Workshops and Seminars
Performing Space Speakers and participants
A hybrid event organized by Frank Abbott, School of Art and Design, The Nottingham Trent University (22 February 2008).
Morning session: Performing Space-Setting the Context
Professor Steven Benford
Steve Benford is the Professor of Collaborative Computing at the University of Nottingham where he co-founded the MRL. He is a co-investigator of the Equator IRC. The Mixed Reality Lab at Nottingham University has worked with artists like Active Ingredient and Blast Theory creating innovative pervasive work using wireless and mobile networks for interactive work within cities around the world.
Professor David Crouch
David Crouch is Professor of Cultural Geography, Leisure and Tourism at the University of Derby, and Visiting Professor of Geography and Tourism at Karlstad and Kalmar in Sweden. He is editor of Leisure/tourism Geographies [Routledge 1999] and Co-editor of Visual Culture and Tourism [Berg 2003]. His work particularly addresses our new understanding of how we perform space from the position of a geographer.
Jonathan Hale
Jonathan Hale is an architect and associate professor at the University of Nottingham. He is author and editor of several books and articles in the area of architecture, the body and technology. He is currently developing a collaborative project with the Vienna based artist/choreographer Cie. Willi Dorner and the Mixed Reality Lab at Nottingham University's School of Computer Sciences, having worked with the same team in 2006 on a commission for the nottdance06 festival.
Angharad Wynne-Jones
Angharad Wynne-Jones, Director of LIFT (London International Festival of Theatre) will talk about 'the Lift'. The Lift is a new concept in performance space where artists from around the world and the people of can gather together to share stories, exchange knowledge and imagine and rehearse new futures. The processes of working and developing its design with architects AOC and 200 east and south-east London residents who are representative of the people who will use the Lift.
Afternoon session: Performing Space-Interrogating the Context
The afternoon session will address the initiatives which have been taken by artists. It will include include a series of short artist presentations and discussions responded to by presenters from the previous symposium and researchers and curators engaged in the current projects.
The particular artists and projects we will be engaging with as examples include:
Professor John Newling
John Newling lives in Nottingham where he is currently Professor of Installation Sculpture at The Nottingham Trent University. Newling has an international reputation and has installed works across Europe and the USA. He has pioneered working with information in site specific contexts and the use of online camera monitoring networks for example Chatham Vines.
Heath Bunting
An artist looking critically at identity and the city in the context of digital networks. He recently exhibited the next stage of The Status Project in Nottingham. Heath is preparing works examining borders and identity to be shown at both the Institute of Contemporary Arts and Tate Modern in 2008.
http://irational.org/cgi-bin/cv2/temp.pl
Mirjam Struppek
Mirjam Struppek is based in Berlin and works internationally as urbanist, researcher and consultant. She is President of the newly formed International Urban Screens Association (IUSA) and a member of Public Art Lab, Berlin. With a background in Urban- and Environmental Planning she has internationally lectured and published essays with a special focus on the livability of urban space, public sphere and its transformation and acquisition through new media.
http://www.urbanscreens08.net/
Anette Schaefer
Anette Schaefer is Curator and Director of Trampoline, a new media art organisation, who initiated the Radiator Festival for New Technology Art. Trampoline has been active over the last 10 years curating and supporting work which has explored a re-conceptualizing of public space within the city. The Radiator festival scheduled for late 2008 will be commissioning new artists work which uses this new configurations of the city public spaces and the networked environment.
http://www.trampoline.org.uk/TrampolineUK/
http://www.trampoline-berlin.de/
The WiMAX Forest
Nottingham Trent University has been working with a range of partners including cultural and educational institutions, small companies and INTEL to establish an innovative WiMAX community network in a vibrant multi-cultural area of the city connected to a school and new African-Caribbean and South Asian Arts Centre. By the end of November 2007 the project will be activated as a demonstrator for new content and interaction. A range of artists are looking to create work within this new context.
http://www.intel.com/technology/magazine/communications/digital-communities-0905.htm#section1
Active Ingredient.
This is a development of 'Heartlands' an award winning locative media project with the Mixed Reality Laboratory designed to re-energise urban space and encourage exercise. It is funded by the Department of Health.
http://www.i-am-ai.net/home.html
Open City
Andrew Brown will consider the use of dance and wireless technology to map activities in the city presented by Open City across Nottingham at NottDance 07.
http://www.thinkingfeet.blogspot.com
Tour Of Tokyo
This project uses international online interaction to develop an understanding of Urban Space and intercultural dialogue by school children in Nottingham and Tokyo. A collaborative initiative by Trampoline and the Dis-Locate exhibition and seminar series which takes place annually in Tokyo.