Turbulence Commission: iPak - 10,000 songs, 10,000 images, 10,000 abuses curated and engendered by Ajaykumar.

iPak - 10,000 songs, 10,000 images, 10,000 abuses (iPak) is a playful, inter-active and participatory art work, that integrates your creativity, the random generation of works by a computer, and art engendered by Ajaykumar. iPak synthesises conceptual innovation, social engagement and therapeutic process: generative art as re-generative force; art-making as a medicine; inspiration emerging from tragedy; and the notion that social factors — such as marginalisation and racism — cause mental illness. Ajaykumar has created the foundation for a ‘polyphonic’ narrative, one created by many stories — yours essentially. You can upload still images, movies, texts, music, sounds, and ideas, to create a dynamic, evolving, relational entity in cyberspace. iPak fully comes into ‘being’ through your participation.

iPak - 10,000 songs, 10,000 images, 10,000 abuses is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web site. It was made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. Its production has also been funded by Arts Council England. “iPak” has been researched, developed, and realised through a digital media bursary and support from Artsadmin (UK), funded by Arts Council England; as well as through collaboration with Re-Active (Italy). “iPak” - is a research project of Goldsmiths University of London, curated and engendered by Ajaykumar.

BIOGRAPHY

Ajaykumar’s art and research focuses on ‘being’: interrogating notions of ‘relational being’, ‘the being of a space’, and ‘non-anthropocentric being’. It is concerned with engendering new epistemologies in ontological art practice: through reappraising Buddhist, Tantric, and Animistic processes; through investigating the contemporary pertinence of a hypothesis of ‘dependent origination’ beyond its original Buddhist cultural and religious significance, particularly with regard spectatorship, ludic, performative, and pedagogic processes.

Ajaykumar teaches at Goldsmith’s College, London. His current courses include: Technology, Art, and Being; Narrative Construction in Film; Notions of void, emptiness, and ‘an art of spectatorship’ in Japanese Art and Culture; Multi-Media and Site-Specific Art. He is a member of the University of Arts London Research Centre, Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN); and a co-director of the Shapes Design Studio where he is collaborating with an architect and product designer to engender furniture, lighting and gardens that come into ‘being’ through the play of others.

Ajaykumar studied fine art, film, and performance at Chelsea College of Art and Design, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London; the Institute of Education, University of London; and at the Royal College of Art.