Whilst out in Arles for Databit.me I did a short interview with David LePôle about my time at Databit.me, glitch art, my inspirations, and contemporary art. You can also see a bit of me delivering a Pure Data workshop.
Thanks to Belka for filming it!
Arles is such a beautiful town that I think it deservers a whole blog post just to show it off!
More photos on my Flickr.
From 14-21 October I was in the beautiful town of Arles for Databit.me #2. It was all really amazing! I had the privilege of being in the presence of so many talented and creative individuals, including Jankenpopp, Gijs Gisekes, Tapetronic and Axel Debeul, who all were very happy to share their knowledge and skills.
Much of the week was spent working on the Open Camera project. The aim was to find a cheap and affordable way to capture images. My solution was to use a Raspberry Pi and digital photo frame to build a very simple script that glitched images from a webcam
Later in the week the performances from the resident artists and my presentation – alongside Sébastien Magro, Jacques Perconte, Yannick Vernet and Alexandre Simonet – took place. There’s no video recording of the presentation yet, but hopefully it’ll emerge soon!
My performance at the closing party – although only 10 minutes long – marked my first ever solo audio and visual performance. There’s no video (yet) of this, but it sounded and looked a lot like the preview video.
I’ll do detailed writeups of some of the achievements of the week, but until then enjoy this video documentation of performances from other artists:
More photos from the week are here on Flickr. Thanks to TNTB/David LePôle for inviting me over for the festival!
On Friday 2nd November from 12pm I’ll be running a Pure Data workshop as part of Flip Festival at Lighthouse Media Centre in Wolverhampton.
Pure Data is a dataflow programming language that is utilised for a wide variety of purposes including making generative electronic music, creating glitch visuals, interactive live performance and VJing (Video Jockeying). I’ll guide participants through the basics of Pure Data – including general usage, playing and manipulating videos and creating generative visuals that respond to different inputs. No experience of Pure Data is necessary, only a laptop and a willingness to experiment and learn!
The event is free to Flip Festival ticket holders and £6 for everyone else. Tickets can be purchased online. Here’s the event details on Facebook. Don’t forget to bring your laptop!
To see what can be created with Pure Data take a look at what I’ve made in the past.
On Saturday 3rd November 2012 I’ll be curating an event for Flip Festival 2012 called The People VS The Machine
Join us for the closing party for Flip 2012 which will see digital artists and illustration artists battle at Fixxion Warehouse Project in Wolverhampton from 9:30pm for an eclectic night of digitally-inspired visual art, set to a backdrop of electronic music. Artwork will be created as a response to the future of the relationship between humans and computers. Will human and machine fuse to form a race of superhuman cyborgs or will we be crushed under the weight of a robot uprising, whilst having a dance? The night will feature artwork from a range of local and nationally known artists, and music influenced by the interchange of visual elements from Silhouettes and a special guest DJ. Tickets are £6 plus booking fee and can be purchased online. Here’s the event details on Facebook.
Keep an eye on the Flip Festival website for more news!
On Thursday 1st November at 6pm I’ll be taking part in a panel discussion at The Drum, as part of Kalaboration. The discussion will be chaired by Elly Clarke and will feature myself, Dan Auluk and Karen Mclean.
Who are the new wave of artists practicing today and what are their influences? Can artists become a success commercially whilst addressing politics, diversity and identity? Should participating in the arts for young people be purely a creative process, or is it important to address social, environmental and cultural issues? Our panel of speakers and presentations provide an insight of the “Brand New Generation”.
The discussion focuses on who are the new wave of artists practising today and what are their influences? Each artist can be regarded as emerging in the past couple of years and are beginning to make a name for themselves in their respective practises. This is an opportunity for them to share their ideas and experiences of recent projects with our audience. The discussion will also focus the ever changing social, economic and political environment, locally and globally and the impact/influence this has had on their practice.
Places for this event are free, but you’re advised to contact Kalaboration, either via their website or Facebook, to confirm a place
BZF 2012 happened from 12-15th October and, as with the previous two years, it was a great success!
BZF – artwork by Ben Javens
On October 13th, the day of the main fair, over 500 people came through the doors of Sidewalk to indulge in zines, comics and illustrations from over 40 exhibitors, as well as films and presentations from the likes of The Brothers McLeod and Jeffrey Lewis
This was my last year as part of the BZF team, and I enjoyed it just as much as the previous two! Good luck to the remaining BZF team, Lizz and Annelisefa, for next year and future events!
More photos from myself and others are available on Flickr
GLI.TC/H 2112
[ DEC 6, 2112 – DEC 9, 2112 ]
[ CHICAGO, IL ]
http://gli.tc/h
Databit.me starts this Saturday, 13th October in Arles, France. I’ll be there from 14th-21st October. Here’s a taster of what I’ll be doing there:
TROVE, whom I recently did an exhibition with, will be celebrating its third birthday on 12th October 2012 5-9pm. To celebrate this occasion they’ve invited past artists and collaborators to exhibit some work with them
Over the past three years TROVE have worked with 146 local, national and international artists that have created, exhibited and performed as part of TROVE’s programme.
TROVE have realised over 36 shows in the wonderful TROVE home, the Old Science Museum, and in offsite projects, with venues including Curzon Street Station, mac birmingham, Edible Eastside, DownStairs Gallery, FarGo, The Burlington Fine Art Club, Coexist and ARC.
TROVE is an independent art gallery who have worked with Fierce Festival, Hereford Photography Festival, Hedge Enquiry, Minnie Weisz Studio, Museum of Lost Heritage, Birmingham Architects Association, Birmingham City Council, Clarke Gallery, Birmingham City University and Crowd 6.
At Pop! Bang! Wallop! there will be presents, piñatas and pass the parcel! There will be artworks and cards from past TROVE artists! There will be a bouncy castle! And much much more!
Come and celebrate TROVE’s 3rd Birthday on 12th October 2012 5-9pm.
TROVE, Newhall Square, off 144 Newhall Street, Birmingham, B3 1RY
To celebrate the occasion, in addition to making/glitch a birthday card, I circuit bent a toy for them:
I received this toy as a present from the micro residency that I did in 2011 at Fargo Hack Play Space. Although it’s really small, this toy contains a lot of bits to bend and break! The toy originally played several nursery rhymes, contained a single-purpose light and had its own speaker and headphone port.
Using great science a lot of guesswork I added in a light-dependant resistor to control the speed of playback, repurposed the light switch to reset the device and made the light only turn on when noise is being made. Pressing and holding the play and skip button causes the speed of playback to double (or triple). I also replaced the sticker on the front with some of my own art. The below video probably explains it a lot better than words ever could:
(If pictures are worth 1000 words then the above video is worth 2095000 words)