News

On March 26 The South West Creative Technology Network (SWCTN) invite you to join them online for their Data Showcase.

It’s a day to share, reflect on and challenge ideas in DATA, INCLUSIVE FUTURES and CREATIVE BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT.

Explore the inspiring work of the Data Prototype teams, and learn more about their developing work, as well as diving into the deep thinking done by our Data Fellows.

Tickets:
Tickets are free so sign up now!

https://www.watershed.co.uk/whatson/10678/south-west-creative-technology-network-data-showcase/

Accessibility:
There will be BSL interpretation on talks, plus captioning on pre-recorded material, as well as live captioning on all events throughout the day.

Contact:
If you have any additional questions regarding access for the day, please contact Producer Katherine on katherine@kaleider.com.

Helen Pritchard is part of Sonic Acts Exhaust, an online roundtable discussion on oil and data, on 27 February 2021.

https://www.newmuseum.org/calendar/view/1710/world-on-a-wire-pete-jiadong-qiang-playthrough

Please RSVP for this online program here.

Artist Pete Jiadong Qiang will join Michael Connor, artistic director of New Museum affiliate Rhizome, for a screening / play-through and conversation exploring Qiang’s recent interactive works. The event will revolve around the artist’s concept of the “HyperBody,” a transformative, fluid, group-determined identity composed of community material from gaming, comics, anime, and other fandoms, crossing over between physical and virtual space. Qiang explores the concept of the HyperBody in videogames and installations that incorporate practices drawn from videogame and online fan culture, including modding (making user-determined enhancements), crossover (bridging characters from various fictional words), and shipping (desiring romantic connection between fictional characters).

This event is presented in conjunction with “World on a Wire,” the first exhibition in a new partnership between Hyundai Motor Company and Rhizome of the New Museum to showcase leading digital art globally. Qiang’s work Dungeon: Maximalism HyperBody is currently on view at Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing, and online at https://worldonawire.net.

Pete Jiadong Qiang is currently a PhD student in arts and computational technology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and was trained as an architect (RIBA Part 2) in Architectural Association School of Architecture.

Pete Jiadong Qiang is an Associate Lecturer at i-DAT.org

Helen V. Pritchard, Miriyam Aouragh, Seda Gürses and Femke Snelting have been awarded a grant for £10,000 from the HDI EPSRC Network plus for “Infrastructural Interactions” a transdisciplinary research initiative working with activists (specifically groups organising with refugees and around Anti-Racist, Trans, and Queer work), artists and technologists  to ask how they are mobilising creative forms of organising and inventive methods to ensure that data infrastructures can support their practices instead of extracting from it. As part of the grant we will be welcoming Yasmine Boudiaf to i-DAT as a research assistant and Femke Snelting as a research fellow.

On Thursday (28/01/21) evening, Dr. Helen V. Pritchard’s new browser based art service, Queer Motto API, made in collaboration with Winnie Soon (Digital Design, Aarhus University) will be launched. The work is commissioned by of one of Europe’s most significant festivals for art and digital culture – transmediale, Berlin. https://transmediale.de/. Previous iterations of the work were shown at ACM SIGGRAPH 2020 and Exhibition Research Lab.

https://gitlab.com/siusoon/queer-motto-api

Issue #1: Volume 7, 2020 Published.

https://www.ubiquityjournal.net/

Issue #1: Volume 7, 2020
ingentaconnect download

Articles:

3–16: Architectural paradox in the smart home – ALEXANDER ĆETKOVIĆ

Abstract

Bernard Tschumi pointed out that architecture redefines itself continuously out of the conflict between it being a product of abstract design and the condition that architecture is experienced sensually – conditions that are interdependent and, at the same time, mutually exclusive. How does this relationship change when a further layer is introduced, the user roles determined by the digitized home? For the users, the conceived roles (design and digital) stand in competition and sometimes even in conflict with the habitual roles experienced by their bodies in the physical environment. The awareness of the juxtaposition of the different roles can lead to interesting new possibilities in the user-architecture relationship. On the other hand, disguising or even hiding the differences can not only frustrate users but also further undermine their trust in a technology that tries to impose such roles or, in the users’ eyes, even tries to abuse them.

E-mail: acetkovic@acm.org

17–23: Eco art: Art is life and life is embedded in nature – NINA CZEGLEDY

Abstract

Nature may be considered as the world of living organisms and their environment; in a larger sense, the shape of nature can also be understood to include particular extents of space and time. The visual perspectives of nature form a particular course that begins with the earliest historical depictions and might be currently expressed by a variety of cross-disciplinary contributions. The diverse perspectives form eclectic threads that today are frequently manifested within the eco-activist art movement. Several of the contemporary ecological art projects are grounded in explicit experiences and connections to specific spaces relevant to where the work is created. The local or international ecological labs, experimental urban gardens, projects on the migration of plants and the creation of new species included here are all new models contributing to a speculative future culture.

E-mail: czegledy@interlog.com

25–36: Between Us: Desire, touch and seduction as immaterial agents in augmented sonic artworks – JANE GRANT

Abstract

New media has expanded our experiences of art forms from the retinal to the immersive and embodied. This evolution offers novel experiences as we push the boundaries of these emerging technologies. Recently, I have been working with augmented reality headsets. These headsets sometimes separate us from the physical and the sensory, substituting the world of matter for the virtual. My research questions whether the exchange of the sensory for the digital provides an opportunity to redesign experiences that act upon the body? Developing sound design to create the illusion of touching, could our skin become a site where artworks are experienced?

E-mail: J.Grant-1@plymouth.ac.uk

37–46: Weaving quantum chaos – PAUL THOMAS

Abstract

No matter how hard we strive to be certain, absolute certainty cannot be achieved. The article focuses on chaos to identify, conceptualize and visualize a liminal space between the classical and quantum world, where everything is in some state of chaos. The article asks questions of visualizing the invisible, indiscernible and unfathomable quantum world of subatomic particles. This quantum artistic research examines a role of atomic and subatomic particles in the search for consciousness, materially, ethically, scientifically and culturally. The burden of molecular ethics and aesthetics of care are discussed to enable a critique of the information given to us by science.

E-mail: p.thomas@unsw.edu.au

Archaeology

PRITCHARD, Helen; ROCHA, Jara; SNELTING, Femke. Figurations of Timely Extraction. Media Theory, [S.l.], v. 4, n. 2, p. 159-188, dec. 2020. ISSN 2557-826X. Available at: <http://journalcontent.mediatheoryjournal.org/index.php/mt/article/view/123>.

Vol 4 No 2 (2020): Mediating Presents | Media Theory (mediatheoryjournal.org)

http://journalcontent.mediatheoryjournal.org/index.php/mt/issue/view/7

The contributions to the special issue see time not as a neutral backdrop to, but as actively constituted by and constitutive of, (digital) media, and develop broad understandings of both media and the temporality of the present/present temporalities. The special issue develops theoretically informed and engaged understandings of digital media presents, drawing from and expanding a range of theoretical traditions, including feminist, queer and anti-racist theory, science and technology studies, media theory, philosophy and cultural theory.

Pritchard,  Rocha  and Snelting build on a mixed methodology combining ethnography with practice-based experimentations  with  game  engines and  4D  earth  modelling  software to  untangle the  complex  worldings  that  emerge  parallel  to,  yet  irreducible  to, the  logics  of contemporary    extractivist    capitalism, and    outline    affirmative    modes    for understanding timely extraction differently through complexity and alliance.

The Plurality of Plasma: BioArt as Translation Medium
Blue Grindrod

BioArt, or art that takes biological forms and processes as its medium of choice, is increasingly becoming a tool in methods of cultural translation; working to decolonise art practices, biological arts work to translate cultural attitudes through the medium of the body, allowing for increased representations of race, gender and sexuality within a tangible and visceral art form. Arising from religious and historical practices of bodily mark-making and morphological alteration, BioArt found a foothold in popular culture through the literary work of Mary Shelley and H.G. Wells, the filmic traditions of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, and in recent years the art of avant-garde enfants terrible Damien Hirst, Orlan and Stelarc.

The aim of this paper is to explore the plurality of biological art practices, both historical and current, as they relate to the translation of cultural values and ideologies through the medium of the human body. Drawing on posthumanist theory, advances in biological technology and feminist and queer discourses, the paper aims to identify the impact and cultural challenges of biological art to
the dominant ideological values of the society in which it has been created, whether this be challenges to existing heteronormative structures regarding gender and sexuality or the questioning of supposed human importance in a world increasingly damaged within the age of the anthropocene. By examining the work of key and diverse figures in the field of BioArt, this paper ultimately aims to identify the ways in which artists making use of biological forms have used the medium to present challenges to culturally inscripted models of behaviour and being prescribed by homogeneous hegemonic power structures, as well as assessing the capability of the forms produced to adequately articulate these challenges as they are translated into a textural and biological product.

As part of the Thirteen Ways Of Looking exhibition at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry (2 October – 13 December 2020).

Donald Rodney – Autoicon: Discussing The Digital Body

12 November 2020 7.00pm – 8.00pm

Hosted by the exhibition curator Sylvia Theuri, with Ian Sergeant and Professor Mike Phillips as they discuss and unpack Donald Rodney’s Autoicon.

This talk will be facilitated by Sylvia Theuri

What does it mean for an artist to represent themselves visually in the digital space? How can Rodney’s work speak to contemporary experiences of navigating digital spaces? Can we read Autoicon as a digital site of resistance?

This talk will be an online only event, and it will take place through Microsoft Teams. Attendees will receive a link to join the session.

Free | Book online in advance

https://www.theherbert.org/whats_on/1533/thirteen_ways_of_looking