Time Portals

Octavia E Butler had a vision of time as circular, giving meaning to acts of courage and persistence. In the face of social and environmental injustice, setbacks are guaranteed, no gains are made or held without struggle, but societal woes will pass and our time will come again. In this sense, history offers solace, inspiration, and perhaps even a prediction of what to prepare for.

The Time Portals exhibition, at Furtherfield Gallery and online spaces, celebrates the 150th anniversary of Finsbury Park. As one of London’s first ‘People’s Parks’, designed for free movement and thought, it is the perfect location to create a mass investigation of radical pasts and futures, circling back to the start as we move forwards.

Each artwork invites audience participation – either in its creation or in the development of a parallel ‘people’s’ work – turning every idea into a portal to countless more imaginings of past and future urban green spaces and beyond.

What rights in Copyright? Interview with Filippo Lorenzin

Following the opening of the Common Property exhibition at Jerwood Visual Arts I was interviewed by Filippo Lorenzin about the exhibition and my views on copyright in general. On 8th February this interview was published on the Furtherfield website.

furtherfieldcommonproperty

I think Copyright as a whole is in a terrible state. As Cory Doctorow suggests in the exhibition programme (which is in itself an excerpt from his book “Information Doesn’t want to be Free”) Copyright as we know it isn’t written for artists or any individual. Its verbose terms and complexities cannot be understood and are probably not even read by most of us. They are written for other lawyers. If, in order to go about our creative business, we are expected to read and understand the terms and conditions and law – it is estimated that it would take 76 days to read all of the Ts and Cs of websites we use – what time do we have to be creative?

Read the full interview on the Furtherfield website.

Glitch Moment/ums Opening Event

The opening event for Glitch Moment/ums took place on 8th June at Furtherfield Gallery. In addition to being blessed with great weather (and Stone Roses playing on the same grounds), the opening, I felt, was very successful!

My performance appeared to go down well with the audience and happened without any unwanted glitches. I’ll do a video recording of it soon, and no doubt Furtherfield will have some video documentation of the day themselves.

Regarding the works in the exhibition, I was/am very impressed with the selection! I like to see (glitch) work that ventures off the screen as I feel this is an area that hasn’t been explored as much as screen-based glitches have. In fact, videos are in the minority at this exhibition!

Anyways, some photos of the works below and on Flickr, all by Furtherfield.

Antonio Roberts' glitch performance

Glitch Moment/ums exhibition

Glitch Moment/ums Opening Event - 08 June 2013

Further Abstract by Alma Alloro

Glitch Moment/ums Opening Event - 08 June 2013

untitled [screencaptures] (2010) by Melissa Barron

Thanks to Roͬͬ͠͠͡͠͠͠͠͠͠͠͠sͬͬ͠͠͠͠͠͠͠͠͠aͬͬ͠͠͠͠͠͠͠ Menkman everyone at Furtherfield for having me as part of this exhibition ^_^.

The exhibition continues until 28th July. If you’re in London you should see it.

Glitch Moment/ums – 8 June – 28th July 2013

From 8th June – 28th July I’ll be part of the Glitch Moment/ums exhibition, curated by Rosa Menkman & Furtherfield, at Furtherfield Gallery.

glitchmomentums

Glitches are commonly understood as malfunctions, bugs or sudden disruptions to the normal running of machine hardware and computer networks. Artists have been tweaking these technologies to deliberately produce glitches that generate new meanings and forms. The high-speed networks of creation and distribution across the Internet have provided the perfect compost to feed this international craze. The exhibition shows various approaches by artists hacking familiar hardware and their devices which include mobile phones, and kindles. They disrupt both the softwares and the digital artefacts produced by these softwares, whether it be in the form of video, sound and woven glitch textiles.

Glitch art subverts the way in which we are supposed to relate to technology, causing playful, imaginative disruptions. It is a low-tech and dirty media approach with a punk attitude. These artists appropriate the medium and forge expressions that go beyond what the mainstream art world expects artists to do, it is unstoppable – it is Glitch Moment/ums.

I’ll also be doing a short performance on Saturday 8th June, 3pm, at the gallery.

Participating artists + works

Alma Alloro – Empty Spinning Circle become Full (part b) (2012) from the Further Abstract series | One Square in colors (2012) from the Further Abstract series
Melissa Barronuntitled [screencaptures] (2010)
Nick BrizThe Glitch Codec Tutorial
Benjamin Gaulon – KindleGlitched (2012)
José Irion Neto – Thoreau Glitch Portrait (2011)
Antonio Roberts – Copyright Atrophy (2013) | What Revolution? (2011)
Ant Scott – Beyond Yes and No (2013)

Glitch Art 0P3NR3P0.NET Open Call

openrepo

Glitch artists and enthusiasts are invited to add their work to GLI.TC/H 0p3nr3p0.net, a Glitch Art repository coded by and developed by Joseph ‘Yølk’ Chiocchi & Nick Briz. The submissions will be showcased during Glitch Moment/ums at Furtherfield Gallery. To include your work in the 0P3NR3P0 component of Glitch Moment/ums submit a link to any visually wwweb based file (html, jpg, gif, youtube, vimeo, etc.) and your piece will automatically be included in the line-up (one work per artist).

This new IRL exhibition has been organised in collaboration with Nick Briz and Joseph ‘Yølk’ Chiocchi.

SUBMIT && SHOW on 0P3NR3P0.NET

Libre Graphics Research Unit article on Furtherfield.org

Last month I attended the Co-Position meeting in Brussels of the Libre Graphics Research Unit. I’ve already talked about one of the work sessions in a bit of depth. Today I was alerted that an article I wrote for Furtherfield that gives an overview of the meeting went live!

Libre Graphics Research Unit on Furtherfield

Click to view the article

How can designers and programmers work more harmoniously? How can the tools being created better meet the needs of users? There is a need for designers to have a greater role in the production of the tools that they use, aside from just reporting bugs, requesting features or designing logos for open source projects.

Head over to further field to read the whole article.

Here’s some of my favourite photos from the meeting from myself and Tom Lechner

The Libre Graphics Research Unit

Almost all of the LGRU attendees


LGRU Day 4 - Prototypes

At the roundtable discussion (there was no table to speak of)


Preparing the round table

Preparing the roundtable discussion


LGRU Day 3 - Shared Vocabularies

Toonloop performance by Alexandre Quessy

More can be seen on the LGRU Flickr tag

For the Spanish amongst us there’s two more articles about the Co-Position meeting