Digital Resources in Arts and Humanities Conference, Cambridge, 2008
September 17, 2008
Tim has attended the DRHA08 conference and presented his interactive drawing machine, which has intrigued and alarmed some delegates.
A relay of joy - Synaesthesia and drawing: a performance of a physical computing assembly
Sydney Cooper Gallery Exhibition
July 29, 2008
Relay of joy sound drawing tests
November 15, 2007
Drawing as research into sound relay machine for a performance. The round triggers play a sound via computer once they are drawn over. The process of drawing is changed by the introduction of sound feedback from the touch sensitive area behind the paper.
I have tried making a drawing blindfolded (illustrated above), which brings far more random results in to play. The relay is also broken, or changed from the normal, sighted, hand-eye coordination. Instead, sound returns an element of sensory feedback, permitting another type of coordination to occur.
Principles of Landskip – Paintings by Bryan Hawkins at UKC Keynes College -October till December 7th 2007
The title of this exhibition Principles of Landskip is derived from the titles of two writings by the landscape painter Alexander Cozens (1717-1786). This hybrid title brings together the search for underlying systems and Landskip a term which evokes the past, the romantic and the antiquarian and perhaps more contemporary conditions.
In Principles of Beauty Relative to the Human Head Cozens attempted to define certain conventions and rules relating to beauty. In An Essay to Facilitate the Inventing of Landskips Cozens drew on Leonardo da Vinci’s writings to suggest a method by which blots and marks could provide a stimulus for landscape image making . This essay in particular has, since 1759, contributed to aesthetic debate and interest in abstraction, chance, visual language, dream, drawing, mark and gesture and representation of landscape.
In the series of paintings exhibited here my engagement has been with the landscapes of The Lake District and more recently Thanet and Margate. My involvement has also been with a mixed bag of artists and writers (artist/writers) who have employed, invented, charted and constructed their response to landscape through image making and through writing. Ruskin, Palmer, Turner, Cotman, and Constable – my taste has been mainly for the C19 Century – Sutherland and Piper and Craxton and others are there too – as influences and lenses. Words and images, artists and landskips.
If looking at landscape is conventionally understood as the starting point for painting landscapes – and the meanings to be found within the paintings produced the points of arrival – then I am interested in reversing this process. Looking at landscape, as though retrieving a lost sensibility or inner landscape or finding the possibility of a coherent sense of self in landscape becomes a point of arrival – the analysis of existing texts and images, as maps, or traces becomes a point of departure. The act of painting makes everything more complicated and moves, restlessly, between these points.
Bryan Hawkins
Hawkins, Bryan (bryan.hawkins@canterbury.ac.uk)
Thinking Through Art
June 15, 2007
I have only just started reading Thinking Through Art as a sort of introduction to some of the issues surrounding arts Phd’s which are largely or solely practice-based so this is not a review, far too early for that as I’m only 20 pages in.
This publication, pricey at £75, only with black and white illustrations and very difficult to find apart from on amazon, seems to be spot on. It asks all the right questions and rather than providing clear cut solutions provides detailed case studies of approaches to doing and completing a practice-based Phd. It starts very well and defines the what Christopher Frayling’s paper on Research in Art and Design identifies as the differences between research into art and design, research through art and design and research for art.
There are countless books on doing Phd’s out there but these are largely useless for understanding how art can function as research and whether research can or should function as art to be exhibited. This seems to address that issue.
Bar Code Hotel
June 8, 2007
Bar Code Hotel (overview image above) by Perry Hoberman employes barcodes as an interface (image below left) to a virtual environment (image below right) and is one of those works which seems to preempt the current interest in The Internet of Things. While the use of networks as part of this work (excluding the social network created between its users) is minimal it bears a striking resemblance to some works created over the last few years with R.F.I.D. / Data Matrix including I Can Read You, Urban Eyes and Meghan Trainor’s work.
Within the installation the public interacts with what is displayed on screen by scanning bar codes which correspond to:
familiar and inanimate things from everyday experience: eyeglasses, hats, suitcases, paper clips, boots, and so on.
The behavior of these everyday objects can then be modified with bar codes which correspond to certain actions or effects on the virtual objects themselves such as movement, location etc. or between them and other virtual objects such as chase, avoid, merge etc.
The public simultaneously influences and interacts with computer-generated objects in an oversized three-dimensional projection, scanning and transmitting printed bar code information instantaneously into the computer system. The objects, each corresponding to a different user, exist as semi-autonomous agents that are only partially under the control of their human collaborators. Each guest who checks into the Bar Code Hotel dons a pair of 3D glasses and picks up a bar code wand, a lightweight pen with the ability to scan and transmit printed bar code information instantaneously into the computer system. Because each wand can be distinguished by the system as a separate input device, each guest can have their own consistent identity and personality in the computer-generated world. And since the interface is the room itself, guests can interact not only with the computer-generated world, but with each other as well.
Reblogged from Network Research.
Art and Interactivity
May 31, 2007
As part of the MA Fine Art master class on Saturday the 26/05/07 we discussed how networks change art whether this be through their use, such as the internet in net.art, or the idea that creating an art work as a open system is a network in itself between the artist, art work and user. This was discussed initially within the context of my work, what could be categorised as new media art, a selection of which was presented to the students who were then asked to map some of the same ideas and concerns without necessarily the use of technology to their own practice. The majority of students classed themselves as painters.
The above diagram, in another form, was used in the session to explain parallels between the Transmission Communication Model as discussed by Claude Elwood Shannon in A Mathematical Theory of Communication and later popularised in his co authored book with Warren Weaver, The Mathematical Theory of Communication and the model employed in the creation of traditional art (the top part of the diagram, a linear one way model) in comparison with the model employed in new media art (the bottom part of the diagram) which creates a feedback loop to the artist. The diagram below developed as a result of the session illustrated that students correctly identified that traditional art already creates a feedback loop (culture) but this loop is more complex, less controlable and often moves outside the framework of the intended concept of the art work.
References:
Shannon, C.E. (1948), A Mathematical Theory of Communication. Bell System Technical Journal.
Ascott, R. Shanken E.A. (Ed) (2003), Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology and Consciousness. Berkeley: University of California Press. (ISBN: 0520218035)
ARToolkit
May 18, 2007
The ARToolKit is one software library you could use to build your own Augmented Reality projects / interfaces. Below are images of projects created with ARToolKit. Timo Arnall has an interesting write up of some experiments he did with this free for non-commercial use software library.
ARTag (image and videos below) is another system which uses tags (very similar to Data Matrix tags):
where virtual objects, games, and animations appear to enter the real world. 3D graphics is added in real time to video, similar to “view matching” in Hollywood, except that with Augmented Reality it is happening online. ARTag “Magic Lens” and “Magic Mirror” systems use arrays of the square ARTag markers added to objects or the environment allowing a computer vision algorithm to calculate the camera “pose” in real time, allowing the CG (computer graphics) virtual camera to be aligned. This gives the illusion of 3D animations or video games to appear to belong in the real world.
If you can’t see the embedded movie above see the videos page here.
Post partially inspired by this post at Turbulance and reblogged from this post at Network Research.
On the 26th of May I will be giving a master class for the Ma Fine Art programme in the Department of Art. This post is primarily for the students who will be attending to familiarise them in advance with the topics I hope to cover and by way of that introduce myself and what my practice as an artist consists of.
The main topic of the master class will be the use of new media (particularily networks) in contemporary artistic practice and how it continues a change in art, in its simplest definition the change from art as object to art as idea, occuring for almost a century. The origins of this lie in the work of Marcel Duchamp and are continually progressed and developed in Happenings, Fluxus, Conceptual Art, Video Art and most recently New Media Art and Net.art. I will show some of my work, talk about it, the themes and focus I repeatedly return to in a cross section of technology enabled online / installation / performance works. I will also talk about where my ideas come from, notably the ideas of Roy Ascott, Net.art and possibly touch on Conceptual Art. Below are a short selection of my works followed by links to the rest, my research and an interview I did a few months back.
Just to let you all know I am currently organising a performance piece for Snd:arc- (Sound and Architecture) taking place Friday 11/05/07 at Broadstairs Campus 8pm so please feel free to come along, its a free event. More details about the event here.
Above: Stills from the internet / installation piece Perpetual.Portrait.
Perpetual.portrait is a software based art work based on the portrait in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. It attempts to simulate what a portrait can never really do, evolve, age with or independently of its subject or as in the novel accumulate visible signs of mis-deeds performed by its subject.
Above: A still (taken 05/05/07) from the internet piece “Quote me!”.
“Quote me!” is an online piece which uses live headlines from a selection of newpapers worldwide to generate short quotes and catchphrases so that I as an artist don’t have to and can focus on my work. In a sense it is my own personal automated spin doctor.
Above: 10 seconds of no video.
10 seconds of no video is a video piece created specifically for websites like Youtube, video on demand web sites, as a site specific work. The video is created through a webcam application with no connected webcam. It is a paradox, a video which states that there is no video, an error as video resulting from a video capturing application which has no input video signal.
Above: Extract from Open Ear performances 06/10/06 .
Open Ear is a loose collaborative group of like minded individuals creating audio-visual art and organising live events within club, gallery, open air or site specific venues. Our principal interests include collaboration, live performance, generative audio-visual work, hybridised art, DIY soundart, circuit-bending and networks.
Links to some of my work and research:
Work – http://www.asquare.org/
Research – http://www.asquare.org/networkresearch/
A recent interview about my work and practice (in Italian and English, scroll down for English version) – http://www.noemalab.org/sections/arte_focus.php?IDFocus=208
Some references / reading:
Sterling, B. (2005) Shaping Things. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. (ISBN: 0262693267)
Baumgärtel, T. (2001) net.art 2.0: New Materials Towards Net Art . Nuremberg: Verlag Moderne Kunst Nurnberg. (ISBN: 3933096669)
Ascott, R. Shanken E.A. (Ed) (2003), Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology and Consciousness. Berkeley: University of California Press. (ISBN: 0520218035)
Bleecker, J. (2005) Why Things Matter. Available at: http://research.techkwondo.com/files/WhyThingsMatter.pdf (Accessed: 25th November 2006)
Stinkbomb, Carey Building, Broadstairs
April 27, 2007
As part of our research both Bryan Hawkins (in collaboration with the Substation Gallery in Margate) and Tim Long are curating seperate exhibitions in the Carey Building at Broadstairs and the Powell Building in Canterbury.
The first of these entitled Stinkbomb and curated by Bryan Hawkins (in collaboration with the Substation Gallery in Margate) in the Carey Building at Broadstairs is an exhibition that gives artists a platform to illustrate humour in their work.
‘Stink Bomb’ has been put together in collaboration with local arts collective Limbo Arts, an informal group that provides gallery space and resources for up-and-coming artists. ‘Stink Bomb’ will also be featuring works in the Substation Gallery and the Joke Shop, both situated in Margate, as well as the Atrium Gallery at Broadstairs Campus.
This event is open to the public. Opening hours for the ‘Stink Bomb’ exhibition are:
The Atrium Gallery, Broadstairs Campus – Monday to Friday, from 10am to 4pm, and Saturday, from 1pm to 4pm.
The Substation, High Street, Margate – Thursday to Sunday, from 11am to 4pm.
The Joke Shop, 32 Arlington Square, Margate – Monday to Saturday, from 9am to 4pm.
For more information please visit the exhibition press release of this event or the Limbo Arts website.
