ISEA2009 Pre-symposium Belfast, Derry/Londonderry, Dublin with link to MIT
ISEA2009 – Pre-Symposium
10 -14 of November 2008
Black Box and University of Ulster Belfast & Magee and Dublin various locations
The ISEA2009 Pre-symposium has been initiated to strategically explore and test the ISEA 2009 theme Engaged Creativity in Mobile Environments and its sub-themes through a series of programmed events and a range of different formats in Belfast, Derry/Londonderry and Dublin with links to MIT. It will offer invited artists, researchers and organisations an opportunity to explore the context of Northern Ireland, to network with peers, organisations and communities of interested and thus to develop the foundations for a dedicated creative ISEA project in 2009. This series of events and discussions are an important means for the building of partnerships and publics for ISEA2009, the 15th Symposium on Electronic Art.
Black Box 18 - 22 Hill Street Belfast BT1 2LA
For more information and the full Pre-symposium go to www.isea2009.org Also see ISEA www.isea-web.org All events are free, limited numbers, early bird policy applies. For more information contact
Cherie Driver at c.driver@ulster.ac.uk or go to our website www.isea2009.org
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ALL WEEK
10-14 November: Magee Derry/Londonderry
All week long installations include Cross(referenc)ing the Namib (Paul Moore), ‘Structure Fatigue’ (Brian Bridges) and Work from the School of Creative Arts DEME Collective at University of Ulster Magee (UUM).
10-14 November: Belfast Art Gallery UU Belfast
AffecTech
Niall Coghlan
Benjamin Knapp
Javier Jaimovich
Donal O’Brien
Miguel Ortiz
Terry Quigley
Tech Affect collaboration between SARC and UU which proposes a collaborative biosignal based installation incorporating audio and visual elements. Terry Quigley (UU) and Ben Knapp (SARC QUB). A collaborative biosignal based installation incorporating audio and visual elements. The viewer will interact with sensors which detect signals from their body and uses these to create sonic events and change the visual landscape, examining and interpreting their emotional state and their reactions to the installation.
AffecTech is an interactive audio-visual installation which uses physiological signals from the human body to explore notions of presence, action and reaction, as experienced by the viewer. Born in the grey area where art and science meet, the installation uses sensor enhanced chairs, cameras, interactive visuals and surround sound to place 2 viewers into the virtual world where the mediascape is dependent on and reactive to, the similarity or disparity of their bio-signals.
Viewers are asked to sit in one of the two chairs and place the palm of one hand over the two copper electrodes mounted on the arm. This will read information from your body, which will control all you see and hear. If the other chair is occupied you may experience brief moments of harmony with the other occupant. This is normal, do not be alarmed.
AffecTech is a collaborative installation between the School of Creative Arts at Ulster University and the Sonic Art Research Centre (SARC) at Queens University Belfast.
10-15 November Dublin:
Location: Thomas Street, Dublin.
Art is Good For You! a Bluetooth project around Thomas St, Dublin. http://artisgoodforyou.wordpress.com
Bluetooth hub locations: Café Noto, NCAD, Digital Hub.
Art is Good For You! a Bluetooth project around Thomas Street, Dublin.
http://artisgoodforyou.wordpress.com <http://artisgoodforyou.wordpress.com>
In this climate of global uncertainty Art is Good For You! For a whole week in November we will prescribe your daily dose. Passers-by will be invited to take away selected artworks via Bluetooth to their mobile phones. The Bluetooth hubs will be located along Thomas Street from Café Noto, NCAD, Digital Hub up to IMMA.
The ‘Art is Good for you’ project attempts to express something of the creative dialogue in and around the ‘creative corridor’ of Thomas Street and offer this to the public. This project is part of a Dublin City Council artists’ residency programme with artist Saoirse Higgins. The artworks are selected by Mike Stubbs, director, FACT, Liverpool. This project is one of the many events in the ISEA (International Symposium for Electronic Art) pre-symposium week 10th-15th November.
NOTE* Turn your mobile bluetooth setting ON to receive ‘Artisgoodforyou’!
Sponsored by Dublin City Council and ISEA. Bluetooth technology is supplied by Bloozy.ie.
http://artisgoodforyou.wordpress.com
http://www.fact.co.uk/
http://www.bloozy.ie/
http://www.dublincity.ie
MONDAY TO FRIDAY CALENDAR
Monday, 10 November 2008
Venue: Black Box, Hill Street, Belfast
9.30 Introduction of ISEA2009 the 15th Symposium on Electronic Art (LIVE STREAM)
10.00 – 11.30 Sala Manca, presentation of their work and discussion
Group of independent Jerusalem-based artists that creates in different fields: performance, video, installation & new media since 2000. Sala-Manca will give an introductory session on their work which deals with poetics of translation (cultural, mediatic and social), with textual, urban and net contexts and with the tensions between low tech and high tech aesthetics, as well as social and political issues. (LIVE STREAM)
14.00 – 16.00 Filmmaking in Contested Spaces
Introduction – Cahal McLaughlin (chair)
Panel –
Jean Chamoun, Lebanese filmmaker (Women Beyond Borders)
Simone Bitton, Paris-based filmmaker (Wall)
Anne Crilly, Derry (Mother Ireland and The Kathleen Thompson Story)
Terry Loane (Mickey Bo and Me)
Jonathan Cummins (artist and filmmaker)
Panel discussion followed by floor contributions (LIVE STREAM)
Tuesday, 11 November 2008
Venue: Black Box, Hill Street, Belfast
10.00 – 12.30 HUB-Nubbing: Research Presentation slot
Jenna Roddy, Jo Briggs, Alan Hughes,
Interactive Storytelling (LIVE STREAM)
14:00 – 14:30
Maureen Heatherington: An overview of storytelling as used in post-conflict situations with an introduction to the storytelling workshops organised by Towards Understanding and Healing and their training DVD. Followed by Q&A
Maureen Hetherington has an MA in Humanities and has been working in the field of community relations and peace building for sixteen years. She was a founder member of An Crann/The Tree along with with Damian Gorman. For the last ten years she has headed up Towards Understanding and Healing (TUH), an organization set up to tentatively explore the personal lived experience of those caught up in the conflict over the past 30 years. Maureen is the Coordinator of The Junction, a Community Relations Resource and Peace Building Centre in Derry Londonderry, and she works with statutory, education, public, private and community and voluntary sector on matters relating to a shared and inclusive society.
Inclusion:
The work of TUH is to promote storytelling and dialogue to create better understanding and cooperation across political, religious and geographical borders. TUH provides a safe non-threatening space in which a wide variety of voices can tell and hear each other’s stories at a meaningful level. Storytelling encounters with different voices and perspectives is one way of dealing with past hurts in a way that acknowledges and recognises the individual experience with respect. New voices and vulnerable voices are encouraged to engage in the debate of working towards a better future. The recent work of TUH has been the development of a training resource on Dealing with the Past through Storytelling and Positive Encounter Dialogue that includes a DVD outlining a methodology for storytelling and positive encounter dialogue, a book entitled ‘Stories in Conflict’ which is complementary to the accredited Training Manual.
14:30 – 15:00
Verity Peet: The processes involved in compiling the Northern Irish Digital Film Archive: dealing with practical and technical issues and stakeholders’ expectations. Followed by Q&A
Verity Peet is a multi-platform development producer specialising in innovative digital delivery solutions for multiplatform content. In 2001, she created the UK’s first Digital Film Archive for the Northern Ireland Film Commission and has since provided consultation on similar projects to a variety of organizations across the UK and Ireland. In 2003, she joined Stephen Fry’s company HandHeldHistory to create dramatized audio of London’s history for mobile delivery before joining Channel 4 as a New Media Producer in 2004. Verity returned to Northern Ireland in 2006 to develop a multi-platform comedy performance space - ConstantComedy.com - for Wild Rover Productions.
This presentation will provide an introduction to Northern Ireland Screen’s Digital Film Archive and consider its development from initial concept to current product and usage, focussing on the practical issues associated with funding and concept design, content selection and rights, technology, venues and consumers. The Digital Film Archive will be used to illustrate, where applicable, such considerations.
Coffee: 15:00 – 15:30
15:30 – 16:00
Lorraine Dennis: The Prison’s Memory Archive. Followed by Q&A
The Prisons Memory Archive: a virtual heritage site for the future
Lorraine Dennis is Project Manager of the Prisons’ Memory Archive (PMA), a collection of narratives from those connected with prisons in Northern Ireland. Her research interests focus on the relationship between the national and the local, which is but one of the themes investigated in the PMA, where a rich archive of inclusive recordings has been collected.
She has recently completed her doctoral research which provides the first sustained, in-depth study of the impact of partition on everyday life in the Irish borderlands between 1921 and 1950. Lorraine is also a Trustee of the Design History Society.
The Prisons Memory Archive: a virtual heritage site for the future
As Northern Ireland emerges from over thirty years of political violence and democratic institutions taking root, society appears more willing to contribute to narrating and witnessing experiences from that past. From this background the Prisons’ Memory Archive (PMA) which is an audio-visual collection of narratives from some of those involved with prison sites in Northern Ireland, has been established. Over 200 recordings have already been made from prison staff, probation officers, prisoners, chaplains, teachers and visitors, who all played a part in the story of these historic sites. Recorded on location at Armagh and Maze/Long Kesh Prisons, the PMA uses a unique framework to allow participants to tell their own story, in their own words, without interviewer intervention, by using the prison site to act as a stimulus for memories and individual story telling. The value of this unique approach was recognised in two successful grant applications to the Heritage Lottery Fund.
This talk will investigate some of the key issues in gathering politically sensitive material and how the protocols the PMA have developed have become the cornerstone of the project, with co-ownership and inclusivity central to the relationship between each participant and the PMA. Following a viewing of some of the material we will discuss how the PMA user will have access to multi-vocal, multi-site narratives that reflect the contestation of histories and memories, and serve to promote greater public understanding across temporal and cultural boundaries. The model will be of interest to researchers, educators and curators from other societies living with a legacy of violence as the recordings will be developed from a series of linear narratives to an interactive production - a virtual heritage site for the future.
16:00 – 16:30
Anthony Haughey: The Borderlines Project: Followed by Q&A
Anthony Haughey is an artist, researcher and lecturer at the School of Media, Dublin Institute of Technology. He recently completed a research fellowship at the Interface Centre for Research in Art, Technologies and Design at the University of Ulster. His research interests include work explores the consequences of national and ethnic disputes over territorial sovereignty and the subsequent displacement and disappearance of communities in the aftermath of conflict. Disputed Territory and his installation, Resolution (2006) is the culmination of his project on post-conflict countries in Europe and was recently acquired for the permanent collection of Wolverhampton Art Gallery. His current work examines Irelands shifting demographics in relation to questions of identity, emerging migrant narratives, citizenship and contested space. His art practice includes photography, video and appropriation of archival images and texts. He is also involved in participatory and interdisciplinary collaborative projects. His essay, Imaging the Unimaginable was recently published in Projecting Migrations (Wallflower Press) and a forthcoming chapter contribution will be published in Refugees, Museums and New Media, a UNESCO publication. Recent international exhibitions include, Infected Landscape, at Julie Saul Gallery, New York, De L’Europe at Aciérie Steelworks Luxembourg and Postcards From Mosney at Belfast Exposed Gallery. His work is also represented in many international public and private collections. He is currently co-curating Art, Media and Contested Space, an international public art project and associated events including film screenings and artist talks due to launch in Belfast during November.
16:30 – 17:00
Questions and round-up (LIVE STREAM)
17:00
Launch of short videos made by a community group in Digital Storytelling workshops, commissioned by ISEA2009 with the support of Golden Thread Gallery
Digital Stories are short, personal, multimedia tales. Digital stories are a way of uncovering and sharing moments of our lives with one another. These moments may be the life-changing, the absurd, the beautiful, the sad or the silly. Digital stories have a scrapbook aesthetic. They are narrated by the storyteller and illustrated using the ingredients from their own archive; photographs, mobile phone video, family albums, sacred stuffs from shoeboxes. People come together in a workshop to learn everything needed to make a digital story. By the end of two days skills like script writing, voice recording and editing will be gathered and used to make an elegant and authentic piece of film. Oh, and it’s lots of fun. We promise. (LIVE STREAM)
Lisa Heledd Jones was hooked after the first digital story she saw and was determined to make her career helping people share their stories in this new and exciting way. A graduate from Cardiff University’s Journalism school, she joined the BBC’s Digital Storytelling team in April 2003 and has loved every moment of facilitating hundreds of stories in English, Welsh and even Norwegian! Now on assignment to the University of Glamorgan Lisa leads the workshop arm of their Digital Storytelling project whilst still producing stories and developing the form for the BBC through her MRes research into Participatory Media.
Carwyn Evans has worked for the BBC’s Digital Storytelling team for over six years. Trained as an artist, Carwyn’s aesthetic eye and innate understanding of a good story meant that he was destined to facilitate digital stories. Now, highly skilled with a computer, a keen voice recordist and the most gentle with a wicked sense of humour he is an asset to every workshop.
8.00pm
UU Visiting Professor in Creative Technologies Adam Singer Wed 12th at 8pm in (Foyle Arts Building University of Ulster Magee Derry/Londonderry)
20.00 – till late acroplane/cinilingius night
Blackbox Belfast
Film-8pm-9pm
RL/VL 9pm- 9.30pm
Kinnego Flux, Dodgy stereo 9.45pm- 10.30pm
Kinnego Flux
Belfast-based duo David Baxter (who also records as Filaria) and Brian Greene blend hardware and software with saxophone, trumpet, bass guitar and Greene’s (arguably underused) blue-eyed soul voice. Their sound is a fluid one, flirting with jazz, soul, funk and IDM. Live, there’s a real seat-of-the-pants, improvised edge. Happily though, the jamming never gets self-indulgent. Tracks drift into shape slowly, as a crisp beat is joined by a bassline or brass part, manipulated and looped to create a languid yet danceable groove. In a busier venue, you imagine that the seamless transitions and constant pulse would have the room contorting en masse. (AU Magazine).
RL/VL
Presenting an impeccably crafted minimalism and focus married to an ineffable sense of human frailty. The beauty of RL/VL is that no sound is too small, no detail too elusive.
Cloaked in tape hiss, the heartbreaking organ figure at the core of the song has enough emotional weight to floor even the most cynical listener. As ‘Kweens’ unfolds, glistening synths circle around the organ, until the melody dissolves in a shimmering outro akin to prime Boards Of Canada. This is ambient electronica of staggering emotive power. (Single review).
Hidden Shoal Recordings will release RL/VL’s mesmerising full length Chagrin on October 2008.
BEW
Experimental/electronic music producer Barry Cullen releases audio and video work under the name BEW (Barry’s Electric Workshop). He is part of the Dodgy Stereo collective. Barry started working with electronic sounds as a teenager. Things started to get interesting when he was struggling to make his guitar sound like a synthesiser. After many years meddling with cheap equipment he found computer music. Nowadays he blends sounds and images from old junk with hi-fi sounds and graphics, trying to find a balance between creating something new and making it fit along with something recycled. Sometimes playing with machines and/or people depending on the needs of the recording/performance.
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
Venue: Black Box, Hill Street Belfast
Open Space - Postgraduate Platform
10.00 – 10.30 ISEA Foundation and ISEA Headquarters (LIVE STREAM)
10.30 – 17.00 Facilitated Open Space (University of Ulster, SARC, GradCAM and other invited PG programmes) which will explore…
How do digital technologies impact on cultural practices from your perspective of inquiry?
17.00-17.30 Patching Zone Rotterdam – Presentation
17.30 – 18.30 Launch of Arkive City in Black Box
“Arkive City invites the reader on a journey through Kilmainham Gaol and Museum, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and the Live Art Archives, to the Imperial War Museum, Arnolfini art centre and the Stasi Archive, to name but a few.
The context of this cityscape is one in which mass forms of (self) representation, dissemination, documenting and monitoring converge and influence the perception of information, knowledge, interaction, security, and indeed our imagining of time.
The contributors to Arkive City map out important questions and shifts in interest that have arisen from the changing role of archiving in culture, and its relationship with the arts, through their work: curating exhibitions in museums, (de)constructing (art) history, running library and government archives, initiating archives in arts organisations, and shaping individual practice.
Six themes underpin Arkive City, emphasizing the repercussions of archiving in terms of: Taxonomies, Technology, Memory and Identities, Liberty and Surveillance, Markets and Resources, and Voids.
This anthology offers a resource to all individuals and organisations interested in the relationship between aesthetics and politics, and the use of artistic and creative strategies to explore and influence the processes of history making and memory.”
18.30 – Feast (Food and Drink)
20.00 – astro+prism
An absorbing live audio/visual show from astro+prism (A/V/DJ/VJ team) from Newcastle upon Tyne. This sister team will engage your senses in a stimulating amalgam of moody electronic bass and beats; live vocals with fx; and multi layered visuals integrating live footage and graphics.
astro+prisms work has been supported by Arts Council England and PRS Foundation and seen/heard in venues such as FACT Centre Liverpool, Club Dogma Edinburgh and Redhouse, Sofia, Bulgaria.
Thursday, 13 November 2008
Venue: Foyle Arts Building University of Ulster Magee Derry/Londonderry
16.30 Creative Technologies PhD student slot with talks and performance by Rachel McClure and Ricky Graham
Venue: Foyle Arts Building, University of Ulster Magee Derry/Londonderry
18.00 Launch of RUSH CD of electronic music by Frank Lyons
17.00 – 19.00 A Citizen’s Call to Synthesize! a creative conversation with science on public participation in the laboratory.
(E-mobile Arts Lab project) Video Conference Links
Venues:
1) INTERFACE Lecture Theatre University of Ulster Belfast.
2) Dun laoighre Institute of Art Design and Technology Dublin.
3) MIT Bioengineering Laboratory, Boston, USA.
4) Bloomfield Science Museum Jerusalem, Israel
A Citizen’s Call to Synthesize!
a creative conversation with science on public participation in the laboratory.
A Citizen’s Call to Synthesize! is a transatlantic discussion and exchange between Dr. Natalie Kuldell’s bio engineering laboratory at MIT and art and science collective, The Grafting Parlour. Their web-cast discussion on citizenship and synthetic biology is the launching pad for the fusion of research by participating artists and scientists, who will address ways the public can interact with science, and how a new model for an interactive laboratory fits into the history of science and knowledge.
Some of the Artist and Scientists participating:
Dr. Natalie Kuldell (USA)
expertise: synthetic biology and responsive yeast
http://openwetware.org/wiki/20.20
Dr. L. Hernandez Gomez/ the League of Imaginary Scientists
expertise: creative integration of science and technology and conveying research as interactivity
http://www.imaginaryscience.org
Kelly Andres (Canada)
expertise: mechanized telecommunication devices and translation of viewer interaction into sound
http://www.kellyandres.com
Nurit Bar-Shai (USA/Israel)
expertise: remotely operated mechanics and participatory object-based narratives
http://www.nuritbarshai.com
Saoirse Higgins (Ireland)
expertise: audio capture, mechanical communication devices and interpreting live data as meta-
http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~saoirse
Antti Tenetz (Finland)
expertise: AV and data recordings of nature and interactive visualization of scientific information http://www.arcticcentre.org
Background to the artist group The Grafting Parlour:
The Grafting Parlour is a collaborative research project by artists and scientists who exchange and combine their methodologies through playful experimentation. Based both live in the gallery and live in the laboratory, GfP synthesizes the practices of artists and scientists while providing opportunities for the public to interact with and shape science.
Formed through e-MobiLArt as part of its initiative for collaborative inquiry. GfP is the brainchild of artists Kelly Andres, Nurit Bar-Shai, Coti, Saoirse Higgins, Antti Tenetz and Dr. Gomez from the League of Imaginary Scientists, with contributions from Dimitris Charitos. What the artists have in common is a playful mechanization of socially relevant and sometimes complex narratives, as well as an eagerness to apply the same sideways approach to science. Scientific collaborators include synthetic biologist Dr. Natalie Kuldell and her MIT laboratory, genomic engineer Jennifer Kuehl, Finnish biologist Dr. Panu Oulasvirta, and contributors chemist Dr. David Garin and neurologist Dr. Florian Thomas.
Friday, 14 November 2008
Venue: University of Ulster, Belfast campus, Interface 82e04
FULL SESSION Video Conference link to iadt Dublin
10.30 Mark Cullen: Recent studies into digital human visualisation and animation incorporating research carried out with Prof. Gunther von Hagen’s Institute of Plastenation.
11.30 – 13.00 ISEA2009 Organising committee platform
13.30 – 13.30 Sandwich lunch
13.30 – 14.30 Public lecture by Mike Stubbs (FACT) Andy Miah (Reader in New Media & Bioethics, University of the West of Scotland)
Black Box 18 - 22 Hill Street Belfast BT1 2LA
For more information and the full Pre-symposium go to www.isea2009.org Also see ISEA www.isea-web.org All events are free, limited numbers, early bird policy applies. For more information contact
Cherie Driver at c.driver@ulster.ac.uk or go to our website www.isea2009.org