From April 2nd to May24th, SONGEUN presents Ping Inside Noisy Giraffe, the first solo exhibition in Korea by Tromarama, following their participation in the group exhibition Cloud Walkers at Leeum in 2022.
Tromarama (established 2006, Bandung, Indonesia) is a collective founded by Febie Babyrose (b.1985, Jakarta, Indonesia), Ruddy Hatumena (b. 1984, Manama, Bahrain) and Herbert Hans (b. 1984, Jakarta, Indonesia). As students at the Bandung Institute of Technology, the artists first collaborated on a music video commission for the Indonesian rock band Seringai. The video, Serigala Militia (Wolf Militia), created in 2006 using hundreds of individually-sculpted wood cut plywood boards, proved much more laborious to produce than initially expected, and the “trauma” of the experience would inspire the artist’s moniker for their collective. This work marked the beginning of Tromarama’s foray into stop-motion animation—which the collective would be developing until 2014—including works such as ting*, Everyone is Everybody, andThe Lost One. Since then, Tromarama’s video practice has developed into more complex methodologies of production, responding to the progress of moving image technology. In parallel, the collective has also been developing new forms of aesthetic modalities through installation, sound, computer programming, as well as performance. Informing a more multidisciplinary approach, Tromarama has more recently been focused on human engagement with an ever-expanding digital reality in which labor and leisure are increasingly entangled.
The seemingly nonsensical title of the exhibition, Ping Inside Noisy Giraffe,
is a recursive acronymfor the word “ping”. A “ping” measures message
transmission time between computer devices, derived from sonar technology's
pulse-echo process for under water detection. The title functions as a recursive
acronym—a self-referential programming convention exemplified by phrases like
"PNG'sNotGIF"(PNG) or "GODOverDjinn"(GOD). These acronyms typically
employ humorous double negatives, or caricatural resemblances to other reference
points, to simplify complexcomputational concepts.
Ping Inside Noisy Giraffe, then, acts as a provocation for the audience to speculate about the idea of a ping, bouncing between two points, in a frequency that reaches upon the infinite—a ping that constantly bounces without end. The questions being considered by the artists are manifold: Can increasingly sophisticated computer programs and artificial intelligence speculate upon more abstract notions of things such as infinity? How does this sentience separate the finite from the infinite? And to what extent are these pings being sent and received in the digital world an inseparable part of daily human existence? What forms of truths, or mistruths, undergird a ping’s underlying structure?
Tromarama continues to find inspiration from the ever-changing relationship, and blurring terms and conditions, between humans and the digital realm. The collection, interpretation, an dutilization of personal data—often gathered in a manner devoid of consent—are amassed and processed by corporations through increasingly opaque and indistinguishable algorithms. Ping Inside Noisy Giraffe brings together a compilation of video pieces across the collective’s career, expanded reconsiderations of previous works that contain algorithmically generated connection points, as well as newly commissioned works engaging with some of the far-reaching ramifications of these ever-changing realities. In Ping Inside Noisy Giraffe the artists utilize local Indonesian aphorisms, such as sapi perah (“dairycow” or “cash cow”) and banting tulang("to slam one's bones" or "to toil with great hardship"), as metaphorical and visual frameworks to consider more universal issues.
ARTIST
Art collective formed in 2006
Tromarama is an art collective consisting of Febie Babyrose, Herbert Hans, and Ruddy Hatumena whose artistic interests include the notion of hyperreality and interrelationships between the virtual and the physical worlds. Their art often combines video, installation, and algorithmic based computer programming.
Tromarama has participated in major exhibitions at various notable institutions worldwide. Selected solo exhibitions namely Auto Ally at DOCUMENT Space, Chicago, USA (2024); Contraflow at Kiang Malingue, Tin Wan, Hong Kong (2023); PERSONALIA at ROH, Jakarta, Indonesia (2022); Beta at DOCUMENT Space, Chicago, USA (2021) and at Paris Internationale with ROH Projects, Paris, France (2019); LLIMIIINALL at Edouard Malingue Gallery, Wan Chai, Hong Kong (2019); Amphibia at Centre A, Vancouver, Canada (2017); and Tromarama at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Netherlands (2015). Notable special projects include Tromarama: The Lost Jungle at the Children’s Art Space at Museum MACAN, Jakarta, Indonesia (2021-2022); Madakaripura with Edouard Malingue Gallery in Islington, London, UK (2020); and Private Riots at Encounters, Art Basel Hong Kong presented by Edouard Malingue Gallery, Hong Kong (2016). Tromarama’s selected group exhibitions include Digital Diaries at Julia Stoschek Foundation, Düsseldorf, Germany (2024); Kunsthal Charlottenborg Biennale: Public Structures in Copenhagen, Denmark (2023); 84 Steps at Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam, the Netherlands (2023); CLOUD WALKERS at Leeum Art Museum, Seoul, South Korea (2022); NOT IN MY NAME at CCA Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel (2022); 1 at ROH, Jakarta, Indonesia (2022); The Turn of the Fifth Age at Selasar Sunaryo Art Space, Bandung, Indonesia (2021); NGV Triennial at National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia (2020); Contemporary Worlds: Indonesia at National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia (2019); The Extra Extra Ordinary at Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD), Manila, Philippines (2018); Cinerama at Singapore Art Museum, Singapore (2017); Jakarta Biennale 2015: Neither Back nor Forward: Acting in the Present at Gudang Sarinah Ekosistem, Jakarta, Indonesia (2015); and the 11th Gwangju Biennale: The Eighth Climate (What Does Art Do?) in Gwangju, South Korea (2016); and more. Tromarama is the commissioned artist for the moving image work screened on the M+ Facade, M+ Museum, Hong Kong in the third quarter of 2023.
View ArtistCopyright belongs to The Artists
Organized by SONGEUN Art and Cultural Foundation
Artistic Direction by Laurence Geoffrey’s, Ltd.
Main Graphic Identity by Tiny Studio
Photography by Studio JAYBEE
Courtesy of The Artists, SONGEUN Art and Cultural Foundation, and ROH