Friday 18 April 2008

notes from liverpool and london

I received travel expenses to attend the last weekend of the Sk-Interfaces exhibition and talks at the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology in Liverpool (March 2008).


Having seen much of Eduardo Kacs http://www.ekac.org/ work on the net it was good to see him talk about his projects, past present and future, including his work on telepresence. His desire with this work was to create a situation where one person becomes the ‘host’ of another person through the use of a wireless transmission garment which transmits what the host sees. The idea of co-habiting one body or seeing/experiencing the world through a host is an interesting one. It made me think about 2nd Life and also the work I’m doing with portraits and mocap.

The show, curated by Jens Hauser, included the work of many international artists whose works tackle strong moral, political and philosophical issues. Some of the work investigated corporate, scientific and political research practices that would not otherwise be presented in the public realm. Of particular note was the video of the Critical Art Ensemble www.critical-art.net/ whose Biotech work resulted in detention by the FBI. Others examined and presented living tissue culture samples such as tiny semi-living jackets made from ‘victimless leather’ by The Tissue Culture and Art Project www.tca.uwa.edu.au/
I also took part in the ‘Truth Serum’ Experiment by Neal White – Office of Experiments www.nealwhite.org/ . A thought provoking work where the pressure to tell the ‘truth’ was coupled with the fear of giving the ‘wrong’ answer and had me pleading, banging my hands on a desk and shouting at a video projection of typed questions in an empty room in a derelict building.
Image: Office of Experiment 'Truth Serum', Neal White


I received travel expenses to attend Candy + Code, ICA london, March 2008. I was particularly interested to see the work of Dr Barbara Rauch - www.sciria.org.uk/ , research fellow at the Chelsea College of Art. She has been researching evolutionary aspects of human and animal conscious and subconscious facial expression. She has been using data capture, including laser scanning techniques, combining these with 3D visualisation such as morphing and blending of human and animal faces. Her installations include drawing, sound and performance. I was interested to learn how and why she uses data capture technology in her work and my aim is to follow this up.

Rachel Beth Egenhoefer discussed her research as part of her Distributed South residency www.rachelbeth.net/work.html . Of particular interest is her research in tracking her everyday actions using knitting needles. She discussed using a wii controller attached to knitting needles to capture the patterns created by the cyclical action of knitting.
In terms of my practice/research these events allowed me to network with other artists, some of whom are using similar technologies and themes but also to discuss how they practice and exhibit.

No comments: