Presentation

Lecture

Xcommunicate EMARE Symposium, QUT, Brisbane

March 1, 2014, 10:00 am
Xcommunicate © Peter Zorn

Xcommunicate: EMARE (European Media Artists in Residence Exchange) Symposium provided a line-up of some of the most recognised Australian media artists and organisations. An opportunity for people to meet, make new connections and create new collaborative partnerships. The symposium was based on the PechaKucha format – a dynamic fast-paced presentation and networking experience. Xcommunicate included a key note address by Prof. Mike Stubbs (CEO of FACT, Liverpool) and presentations with creative practitioners, festival organisations, institutional directors and curators giving a five minute flash presentation on their work, spaces, programs and projects.

Program and Speakers:

Trish Adams

One Thing Leads to Another

A brief visual introduction into of some of my main art/science projects: past, present and future.

Trish completed her Doctor of Visual Arts at Griffith University in 2005. Her thesis explored the impact of experimental biomedical engineering techniques on expressions and representations of corporeality. Her interactive installation:“machina carnis” incorporated digital video micrograph image data of cardiac cells that she cultured in the laboratory by converting adult stem cells from her blood at the School of Biomedical sciences, The University of Queensland. She was the first artist to experiment on her own stem cells in this way. Trish is currently Postdoctoral Research Fellow at RMIT School of Arts, Melbourne.

Since October 2007 Trish has been visiting artist at the Visual & Sensory Neuroscience Group, at the Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland. Under the leadership of Professor Mandyam Srinivasan this research group focuses on the cognitive and navigational abilities of the honey bee. During this collaboration Trish created the DVD installation: “HOST”. In 2008 Trish and her Sydney based collaborator Andrew Burrell were awarded the second Australia Council for the Arts Inter-Arts Board MMMUVE_IT initiative. For this they developed the ‘mellifera’ project; which involved incorporating their direct observations of bee behaviours into both a virtual Second Life environment and the real-time installation context.

In addition, Trish has presented her research outcomes at a number of conferences such as: *“New Constellations: Art, Science & Society”, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2006; Perth Digital Art & Culture Conference, 2007, ISEA2008 & “Eye of the Storm”, Tate Britain, 2009

Keith Armstrong

The Extinction of Human Experience / Seasonal Media Art

Evolving media artworks that explore the 'extinction of human experience’ implicit within conventional notions of progress / Thinking through a 'Seasonal Media Art’ Practice.

KEITH ARMSTRONG has specialised for 20 years in collaborative, hybrid, new media works with anemphasis on innovative performance forms, site-specific electronic arts, networked interactive installations, alternative interfaces, public arts practices and art-science collaborations. His ongoing research focuses on how scientific and philosophical ecologies can both influence and direct the design and conception of networked, interactive media artworks. Keith's artworks have been shown and profiled extensively both in Australia and overseas and he has been the recipient of numerous grants from the public and private sectors.

He was formerly an Australia Council New Media Arts Fellow, a doctoral and Postdoctoral New Media Fellow at QUT's Creative Industries Faculty and a lead researcher at the ACID Australasian Cooperative Research Centre for Interaction Design. He is currently a part-time Senior Research Fellow at QUT and an actively practicing freelance new media artist. His work is held in the permanent collection of ZKM and he has shown his large scale installations in venues as diverse at the National Art Gallery of China, Prix Ars Electronica (Honorary mention), ICA (London), the Powerhouse Museum Sydney (ISEA 2013) and ACMI (Melbourne). Having recently been resident with the Australian Wildlife Conservancy working with the field scientists in central Australia Keith is currently working on a year long funded project to develop the idea of 'seasonal media practices’.

Arjon Dunnewind

Impakt - Critical Media Culture

Impakt presents critical and creative views on contemporary media culture. We organize an annual festival and all year through events, internet projects, residencies and workshops.

Sandra Emonét

Bandits-Mages and "Bandits-Mages Gatherings" (Festival)

Since it's creation in 1991, by the will of a group of students from the Beaux-Arts de Bourges, BANDITS–MAGES organizes a festival , origin and heart of the association. At the same time it has become a unit of support for creation and research in the field of images in movement and mediatic art.

Christy Dena

GO OTT

A quick run down on what I found different, annoying, and unexpected about working on a the large-screen digital project for the first time

Christy Dena is a writer-designer-director who has worked on award-winning pervasive games, film, digital and theatre projects. Clients include Nokia, Cisco/No Mimes Media, ABC, Wieden+Kennedy, Bangarra Dance Theatre, Noah Falstein, Ken Eklund & Agency of Coney, and many more.

Christy has just been granted Australia’s first Digital Writing Residency at The Cube for her project “Robot University,” funded by the Australia Council for the Arts and QUT. In 2012, she was the “Digital Writing Ambassador” for the Emerging Writers Festival; and a prototype of her project “AUTHENTIC IN ALL CAPS” was Finalist for “Best Writing in a Game” Award at the Freeplay Independent Gaming Festival. Christy co-wrote “The Writers Guide to Making a Digital Living” for the Australian Literature Board.

She has given keynotes and presentations at film, tech, writing, and gaming festivals worldwide, including Power to the Pixel (London), DIYDays (LA), TEDxTransmedia (Switzerland). She has mentored industry professionals around the world, including The Pixel Lab and Crossover; has written numerous articles on writing and design, and been published in numerous industry books. Christy was commissioned to run Transmedia Victoria, a key transmedia event in Melbourne bringing professionals from TV, film, performance, art, and gaming together.

Christy has been a juror for the International Digital Emmy Awards, IPF Web Drama Series, and many other programs including the Australia Council for the Arts. She is on the board on Alternate and Hybrid Performance for the Green Room Awards, and gaming publisher ETC Press.

Christy is Professor Adjunct at Creative Industries, QUT. She wrote the first PhD on Transmedia Practice, and wrote the definition of ‘transmedial fictions’ for the forthcoming The Johns Hopkins Encyclopedia of Digital Textuality.

Christy is about to release her web audio adventure for the iPad called AUTHENTIC IN ALL CAPS (with the crowdfunding campaign being the biggest successful campaign for a game on Pozible to date). Robot University is in development; and her playful story for the phone, “Guardians of Hidden Universes” was released at the first outdoor pervasive gaming festival: Popup Playground’s Fresh Air Festival.

Jacina Leong

STEAM? Don't you mean STEM?

Jacina Leong will talk about her experience designing STEAM learning experiences and how this convergence will continue to evolve through The Cube's education and public programs.

Jacina Leong is the Public Programs Curator at The Cube (QUT), where she develops and manages a STEAM focused public and education program for a broad audience. Jacina has also worked within regional and commercial galleries and is currently undertaking research into learning experiences that take place at the convergence of art, science and technology. She is also a freelance arts writer and founder of the online publication, brisbandialogues.

Jon McCormack

Multimodal realities: software art in the 21st century

In the past, technology and art differentiated between the real and the virtual, but changes over the last decade increasingly merge the virtual with the real.

Jon McCormack is a researcher in computing and an internationally acclaimed electronic media artist. He is currently an ARC Australian Research Fellow in the Faculty of Information technology at Monash University.

With a background in art, mathematics and computer science, his research seeks to discover new kinds of creativity using computers. This research spans visualisation and virtual environments, evolutionary systems, machine intelligence, human-computer interaction, music composition and sound arts.

McCormack is the recipient of more than 15 international awards for both art and computing research, most recently the 2012 Eureka Prize for Innovation in Computer Science. His artworks have been widely exhibited at leading galleries, museums and symposia, including the Museum of Modern Art (New York, USA), Tate Gallery (Liverpool, UK), ACM SIGGRAPH (USA), Ars Electronica Museum (Austria) and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (Australia). McCormack's recent book, "Computers and Creativity" (co-edited with Prof. Mark d'Inveno at the University of London) looks at how human creativity is being radically changed by technology and was recently described by the head of Sony research labs in Europe as "required reading for everyone involved in the create arts and interested in the role of technology towards shaping its future."

Jen Mizuick

Inspiring creativity

Imagine a place where hundreds of artists from around the world, working in every medium from chamber music and opera to installation art, poetry, playwriting, photography, filmmaking, and dance come to create. Imagine a place that exists for artists — to provide them with the time, space, and support to grow professionally and creatively. This place is The Banff Centre.

Jen has been involved in the contemporary arts industry in Australia and Canada for over 12 years. Starting in mid March 2014 Jen will be taking on the role of Director Visual/Digital Arts at the Banff Centre, Canada. Jen is excited about this new role, “It is an amazing opportunity to join the Banff Centre at this very exciting time. I’m looking forward to supporting artists as they push the creative possibilities of their practice, encouraging new ways of working within the Centre though collaboration and exchange, and to engage artists and audiences through new technologies”

Jen’s outgoing role is as Director of Experimenta Media Arts, Melbourne Australia. She was Experimenta’s Director since 2009, prior to this she was the General Manager at Experimenta. She has worked for the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) in Melbourne, Australia and prior to this worked at the Art Gallery of Calgary. She is an advocate and supporter of media and contemporary arts practice, which, by it’s very nature is focused on collaboration and exchange. Jen is actively engaged in the conversation around the future of contemporary arts practice and the changing expectations of arts audiences.

Jen’s professional focus is on creating opportunities for contemporary artists, developing industry partnerships and engaging a wide demographic of audiences. Jen is a strategic leader with strengths in vision, strategic leadership, business development and encourages innovation through experimentation and collaboration. Jen has been privileged to speak internationally at events and symposia, most recently was a member of the planning and exhibitions committees for ISEA2013 and a graduate of the Australia Council Emerging Leaders Program 2013, previously she has been a Board member for Ceramics Victoria, is a member of NAVA, Ceramics Victoria, Craft Victoria, NGV International, Malthouse Theatre, Arts Hub, and Philanthropy Australia.

Jen holds a Bachelor Degree in Fine Art and is currently a Masters of Arts History candidate at the University of Adelaide.

Tara Morelos

Scanlines: excavating the archive

A socially engaged approach to spreading the word about the history of media arts in Australia.

Tara Morelos is the Director of dLux MediaArts, one of Australia’s key grassroots screen and media art organisations with over 30 years of experience in the presentation and promotion of media arts and screen culture.

dLux creates opportunities for artists working within international, metropolitan and regional communities to deliver an annual program of education, touring exhibitions, artist incubators, community engagement workshops and public art events.

Tara began in 2008 as the Program Manager at dLux co-ordinating the touring and installation of new media and video art exhibitions in regional galleries throughout Australia and internationally. Since 2010 as Director, she has taken charge of the organisation to give a greater emphasis to socially engaged media arts practice and education creating new employment opportunities for media artists in regional communities.

Tara has a Master of Visual Arts from Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney with a double major in Sculpture, Performance and Installation and Electronic and Temporal Arts. She has over seven years experience in curation and event management including the delivery of a large scale outdoor sculpture exhibition in the premier wine growing region of NSW. Sculpture in the Vineyards, held in the Hunter Valley has grown into a significant annual event in which Tara continues her involvement as Artistic Director.

Alex Murray-Leslie

Synthesizing wearable technology and new musical interfaces for performance

Performance research around the notion of how digital arts coupled with interdisciplinary mediums can bring a new relevance to creative practice and work towards creating a new contemporary Pop-Gesamtkunstwerk.

Alex Murray-Leslie is a multidisciplinary artist researcher, working in the mediums of embodied musical instrument design, Pop Music, Fashion & Live Art. She is founder of Chicks on Speed, an internationally renowned collective of Culture Workers. Alex has just completed her position as Entertainment Manager at The 34th America's Cup World Series and as co-director of Diane Pernet´s A Shaded View on Fashion Film, Barcelona. Alex lectures & exhibits internationally, along side curating live art performances at key cultural institutions and writing for journal and book publications.

Alex has published numerous pop albums and 2 books with Chicks on Speed. The group's new album and series of APP's titled "UTOPIA", is scheduled for release on the itunes APP store early 2014, produced in conjunction with ZKM, Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, ArtSpace, Sydney, IMA, Brisbane & Thyssen Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna.

Alex is currently undertaking a PhD in the Faculty of Engineering and IT, Creativity and Cognition Studios, University of Technology Sydney.

Jonathan Parsons

Experimenta is Australia’s preeminent media arts organisation, dedicated to commissioning, exhibiting and touring the best Australian and international contemporary media art.

Jonathan has over twenty years of experience working in arts and culture in Australia and internationally. He is currently Artistic Director of Experimenta. In 2013 he also was the Creative Director of Robotronica, an event to celebrate the the opening of the new Queensland University of Technology’s Science and Technology Centre featuring the latest in robotics. He also was the Director of ISEA2013 (International Symposium on Electronic Art ) an international festival of art, technology and ideas in Sydney, June 7-16, 2013 in partnership with Vivid Sydney. He has extensive arts administration and management experience working for a range of festivals, cultural institutions and performing arts companies. He has developed a broad range of cultural programs in Brisbane, Byron Bay, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth and London, including for the State Library of Queensland, Queensland Art Gallery, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Riverfestival, Byron Bay Writers Festival, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival, Pacific Wave Festival, Adelaide Festival of the Arts, Awesome Festival and the London International Festival of Theatre.

Jason Nelson

From Net-Art to Art-Games, from Digital Poetry to Interactive Playthings, the curiously dangerous creatures of Jason Nelson.

Born from the Oklahoma flatlands of farmers and spring thunderstorms, Jason Nelson stumbled into creating awkward and wondrous digital poems and net-artworks of odd lives, building confounding art games and all manner of curious digital creatures. Currently he professes Net Art and Electronic Literature at Australia's Griffith University on the South side of Brisbane's bank. Aside from coaxing his students into breaking, playing and morphing their creativity with all manner of technologies, he exhibits widely in galleries and journals, with work featured around the globe at FILE, ACM, LEA, ISEA, SIGGRAPH, ELO and dozens of other acronyms. There are awards to list (Paris Biennale Media Poetry Prize), organizational boards he frequents (Australia Council Literature Board and the Electronic Literature Organization), and numerous other accolades (Webby Award), but in the web based realm where his work resides, Jason is most proud of the millions of visitors his artwork/digital poetry portal http://www.secrettechnology.com attracts each year.

Kate Richards

Landfall: creating immersive, experiential environments for mobile audiences

My new media arts practice is characterised by audience participation and engagement at affective, emotional and cognitive levels - I outline some key aesthetic and design strategies for creating for - and with - audiences in responsive media environments.

Kate Richards’ versatile practice includes interactive video installations, datamapping software and visualisation, virtual worlds, and combining live performance with electronic media. She is primarily concerned with audience perception and experience and is platform agnostic, choosing to work with electronic, interactive and digital media as appropriate to her concepts. Recent artworks include 'Unhomely', a 6 channel video installation for the International Symposium of Electronic Art, Sydney 2013 (part of the LifeAfterWartime suite with Ross Gibson and Aaron Seymour), 'Bloodbath' at The Hordern Pavilion with BUMP (2010), 'Wayfarer' with Martyn Coutts (2007 and 2010), and 'The Uncertainty Principle' at The Australian Centre for Photography (2007). Kate has shown at ACMI, The Performance Space, Justice and Police Museum, ACCA amongst others and her work has been exhibited and toured in China, South Africa, UK, Brasil, North America and Europe. Kate is also an experienced multimedia concept designer and producer, and is the co-ordinator of the Masters of Convergent Media at the University of Western Sydney.

Vicki Sowry

Interdisciplinary arts projects

ANAT has long and exemplary track record of delivering interdisciplinary projects bringing artists together with science, research and technology partners; this session will provide a brief overview of such projects.

Vicki Sowry is Director of the Adelaide-based Australian Network for Art & Technology (ANAT). For over twenty-five years she has initiated and delivered programs for artists in partnership with industry, government and academia that give rise to innovative cross-disciplinary research and creative practice. She has been a peer assessor for many agencies including the Australia Council for the Arts, Screen Australia and the Media Entertainment Growth Alliance (MEGA) and, throughout her career, has contributed to the development of industry capability and policy through her participation on the boards of a wide range of arts and screen organisations. Most recently, she was Chair of the Organising Committee of the critically-acclaimed and hugely successful 19th International Symposium on Electronic Art, which took place in Sydney in June 2013.

Mike Stubbs

Key Note Address

Interventions and collaborative Networks in Public Space

Mike Stubbs is the Director of FACT, Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, the UK's leading organisation for the commissioning and presentation of film, video and new media art forms. Stubbs was jointly appointed by Liverpool John Moores University in 2007, where he is Professor of Art, Media and Curating. Previously he was Head of Program for ACMI, Melbourne. Encompassing a broad range of arts and media practice, his arts management, curating and advocacy has been internationally acknowledged. Stubbs has commissioned and produced over 350 exhibition programmes including White Noise for ACMI, the Nam June Paik retrospective with Tate Liverpool, and Pipilotti Rist at FACT. He founded the ROOT (Running Out of Time) and AND (Abandon Normal Devices) festivals. Stubbs is an award-winning moving image artist whose work has won more than a dozen major international awards. He is fellow of the RSA and was awarded a Fleck Fellowship, Banff in 2002.

Lubi Thomas

Thinking inside the Cube

Beyond the digital projects and the object itself – is a culture shift is underway?

As Senior Curator-Digital Media at QUT Brisbane, Lubi Thomas has extensive experience in the development and delivery of digital media focused exhibitions and associate public and educational engagement programs. Lubi continues to lead the creative industries precinct programs team, whilst working on developing an innovative STEAM focused program for the Cube – QUT Science and Engineering Centre. This program includes key partnerships with LEGO Education, Ars Electronica and the Australia Council for the Arts. Lubi works locally, nationally and internationally on exhibition programs, creative projects, public art opportunities for digital media and consultancies. She has also developed an ever-growing curatorial internship program at QUT focused on mentoring the next generation of digital media curators.

Peter Zorn

European Media Art Network / European Media Artist in Residence Exchange with Australia and Canada (EMAN/EMARE)

Peter Zorn, born 1967 in Traunstein, Germany, studied 1990 - 95 in the experimental film class of Prof. Birgit Hein at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brunswick. He co-founded the Werkleitz Association, the Centre for Media Art Saxony-Anhalt,Germany, in 1995 he initiated and since then coordinates the European Artists in Residence Exchange (EMARE) of the European Media Art Network (EMAN), is co-director of the Werkleitz Biennale / Werkleitz Festivaland since 2011 director of Werkleitz Professional Media Master Class.He works as film maker, producer, media researcher and media art curator / expert (i.e. for the Goethe Institute) in Werkleitz and Halle (Saale).

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