Traces, a VR 360 dance film with the National Film Board of Canada. Her work has been presented at MUTEK Japan, SXSW, and Cannes Film Festival, among others. Bhumber is a co-director of INTER/MEDIATE, a media art educational festival focused on cultivating growth within Vancouver’s media art communities and empowering marginalized communities. Bhumber is a Sundance New Frontier alumni and is collaborating with Nancy Lee on a speculative-sci fi solo exhibition, UNION.