Curating the Machine

Since May 2017, alongside everything else, I been undertaking a fellowship with Near Now in Nottingham. The Fellowship, now in its third iteration, is for anyone interested in developing a project that uses technology in a creative way.

For my fellowship I have been conducting research into the relationship been copyright, curating and automation. There are no concrete outputs yet but do take a look at the blog, Curating the Machine, which collates all of my research to date.

If any of this sparks an interest or it you want to know more please do get in touch! I’ll also be at Transmediale on a research trip (thx Near Now) at the end of January if you want to meet IRL 😺

Random String Fellowships

The awesome folk at Ludic Room have announced that they are now running a Fellowship programme for their Random String event. If you’re interested in incorporating digital technology into your practice then read on. I’ll be one of the mentors on this programme.

randomstring

The Random String Fellowship is an opportunity open to artists and practitioners from any discipline, including visual arts, music, literature and performing arts, who are interested in embarking on a technology-focused creative enquiry.

We are looking for 6 enthusiastic mid-career artists with an established body of practice to explore how technology might make their work more interactive, develop a more meaningful relationship with audiences or explore future notions of co-creation and participatory practice.

What is the Fellowship?

The Fellowship is a comprehensive programme that includes:

  • 1-1 time with a Mentor to give training and support
  • Group development opportunities alongside other artists
  • Studio and exhibition visits
  • The option to spend time with academics from Warwick University
  • Attendance and presence at the Random String festival in June

We’ll also give each artist a stipend of £800 towards their time and expenses and we’ll provide £200 worth of technology to use in their enquiry and keep afterwards. We can also offer shared studio and hot-desking at our space in Coventry Canal Warehouse if required. There is no expectation that the Fellowship will result in a new body of work, this is an opportunity to play. We ask Fellows to honestly and openly experiment with the technology, share their experience via our blog through visual or textual means and to show any work in progress at the Symposium and at a final Pecha Kucha event charting your successes and failures.

randomstring_hacking

How do I apply?

The application process is very simple. Please complete the application form here, including uploading a CV and any supporting images or weblinks and write a short paragraph outlining what you find interesting about the Random String Fellowship programme.

The Fellowship is only open to artists who currently do not use routinely use interactive technology in their creative practice.

The deadline is 13:00 on 18th April. Get applying now!

Evasive Manoeuvres

During my 2016 Fellowship at Birmingham Open Media I will continue my collaboration with Lucy Hutchinson to further the work we have been producing in response to the growing surveillance culture. We will be devising creative interventions which aim to circumvent invasive surveillance technology.

evasive

These interventions will take a variety of approaches and will not be limited to purely hardware/software based response. In one such intervention we will be taking inspiration from the work of artists such as Adam Harvey and Zach Blas and develop a series of masks that can be worn to obscure faces from these cameras whilst making a political statement.

This project came about through several events. For me interest in this area started in 2015 when I curated the Stealth exhibition at Vivid Projects. This exhibition featured works by six artists that produced work in response to surveillance culture. This included a font by Sang Munn for circumventing text scanning software, a personal drone system by Joseph DeLappe and a film made entirely of CCTV footage by Manu Luksch.

Stealth

For Hutchinson work in this area began with the This Is What A Feminist Looks like and Paying Artist artworks produced in 2015. These works used facial recognition software together with face-obscuring masks to make political statements. Since 2016, she has been undertaking a residency at Coventry University where she is using the “Media Eyes” at Birmingham New Street station as a focal point to explore the effect of surveillance on behaviour, particularly focusing on themes of participation and consumption.

This is What a Feminist Looks Like

During the fellowship we will bring together our skills in programming, photography and printmaking and collaboratively examine the increasing collection of audience metrics by surveillance technologies for advertising uses. We intend to further this research by considering resistance scenarios to these technologies and the application of this software into other areas such as threat recognition, art galleries and work spaces.