Transforming Literary Places

Transforming Literary Places Art Exhibition - University of Tartu Art Museum - 28.3 - 18.5. 2024

Yesterday was museum night! And also the last day of the exhibition! One of the artists joined us during the last tour a...
19/05/2024

Yesterday was museum night! And also the last day of the exhibition! One of the artists joined us during the last tour and talked about her beautiful paintings Adéla Rúčková 🙂

Our last piece reimagines Tartu, with Alan Marshall’s The Literary Method of Urban Design.Digital art, AI-assisted.A fan...
19/05/2024

Our last piece reimagines Tartu, with Alan Marshall’s The Literary Method of Urban Design.
Digital art, AI-assisted.
A fantastic version of Tartu inspired by Meelis Friedenthal’s Mesilased, through a collaboration between human creativity and artificial intelligence.
Literary reference: The Willow King by Meelis Friedenthal (Mesilased)

The topic of employing AI tools to support human creativity is explored in the exhibition. Yana Knight’s pieces depict L...
18/05/2024

The topic of employing AI tools to support human creativity is explored in the exhibition. Yana Knight’s pieces depict London from three different literary contexts. Story of Yana Literary London through the Eyes of an AI: a Tale of Three Authors, Yana Knight.
Analogue hand drawings (ink, pencil, watercolour on paper) augmented by
generative AI text-to-image tools.
Phrases from the original texts are used as text prompts to generate the final images. The artist’s analogue cartoons are used as the basis for image generation in order to introduce and maintain her personal drawing style throughout the project. The AI is seen as a material in this process, involved in the same way as the inks and paints that have made the original drawings, all contributing to the final artwork. The process of creation is exemplified in one of the images.
Literary reference: London by William Blake; Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens; Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Another piece by Jean Lorrah, Sing, and Louder Sing. Jean LorrahDigital print of watercolor.A reimagination of the spac...
18/05/2024

Another piece by Jean Lorrah, Sing, and Louder Sing. Jean Lorrah
Digital print of watercolor.
A reimagination of the space described in W. B. Yeats’s poem “Sailing to Byzantium” as today’s world of AI.
Literary reference: Sailing to Byzantium by William Butler Yeats. Next to the painting, a presentation in which the artist explains her creative process and the genesis and meaning of the two paintings the exhibition features.

Our most elusive artist (we only know her name as the colour code for yellow!) and most elusive piece, Wanna Chat? Digi...
17/05/2024

Our most elusive artist (we only know her name as the colour code for yellow!) and most elusive piece, Wanna Chat?

Digital images, QRcodes.
The online dating app Grindr is re-imagined as the new “Taihoku New Park” from the novel Crystal Boys, where the park is a gathering place for the gay community of Taipei. The QRcode form echoes the browsing on phone experience of Grindr, emphasising, along with low-resolution images, the concealment of q***r practice.
Literary reference: Crystal Boys by Pai Hsien-yung

Next piece about cities deals with the cities created by Italo Calvino in his Invisible Cities - these may appear as ima...
17/05/2024

Next piece about cities deals with the cities created by Italo Calvino in his Invisible Cities - these may appear as imaginary ones but they are actually all inspired by a real city, Venice. HumidCity, Mez Breeze.
Digital interactive system.
In this work, storytelling transcends traditional modes. In this piece, “Mezangelle” poetic style acts as a prism, refracting words into multiple meanings and perspectives much like the multifaceted streets of an urban landscape. The narrative becomes a labyrinth of text, a digital metropolis that beckons readers to explore its hidden alleys and discover its encoded stories.
Literary reference: Le Città Invisibili by Italo Calvino

The next three pieces take us to Prague, as depicted in three different literary works, with Adela Ruckova’s three paint...
17/05/2024

The next three pieces take us to Prague, as depicted in three different literary works, with Adela Ruckova’s three paintings reflecting on alternative possibilities.

What if they were still there? I
Oil painting on hardboard
What if Gregor Samsa did not die, but escaped and survived in some deserted garden in the old Prague?
Literary reference: The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.

What if they were still there? II
Oil painting on hardboard
What if some Newts, a new intelligent species described in the sci-fi novel War with the Newts,
are still secretly surviving in the Vltava river?
Literary reference: War with the Newts by Karel Capek

What if they were still there? III
Oil painting on hardboard
What if the mysterious masked man Scirocco still appears in the city of Prague?
Literary reference: The Shades are Revolting by Jaroslav Foglar

Next we have Stockholm, with Spelarne (The Players), by Jolene Armstrong. Jolene ArmstrongText, hand-made illustrations,...
16/05/2024

Next we have Stockholm, with Spelarne (The Players), by Jolene Armstrong. Jolene Armstrong
Text, hand-made illustrations, generative AI illustrations and animations, augmented reality.
The piece reinterprets Söderberg story using vignettes, as opposed to chapters, and focusing on giving visual, filmic treatment to those vignettes, the atmosphere, the era, the literary place of Söderberg, and the story. The Augmented Reality imagining of the textual cinematics creates an intriguing interplay among text, time and space, which becomes a way for readers to both watch and read the story.
Literary reference: Doctor Glas by Hjalmar Söderberg

In our next (and last!) thematic cluster we have placed pieces representing real cities as depicted in different novels....
16/05/2024

In our next (and last!) thematic cluster we have placed pieces representing real cities as depicted in different novels. We start with Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul with Orbit of Innocence, Spiral of Memories by Serra Ataman.
Digital hand-drawing.
Orhan Pamuk transforms a literary text into Istanbul and vice versa. With this artwork, the artist looks at Istanbul, the city she lives in, from a different lens in the light of “The Museum of Innocence” and interpreted the novel and museum’s projection in the city from her own perspective and transferred it to her canvas. A butterfly earring is a powerful symbol in the novel and the spiral pattern of butterfly wings reminds us of the orbit of an atomic model and of the cyclicality of Time.
Literary reference: The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk

Last piece in our “fairy tale room” is a VR experience, Affiorare/Surfacing by Rossella Schillaci. 360° video.A 360 imme...
16/05/2024

Last piece in our “fairy tale room” is a VR experience, Affiorare/Surfacing by Rossella Schillaci. 360° video.
A 360 immersive fairy tale, set amongst mothers and children who live in prison. A magical journey in their everyday life, with animations of their surreal memories of the past and dreams for the future, created through a collaborative process.
Literary reference: Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault; Literary fairy tales by Charles Perrault

Places in fairy tales are often ambiguous ones, as seen with the previous piece. Here we find another garden, the garden...
16/05/2024

Places in fairy tales are often ambiguous ones, as seen with the previous piece. Here we find another garden, the garden where the little mermaid keeps the statue of the prince. The Little Mermaid, by Nguyen Thien Ngoc Tuyen.
Digital print of oil paint on canvas panel.
In this painting, inspired by the famous fairy tale, the artist captures one of the most impressive scenes of the story: the little mermaid’s garden containing flowers and a beautiful marble statue, representing a handsome prince. Through her gaze at the statue, the artist conveys the depth of her love and curiosity, encapsulating the dreams she nurtures about the world.
Literary reference: The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen

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