Publications

Selected round-up of forthcoming exhibitions and events from the world of new media arts and imaging.

Amongst new moves in the academic world, in 2010 Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design's highly successful MSc Media Arts & Imaging will be developed into two courses to include an MSc in Media Art and an MSc in Animation and Visual Communication. As part of the existing course, practising video dance maker, director and festival curator, Jeannette Ginslov has been utilising dance videos, interactive installations and internet platforms to explore the amplification of the authentic and the digital, the emotional and kinaesthetic to heighten empathetic responses. The combination of movement, music, text, video and interactive media provides the basis for stimulating explorations of the notion of identity, freedom and otherness. Her final work CoNCrEte reveals ever changing responses to the environment, relationships and events that result in a display of emotions and affordances.

At University of Wolverhampton, the TH EME (Technology, Hypermedia, Environments, Moving image, Experience) research group has a depth of knowledge and expertise in digital creativity and audio visual technology. With explorations into both narrative and non-narrative forms in conceptual, immersive and performative spaces, practitioners and theorists engage in both traditional and digital media ranging from virtual and ludic environments through to animation, sonic art and gallery-based video. Amongst its research focuses are the position (both temporal and spatial) of the spectator or participant in relation to moving image and digital technologies in both real and virtual worlds. Check out this and all MA courses available at Wolverhampton at www.wlv.ac.uk/artanddesign or visit the MA shows running 5, 7-12 September.

Following on from last year's Kinopixel: 'Exploding the Image' Reel #1 'Materialist Experiments' shown at Herbert Art Gallery and curated by Darryl Georgiou, 2009 sees 'Kinopravda: Fragments/Out-takes'. Curator George Saxon from the Housewatch collective said: the exhibition is "concerned with recovered fragments from the personal and junk-yard of the moving image bin and explores the way in which artists have re-interpreted the discarded, shelved and abandoned". This recycling of the moving image reveals new image, sound, memory investigations through disembodied dialogues. Running 7-24 October at Lanchester Gallery, Coventry School of Art & Design, highlights include work by Sarah Tulloch, James Holcombe, Patti Gaal-Holmes, John Holden, Anna Thew, Alison Winckle, Darryl Georgiou, Jerzy & Tadeusz Witkowski and Saxon himself. Recipient of the 2009 Kinopixel artists' fellowship is Paul Rooney. Pre-launch September events include new works by emerging artists and postgraduates from Coventry School of Art & Design to coincide with launch of the new MA Contemporary Arts Practice and a Kinopixel 'off-site' initiative including a 16mm artists' moving image event on 24 September at The Herbert within the 'A Thing About Machines' arts festival, plus the new reactive artwork on www.kinopixel.net. Kinopixel is ephemeral and evolving as subsequent screenings are scheduled for London and New York in the fall of 2009. Look out for the forthcoming deadline 31 January 2010 for Kinopixel Reel #3: The Still In Moving Image, info from submissions@kinopixel.co.uk

Running since 2004 and managed by sound artist, Martin Franklin, South Hill Park's. Digital Media Centre has a distinctive programme of artists' development events and workshops focused on sound art animation and hybrid digital traditional printmaking, supported by creative software training. Autumn sees launch of a new stream of Digital developments, with creative and technical weekends led by invited artists. Composer and installation artist, Janek Schaefer leads a session investigating use of found sound and non-computer manipulation of audio. Nic Sandiland introduces Using Sensors for Installation and Performance that uses the Arduino platform for real-time triggering of audio and video. Print-based artist, Janet Curley Cannon works with Ink Aid to transfer digital images onto otherwise non-printable surfaces, whilst hardware hacker, Stu 'ASMO' Smith from Leicester's Bathysphere leads the Circuit Bending weekend in November, to create new and strange electronic instruments.

The giddy pace of a wired visual culture was the impetus for 'It's All About Paradise 2', an interdisciplinary exhibition by ten emerging artists and writers at Blank Galleries, Brighton running 16-31 October. Beginning from the recognition that new media and communications have radically expedited the dissemination of creative discourses, these works traverse the gap between global ironies and spectral locales. In order to address the challenges posed by this climate to traditional practices and notions of authorship, the artists have undertaken to work beyond the boundaries of their regular disciplines, both by working in unfamiliar media, and by collaboratively developing the ideas that guide the project. Alluding to the impossibility of reproducing the infinite, the exhibition's title captures these artists' preoccupation with the ubiquity of the copy as a formal determinant. Numbering among their representations of these themes are a cardboard house demolished by Monet, urban detritus re-rendered in Flash animation, Paradise Lost remixed, and a conversation between archaic and cutting-edge cinematics. Includes artists Sandra Heathcote, Giuseppe Iozzi, Lorenza Ipollito, Ned McConnell, Daniella Norton, Emelye Perry, Tila Rodriguez-Past and writers Tom Farrington, Jessica Pujol Duran, Tom Slingsby.

Specialist equipment and technical know-how are vital within presentation of contemporary media works and programmes. A Leeds based not-for-profit arts organisation, Lumen enjoys a national and international reputation not only for producing exciting high-quality art, but for providing support for audio-visual events across the UK.

Director Lucy Dusgate says "Our artistic programme aims to nurture and exhibit video, sound, film and technology art of excellence from established and emerging artists for audiences. Our annual festival 'Evolution' is central. Media art is evolving in exciting times and digital advances are giving artists a whole new platform for exhibition and creativity."

Arts Council revenue funding brings subsidised hire rates to artists and cultural sector, at about 50% cheaper than a commercial company. Lumen's service includes equipment and on-site project management by staff to deliver; festivals, exhibitions, outdoor screening, events, performances and filming, with projectors, high-definition cameras, screens, audio systems and PA systems on offer to projects such as Opera North, Sonic Arts Network Festival, Museum in Docklands, Henry Moore Institute, Whitworth Art Gallery, international film festivals, Glastonbury, local authorities and international artists.

www.dundee.ac.uk/djcad
www.kinopixel.co.uk
www.digitalmediacentre.org
www.southhillpark.org.uk
www.blankstudiosgallery.org
www.lumen.org.uk

a-n

First published: a-n Magazine September 2009