Walk on the Wild Side of Technology – Past, Present & Future

During Flanders Technology & Innovation Ghent, visit the Winter Circus on 16 & 17 March for a unique blend of history, technology, art and wonder. The Expo features work by researchers at KASK & Conservatorium Valery Vermeulen, María Boto Ordoñez & Elias Heuninck.

The Winter Circus occupies a unique place in Ghent - both in the city's skyline and history. In 2024, tech start-ups will take up residence there, in the place where acrobats used to skim over the heads of elephants. But not before The Expo by ArcelorMittal takes visitors on a ride along all floors and corners of the former circus building (and old-timer cemetery). For the first and last time.

Valery Vermeulen

• Making Music Using Data Stemming from Deep Space

Valery Vermeulen is a Belgian electronic musician, new media artist, researcher at the Department of Mathematics at the University of Antwerp and guest professor at KASK & Conservatorium. In 2001 and 2013, respectively, he obtained a PhD in pure mathematics in the field of algebraic group theory at the University of Ghent and a Master of Arts in music production at the city’s Royal Conservatory.

As an artist, his work covers a broad range of disciplines including algorithmic music composition, (generative) sound synthesis, affective computing, artificial intelligence, biofeedback & psychophysiology, creative evolutionary systems design, astrophysics, theoretical physics, econometrics and data sonification.

In 2021, he released the ‘black hole album’Mikromedas AdS/CFT 001, which received an honorary mention at the S+T+Arts Prize – Ars Electronica. For The Expo by ArcelorMittal, Vermeulen will showcase his data-driven Mikromedas project, in which compositions are created using data stemming from deep space and astrophysical simulation models. On a conceptual level, it deliberately balances on the edge where scientific knowledge ends and a speculative vision of reality starts to emerge.

María Boto Ordoñez & Elias Heuninck

• Mixing Transdisciplinary Research with Complex, Surprising and Disorienting Art

María Boto Ordóñez is a food scientist by training – she specialises in microbiology and did her PhD at the University of Barcelona. However, wanting to share her knowledge with a wider audience, she switched from academia to the art world, where she does transdisciplinary researchon sustainable colour materials.

Elias Heuninck, in turn, studied media art at KASK and draws inspiration from the aesthetics of scientific images. He works with a range of media – though film is ubiquitous in his art – and often uses home-made sensors and machines to explore landscapes.

He says he likes computers and machines for their accuracy and repetitive nature. Heuninck too generally keeps the processes simple and transparent, which is by no means to say that the outcome cannot actually be very complex, surprising and disorienting.