Trading Senses

Please join us for an evening of perceptual adventures.

Hosted by Futurefarmers

Thursday, July 11, 7:00pm

UW Jacobsen Observatory + Glenn Hughes Penthouse Theatre

DETAILS

Trading Senses is a series of five acts of collaborative inquiry which consider human-made tools ranging from stones to A.I. Thematic prompts and objects designed by the international artist group, Futurefarmers, invite a constellation of researchers to cross-disciplinary boundaries through responses (Acts) that shift perspectives. Trading Senses engages the fields of literature, material science, astronomy, theater, archery, geology, electroacoustics, optics, and more. The five acts form a spacial-temporal continuum that begins at the Jacobsen Observatory and wanders through geologic time on the archery field and into future-present imaginaries in the Glenn Hughes Penthouse Theatre.

Tools (of varying practicality) have long been part of Futurefarmers' practice, occupying a hybrid space that blends function, metaphor, and material poetics. For Trading Senses, Futurefarmers has engaged research scientists from many fields, throughout their attention has been drawn to the way “reality” can be made with various tools. The objects implicated in Trading Senses create space for reflection as well as action, considering the human desire to innovate and reach beyond our senses not just to optimize, but also to imagine, to understand, to fictionalize, to conceal, to pursue science and art and to make things happen, practically or not. The three physical sites occupied during this evening performance, all past their primes of activity, are tools of a sort and also serve as symbolic relics of moments in the history of human endeavor, from research and knowledge formation to sport, war, and hunting.

Futurefarmers was founded in San Francisco in 1995. Core collaborators Amy Franceschini and Michael Swaine (faculty and chair of the Sculpture department at University of Washington) have been guiding forces of the group’s transdisciplinary practice. Situated in close proximity to Silicon Valley and the military industrial complex of the Bay Area, Futurefarmers has been shaped by the history and currents of this geo-political location. They were early practitioners of the internet, building online platforms for sociablity and have long since been interested in the free flow of information and knowledge through the making of open source tools. They see technology and innovation as tools to extend our senses and as forces that shape our understanding of the world, from prehistory to unknown futures. Futurefarmers are artists, architects, computer programmers, graphic designers, farmers, writers, and anthropologists with a common interest in the reorganization of the systems in which they work. Through performative processes and collaboration they often provide playful entry points and tools for participants to gain insight into deeper fields of inquiry-not only to imagine, but to participate in and initiate change in the places we live. Futurefarmers are currently Artists in Residence at Meta Reality Labs Research in Redmond, WA.

For Trading Senses, Futurefarmers assembles as Amy Franceschini, Artist, US, Michael Swaine, Artist, US and Lode Vranken, Architect, Philosopher, BE with Elaine Buckholtz, Artist, Yasi Pererra, US and Elizabeth Thomas, Writer, US and will collaborate with researchers: Woody Sullivan (Astronomy, UW), Tekla Cunningham (Music, UW), Archery Club (UW), Rachael Lincoln (Dance, UW), Rebecca Cummins (Artist, UW), Henry Jackson-Spieker (Artist, UW), Jason Groves (Germanics, UW), Sara Walsh (Drama, UW), Adrianne Mackey (Theater, UW) Francis McCue (Poet, UW), Ashley Arhart (Meta), Nava Balsam (Meta), Doug Carmean (Meta), Laurel LaFayette (Meta), Michael Proulx (Meta), Jason Reinhardt (Meta), Kaitlyn Boulding (Meta), and Joshua Walton (Meta).

DIRECTIONS AND PARKING

We will meet at the Jacobsen Observatory, then walk to the Glenn Hughes Penthouse Theatre. Pay parking is available in the adjoining lot “N5” for $6.50 per car (the rate can change). Spaces are usually wide open near the observatory each evening.

https://astro.washington.edu/jacobsen-observatory#directions-parking