Posted on by deptfordtv news

knowledge transfer, university of salford, manchester, 29th november 2006

the following presentation was given at the knowledgre transfer conference at the university of salford in manchester on the 29th of november 2006. you can download the programme  and the slideshow as .pdf files.

Deptford.TV – strategies of sharing

“Can the utopia of liberated media practices, expressed as a recurring pattern in times of new technological  inventions throughout the 20th century, become viable as an approach within a 21st century context, through  the use of FLOSS systems and open content licensing schemes?”

1. Show 1st Slide Map of Deptford.TV – What is Deptford.TV?

Deptford.TV is a research project on collective film-making focusing on post-production and distribution with social software interfaces over which the collaborators can share their ideas, over a combination of WIKI and the EDL – Edit Decision List, protocol used as standard by many editing software programmes. It is a collaboration between facilitators of infrastructure such as Dekspace and the Boundless.coop, software programmers, the Bitnik media collective, open source and free software advocates – Liquidculture and film-makers

Adnan Hadzi’s contribution to this collaboration is the original method to design the Deptford.TV database documenting the regeneration process of Deptford, in South East London. Deptford.TV functions as an open, collaborative platform that allows artists, film-makers and people living and working around Deptford to store, share, re-edit and redistribute the documentation of the regeneration process. The open and collaborative aspect of the project is of particular importance as it manifests a form of liberated media practice. In the case of Deptford.TV this aspect is manifested in two ways

A) audiences can become producers by submitting their own footage

B) the interface that is being used enables the contributors to discuss and interact with each other through the database. Deptford.TV is a form of television, since audiences are able to choose edited timelines they would like to watch, at the same time they have the option to comment on or change the actual content. Deptford.TV makes use of licenses such as the creative commons and gnu, general public license to allow and enhance this politics of sharing…

This politics of sharing started with Linux. Linux (also known as GNU/Linux) is a computer operating system. It is one of the most prominent examples of open source development and free software; unlike proprietary operating systems such as Windows or Mac OS, all of its underlying source code is available to the public for anyone to freely use, modify, and redistribute.

Free software is a matter of the users‘ freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the software:

   * The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).

   * The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1).  Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

   * The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).

   * The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so  that the whole community benefits (freedom 3).  Access to the source code is a  precondition for this.

The Linux distribution chosen for the Deptford.TV project is called DYNEBOLIC.

It is one of the easiest installable systems, you just copy the folder from CD to the computer hard disk.


2. 2nd slide “you are personally invited…”

Deptford.TV contributes for FeedBack

In the spring of 2006 Deptford.TV received a Call for participation in FeedBack 04.

The Feedback Project is a curatorial initiative which invites participants to think critically about what messages and meanings exhibitions offer and aims at encouraging audiences to have opinions about the way that museums and galleries curate and organise exhibitions.

Under FeedBack Project, two main activities take place: FeedBack Publication and the Open Forum.

FeedBack Publication invites contributions from people who have an interest in the Arts to submit their experiences, opinions and comments through texts, images or projects which will be published. The project is concerned with contemporary curating and the equation artist-curator-audience. The forthcoming issue of FeedBack Publication is focused on participatory art events and their significance in current art practice. This will be the second FeedBack publication. 

FeedBack Project’s Open Forum took place three times during exhibitions at the Whitechapel Gallery. Audiences were invited to discuss views on the curatorial aspect of the exhibitions via email, flyers and the Whitechapel’s website. It also took place in Athens during Visions, an international arts event. FeedBack Project is currently in discussion with Space Studios in East London in order to hold a number of Open Forum sessions during 2007-2007.

The initiators of FeedBack are Goldsmiths‘ own Nayia Yiakoumaki, and Elpida Karaba. 

They where looking to collect “ideas related to creating discursive spheres between audience, curators and artists”. FeedBack 04 was aiming to concentrate “on the idea of participatory projects and particularly on the experiences of those participating in the making and realisation of these projects” in order to create an archive of “documents, statements, interviews, arguments and conflicts”. 

The most obvious way to participate in FeedBack was for each one of us to submit a text on his/her own research, which would employ Deptford.TV as a case-study. We thus interviewed 12 of the participants of Detpford.TV, aiming to produce a written essay, as well as a video essay. Both essays are uploaded on the Deptford.TV website http://www.deptford.tv. Faithful to the Deptford.TV’s frame of mind, the rough material those essays are based on is accessible for the audiences to look at or read, and remix, re-edit or rewrite. We consider these essays to reflect our own viewpoints and agendas, thus ‘incarnating‘ the realisation of just one way of reading and writing about the materials we collected. As Deptford.TV is not affiliated with any one institution, we are not under pressure to produce ‘politically correct‘ outcomes. Instead, we try to accommodate some raw, ‘un-beautified‘ responses, that are sometimes silenced within formal frameworks –just like the Deptford.TV database hosts rough, primary materials that audiences do not normally get to see. We hope that some of the people we interviewed, as well as people interested in the broader field of collaborative practices and remix culture, will take the time to –slightly or radically– adapt, reinvent or rewrite these essays to better reflect their own, diverse, viewpoints. 

In fact, You are personally invited to rewrite this essay.


3. show 3rd slide “Presence / Absence”

Collaboration

Deptford.TV focuses on the shift from the individual genius of the artist to the collective nature of the cultural production.  

Quoting from Katherine Hayles. We live in the information era, and Hayles argues that information, unlike materiality, is pattern rather than presence. She further argues that the presence-absence dialectic has been pushed into the background by a new dialectic based on pattern and randomness. Whereas presence-absence is an oppositional dialectic (that is, absence is the opposite of presence), pattern and randomness are not oppositional but complementary. In that sense, randomness is not seen as the absence of pattern, but as the ground for pattern to emerge. Hayles goes on to look at how pattern and randomness apply in our everyday lives, and looks at virtual reality environments where this dialectic leads to the paradox of presence-absence. 

According to Hayles, pattern – randomness also implies a shift of emphasis from ownership to access: ownership requires a presence (something tangible one would wish to own) whereas access implies pattern recognition. Networked practices operate more often as open systems that invite users/audiences to participate, providing access to their internal dramaturgies and structures – or rough material –when it comes to database filmmaking. The degree of involvement participants are granted really depends on the specific project, and it can be anything from formal interaction (audiences have a number of choices but remain very much placed within the constraints of a predefined and closed system) to co-authorship, where participants are invited to create the piece together with its initiator(s), or the audiences themselves initiate the collective production of a piece. Once participants start claiming authorship for a piece, this really marks a major shift in power, responsibility, as well as conceptual, aesthetic and technical control over the outcomes, which challenges deeply the traditional roles of creators /producers vs. consumers of content, and calls for us to rethink these distinctions. 


show 4th slide: “Commons based Peer Production”

Open projects demonstrate the emergence of a new paradigm called ‘commons-based peer production‘, a term coined by Professor Yochai Benkler to describe a new model of economic production in which the creative energy of large numbers of people is coordinated (usually with the aid of the internet) into large projects, mostly without traditional hierarchical organization or financial compensation. The free and open source software movement along with collaborative projects such as wikis, are the best known examples of this practice. In the cultural sphere, more and more projects invite the audiences‘ involvement and participation, and/or use open source software providing their users with access to content and know-how, as well as the possibility of developing or recycling the project for the production of their own work. The Internet, being a decentralized peer-to-peer environment, provides the best possible infrastructure for projects that favor open access and collaborative creativity over ownership and authorship. 

Examples of such works:

Show 5th Slide Half-Life Game

Counter Strike: First Person Shooter game, its first version was created entirely by its players, using the level-builders in the Half Life game engine. According to Celia Pearce, the Open Source movement is particularly strong in the First Person Shooter game genre, with games that tend to contain marginal narrative content, but are often at the forefront of engaging player creativity. In March 2001 Counter-Strike was awarded the best Studio award at the Computer Game Developers Conference, although its creators were not professional game designers, but Open-Sourcers who wanted to develop their own game environment. Counter Strike was made available as freeware on the web and quickly became the most popular Online First Person Shooter Game.


Show 6th Slide KR

When it comes to digital /media arts, they often involve appropriation, collaboration, and the free sharing of tools and ideas. So it is not surprising that a growing number of artists use open source technologies, and produce works that, among other things, recycle, duplicate or hack existing artworks or systems. 

Some of these artists are: 

  •  Austrian-Swiss collective Knowbotic Research who experiment with formations of information, interface and networked agency, in an attempt to find viable forms of intervention in the public domain, 

Show 7th slide radioqualia

  •  New Zealanders, London-based duo radioqualia who develop their own tools and use various streaming media softwares to experiment with the concept of artistic broadcasting, using the internet and traditional media forms, such as radio and television, as primary tools.http://www.radioqualia.net/

Show 8th slide Critical Art Ensemble

  •  American interdisciplinary collective Critical Art Ensemble, dedicated to exploring the intersections between art, technologies, critical theory and radical politics. 

Show 9th Slide YesMen

  •  The YesMen. What some would call identity theft, and which they call ‘identity correction‘, by impersonating representatives of the most powerful multinational companies that have committed crimes for which they have never been charged. The Yes Men undertake to impersonate them in public, in conferences, on TV or on the web, in order to ‘correct their


4. show 10th slide “We asked about…” Strategies of Sharing

But let me go back to the Strategies of Sharing and the Deptford.TV project, and talk about our interviews and interviewees. The main aim of these interviews was to gain an insight into the complexities of producing  collaborative work within a creative context. We wanted to find out which are the processes and methodologies employed in such practices. Most importantly, we wanted to illuminate, through our discussions with these participants, their own, personal strategies and tactics. We used ‘heavy‘ terms, that is, terms that are loaded with multiple, often contradictory meanings, to challenge the participants, inviting them to offer their own definitions and approaches. The questions we asked followed three main threads: collaboration, authorship, and community. The issue of diversity came up during the interviews as a fourth thread, as participants either insisted on its importance or were immediately put off by the term. 

Show 11th slide “what does collaboration mean…”

We asked the contributors what collaboration means to them. Is it enjoyable as a process? Is it productive? Does it enhance creativity? Can it suppress individual creativity? Can it work outside hierarchical systems –or not?

Show 12th slide “What does authorship…”

We further asked how they perceive the notion of authorship and to what extent this is important to them as contributors of either content or context. Do they consider personal attribution to be important within a collaborative project? How do they feel when their work is reused, remixed or re-edited –and thus re-authored? And how do they feel about the fact that their work can be reused for commercial purposes, or for ideological purposes they do not necessarily endorse? To us, collaboration invokes the notion of a community that emerges from the very practices of sharing –we are talking about the sharing of time, space (physical or virtual), views, resources, content, skills, knowledge, information, and/or support networks. 

Show 13th slide “What does community…”

We asked the Deptford.TV participants what does the term community signify to them, hoping to get responses that are both personal and grounded in experience -rather than theoretical and ‘politically correct‘ answers. Furthermore, we asked whether the Deptford.TV project initiates, shapes, or awakens a community? And whether it includes, or possibly excludes, existing communities or individuals?

Show 14th slide “Interviewees …”

We interviewed 12 participants in 10 interview sessions. These were:

  •  Janine Lãi, is a local resident, film-make. Janine has experienced a regeneration process in her own area, and hopes that her personal experience can feed into the context of the Deptford regeneration. She contributed film shot specifically for Deptford.TV
  •  Gordon Cooper, is a local resident since 1978 and a film-maker. Gordon has an interest both in the Deptford area, and in generating open-access and shared resources through the use of alternative litigation such as the Creative Commons. Gordon contributed archive film material. 
  •  Elvira, is a local resident, student and film-maker. She contributed film shot for D.TV
  •  Bitnik are a media collective based in Zurich. Switzerland. Bitnik produce artistic, social and collaborative work. They are concerned with open media practices and the production of tools that can facilitate such practices. They produce their own software systems which they are interested to make applicable in different contexts. Their goal is to merge platform and content, and involve the audiences as producers. Bitnik contributed software. 
  •  Stephen Oldfield, is a local resident since twenty years, and a sound artist. Stephen contributed a live sound performance and its recordings. 
  •  Camden McDonald, is a local resident, a performer, and one of the initiators of the Mindsweeper project: a floating venue on a boat that hosts screenings and other small-scale events. Camden contributed the physical space of the Mindsweeper. 
  •  Nik Hilton, is a local resident, and an architect. Nik is interested in the intersection between film and architecture. He got involved with Deptford.TV due to his interest in collaborative work, and the difficulty of applying this to his professional life as an architect. Nik is also interested in the local area and the Deptford communities. He contributed film shot for D.TV
  •  James Stevens, is one of the initiators of the project Boundless (Deptford), and the initiator of Deckspace media lab (Greenwich). James has a long history as the initiator of projects concerned with open spaces and public access media. His main aim is to facilitate people’s access to technologies. James contributed the infrastructure for D.TV through these two projects, as well as the physical space for the D.TV workshops. 
  •  Raw Nerve are a design collective based in Deptford. Raw Nerve work on a number of community-focused projects, and they aim to build up the connectivity between different creative people in the area. Raw Nerve contributed film archive material. 
  •  Amanda Egbe, is a film-maker and a Goldsmiths MA student. Amanda is interested in the political and technical issues raised by practices of collaborative film-making, as well as the social issues raised by processes of regeneration. Amanda contributed film shot for D.TV. 

And now the Movie “Deptford.TV essay: strategies of sharing”, 5 min. (excerpt of 28 min).

Show first 5 to 10 minutes of the film 

Posted on by adnan INTIMACY

INTIMACY: Open Call for Papers, Posters & Performances

NTIMACY
Across Visceral and Digital Performance

OPEN CALL FOR PAPERS, POSTERS & PERFORMANCES
INTIMACY Across Visceral and Digital Performance is supported by the AHRC ICT Methods Network, Goldsmiths Graduate School, Goldsmiths Digital Studios, Goldsmiths Drama Department, Goldsmiths Department of Visual Cultures and LABAN.

ABOUT
INTIMACY is a three-day interdisciplinary programme of events made to elicit connectivity, induce interaction and provoke debate between makers, participants and witnesses of works that explicitly address proximity and hybridity in performance. It will feature workshops, seminars, performances, posters, and a 1-day symposium. INTIMACY will employ digital and live art practices as agents, aiming to further practical exploration of and vibrant discourse into notions of intimacy in contemporary performance. It is framed as a forum for artists, scholars, community workers, performers, cultural practitioners, researchers and creative thinkers.

INTIMACY will provide a platform for the discussion of live art/performance practices concerned with displaying intuitive, intimate and visceral relationships between artist and other. It will explore performance practices that engage in intimate encounters, raising issues around bodies of data and flesh; presence as aura and representation; desire as embodied condition and disembodied fantasy; the human and posthuman self. Confirmed contributors include: Johannes Birringer, Kira O’Reilly, Tracey Warr, Janis Jefferies, Amelia Jones, Kelli Dipple, Dominic Johnson, Paul Sermon.

SPACETIME
INTIMACY will take place on the 7th, 8th and 9th December in and around Goldsmiths University of London, LABAN and The Albany (South London).

CO-DIRECTORS
Rachel Zerihan and Maria Chatzichristodoulou [aka maria x]

BOARD
Prof. Johannes Birringer, Chair in Drama and Performance Technologies, School of Arts, Brunel University of West London; Artistic Director of AlienNation Co.
Hazel Gardiner, Senior Projects Officer, AHRC ICT Methods Network; Researcher.
Prof. Adrian Heathfield, School of Arts, Roehampton University; Writer; Curator.
Prof. Janis Jefferies, Artistic Director, Goldsmiths Digital Studios; Director Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in Textiles; Artist; Writer; Curator.
Gerald Lidstone, Head of Drama Department, Goldsmiths University of London.

PROPOSALS
All participants will be selected on an open submissions basis. Proposals will be peer reviewed by the INTIMACY Board and Advisory Panel. Proposals must not exceed the word limit specified. You may provide additional info such as links to digital material including online video, photos and websites. Further supporting documentation such as hard copies and discs are welcome; if you want these returned please enclose a SAE. We are accepting proposals for:

Paper presentations or Performance Lectures
Poster presentations
Live performances -physical and/or digital

Proposals should be concerned with the relationship between visceral and digital environments/methodologies being explored in contemporary performance practice. Specifically, topics of interest include but are not limited to:
The politics of intimacy in contemporary performance
Risk in relation to intimacy in contemporary performance
Pornography/erotics and performed intimacy
(Dis)embodiment, (tele)presence and intimate performance encounters
Technologies as affective instigators of intimacy
Intimate aesthetics in contemporary performance
Interfaces of performed desire

Accepted proposals will be published on our website. Further publishing possibilities are being explored.

HOW TO SUBMIT
Submit by email to Maria X at <drp01mc@gold.ac.uk> and Rachel Zerihan <intimacyrachelz@yahoo.co.uk> writing INTIMACY SUBMISSION in the subject line.
Send hard copies to INTIMACY c/o 22 Dutton Street, London, SE10 8TB.

Performances: Submit 1) 500-word statement detailing your project; 2) 200-word CV; 3) Tech Drive; 4) Any other supporting material as described above. Please note that only limited technical support can be provided.

Papers/ Performance Lectures: Submit 1) 500-word abstract. This contribution would form a 15 minute paper to be presented at the Symposium on Sunday 9th December; 2) 200-word CV; 3) Any other supporting material as described above.

Posters: Submit 1) 300-word abstract /summary; 2) 200-word CV; 3) Any other supporting material as described above.

DEADLINE
Deadline for submissions: 19 August 2007.
Notification of acceptance: early October 2007

ADVISORY PANEL

Daisy Abbot, AHDS Performing Arts Glasgow
Sylvette Babin, Artist, Editor, Canada
Gavin Barlow, The Albany
Alice Bayliss, School of Performance and Cultural Industries, University of Leeds
Lauren Berlant, Department of English, University of Chicago, USA
Ghislaine Boddington, Performer, Body>Data>Space
Susan Broadhurst, School of Arts, Brunel University of West London
Brian Brady, LABAN
Teresa Dillon, Polar Produce
Simon Donger, Central School of Speech and Drama
Anna Furse, Drama Department, Goldsmiths University of London
Marc Garrett, Artist, Furtherfield
Gabriella Giannachi, Centre for Intermedia, University of Exeter
Joe Kelleher, School of Arts, Roehampton University
Roberta Mock, Faculty of Arts, University of Plymouth
Morrigan Mullen, Re-Write
Chris Salter, Artist, Hexagram; Department of Design and Computational Arts, Concordia University, Canada
Jennifer Sheridan, BigDog Interactive
Igor Stromajer, Artist, Slovenia
Bojana Kunst, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Tony Thatcher, Choreographer, LABAN
Helen Varley Jamieson, Performer, New Zealand

For more information on INTIMACY also check http://www.intimateperformance.org or contact intimacyrachelz@yahoo.co.uk or drp01mc@gold.ac.uk for full details of the call

Posted on by adnan INTIMACY

INTIMACY Across Digital and Visceral Performance

INTIMACY is a culturally urgent series of events designed to address an aesthetically and formally diverse set of responses to the notion of ‘being intimate’.

Intimacy has been constructed as a three-day interdisciplinary programme of events made to illicit connectivity, induce interaction and provoke debate between makers of and witnesses to works that explicitly address proximity and hybridity in performance. Digital and live art performance practices will be used as agents to further practical exploration of and vibrant discourse into intimate inter-actions. Resisting rigid forms of communication such as paper-giving and conference proceedings, collaborative techniques have instead been adopted to platform interactive strategies including workshops, seminars, roundtable discussions and performances. Intimacy is framed as a forum for artists, scholars, community workers, performers, cultural practitioners, researchers and creative thinkers.

Performance and live artists appear to be making work which addresses the disparity and isolation that breeds throughout communities facing direct and indirect conflict. Responding to the cultural climate of acute (in)security, current live art practice is explicitly addressing our relationship to one another in environments of extreme closeness and heightened connectivity. The current explosion in One to One performances (a performer, literally performing to an audience of one), for example, is an encounter that’s becoming increasingly rife in new performance festival showcases. Intimacy will provide a platform for the discussion of sub-cultural practices concerned with displaying intuitive, intimate and visceral relationships between artist and other. As such, it affords contemporary practitioners, theorists and students the opportunity of practical and critical engagement with co-ordinates that currently define these practices.

“How are bodies represented through technology? How is desire constructed through representation? What is the relationship of the body to self-awareness?” [Stone, Allucquère Rosanne The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age Cambridge, Mass. & London: MIT Press, 1995, p. 17]

Intimacy will employ these questions as a starting point to explore performance practices that engage in intimate encounters, raising issues around bodies of data and flesh; presence as aura and representation; desire as embodied condition and disembodied fantasy; the human and posthuman self. At the same time, it will explore technologies that can enhance ‘closeness’: networking technologies such as the Internet, wireless networks, telecommunications and Web.02; sensor technologies; virtual reality and other digital multi-user environments. These technologies of inter-subjectivity generate heterotopias that can function as the settings for beautiful and threatening encounters. Intimacy will allow for a hands-on exploration of such technologies as a means for intimate inter-actions in digital and hybrid performance practices.

The final outcome will be an online publication in the form of a media wiki which will host papers, reports, and AV documentation of the diverse events. Parts of the publication, such as the reports and documentation, will be made accessible to everyone to rewrite, re-edit and reuse. Intimacy’s open, collaborative and process-driven publication, rather than offering a fixed outcome edited by a sole author, will aim to ensure a multiplicity of voices and initiate an ongoing discussion and exchange among members of the communities.

Featuring performances, workshops, seminars and a symposium, Intimacy invites established scholars, current researchers, leading and emergent artists and eager audiences to enable the interrogation and creative exploration of formal, aesthetic and affective modes of performing intimacy now.

Intimacy is co-organised by Maria Chatzichristodoulou [aka maria x] , PhD Candidate at the Goldsmiths Digital Studios and Drama Department, University of London & Sessional Lecturer at Birkbeck College FCE; and Rachel Zerihan, PhD Candidate at the Performance and Live Art Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University.

Intimacy Committee:

Posted on by adnan Thursday Club

Thursday Club Open Call for Projects & Proposals

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). The Club is supported by the Goldsmiths Digital Studios (GDS) and the Goldsmiths Graduate School.

Originally set up in October 2005 by GDS as a more informal setting for research discussions, it has grown to include over 150 members, artists, technologists, scientists, in fact, a growing diversity of people from different communities worldwide, that are now connected via a mailing list and online forum.

There are also regular meetings in ‘real’ space at the Ben Pimlott site of Goldsmiths, University of London. Anyone can attend these events. By keeping these meetings free, informal and open to all, we provide a platform for diverse and open ended discourse, for people who perhaps would not have the opportunity to discuss ideas outside of their chosen discipline.

The Thursday Club brings together people from diverse fields and degrees of expertise, aiming to initiate discussion and debates among postgraduate students, researchers, academics, artists, theorists, and other cultural practitioners.

Since it focuses on interdisciplinary practices, the Club is interested to experiment with innovative formats of presentation that are appropriate to the nature of the subject. We particularly welcome the proposal of round table discussions, panels, screenings, ‘hearings’, live gigs and performance lectures as well as more traditional presentations. We are also interested to platform experimental work-in-progress, of both practical and theoretical nature.

Submission Materials

1. An A4 size page with your proposal (about 500 words); any relevant links; 1-2 pictures if relevant.

2. A 200 words CV

3. Your contact details: name, address, email and telephone number

4. Selected additional audiovisual information (e.g. audio and video files) preferably as a link.

Please send any submissions by email to Maria X at <drp01mc@gold.ac.uk> writing ‘Thursday Club Submission’ as a Subject.

The deadline for the submission of proposals is 29 JULY 2007. The submissions will be reviewed by the Thursday Club Board.

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 Coordinator
PhD Candidate Goldsmiths Digital Studios; Sessional Lecturer Birkbeck FCE; Curator.

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

Prof. 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.

Dr Sarah Kember
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.

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

Prof. Robert Zimmer
Professor of Computing, Goldsmiths College; Co-director Goldsmiths Digital Studios.

 

Posted on by adnan relevant projects

070707 UpStage Festival Performances Announced


Shadow puppets, flights of fancy, air guitar and a visit to a London building site will be some of the virtual attractions at 070707 UpStage Festival – a feast of online performances on July 7, 2007 to celebrate the release of UpStage 2.

New Zealand and international artists are creating work specifically for the UpStage environment, which will be performed for an online audiences and simultaneously screened at the New Zealand Film Archive in Wellington.

UpStage is software that allows audiences from anywhere in the world to participate in live online performances, created in real time by remote players. Audiences need only an internet connection and web browser and can interact through a text chat tool while the players use images to create visual scenes, and operate “avatars” – graphical characters that speak aloud and move.

The diversity of proposals for the festival has impressed the organisers. “It’s exciting to see UpStage being used in such a variety of ways,” said UpStage project manager Helen Varley Jamieson. “We have all manner of artists – writers, musicians, dancers, performers, videographers, story-tellers – experimenting with how they can use the internet as a creative medium and a site for their work.”

The full list of performances and artists is attached and is on the UpStage web site. Performance times will be publicised on the UpStage and New Zealand Film Archive web sites soon, and live links to the stages will be accessible from the UpStage web site on July 7; online audiences just need to click!

The performances will be screened live in the the New Zealand Film Archive mediagallery where visitors can buy a coffee, take a seat and watch the performances taking place from remote locations around the world. Exhibitions Manager Mark Williams says “It will be like watching a live movie, as the shows unfold in front our eyes.”

UpStage workshop facilitator Vicki Smith has been providing graphic, technical and tutorial support for artists and education groups who are creating performances, and says that the level and range of work being produced promises breathtaking cyberformances (online performances) for audiences to view and take part in.

UpStage 2 is funded by the Community Partnership Fund of the NZ Government’s Digital Strategy, with the support of partners CityLink, MediaLab and Auckland University of Technology, and developed by programmer and digital artist Douglas Bagnall.

The launch takes place on 28 June and will be accompanied by an exhibition at the NZ Film Archive from 28 June to 15 July, and the festival on 7 July.

For further information and images, contact:

Helen Varley Jamieson, helen@upstage.org.nz

Vicki Smith, vicki@upstage.org.nz

 

 

Posted on by adnan Thursday Club

NEW THURSDAY CLUB on 10 MAY: CURATING INTERDISCIPLINARY ARTS

Supported by the Goldsmiths DIGITAL STUDIOS and the Goldsmiths GRADUATE SCHOOL

6pm until 8:30pm, Seminar Rooms at Ben Pimlott Building (Ground Floor, right), Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, SE14 6NW

FREE, ALL ARE WELCOME

Issues of policies have frequently emerged at Thursday Club presentations, specifically in relation to the funding and curation of digital/ media arts, art-science collaborations, and interdisciplinary work in general. So, for the summer term 2007, we invited four distinguished speakers to take part in a round table discussion addressing the question:

Is curation as a practice relevant within the field of interdisciplinary work such as digital /media arts, sci-art, and networked arts? If so, what type of curation is appropriate to, and can support such practices?

The speakers are:

>> KELLI DIPPLE

Kelli is currently Webcasting Curator at Tate, London. Working on the development, programming and production of live webcasts and interface design in conjunction with Digital programmes – Tate Online and Education and Interpretation at Tate Modern and Tate Britain.

Kelli has worked for the past decade at the intersection of digital technology and performance practice under the name of Gravelrash Integrated Media, specializing in the integration of visual, interactive, communication and network technologies into live events for live audiences.
More info: http://www.macster.plus.com/gravelrash/

>> FURTHERFIELD.ORG [RUTH CATLOW & MARC GARRETT]

Furtherfield is an online platform for the creation, promotion, and criticism of adventurous digital/net art work for public viewing, experience and interaction. Furtherfield creates imaginative strategies that actively communicate ideas and issues in a range of digital & terrestrial media contexts; featuring works online and organising global, contributory projects, simultaneously on the Internet, the streets and public venues. It focuses on network-related projects that explore new social contexts that transcend the digital, or offer a subjective voice that communicates beyond the medium. Furtherfield is the collaborative work of artists, programmers, writers, activists, musicians and thinkers who explore beyond traditional remits.

Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett are Furtherfield’s co-founders and co-directors. They are both artists involved in research into net art and cultural context on the Internet. They co-curate works featured on Furtherfield.

>> ARMIN MEDOSCH

Armin is a writer, curator, artist, and Associate Senior Lecturer in digital media at Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication. He has written and edited several books on new media and network culture, his latest work including texts on wireless community networking and free and open source culture.

His latest work as a curator includes a contribution to the exhibition OpenNature at NTTICC Tokyo and the exhibition Waves, Riga 2006. In his spare time he is conducting research on collaborative and participative art forms, open cartography and mobile and interactive travelogues. Armin is a PhD candidate at Goldsmiths Digital Studios.

>> CHAIR: PROF. JANIS JEFFERIES

Janis is an artist, writer, curator, and Professor of Visual Arts at the Department of Computing, Goldsmiths College. She is Artistic Director of the Goldsmiths Digital Studios, Director of the Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in Textiles, and Convener of the GoldsmithsThursday Club.
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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).

1 Comment Posted on by adnan Thursday Club

New Thursday Club: 22 March with IGLOO

Supported by the Goldsmiths DIGITAL STUDIOS and the Goldsmiths GRADUATE SCHOOL

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

FREE, ALL ARE WELCOME

IGLOO

We believe in growing pieces and exploring ideas of being in other peoples stories, allowing audiences to join the dots, providing libraries of motion for play and provoking imagination so that certain things can be left unsaid. We experiment with different formats & new methods of interaction. Our ideas demand many skills therefore our work is collaborative. We go under the umbrella name of igloo & invite different artists to create with us. igloo are developing ways of blurring the boundaries between spectator & participator both passively & actively viewing ‘interactivity’ as a new kind of audience engagement.

International and award-winning artists igloo create intermedia artworks, led by Ruth Gibson & Bruno Martelli.

‘In the mid-sixties, Fluxus artists began using the term ‘intermedia’ to describe work that was ….composed of multiple media. The term highlights the intersection of artistic genres and has gradually emphasized performative work and projects that employ new technologies.’ [Marisa Olson – Rhizome.org]

igloo projects are created with teams of highly skilled practitioners drawn primarily from performance, music, design, architecture, costume, computer science and technology backgrounds. Their work combines film, video, motion capture technology, music and performance with digital technology. The work is developed in a variety of formats and made for distribution across a range of platforms, including gallery installation, internet sites, large and small scale performance and Cd Rom.
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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).

For more information email maria x at drp01mc@gold.ac.uk
To find Goldsmiths check http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/find-us/