On 26th November from 18:00 – 21:00 I’ll be holding the second event as part of my solo exhibition, Permission Taken, at Birmingham Open Media.
In this workshop I’ll introduce concepts behind the exhibition and my knowledge of copyright gained through undertaking a CopyrightX course.
This session encourages artists to think critically about how Copyleft concepts could be applied to their own practice.
Places are free but limited, to reserve places please get in contact.
The Archive Remix print pieces are a continuation of the remix pictures that I have been making as part of my residency at the University of Birmingham’s Research and Cultural Collections. The content that I have been making for that has focused on what can be lost when restrictive copyright is enforced. In keeping more with the themes of this exhibition the Archive Remix print pieces focus on the effect of corporate branding on imagery.
The most central imagery consists of 3D scans of artefacts from the archives of Research and Cultural Collections. These then become obscured amongst the visual barrage of slightly distorted corporate branding, something which might not seem so visible at first.
The Copy Bombs are my way of contributing to the free culture movemnt by encouraging the public to share images, audio, text and video in an unhindered way.
The Copy Bombs are, at their heart, PirateBox installations.
PirateBox creates offline wireless networks designed for anonymous file sharing, chatting, message boarding, and media streaming. You can think of it as your very own portable offline Internet in a box!
When users join the PirateBox wireless network and open a web browser, they are automatically redirected to the PirateBox welcome page. Users can anonymously chat, post images or comments on the bulletin board, watch or listen to streaming media, or upload and download files inside their web browser.
By building these sculptures (well, I employed Matthew James Moore to make them) I aim to give more of a physical presence to the wifi network. It serves as an object to signal that media can be shared freely within the vicinity. Due to being powered by battery (which can last nearly three days) these can be located anywhere.
In practical terms to use the Copy Bomb only a browser is needed, which can be on a mobile or desktop OS. A user needs to join the CopyBomb Alpha/Beta/Gamma network and then point their browser to http://copybomb.lan. They will be redirected to the sharing site, which is a PirateBox with the theme/CSS changed.
Once there they can browse the current contents or upload their own. I have hand picked content from the following online open archives:
In addition to this there is content from the University of Birmingham’s Research and Cultural Collections and my own archive of previous artworks.
The content from the public archives was chosen based on how easy it could be to remix and modify it. So, many of the items can easily be isolated from their backgrounds and used in other projects.
Perhaps the most immediately visible piece in my exhibition is the Dead Copyright vinyl wall installation.
Inspiration for this piece came from the Copyright Atrophy project I undertook in 2013. I began to consider how objects, logos and images can be abstracted into basic geometric shapes that eventually become noise. Are they still recognisable when presented in their most simplified form? This is combined with the projection of the glitched logos from the Copyright Atrophy project to create forms that might seem almost recognisible but disappear shortly afterwards.
The Archive Remix video pieces are a continuation of the remix gifs that I have been making as part of my residency at the University of Birmingham’s Research and Cultural Collections. The content that I have been making for that has focused on what can be lost when restrictive copyright is enforced. In keeping more with the themes of this exhibition the Archive Remix video pieces focus on the effect of corporate branding on imagery.
The most central imagery consists of 3D scans of artefacts from the archives of Research and Cultural Collections. These then become obscured amongst the visual barrage of slightly distorted corporate branding, something which might not seem so visible at first.
On 19th November from 18:00 – 21:00 I’ll be holding the first of the events as part of the Permission Taken exhibition at Birmingham Open Media.
A workshop inspired by the Exquisite Corpse surrealist storytelling technique. Participants are invited to co-create an artwork re-mixing archive images and other materials to be exhibited at the University of Birmingham. Following this a discussion will be held questioning authorship and ownership of the collaboratively created artworks.
Participants need only bring themselves and a willingness to get creative!
Places are free but limited, to reserve places please get in contact.
Permission Taken launched at Birmingham Open Media on 23rd October and it couldn’t have been better!
You may have noticed my internet presence has been somewhat quiet over the last few months. This can all be attributed to the many hours it took to prepare for this, my first solo exhibition. Prior to this I had done many performances, contributed videos, gifs and still images to group shows, and curated shows featuring the work of other artists. Being given the large gallery space of BOM was therefore quite a challenge and a new experience.
In developing work for this exhibition I wanted to present work that best represented the direction my work is taking. Aesthetically this will still include lots of screens and projections, and will still incorporate the (mis)use of technology and glitch art. However, there will be more of a focus on the free culture and the open source movement.
These issues have always been present within my work, just not at the forefront. For example, it’s no secret that I only use open source software and have done since around 2008. I also release my work under Creative Commons licences in the hope that people will reuse my work somehow. Through this exhibition I aim to encourage others to do the same in their own practices.
I know that this can be a difficult message to convey through visual artwork alone. There will be a few upcoming events that will invite the public to further look into these issues, explore new approaches to ownership and authorship, and learn about how creativity is restricted by outdated laws and practices. Information about those will be published very soon, but in the meantime keep an eye on my events page and the BOM website.
This exhibition wouldn’t have been possible without the help of loads of people. In particular I want to thank:
And last, but by no means least, I’d like to thank everyone that came out on the opening night and has been to the exhibition since. I was really touched by all of the support from my family, friends and the art community.
The exhibition continues at Birmingham Open Media until 23rd January. It then will happen again in March 2016 but more on that later 😉
I’m happy to announce the launch of my first solo exhibition, Permission Taken, taking place at Birmingham Open Media from 23rd October 2015 to 23rd January 2016.
The exhibition features a number of digital, video, print and installation pieces developed as part of my residency at the University of Birmingham’s Research and Cultural Collections and Fellowship at Birmingham Open Media. The pieces explore ideas of ownership, copyright and free culture – issues which are pertinent as online communities become more prolific and harder to police.
Over the course of the exhibition a number of events will be held that invite artists and the public to rethink ideas surrounding ownership and authorship in the digital age.
Permission Taken is supported through public funding by Arts Council England and with funding from University of Birmingham.
