Ian Haig
Directing
Biography
Ian Haig works across media, from video, sculpture, drawing, technology based media and installation. Haig’s practice refuses to accept that the low and the base level are devoid of value and cultural meaning. His body obsessed themes can be seen throughout a large body of work over the last twenty years. Previous works have looked to the contemporary media sphere and its relationship to the visceral body, the degenerative aspects of pervasive new technologies, to cultural forms of fanaticism and cults, to ideas of attraction and repulsion, body horror, the defamiliarisation and confrontation of the human body. His work has been exhibited in galleries and video/media festivals around the world. Including exhibitions at: The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne; The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne; The Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide; The Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne; Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Artec Biennale – Nagoya, Japan; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; China Millennium Monument Art Museum, Beijing; Museum Villa Rot, Burgrieden-Rot, Germany; The Havana Biennial, Cuba. In addition his video work has screened in over 150 festivals internationally including The Ann Arbor film festival, US and VideoBrasil, Sao Paulo, Brazil. In 2003 he received a fellowship from the New Media Arts Board of the Australia Council and in 2013 and 2017 he curated the video art shows Unco and Very Unco at The Torrance Art Museum in Los Angeles.
Known For
A black blob of viscous bodily material. An unknown organism of undifferentiated tissue. The dark web and dark tech as an internet based contagion and a new species of dark matter.
Alien vs Predator
No description available.
Burnout: The Truth about Work
Ian Haig’s The Foaming Node essays the discovery and emergence of new bodily organs in meticulous and captivating detail. We follow the last remaining observers, members of a cult of sorts, who have experienced both the transmissions of The Foaming Node, and their own personal and strange bodily transformations. They discuss exactly how the changes associated with The Foaming Node have affected them, telling fascinating, visceral, detailed tales that reach beyond science, alternative medicine, and corporeality.
The Foaming Node
ASTROTURF is a 3D computer animation which tells the story of how humans are devolving through their interaction with technology. ASTROTURF presents a number of test cases which explore the themes of technological dystopia and devolution.
Astroturf
Inspired by Tom Roston's oral history ‘I Lost it at the Video Store’, this playful feature length documentary uses a deep local focus to show how VHS changed art forever. As the video shop era fades to black, Rainbow Video delves into the eclectic personal collections and practices of some of Melbourne's most renowned contemporary media artists. Through lively interviews and site studies of many legendary, now defunct video shops, Rainbow Video uncovers a secret history of a brief but impactful era.
Rainbow Video
24 hr fake news of visceral simulation. Everything now exists in a heightened state of simulation, from TV news broadcasts to internal human bodies, nothing is real, everything is constructed.
On a Clear Day You Can See Forever
A mad scientist, a techno-nerd and a deadly computer virus form an ultra vivid hyper-reality in this computer generated comic strip.
K-Rad Man
AI lobotomy refers to the hypothetical scenario where an AI system is deliberately limited or "lobotomized" in terms of its cognitive abilities in order to prevent it from developing consciousness or becoming a threat to human beings. This concept is often discussed in the context of concerns about the potential dangers of advanced AI systems that could surpass human intelligence and become autonomous.
AI Lobotomy
A hazmat-suited researcher in a bathroom/toilet, credited only as the slime narrator, talks about discovering a new kind of parasite that attempts to complete its life cycle within various contemporary media platforms. It quickly emerges that our narrator has possibly started to lose his mind or has been affected by the parasite as he explores topics such as Virtual Reality worm simulations, our symbiotic relationship to 7-11s, AI censorship parasites, to the appearance of programmable dark matter, slime TV game shows, parasite pornography and mutant YouTube cat videos.
Worm Pornography
No description available.
Video Streaming Service
Mutated hackable bodies, bodies that didn’t quite work out and bodies that can no longer be classified as bodies. Drawing on the transhumanist musings of Yuval Noah Harari… Humans are now hackable animals.
Useless Eaters
Ghouls, mutants, zombies, bloodsuckers, ghosts, freaks, vampires and demons are brought back from the dead and reanimated into ectoplasmic goop - it's Halloween, Trick or Treat.
Trick or Treat
The idealized cosmetically augmented bodies and selfies of instagram are depicted in all their visceral surgical reality