LAT Press Support Contact

Exhibitions

From 1st June to 22nd September a modern art exhibition of Latvia “Talaðu við mig! / Runā ar mani! / Talk To Me!” is taking place in Akureyri, Northern capital of Iceland, consisting of artworks from the collection of Latvian National Museum of Art.

The project is named after the multimedia installation “Talk To Me!” by Rasa Smite, Raitis Smits and Martins Ratniks, which has been chosen as key-message of Latvian contemporary art exposition.

Talk to Me is an artistic inquiry into human and plant communication, exploring the relationships between nature and people, biological and social processes in particular. Scientists have nowadays performed various experiments in order to verify the old assumption that communicating with plants makes them grow better. RIXC artists developed a human-plant communication interface, through which people were asked to send encouraging messages to the growing plants, "equipped" with web-cam, wi-fi and loudspeakers.

Over 13000 messages were received during the two-year period of the human-plant communication experiment performed in various exhibitions in Tallinn, Basel, Riga and Ventspils. The content of collected messages now are mapped and analysed by most commonly used words, selected messages made audible, whereby the video made from web-cam images represents the growing conditions of the living plants in different locations. The future stage of the project includes building a self-sustainable human-plant communication device that is powered by "bacteria-battery", generating electricity from soil and water.

The artwork of a mandarin tree is featured at the Latvian National Art Museum's collection show, under the name of the artwork by Smite&Smits. at Akureyri Art Museum, Iceland, Jun 1 - September 20, 2019

You are kindly asked to talk to this mandarin tree - http://talktome.rixc.lv - which is a part of an installation by Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits - Talk to Me. Please send encouraging messages to the growing plant, which this time has turn to be a mandarin tree –referencing the climate change and melting glaciers in Iceland.

Credits: Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits – artistic concept, authors of the Talk to Me book, data analysing, mapping and visualizing; Martins Ratniks – video editing, design of the book, Davis Bojars – technical solutions, Kristine Briede – video documentation; Raitis Smits and Lauris Smits – sound track.

01.06-22.09.2019

Further information: http://www.listak.is/en/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/talk-to-me

CONTACTS

rixc@rixc.org

+371 67228478 (office)

+371 26546776 (Rasa Smite)