In partnership with The Arts Catalyst.
‘Living Assemblies’ is a hands-on workshop, led by designer and researcher Veronica Ranner, investigating the coupling of the biological material silk, with digital technologies. This workshop is organised by The Arts Catalyst in cooperation with Furtherfield.
We invite participants (experts in their own field – artists, designers, scientists, writers, technologists, academics, and activists) to join a weekend-long workshop, in which we will experiment with silk and a range of transient materials to imagine potential future applications for combining biological and digital media.
Traditional methods of crafting silk have barely changed in 5000 years, but recent explorations by scientists are uncovering extraordinary new potential uses for this material. Reverse engineered silk is one of the few biomaterials not rejected by the human body. Rather, able to be fully absorbed by human tissue, it allows for a range of applications within and interacting with the body, including human bone and tissue replacements, biosensors and biodegradable electronics, opening the potential to imagine new wearables and implantables with a range of functions.
During this two-day workshop, participants will collaboratively explore the potential of reverse engineered silk, currently confined to laboratories. Taking the body as the first site for investigation, Veronica will ask participants to consider themselves as living assemblies that can be hacked, enhanced, and patched into using bio-digital materials. Activities will involve material experiments combined with a narrative design process to speculate on silk’s possible future use in the world.
DAY 1
With Veronica Ranner, Clemens Winkler and Luke Franzke, participants will be introduced to transient materials — such as reversed engineered silk — through hands-on experimentation with a range of materials, including agar-agar, gelatine, fibroin, glucose and silk-fibres. They will use digital methods and circuits and combine them with silken materials, to then begin forming their own ideas into speculative objects and artworks.
DAY 2
Innovator, scientist and intermedia artist, Gjino Sutic will introduce the concept of ‘bio-tweaking’: improving and hacking living organisms, for example through metabolism hacking, neuro-tweaking, tissue engineering and organ growing. Participants will work together with science writer Frank Swain to construct narratives around their work. In the final session, participants will map out their ideas in discussion with the group.
If you would like to attend the 2-day workshop please send a statement of no more than 100 words and explain why you would like to attend and a brief summary of your background.
Deadline: 5pm, 18 May 2015
Please email: admin@artscatalyst.org
**Participants must be able to attend the full 2 day workshop**
**Please note spaces are limited**
Participants are encouraged to bring their own laptops, inspirational materials, tablets and cameras along, to enrich the tool set for story crafting.
Veronica Ranner is a designer, artist and researcher living and working in London. She researches the burgeoning domain of the bio–digital — a converging knowledge space where digitality and computational thinking meet biological matter. She dissects and creates tangible and immaterial manifestations of such collisions, examining hereby the polyphonic potential of alternative technological futures. Her current doctoral work explores paradigm shifts in reality perception by coupling speculative (bio)material strategies and information experience through design research. Veronica holds a degree in Industrial Design from Pforzheim University, a Masters in Design Interactions (RCA), and has worked trans-disciplinary with a variety of science institutions and biomedical companies, and she teaches and lectures internationally. Her work is exhibited internationally, including at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem (2012), Science Gallery, Dublin (2012), China Technology Museum, Beijing (2012), Ventura Lambrate, Milan (2013) and French Design Biennale, St. Etienne (2013). She is currently pursuing a PhD at the Royal College of Art’s Information Experience Design programme and is interested in complex networked cycles, emerging (bio-) technologies and biological fabrication, systems design, material futures and new roles for designers.
Clemens Winkler, designer and researcher at the Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland.
Luke Franzke, designer and researcher at the Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland.
Frank Swain, science writer and journalist.
Gjino Sutic, innovator, scientist and artist; Director of the Universal Institute in Zagreb, Croatia.
Other experts joining discussions during the workshops will be Bio-informatician Dr Derek Huntley (Imperial College).
The project is a collaboration between The Creative Exchange Hub at the Royal College of Art, Tufts University (Boston, MA), The Arts Catalyst (London), and Imperial College (London), and hosted and in collaboration with Furtherfield (London). The project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
V&A Digital Futures is a monthly meetup and open platform for the display and discussion of work by students, researchers and creative practitioners working with digital media, interactive art, digital design, science and more. The programme offers participants opportunities to show and discuss work, but also a platform to network and nurture discussion and future collaborations. This is an open mapping session following on from the Digital Futures: Money No Object event that was held in October. The event will look at alternative currencies and value systems and will act as an evaluation and gathering session before a larger prototyping event that will follow in January 2015.
Limited places, please contact Irini Papadimitriou if you would like to attend on i.papadimitriou(at)vam.ac.uk – more info on the event page on EventBrite.
Ruth Catlow, artist, Furtherfield co-founder and artistic director, Play Your Place co-creator – http://furtherfield.org, http://furtherfield.org/gallery, http://www.playyourplace.co.uk
Heidi Hinder, artist-maker and researcher – http://www.moneynoobject.co.uk
Marta Owczarek, Brixton Pound Communications Manager and activist @martalucysummer
Carlos Noronha Feio, artist – http://www.carlosnoronhafeio.co.uk
Bill Balaskas, artist – http://www.billbalaskas.com
Gerard Briscoe, researcher, Queen Mary University London – http://webspace.qmul.ac.uk/gbriscoe/site/Home.html
The White Building
Queen’s Yard, White Post Ln
#Unit 7
E9 5EN London
United Kingdom
Since October 2014 Digital Futures is being hosted and co-curated by The White Building. The White Building, run by SPACE, is an incubator for discursive and innovative thought, it serves as a testing ground and creative lab for artists and creatives whose work engages with technology. http://thewhitebuilding.org.uk
Furtherfield presents DIGITAL ZOO: Life from the world wild web, a touring exhibition that invites audiences to explore and marvel at new patterns of human and digital behaviours in the network age.
Featuring Andy Deck, Mary Flanagan, Genetic Moo, Liz Sterry, Thomson & Craighead, Pete Gomes, and a new interactive mobile artwork commission by Transnational Temps.
DIGITAL ZOO features experimental software, interactive videos, installations, workshops, networked and mobile media created by internationally recognised artists inspired to explore the ways in which our lives are being shaped by digital technologies, and challenge the concept that digital art is only accessible in galleries or online.
Since 2008 artist group Genetic Moo have been developing a series of interactive video installations using choreographed video clips that respond in a variety of life-like ways to user motion and touch. With Animacules they take inspiration from the 19th century sea life illustrations of Ernst Haeckel and the work of the 17th century Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek to create a dark sea of wiggling, luminescent creatures that gorge on torch light.
Internationally renowned artist duo Thomson & Craighead create a new site-specific installation especially for the DIGITAL ZOO tour. A wall of propaganda style posters of the Tweets and other status updates drawn from people in the local area of the tour venues, offers a poetic snapshot of the invisible conversations taking place, “the idle mutterings of ourselves to ourselves as a form of concrete poetry.” The work is based on the artists’ London Wall series shown at the Museum of London (2010), Furtherfield Gallery (2012) and Carroll/Fletcher (2013).
Liz Sterry is an artist fascinated with the way people use the Internet to express themselves. In Kay’s Blog she presents an exact physical replica of a young woman’s bedroom, recreated through information, images and notes about her daily life that the real Kay posted on her public blog. With social media often used as a platform for self-expression and performance, the work questions how much of ourselves we share online with strangers without even realising it.
With his novel use of Twitter, US artist Andy Deck savours the wildness of everyday language with people around the world, inspired by the wealth of nature-related sayings passed down over centuries. He invites audiences to help him build a bestiary of animal idioms using social media and an interactive installation.
Experimental filmmaker Pete Gomes invited residents in Sunderland with no acting experience to participate in a 45 minute long acting session. Each participant was directed to perform on camera for a single five-minute take. Screened as a series, Cycle of Purposes questions reality and artifice by exploring how thoughts and feelings are acted, amplified, exaggerated and stylised every day in response to different people and places.
Mary Flanagan travels overland and undersea, in virtual worlds built and inhabited by other virtual beings. [borders] is a video documentation of her walks in beautiful and hypnotic landscapes that expose the boundaries of the virtual world by testing its edges. Her walks are inspired by Thoreau, the great American nature writer and walker, who, avoiding highways, chose instead to wander in order to understand the spiritual possibilities of the landscape.
Mall of the Wild by Transnational Temps is a new commission created especially for Digital Zoo. Players help the famous artist Magritte to find fake wildlife in the shopping centre. Equipped with a store map and a smart phone app, they have limited time to find a number of representations of wild animals visible in the products of the shopping centre. They map rare species and share their wildlife documentary photos in the online “Ceci n’est pas…” collection via social networks.
In creating DIGITAL ZOO, Furtherfield believe that digital networks and social media offer the potential for a more open relationship between artists and audiences, changing the life of an artwork in the world, and the ways in which people encounter it, and sometimes collaborate in its creation.
Personal information is exchanged with increasing frequency, and daily lives are becoming ever more public, as if in a public zoo. People are both animals and visitors; hunters, trackers, observers, naturalists and zookeepers; and educators and pundits. The longer-term social effects of this collective public performance are awaited…
The exhibition was accompanied by a series of creative workshops inspired by Crow_Sourcing for children aged 6-11 years old.
Curated and produced by Furtherfield in collaboration with Culture Code and Land Securities.
Digital Zoo is supported by Arts Council England through the Strategic Touring programme.
Crow_Sourcing by Andy Deck was made possible with funding from the Jerome Foundation, and was a 2012 Commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. for its Turbulence website.
Contact: info@furtherfield.org
Part of Furtherfield Open Spots programme.
Seeking to investigate new modes of audience experience, {crowdsourced} Noir / Love Beyond Recognition is a process-based artwork encompassing a sculptural installation and an interactive stream across the World Wide Web. Both parts of the project are based on the notion of “crowdsourcing” and the use of public domain archives for works of art. The physical installation will be exhibited at Konstepidemin Gallery, Gothenburg (SE), with live interactive streams at Furtherfield Gallery, London.
Visitors will be able to search for keywords from a database of short clips selected from the online public domain Film Noir Archive and hear them play through sourced short clips dialogues containing those words, while a live video stream connecting the two venues in London and Gothenburg will show the sculptural installation intercut by those dialogues and related video footage. A compelling cinematic experience is created. Visitors at Konstepidemin Gallery will be also able to see the live stream and hear the dialogues selected by the London-based audiences.
{crowdsourced} Noir / Love Beyond Recognition is a process-based artwork encompassing a sculptural installation and an interactive stream across the World Wide Web. The origin of both parts of the project is based upon the notion of ‘crowdsourcing’. The principle being that more heads are better than one. By canvassing a large crowd of people for ideas, skills, or participation, the quality of content and idea generation will be superior. In this instance, crowdsourcing will be applied through the use of clipsourcing tools which have been developed to aid in project-related tasks that can only be achieved through human interaction/intervention. This way, the crowd will help the artist achieve these tasks whilst adding a democratic element to the final outcome of the project.
During Spring and Summer 2012, an interested public was invited to both participate and contribute to the project’s creative process in two distinct ways: in Sweden as models, whereby a cast was taken of a chosen body part (the body parts were later assembled to full figure sculptures) and in the UK by taking part in a workshop at Furtherfield Gallery to help source short clips from the online public domain Film Noir Archive through our online tool.
The digital part of Posch’s project was developed in collaboration with UK artist and new media developer Mike Blackman.
Josefina Posch
Josefina Posch is a Swedish artist that has worked and exhibited extensively abroad, including at the 52nd Venice Biennale, Fondazione Pistoletto’s Cittadellarte, Sculpturespace NY and a residency at Duolun Museum of Modern Art Shanghai. During her 3 month residency at Art Space, Portsmouth, in Autumn 2010, she began her collaboration with artist and new media developer Mike Blackman in the development of her digital concepts.
The project is supported by Gothenburg City Arts Council, Arts Council England/British Council and IASPIS – The Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s International Programme for Visual Artists.
www.crowdsourcednoir.org
www.josefinaposch.com
Furtherfield Gallery
McKenzie Pavilion, Finsbury Park
London N4 2NQ
T: +44 (0)20 8802 2827
E: info@furtherfield.org
Furtherfield Gallery is supported by Haringey Council and Arts Council England.
A workshop exploring new, creative ways of using digital media to share ideas and develop them with others from around the world
“All of the Tigers thoroughly enjoyed your workshop, so much so that they continued developing their films for the rest of the week! I wanted to write to tell you how impressed I was by the thought and process you developed for the festival. From the opening ‘getting to know you’ game (genius!); to the group development of themes; to the concentration of the group as they engaged beautifully with VisitorsStudio – the whole day was very smooth and spot on :)” – Ruth Fenton, Arts Project Coordinator, Science Museum
Participants: 6-10 young people (16+ years old) from the Tigers Community Group
Artists: Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett (Furtherfield.org Co-Directors)
As part of the Being Connected festival, hosted by The Science Museum, Furtherfield.org was commissioned to deliver a workshop using their online, audiovisual mixing software, VisitorsStudio. This day of activities offered 10 young women from the Tigers community group in West London the opportunity to learn new, creative ways of sharing ideas and developing them together. The participants reflected on how we are connected in our everyday experience as well as globally by physical, social and digital means. Using VisitorsStudio and Flickr photo-sharing application, the group learnt how to search for and remix audiovisual media, already created and shared by people around the world. The experience culminated with the production of a web-based show-reel of participants’ work. At the final event participants also shared what they had learnt with their friends and families showing how the software works so that they could get involved too. After the workshop many of the participants returned to VisitorsStudio to continue to develop their ideas.
The Being Connected festival explored contemporary issues and themes surrounding media art, digital technology and engineering through a series of innovative workshops for, run by artists and artist engineers.
Partners: Science Museum, Vital Regeneration
Related links: VisitorsStudio
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