FUTURE_FORECAST by Ziyang Wu & Mark Ramos
The Internet and its services depend on infrastructures that span whole planet: undersea cables, data centres, antennas…etc. The exhibition FUTURE_FORECAST by Ziyang Wu and Mark Ramos looks at these infrastructures to explore the future of our connected societies.
The exhibition focuses on the context of the Philippines to explore the paradox between underdevelopment and progress in the fields of economics, ecology, surveillance and digital colonisation.
The peculiar political, economic, social and ecological context of the Philippnes is the starting point of the two works presented: the video Pasig River 2030 – 6 Plus by Ziyang Wu and the worldbuilding simulation Future_Forecast by Ziyang Wu and Mark Ramos.
The exhibition FUTURE_FORECAST by Ziyang Wu + Mark Ramos is presented as part of CYBER STRUCTURES: Material Realities – Digital Experiences, the inaugural programme of Elektron in collaboration with local institutions.
Biographies
Ziyang Wu is an artist based in New York and Hangzhou. A former member of NEW INC at the New Museum, he currently teaches at the School of Intermedia Art at the China Academy of Art, and. With an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, and a BFA from the Florence Academy of Fine Arts, his video, AR, AI simulation and interactive video installation have exhibited internationally, including ICA Philadelphia, Rhizome at the New Museum in New York, Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Rochester Art Center, SXSW in Austin, Art Dubai, HEK Basel, Annka Kultys Gallery in London, Eigenheim Gallery in Berlin, Medici Palace in Florence, Milan Design Week, M+ Museum in Hong Kong, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, Long March Space in Beijing, Today Art Museum in Beijing, Song Art Museum in Beijing, How Art Museum in Shanghai, K11 in Hong Kong, and Ming Contemporary Art Museum in Shanghai. His recent fellowships and residencies include the shortlist of “Future Generation Art Prize” (2023-2024); “The Randall Chair” award at Alfred University (2022-2023); “Kai Wu” Interdisciplinary Studio residency, Media Art Lab, Times Museum (2021); AACYF Top 30 under 30 (2021); Residency Unlimited (2020); MacDowell Fellowship (2019); Artist-in-residence at Institute for Electronic Arts (IEA) (2019); Winner of The ROCI Road to Peace by Robert Rauschenberg Art Foundation (2015).
Mark Ramos is a Brooklyn-based new media artist. Mark makes fragile post-colonial technology using web/software programming, physical computing (using computers to sense and react to the physical world), and digital sculpture/fabrication to create interactive work that facilitate encounters with our own uncertain digital futures. Mark is deeply committed to the ethos of open source: the free sharing of information and data + creative uses of technology. Mark has exhibited his work and lectured widely both online and AFK including as part of Rhizome's First Look: New Art Online with the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Long March Space in Beijing, M+ Museum in Hong Kong, HEK (Haus der Elektronischen Künste) in Basel, Arebyte Gallery in London, and at the Peter Weibel Institute for Digital Culture in Vienna. He teaches Art after the Internet in the MFA Fine Arts Department at the School of Visual Arts, Form and Code at Pratt Institute, as well as Web Programming and Computer Principles in the Computer Science Department at NYU. You can also find him playing drums for various bands in Brooklyn.