The idea of smart home, where one can adjust his or her dwelling with an instant voice commend or with a press of a button, sounded so very promising. And with the booming of domestic technologies, the idea has become an easily achievable reality with Internet of Things: Amazon echo, Philips Hue, Google Home, Samsung Smart Fridge, etc.

Yet one's home used to be a safe harbor, a place of thorough familiarity and comfort. Today a large percentage of our home appliances are like enigma machines. Autonomously, they light up, beep and constantly they track the waves in the air, attempting to pinpoint a length and frequency that resemble "Siri/Alexa/Google/Turn off the light/Turn up the volume/Warm/Cold..."

For this Café des Sciences lecture. Continuing the trend with digital art and technology discussions, we have invited the Head of Research and Creation at the Chronus Art Center Lab - Vytautas Jankauskas to present his fascination with domestic and home technologies.

Event Rundown

Vytautas Jankauskas

Vytautas holds a BA in Media Art from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, including an exchange at the Royal Danish Design School, faculty of Interaction Design, and another MA in Media Design from HEAD — Genève. He is the co-founder of a project-based practice VJF with Jon Flint, part of Cached Collective that interrogates notions around data and privacy via tangible and immersive experiences, and a permanent resident at the Pervasive Media Studio since 2018. Vytautas’ work has been exhibited at the V&A, CCCB, Chroniques Biennale, Salone Internazionale del Mobile, ISEA, and Cité du Design St.Etienne, amongst others. He has been awarded the Core77 Speculative Concepts Runner-Up prize in 2016. Since May 2019, Vytautas is the Head of Research and Creation at the Chronus Art Center Lab, Shanghai.

My name is Vytautas Jankauskas. I am an artist and interaction designer. I am fascinated by the visual and social dissonances that rapidly developing technologies generate in domestic spaces. I find it strange how willingly we welcome the oddly polished technological infrastructures into our imperfect nests. How will we interact with our most intimate surroundings in the age of the smart, the connected, and the sterile home, in which technology is rendering us less significant?

Co-organized with

Chronus Art Center (CAC) is China’s first nonprofit art organization dedicated to the presentation, research / creation and scholarship of media art. CAC with its exhibitions, residency-oriented fellowships, lectures and workshop programs and through its archiving and publishing initiatives, creates a multifaceted and vibrant platform for the discourse, production and dissemination of media art in a global context. CAC is positioned to advance artistic innovation and cultural awareness by critically engaging with media technologies that are transforming and reshaping contemporary experiences.

Supported by

Extra time is an experimental and innovative art platform designed to bring artists and art lovers closer together as an open community. With our unique space design, we create an immersive and comfortable atmosphere for our customers to explore the subversive experience of art, movie, and music.

Café des Sciences

Shanghai | Every third Thursday each month 2019

Café des Sciences is a new format at swissnex China offering a monthly platform for Swiss Spotlight Scientists and Start-ups to present their projects and connect with the local community. The lectures will offer a casual setting in which speakers can present their work and engage with the attendees during a Q&A period. Audiences are welcomed to enjoy the networking reception with Swiss flavour after the talk. The lecture is scheduled to take place every third Thursday each month at swissnex China or our partner spaces.

Past events：

• November: Semiotics through New Media Art
• October: Lives in our Water
• September: The Invisible Growth of Food Tech
• August: Technical Spiral that We Inspire
• July: From Architectural Anthropology to Digital Fabrication
• June: Engineering Microbes as Living Sensors
• May: Exploring Virtual Reality
• April: Fashion Design inspired by Architecture, Physics and Mathematics
• March: Looking beyond the Horizon
• February: Drone Revolution
• January: Shadow Banking in China