Supported by the Goldsmiths Graduate School and Digital Studios

6pm until 8pm, Seminar Rooms at Ben Pimlott Building (Ground Floor, right), Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, SE14 6NW

FREE, ALL ARE WELCOME. No booking required.

11 OCTOBER with CHRIS BOWMAN

GEO Landscapes and other sites of investigation…

Chris Bowman (University of Technology Sydney, Australia) gives an overview of his recent project GEO Landscapes. This presentation is an introduction to Phase 01 of the GEO Landscapes project which was recently demonstrated at BetaSpace, an experimental exhibition venue for interactive artworks at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney and explores prototype narrative structures which simulate ‘on-site’ engagement by a
potential visitor to a given site ( in this instance the Brickpit Ring walk at the Sydney Olympic Park) or multiple sites of investigation. The long-term aim of GEO Landscapes is how to create an augmented interactive audio-visual story-telling experience using interpretive mobile technologies and this will be defined over an iterative series of
phased developments. The ultimate experience is designed to be accessed through three principle technologies; a) handheld mobile devices, b) interactive audio visual public display and c) and web-community.

Bowman’s creative work for GEO Landscapes and other ‘sites of investigation’ features an exploration between corresponding video sequences, selected narratives and site-specific information (GPS) captured across two or more locations. Socially, this drawing together
of the virtual and the augmented space is designed to enrich the presence of the individual in the spaces or places and thereby enhance the interconnectivity of the user in the associated environment that supports remote creative collaboration and information access.

CHRIS BOWMAN is an Australian based artist, writer, director and teacher who works with film, and convergent media display systems. His research interests include interactive narrative systems, schematic representations of spatio-temporal interactive artworks and related film theory. Chris currently lectures in the Visual Communication Program in The Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building at UTS. He is an active
member of the Creativity and Cognition Studios and Co-Director of the Digital Design Group both at UTS.

—

1 NOVEMBER with VERONIQUE CHANCE & RACHEL STEWART

Live Run(ner) & Thinking Blue Sky

Veronique Chance’s research project (PhD Candidate Goldsmiths) considers
the dynamic relation between the physical presence of the body and its
presence as a screen image, through which she examines the impact of
visual media technologies on our conceptions and perceptions of the body
as a physical presence. The effects of these technologies on traditional
notions and conditions of physicality and representation mark, she
suggests, a shift in our relationship to, and understanding of the body
as a physical presence as we become more used to interacting and
communicating with the body through the immediacy of screen images. This
has led to questions regarding the body as a material presence and to
the technologically mediated image becoming associated with notions and
ideologies of disappearance and disembodiment. Chance understands the
condition of the body as being very much embedded in the material world
and approaches her project through the proposition of what she calls
‘the physicality of an image’, through which she argues for a
reconceptualisation of the materiality of the body through its physical
presence as an image.

For the Thursday Club Chance will present Live’ Run(ner), an artwork in
progress that will record and transmit live the Great North Run through
her own live experience of running the event. The idea is to recreate a
live transmission of her eye-view in real-time, as she run the course,
(literally ‘moving image’). Viewers would experience the event through
her eye-view as she runs, through being able to ‘pick up’ a signal on
their home computers and at wireless hotspots in the City.

VERONIQUE CHANCE is an artist practitioner and educator working across a
range of media. She is currently a PhD Candidate in Fine Art by Practice
at Goldsmiths. She also works as a Mentor for Artists in Residence
Project, Morley College, London; Associate Lecturer, Foundation Course,
Wimbledon School of Art; and Visiting Tutor, Fine Art/ArtHistory,
Goldsmiths.

&

Rachel Stewart’s research (PhD Candidate Goldsmiths) is based around an
engagement with the psycho-geography of the everyday sky and its
representation with contemporary visual culture. Stewart is interested
in how experiences of freedom, imagination, spirituality, orientation
and weight are contextualised within manifestations of the skies of the
post-human landscapes of C21st.

Her research addresses the literary and visual trope of the sky,
specifically the blue sky. The specific material she will discuss is an
index of sky photographs that she has been collecting for a number of
years. The photographs all detail a sky at the occurrence of ‘a sky
event’ i.e. the sky above the screening of James Benning’s Ten Skies, or
the Whitechapel exhibition of Gerhard Richter’s Atlas, or the sky above
Manuel de Landa talking of the sky as a painting of intensive different
at the Creative Evolutions Conference in 2005. The photographs detail
only the particular sky and contain no other visual information. They
could be construed as ‘eventless’. However, seen together these images
create a visual subject, a subject that works in a familiar way but also
starts to describe a new set of relations with this space.

RACHEL STEWART is a contemporary art curator and PhD candidate at
Goldsmiths Visual Cultures. As a curator she has worked both in
partnership with Helen Hayward and on behalf of other organisations on
commissions that include working with Mark Wallinger, Amy Plant, Lothar
Goetz, Daziell+ Scullion, James Ireland, Simon Periton, Mark Titchner,
Florain Balze and Rose Finn-Kelcey. From 1994-1998 Stewart set up,
edited, published and distributed independent arts magazine ENGAGED.

—

22 NOVEMBER with JOSEPH TABBI

Toward a Semantic Literary Web: Three Case Histories

Supported by Goldsmiths Department of English and Comparative Literature

In this talkm, Joseph Tabbi introduces a new literary and arts collective, Electronic Text + Textiles,whose members are exploring the convergence of written and material practices. While some associates create actual electronic textiles, Tabbi has explored the text/textileconnection as it manifests itself in writing produced within electronic environments. His online laboratory consists of two literary web sites, EBR, a literary journal in continuousproduction since 1995, and the Electronic Literature Directory , a project thatseeks not just to list works but to define an emerging field. Rather than regard these sites as independent or free-standing projects, Tabbi presents their development in combination with the current (and similarly halting) development of semantically driven content on theInternet (e.g., The Semantic Web, or Internet 2.0).

His purpose is to determine to what extent concepts can flow through electronic networks, as distinct from the predominant flow of information. The latter, in which documents are brought together by metatags, keywords, and hot links, is arguably destructive of literary value. Where tagging and linking depend on direct, imposed conectivity at the level of the signifier, the creation of literary value depends on suggestiveness, associative thought, ambiguity in expression and intent, fuzzy logic, and verbal resonance. At a time when powerful and enforced combinations of image and text threaten to obscure the differential basis of meaning as well as the potential for bringing
together, rather than separating, rhetorical modes, Electronic Text + Textiles seeks to recognize and encourage the production of nuanced, textured languages within electronic environments.

JOSEPH TABBI is the author of two books of literary criticism, Cognitive Fictions (Minnesota, 2002) and Postmodern Sublime (Cornell, 1995). He edits EBR and hosted the 2005 Chicagomeeting of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. He is Professor of Literature at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

—

13 DECEMBER with ALEX GILLESPIE, BRIAN O’NEILL & ROBB MITCHELL

Cyranoids…

How can “speaking the thoughts of others” enhance and subvert social
interaction both face-to-face and remotely ?

What is a cyranoid ? Cyranoids are people whose speech is being
controlled by another person. The term comes from the character Cyrano
de Bergerac in Edmond Rostand’s 19th Century play. Cyrano, who is ugly
but articulate, helps his handsome but inarticulate friend win the heart
of Roxane by providing eloquent and witty prompts from the sidelines.
The outcome is that Roxane falls in love with Cyrano’s mind through
interacting with the body of his friend. Stanley Milgram, a social
psychologist, in the 1970s coined the term cyranoid to describe a person
whose utterances were being controlled by a second person, the source,
via radio transmission. The cyranoid wears a headset which receives
input from a microphone in a different location. The source then speaks
into the microphone, and the cyranoid just has to repeat what they hear
in their ear. So that the source knows what is going on, the cyranoid
also wears a microphone which transmits everything it hears back to the
source. In this way one person can control the utterances of another
unbeknownst to other people. While the headsets used by Milgram were
conspicuous and limited to transmitting verbal data, now, it is possible
to use incredibly inconspicuous equipment to transmit both verbal
instruction and for the source to receive a video stream of what the
cyranoid is seeing. The internet means that the cyranoid and the source
can be separated by huge distances, with sources simply ‘logging in’ via
the web to a given cyranoid, being able to see and hear what the
cyranoid hears and sees, and then being able to transmit thoughts to the
cyranoid or living, breathing avatar.

The audiences are invited to participate in a social event cum
performance seminar and experience being cyranoids, synchronoids or
sources…

ALEX GILLESPIE holds a PhD in Social Psychology from the University of
Cambridge. His research concerns the Self and self-reflection and
explores the social interactional and cultural basis of the self. He is
a Lecturer at Stirling University and, currently, Co-chair of the
Organising Committee for the Fifth International Conference on the
Dialogical Self.

BRIAN O’NEILL is a clinical psychologist at Southern General Hospital,
Glasgow. He is interested in cognitive impairments, the disability they
cause and how assistive technology for cognition might provide useful
treatments. He also is founding member of Thunder Bug sound system.

ROBB MITCHELL is an artist, curator and events organiser who has
exhibited and lectured widely in the UK and abroad, among other venues
in: Market Gallery (Glasgow), Edinburgh College of Art, Intermedia
Gallery (Glasgow), Galerie Bortiers (Brussels), Artspace (Sydney), FACT
(Liverpool), Mediabath (Helsinki), ICA (London), CCA (Glasgow), National
Museum of Scotland (Edinburgh), Ars Electronica (Linz) and Eyebeam (NYC).

—

THE THURSDAY CLUB is an open forum discussion group for anyone
interested in the theories and practices of cross-disciplinarity,
interactivity, technologies and philosophies of the state-of-the-art in
today’s (and tomorrow’s) cultural landscape(s).

THURSDAY CLUB BOARD

MIGUEL ANDRES-CLAVERA PhD Candidate Goldsmiths Digital Studios; Member of Social Technology and Cultural Interfaces Research Group.

MARIA CHATZICHRISTODOULOU [aka MARIA X], Thursday Club Programme Manager; PhD Candidate Goldsmiths Digital Studios; Sessional Lecturer Birkbeck
FCE; Curator; Producer.

BRONAC FERRAN Director of boundaryobject.org; Member of DCMS Research and KT
taskgroup; Director of Interdisciplinary Arts at Arts Council England until March 2007.

JANIS JEFFERIES, Thursday Club Convener; Professor of Visual Arts, Department of Computing, Goldsmiths; Co-director Goldsmiths Digital Studios; Director Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in Textiles; Curator; Artist.

SARAH KEMBEDr.; Reader in New Technologies of Communication, Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths College; Writer.

MICHELA MAGAS PhD Candidate Goldsmiths Digital Studios; Co-director Stromatolite
Design Studio.

CARRIE PAECHTER

Professor of Educational Studies, Goldsmiths College; Dean of the
Goldsmiths Graduate School.

ROBERT ZIMMER Professor of Computing, Goldsmiths College; Co-director Goldsmiths
Digital Studios.

For more information Maria X at drp01mc@gold.ac.uk

To find Goldsmiths check http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/find-us/