Leon Eckert is a German designer and photographer, currently based in NYC. The focus of his research is the critical discussion of technological progress and its impact on society at large. His work explores the tension between public’s perception of technology’s capabilities on the one side, and the reality of it on the other.
While we include more and more devices into our lives everyday, it’s only a few people that understand technology’s inner workings and fewer still that are in charge of its doing. Leon is interested in both the psychological and sociological process at play as well as in finding ways to encourage everyone to question more actively how technology is used and who creates it. Currently he is pursuing his graduate studies at New York University in the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP).
Genetic algorithms, inspired by Darwinian selection theory, symbolise the idea of machines emulating living organisms. This idea, filtered through fiction, news and advertisement, is fundamental to the anxieties connected to technological progress at large and the term Artificial Intelligence (AI) in particular. Reversing this, the Genetic Dance Performance translates the same algorithm back into the form of human movement to show that after all, the machines' inner processes are not magic, but man-made.
Leon will be presenting his "Genetic Dance Algorithm" as an installation during our ART+TECH Fesitval "MOVEMENT" on October 23rd and 24th, 2015.
