Archive for the 'art' Category

The Future of Creative Technologies Conference ‘08

Published
by
sctv
on November 20, 2008
in art and conference
. 0 Comments

Some of my twitters relating to the Future of Creative Technologies-Technology workshop

I have a twitter stream, but have it protected but want to share only the #keywords. Maybe one day there will be a semiporus privacy setting, which would be nice, but in the meantime…

#foct08 JimHendler new ways of teaching? should we try to bring childrens attention to focus, or ask better questions on how best to teach 7 minutes ago from TwitterFox

#foct08, Jim Hendler “we love disruptive technology as long as it isnt disrupting us” 10 minutes ago from TwitterFox

@Eingang, but how you know the people you know is related to what you know, if you are trusted, have reputation and skill. 17 minutes ago from TwitterFox in reply to Eingang

@sleepydog made hires through meeting over twitter in his company #foct08 20 minutes ago from TwitterFox in reply to sleepydog

#foct08 content, methods of delivery , and validation, how to get quality 25 minutes ago from TwitterFox

I want something that retweets # even though the rest of my updates are protected, useful at conferences 32 minutes ago from TwitterFox

#FOCT08 social networking brings me into a group that I care about… 34 minutes ago from TwitterFox

FOCT08 technology is complicated, and has social and political ramifications 34 minutes ago from TwitterFox

#FOCT08 social networking brings me into a group that I care about… 35 minutes ago from TwitterFox

#FOCT08 social networking brings me into a group that I care about…(think by @sleepydog) 36 minutes ago from TwitterFox

#FOCT08, management of privacy, privacy as a threat vs privacy as an rethink….. 38 minutes ago from TwitterFox

#FOCT08 cultural blocks on use of social technologies in schools. shortsighted? about 1 hour ago from TwitterFox

#FOCT08 crackle on the phone psychosocialhuman ‘feel’ of digital technology about 1 hour ago from TwitterFox

#FOCT08 @josiefraser knows who i am quoting at the technology workshop,but i am not…..but there are about 10twitters here…… about 1 hour ago from TwitterFox

#FOCT08 but the portion that arent are multiply disadvantaged about 1 hour ago from TwitterFox

#FOCT08 digital divides are present even in the creative industries, but what about wider community? Many are socially networked. about 1 hour ago from TwitterFox

#FOCT08 is it possible to make maps of exciting possibilities. about 1 hour ago from TwitterFox

#FOCT08 creating packages of overviews of what exciting is happening in New Media, then introducing then to new areas of expertise. about 1 hour ago from TwitterFox

what is the future Orson Welles “War of the World” moment #FOCT08 about 1 hour ago from TwitterFox

Technology workshop: who is “real” who “virtual” where doe the “work” happen #FOCT08 about 1 hour ago from TwitterFox

The public stream: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23foct08

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

light-responsive objects using arduino

Published
by
sctv
on November 15, 2008
in art, electronics and programming
. 1 Comment

installation close up

Finished trialling my light-responsive objects that I developed  at the AA2A placement and the ISIS Arts mini-residency. My motivation was to make a work that encoded knowledge of natural systems, to create a gentle empathy in the viewer. Over time these devices have transformed themselves in my eyes into pets, or dependant creatures. Although simple, they are evocative,  they have metaphorical attachment  points for anthropomorphism.Some of the verbal reactions to the work are that they are “sweet”, “cute”, “life-like”.  So as well as a model system to learn about interaction, they are also a site of inquiry into human relationships with machines.
Continue reading ‘light-responsive objects using arduino’

non-existential angst

Published
by
sctv
on October 29, 2008
in art
. 0 Comments
at first i didnt know who i was text reads: Mysterious OBJECT, Crisis?! hell i never even had an identity

Design Event 08 Newcastle

Published
by
sctv
on October 29, 2008
in art
. 0 Comments

Have been visiting a few of the interesting events from DE08, Saturday Week, Tetris, a way of thinking about reusing cardboard to make furniture on a 10×10cm grid.

instructions

Next was a talk by Matt Pyke of Universal Everything, showing that it was possible to live in a smallish city and do interesting jobs for companies like Nokia, Nike, Audi. The tip seemed to be having a network of potential collaborators so that the team evolves and can change to suit the job.

As well as collaborators, there is also a pool of interesting ideas that Matt and colleagues find interesting, inspiring, which they document at www.everyoneforever.com.

3Hubs, an experiment

Published
by
sctv
on October 3, 2008
in art and workshop
. 0 Comments

Last week was also an experiment in remote collaboration. On thursday, a group here in Newcastle met at ISIS to think about a complex topic “bio char“.

Pete Hindle and I had attended a keynote by Australian scientist Tim Flannery on bio char.

Tim Flannery

Image via Wikipedia

I had no idea what it was untill that stage, but described simply it is a way to make mineralised carbon that is resistant to degradation. How does that help us? Well, it doesen’t rot (or only very slowly), and so locks away carbon(which would become

2D representation of CO2

Image via Wikipedia

carbon dioxide,

methane etc), but the kicker is while you are making this, it is possible to extract oils/volatiles/tar that can be burnt to make electricity, or heat things.

So for me this seems an interesting way to power interactive artworks. There are two other hubs, one in Regina, Canada (Rachelle Viader Knowles) interested in Solar and the other in Bangalore, India  (Prayas Abhinav) interested in Biomass.

All of these fall under the banner of “powering new media artworks with locally relevant sustainable strategies”.

3hubsv1

Image by sctv via Flickr

This first stage event involved a modest nine people, and our thoughts are up at http://st.ation.in/wiki/projects:co-ordinated_ecodesign

So what did we discover, that it is fun to collaborate over timezones, that three way chats over skype work well (until the internet fell over), that doing it with others works.

Thanks to Pete, Helen, Ben, and Derick at my end for contributing.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Convergent Conversations at the Informatics Forum, Edinburgh

Published
by
sctv
on October 1, 2008
in art and seminar
. 0 Comments

Michael Kozicki and Richard Brown in conversation

Image by sctv via Flickr

Last Saturday, I attended a seminar at the informatics forum on art and science collaborations, or more specifically how the idea of dendrites has allowed artist/researcher Richard Brown and an engineer Professor Michael Kozicki (Arizona State University/Axon Technologies founder) to start talking.

So what is the discussion, the thread is dendrites that Richard Brown explores in his art work, and Michael Kozicki uses in developing disruptive technologies (like nanoscale valves, and massively bigger memory silicon chips).

It was a lively discussion, with that wariness evident, from the artist(you are going to steal my ideas, and not pay for them) and the industrialist(what is the use of art), why should i employ you?). There is that power play too, where the person that has the purse strings gets to call the shots. As a provocation, is there any other reason for artists to work in industry but to come up with novel ideas?

What are artists looking for? To influence technology? To critique it?

The talk was put on by the Informatics Forum and New Media Scotland.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Developing Sustainable Business Models in the Creative and Cultural Sectors

Published
by
sctv
on October 1, 2008
in art, economics and seminar
. 0 Comments

September the 23rd I attended a seminar/workshop put on by Newcastle University eBusiness, on Developing Sustainable Business Models in the Creative and Cultural Sectors(ESRC Project RES-185-31-0017.

It was the culmination of their research, illustrated through how known artists create a revenue stream for themselves, such as those in the Recording or Design areas. The audience had artists from the recording, DJing, Vjing and writing areas. I think I was the only one representing New Media or Fine Art(correct me if I am wrong). Reason for the underrepresentation I think is this gritty friction around fine art and money. Professor Feng Li’s(the primary investigator) standard phrase is “Imagine that you could be successful as an artist and incredibly rich”. At previous workshops, some of the participants had a visceral reaction to this, and I can understand it. However, the interviews have brought about some understanding of each side, the suit and the tshirt.

David Parrish was there to explain how they are not so incongruous. You can buy his book Tshirts and Suits, or download for free. One of the main take home points, was that a smart entrepreneur makes a device that makes money even when the inventer is asleep. The problem with the arts, is that it doesn’t make itself, and if something happens to you, the artist, the work stops.

A lot of the ideas explained in the taxonomy made by Danielly Netto could be described as making communitiy, making limited eddtions and merchandising your one offs. Radiohead’s strategies were discussed and the use of creative commons was also brought up (great!). The idea is to control your IP, and give away what you want.

This ties in nicely with something that was sent to me recently, about ideas, and whether they should be pursued. (from http://coudal.com/newsletter/recent.php)

Here are the questions, all equally important:

1. Will we be able to make money? We’re a business. We have mortgages and tuitions to pay. Plus, if we don’t make some cash once in a while, how will we feed our habit of continually screwing around?

2. When we’re done, will we be proud of the work we’ve done? Slaving for months on a project only to not want to show it to anyone when you’re finished just plain sucks. No amount of money can make that feel better.

3. Can we learn a little something new along the way? Executing the project has to make us smarter and help satisfy our curiosity, which we think is our greatest asset.

For an artist, not all of these are as important, we are not used to a work making money so concentrate more on being proud of the work and learning along the way, at least for the time being.

Which probably leads me back to Hans Abbing, and his book on Why Are Artists Poor? The Exceptional Economy of the Arts (Amsterdam University Press, 2002)….but I will leave it there today.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Lone Koefoed Hansen - Lost in location

Published
by
sctv
on August 6, 2008
in art, conference and transit
. 1 Comment

ABSTRACT

The massive rise in satelite navigation devices (and use) in cars is possible because the Americans turned off the scrambling device on the GPS satellites. However, because navigation is governed by the shortest distance between points, it may lead trucks down tiny roads, or people cars through waterlogged fiords.
Something is wrong, why are people getting lost when using car navigation, trying to drive off cliffs, or through watercourses. Lones argument is the there is information missing, the map that satnav is based upon is not situated in the environment.
Michael de Certeau “place is a practiced space”, people access the city in two ways -from outside through the map(not in the game), from inside as a pedestrian(situated person) . The Naked city(Deboard & Jorn, 1957) is a deconstruction of a map into the flow. This is the route description.
So there is the route description and the map, and gps navigation is a route description.
You do need to know what is happening out there.
The dream that GPS manufacturers are selling is false, It dosen’t situate us, this is why people drive into the water. Make us believe that we can be teleported from place to place without worry.

Eggpass

Published
by
sctv
on August 5, 2008
in art and conference
. 0 Comments
Eggpass Lo-fi social networking. Rosanne Marshack and Richard Valentin “On Augmented Reality-Enabled Social Network Traces of Pratitya-samutpada (Interdependence)” were tracing their social network with 12 black eggs. These eggs were simple to make, nice to hold, but at some point the paths stopped. The participants had become too attached, the eggs became objects of affection and didn’t go any further.

Location! Location? Location!! Table of works

Published
by
sctv
on August 5, 2008
in art and conference
. Closed

Dr Brian Degger – independent researcher brian@transitlab.org (see a picture of me at talk here)

Location! Location? Location!! Can location neutrality exist in artworks?

(http://www.isea2008singapore.org/abstract/a-c/p450.html)

Brian Degger

This paper starts from examining the notion of location neutrality, contrasting artworks that feature a locatitive media or location independent aspect.

Art in these works serves to enable reimagining of a place, a defamiliarisation of the familiar. Indeed a recent rise in the popularity of psychogeography, has led to a number of interesting performances and installations which seek to create new juxtapositions between the physical environment and imagined spaces.

One recent work was the remapping of Blooms (Ulysees, Joyce) walk through Dublin onto any city in the world using a web interface to generate the new walk. It takes site specificity and neutrality to an abrupt intersection. Interestingly, due to copyright issues with the underlying map data, people in UK could not use the interface for generating maps for UK cities.

Agnes Meyer-Brandis connects with an imagined subterranean landscape that underlies our own. In her works, location is neutral or sited upon a certain facility (e.g. ice rinks) as the works explore the interconnected underworld, searching for life in coresamples, icecores and atmospheric moisture.

Atau Tanaka’s work Net_Derive seeks to extend artwork beyond the gallery into the urban environment. It is based upon mobile and locative technologies.

These are but a few artists engaging with locative media. Other examples will be drawn from Blast Theory, the play of GEOcaching, Beatrez Dacosta’s PigeonBlog and FoAM’s TRG amongst others.

I will argue that location neutrality can exist in some works, but that these are a special case, and overwhelmingly location is a significant component.

Continue reading ‘Location! Location? Location!! Table of works’