Utilising a range of formats from audio-visual performance to talks, this event is an experiential investigation of noise as a granular entity. State changes are a central theme. Processes of disintegration and/or reintegration of material elements at a granular level are explored, both as the mode of transference between states (whether physical or digital) and the means by which a thing starts or ceases to be.
The colloquium will take place from 10 am – 5pm at The University of Greenwich, Stockwell Street Building and is held in association with the exhibition Granular: The Material Properties of Noise. The event will be followed by a private viewing of the exhibition.
Chaired by Dr. Stephen Kennedy, University of Greenwich, Department of Creative Professions and Digital Arts
(author: Chaos Media: A Sonic Economy of Digital Space – Bloomsbury 2015)
Keynote: Greg Hainge , University of Queensland, Associate Professor, School of Languages and Cultures
(author: Noise Matters: Towards an Ontology of Noise – Bloomsbury 2013)
Contributors include Russell Duke, Jane Grant, Antonio Roberts, Dr David Ryan, Charles Danby and Rob Smith.
Tickets cost £10 (£5 for students) and are available via this link to our Eventbrite page. Tickets include free access to the performance of “Recitativo” on Friday 26th January.
On 17th March I’ll be delivering a presentation on the topic of Copyleft as part of my exhibition, Permission Taken, and the Arts and Science Festival at University of Birmingham.
Antonio Roberts introduces concepts behind the exhibition and knowledge of copyright gained through undertaking a CopyrightX course. This session encourages participants to think critically about how Copyleft concepts could be applied to their own practice or area.
If you missed the one that happened at Birmingham Open Media now’s your chance to take part! Places are free and can be booked here. There’s loads of other cool events happening during the Arts and Science Festival which you should check out!
On 15th March I’ll be running an Exquisite Corpse workshop as part of my exhibition, Permission Taken, and the Arts and Science Festival at University of Birmingham.
Antonio Roberts leads 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.
Following the workshop there’ll be a discussion questioning authorship and ownership of the collaboratively created artworks.
If you missed the one that happened at Birmingham Open Media now’s your chance to take part! Places are free and can be booked here. There’s loads of other cool events happening during the Arts and Science Festival which you should check out!
The “Brand” New Generation event took place on 2nd November at The Drum as part of Kalaboration. Aside from my Pecha-Kucha-style presentation on glitch art glitching (i.e. not working) it went really well! For the benefit of those who couldn’t make it and those who attended but couldn’t see the images, here’s a desktop recording or the presentation:
The discussion that followed was very interesting and covered topics such as being/not being an “emerging” artist, residing in Birmingham and finding validity in the art scene. Charlie Levine did a bit of live-tweeting:
who are the establishment in brum? @hellocatfood says ‘the Internet and whoever would take a chance on us’ @the_drum
To reiterate some of the points in those tweets, I think the idea of being an “emerging” artist is rather stupid. Whilst I recognise that building confidence in your practice takes time and effort, from what am I emerging and what am I hoping to happen once I emerge from it? Do I lose the emerging artist tag once I’ve had a clearly defined number of exhibitions or successful funding bids? Or is it the case that I need to get my work into the well-known galleries and be represented by a gallery in order to no longer be an “emerging” artist? This confusion on the term isn’t just shared by me.
Although I’m predominantly a digital artist I don’t reject the idea of working within white-walled galleries, nor do I attempt to avoid associations with the fine art “scene”. As the above tweets suggest, I’m more than happy to work with anyone that is as excited about digital art as I am, be they independent galleries and artists/curators or commercial organisations and well-known galleries. To me, the support of friends, family and curious strangers is just as important to me as support from institutions, galleries and funding providers.
On that note, here’s some pictures from the event by Kalaboration:
Thanks to Ian Sergeant/Kalaboration for asking me to take part and Elly Clarke for chairing the discussion.
On Thursday 21st January I’ll be doing a short bit about my involvement with the Changing Rooms exhibition that’s happening at Eastside Projects.
EXTRA SPECIAL PEOPLE SALON
Please join us between 6.30-8pm at Eastside Projects for an introduction to ‘Changing Room’ a project by the Visual Realisation Unit at EP. With an outline of the project concept by lead artist Michael Magruder and EP director Gavin Wade, individual presentations by those developing work and a workshop exploring the technology that makes it happen.
Changing Room is an evolving mixed-reality installation that considers the inherent mutability and reusability of artefacts, concepts and situations in the Digital Age. Lead artist Michael Takeo Magruder will collaborate with Extra Special People artists Ana Benlloch, Iona Makiola, Antonio Roberts,Lee Scott, Zhao Wei and Selma Wong to develop a new collaborative space.
Blending the shared virtual environment of Second Life with the shared physical environment of Eastside Projects, the artwork will facilitate the realisation, curation and documentation of seven distinct – yet interrelated – art projects arising from a common pool of virtual and physical resources.
Changing Room is an experimental prototype for EP:VV (Eastside Projects:Virtualised and Visualised) – a new space for imagining ideas about Art. EP:VV will develop online, multi-user virtual worlds that afford new models for participation and representation of the gallery’s artworks and initiatives.
This’ll then be followed up with a short workshop on Second Life. If you’re one of the ESPers and have ever wondered about using virtual worlds in your work come on down!
Brumcon 9 is coming up this Saturday and I’ve been asked to give a short talk about fizzPOP and hackerspaces.
BrumCon is a regular event organised by Brum2600 regulars, featuring a wide variety of talks, discussion, demos and most importantly, alcohol. Incorrectly but neatly dubbed a ‘blackhat thinktank’ by NTK, The Register – ‘We have your water supply, and printers’, BBC Midlands Today – ‘Spooky’, By you lot as the UK’s biggest underground Hacker con, By hotel staff as ‘scary’ but nice people and I’m scared I’d get my ass so electronically kicked.
We welcome all kinds of phreaks, geeks and other technologically interested people from all sides of the fence (as long as hats, badges and warrants are left at the door).
The entrance fee this year is 8 UK Pounds per delegate. Corporate packs are available that includes entrance, T-shirt and receipt contact us at brumcon9@brum2600.net to book.
Entry from 11am Talks Start 12 noon.
I think it’s interesting that I will have delivered a talk on the same subject but to two different groups. For example, for the talk at Eastside Projects I talked about it more as an artist led space wheras at this talk I’ll more than likely talk about it more as a hackersapce.
Anyhow, my presentation is from 12:45, the full schedule is available on the Brum2600 website
On Thursday 11th June I gave a presentation about Open Source Software and its relationship to open source software. You can download my slides. There’s lots of information in the notes so be sure to check.
In general I covered the usual things including what programs there are availble to facilitate creativity. One thing I wanted to emphasise was the need for more collaboration between coders and artists/non-coders.
What makes many of the open source creative programs so powerful is their extensibility. In many of the programs have a scripting environment where plugins can be written, often in Python, that can do many things, such as batch processing, modifying an image in real time or just about anything that the programmer can imagine. A problem that we (the open source community) face is that not everyone is a coder. So, they may see the scripting environment as a drawback instead of a feature.
So, I think there needs to be more education about the capabilities of the software and demonstrating of what can be achieved by learning programming and understanding more about your tools.
On Saturday 14th March I was at Kitchen Garden Cafe to take part in WXWM as a panel host. My 5-minute talk was a short introduction to hacking. I wanted to dispell some myths about hackers and hacking, show how fun it can be and also promote the Birmingham Hack Space at the same time. You can download the slides from my presentation for free (available under GNU FDL) and you can listen again to all of the presentations over at Rhubarb Radio
My favourite talks included Charlie Pinder’s talk on Pervasive Technology, which she illustrated using the medium of cake
My talk on hacking (with a little bit of promotion for the Birmingham Hack Space) took place near the end, but none the less was still well received. I was a little nervous but everyone seemed to enjoy my use of hats to illustrate the different sides of hacking.
Keep watch on this space for more hackery goodness soon!
Prompted by the number of Brummies migrating over to Texas soon for SXSW, the lovely Shona McQuillain has organised something similar. In her words:
It may have come to some peeps attention that a number of Brummie bods will be whooshing over to Texas all transatlantic style for SXSW (South by South West) later next week, to mingle and schmooze with web wizards, net honchos and to do some other shizz, like having fun. Not wishing to be outdone by this, a furious flurry of Twitter activity this evening has registered interest in a counter-event to these southern States shennanigans: WXWM. That’ll be West by West Midlands, then.
Yours truly will be giving a brief introduction to hackerspaces, so come on down to the Kitchen Garden Cafe this Saturday, 14th March from 2pm for some technological action!
