This symposium centred around methodological questions and problems within the emerging field of art and science, particularly those involving the use of advanced information and communication technologies (ICT).
Speakers: ALEXA WRIGHT, ANN BORDA, ANTHONY STEED, GORDANA NOVAKOVIC, HELEN SLOAN, JANIS JEFFERIES, JULIE FREEMAN, LILIANE LIJN, PAUL BROWN, PETER BENTLEY, STELARC
http://www.methodsnetwork.ac.uk/activities/act36.html
Video footage now available online: http://www.arts-humanities.net/video/julie_freeman_combining_the_odd_carp_behaviour_nan
Tesla UCL - Tesla is an informal art and science discussion forum dealing with visionary ideas beyond the existing remits of art and science. Tesla welcomes artists, scientists, theorists and curators and others active or interested in the field of art and science.
Julie Freeman, Thursday 5 June 2008, 6-7 pm, free entry
INSPIRATION COLLABORATION CONFUSION DIVERSION - an artist working with science.
Julie will show documentation of her work to discuss how science influences and her art and the process of creating it, and how an artist can divert scientific rigours. She’ll show different levels of collaboration, inspiration and often confusion that comes from that same scientific world which ranges from an American fish surgeon to an experimental psychologist to a Professor of nanotechnology.
Anna Valentina Murch, Thursday 12 June 2008
Joanna Hoffmann, Wednesday 25 June 2008
All talk at: University College London, Garwood Lecture Theatre, South Wing
dogs’ ears: an ICA commission
CLICK TO CHAT AND WATCH THEM FLAP!
Playfully subversive, fun and thought provoking, Dogs’ Ears is a visually arresting online installation that explores the beauty and language of the dog ear.
Presented as a video chat website, where visitors can log in, browse dogs and instant message with them online, Dogs’ Ears spotlights both the human attraction to dogs and the future of arts patronage in the digital era.
Dogs’ Ears is free to browse. If users want to ‘live chat’ with a dog, then they will need to make a small donation – either to the charity Hearing Dogs for Deaf People – or direct to the artist to fund the next stage of the project.
Once the ‘conversation’ has started, each dog responds in its own language, whether it is an English ‘woof woof’, a Chinese ‘wang wang’, the Russian ‘gav gav’ or the universal twitch and flap.
If the online Art Patron financing scheme is successful, I’ll develop the work further; mapping the movement of the dogs’ ears and using the coordinates to compose music.
To meet the doggy cast and other randomness check the Dog Blog.
I am currently artist-in-residence at the Microsystems and Nanotechnology Centre at Cranfield University, working with, amongst others, Professor Jeremy Ramsden whose group is researching self-assembled nanotextures to be used for stem cell sorting and the detection of pathogens.
The residency will run for 10 months until October 2008, for me to develop a body of work that aims to increase public understanding of self-assembly and organising processes at the nanoscale, and the potential impact of these on biomedical science as well as hopefully stimulating debate about the social consequences of this work.
The residency is being co-ordinated by Happen and is supported by a Wellcome Trust Arts Award.
HearIMPROV was an experimental audiovisual concert which visualised sound, and targeted people interested in improvisation, audiovisual media, and more specifically, people with hearing difficulties. Adinda van ‘t Klooster invited 3 artists to create scores for improvisation musicians to play.
Translating Nature: B) Nanotextures is an animated visual score that is an abstracted representation of a biological process derived from research into self-assembled nano-textures that could be used for stem cell sorting and the detection of pathogens. The score was created in Processing, a java-based programming environment.
With many thanks to Jeremy J Ramsden, Professor of Nanotechnology at Cranfield University.
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Specious Dialogue consists of a pair of movable, sculptural forms that house battery powered wireless recording and playback systems, and tiny cameras that monitor their positions. Mounted on pairs of swivel castors the forms are able to be pushed, rolled, kicked and shoved around the gallery.
They play a multitude of roles; intervening in other artworks, lurking in corners, spying on reception, shouting at visitors, rolling into walls. However they are encountered, they expect to be touched or moved in some way, at the very least they want to be listened or spoken to.
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In Sound Mind is a demanding sonic artwork, playing pleasant soundscapes, such as bubbling brooks or wind through the trees, and then interrupting itself with screams, twisted laughter or the roar of a motorcycle. The sounds cascade relentlessly giving little time for the listener to achieve ‘aural space’.
In functional Magnetic resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies scientists gather data from the entire brain and all it’s activity. They then subtract layers of data relating to core functions such as breathing, heart beat, looking and so on, to leave data just relating to the small area they are studying – for example, empathic response. I was inspired by this and started to think about how subtraction naturally occurs subconsciously in every day life.
We can subtract unwanted ‘data’ from our environment when we focus our attention on something in particular – visually and aurally or even with smell, taste and touch. When we focus our attention the rest of the information is still being processed, it’s just attenuated, pushed to the background.
In Sound Mind is about trying to explore this sound subtraction ability – the focusing of aural attention. When familiar sounds are played in an unfamiliar way, in a space that has more sound than is comfortable, can this still happen? By moving about the space and adjusting to the sounds, some become familiar again – the brain aurally subtracting the parts you don’t want to hear, similar to eyes adjusting to a darkened room. But at times the work becomes overbearing and prevents the listener from focusing, provoking unease.
The work was accompanied by my talk about Art and Empathy and was created for Tricks of the Psych Trade a collaborative science / art event with psychologist Dr Emma Lawrence and artist Peter Myers.
Sound excerpt from In Sound Mind
Image by Peter Myers (click for larger version)
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Four disciplines, four interpretations, one place.
The sensorial delight of the Cornish landscape was brought to London by four artists in an uniquely immersive experience. This multi-disciplinary exhibition combines painting, digital sonic and video footage simultaneously created in the same spot.
In the exhibition, Julie Freeman’s exquisite momentary recordings are embedded within and around Robert Clarke’s paintings, while Stewart Rainbow’s video is projected in a slow moving panning scan across the walls, intersecting with the paintings periodically - bringing together sound, video and paint in unison. Karen McCarthy’s haiku’s dot the walls and intensify the remotely re-enacted atmosphere. Her poems another interpretation of the changing landscape.
Sound excerpt - Cornish Rain on giant rhubarb leaves
For more information check the site: timemachine
Shown at The Curator’s Space, 47 Great Eastern Street, London from 15 December to 23 January 2006
The Lake website
This pioneering work of digital art was installed at the Tingrith Fishery over the summer of 2005 The work uses hydrophones, custom software and advanced technology to track the electronically tagged fish in the circular Fringe Lake and translate their movement into an audio visual experience. Visitors of all ages are invited to come and listen to the fish composing their very own soundscape whilst watching an animated representation of what’s really happening under the water.
The work was developed over three years and supported by a £96,040 fellowship from NESTA (The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts), and Tingrith Coarse Fishery
Exhibited:
2005 Tingrith Fishery, Beds, UK
2006 Truman Brewery, London, UK
2007 FILE, Sao Paulo, Brazil
SELECTED MEDIA COVERAGE
BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour
BBC news
The Guardian, Taking the Piscine
organism
we make money not art
Times online - pick of the summer exhibitions listing
