ARTIST TALK
Mohsen Hazrati in conversation with Dr. Tina Sauerlaender (peer to space)
September 16, 2023
On the occasion of "UNLEASHED UTOPIAS. Artistic Speculations about Today and Tomorrow in the Metaverse", exhibition of the VR ART PRIZE by DKB in Cooperation with CAA Berlin, September 9 - November 5, 2023, Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin, Germany.
About Mohsen Hazrati:
After majoring in graphic design, with a minor in new media and digital art, Mohsen Hazrati graduated from the Shiraz Art Institute of Higher Education in 2012. His art has been seen at a variety of conferences—for example, at the University of the Arts Berlin, the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste (State Academy of Fine Arts) in Stuttgart, the IAM weekend Barcelona, EVA, the Multimedia Anthropology Lab at University College London; the Electronic Literature Organization Conference at the University of Central Florida, TEDxMollaSadraSt (Shiraz, Iran), and at exhibitions in the Grafikenshus Museum, peer to space, Radiance VR, Synthesis, Triennale Fellbach, and the Transfer Gallery. With Milad Forouzande, Hazrati cofounded the Dar-Al-Hokoomeh Project (a new media art project) which he has been curating since 2013 in Shiraz, Iran. The artist lives in Berlin.
About: FAL Project (NONE AI), 2023
Mohsen Hazrati works with the concept of bibliomancy, a process that employs books to foretell the future. In this case, he uses a volume of poetry called The Divan by the Persian poet Hafez, who lived in Shiraz in the fourteenth century. Words from a randomly selected poem by Hafez are used to create an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm which then generates a collection of data made up of random texts which can be found on the internet. With this data, users can obtain their own individual divinations based on a random AI principle, then interpret the results to predict their own futures.
Film © 2023 peer to space & VR ART PRIZE by DKB in Cooperation with CAA Berlin
Artworks and Installation © Mohsen Hazrati
Installation shots by J. Pegman
www.vrkunst.dkb.de
