Dynamic Media Network » newmedia

Creativity and Cognition Studios

timmaybury — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 04:18:40 +0000

Creativity and Cognition Studios (CCS) is a multidisciplinary research centre located in the University of Technology, Sydney. The centre is committed to fostering the enhancement and progression of human creativity through interaction with new media and digital technology. In aiming to do so the centre provides an environment for artists, technologists, curators, sociologists and various other scholars to gather and experiment with technology through practice-based research. The studio maintains a strong emphasis on the importance of partnerships and collaboration in their development processes.

The focus of CCS arose from concerns regarding the intersection between creativity and technology that were first expressed and explored by studio director Ernest Edmonds in the 1960s. Presently, CCS’s research focuses primarily on themes surrounding digital art and interactive entertainment. Research in these areas is based on a reflexive relationship between the development of new creative practice and research into the computer science and HCI issues around supporting such practice. Relevant CCS projects have investigated experimentation with cybernetic systems involving physical participation and interaction, technology enhanced performance, visual and sonic generative art, cellular automata and the logics that enable their creation. Projects are carried out from conception to evaluation and realization in CCS’s high-end facilities, which include an audio/visual studio dedicated to creation of artworks that explore synaesthetic effects in the viewer, an interaction studio equipped with a range of computers and set of sensor systems used for development of interactive artworks and environments, and a games studio in which researchers develop and engage with artificial intelligence as a driving technology that enables entertainment systems to deliver interesting and engaging experiences. CCS is committed to disseminating its results internationally through research publications, exhibitions, the continuation of the international conference series and through the provision of high quality postgraduate education.

Underpinning the CCS trajectory is a desire to design and understand computer systems that encourage creativity not only within experts’ artistic practice, but also for the benefit of wider society. As such the studio adopts the belief that the work of cutting edge artists can provide a valuable platform from which others can learn and gain new experience. In this respect an important innovation of the CCS has been the establishment of Beta_Space, a duplicate version of the centre’s interaction studio created in collaboraton with Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum. Housed in the public area of the museum, Beta_Space provides an experimental environment where the public can engage with the latest of CCS’s researchers latest prototypes and end products. A critical function the space performs is to allow audience members an opportunity to be creatively involved in the development of new artistic expression, as the engagement with the public provides researchers with essential information that is used to shape further iterations of their art works and research.

Digital Artists Handbook

Xavier — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 06:02:13 +0000

The Digital Artists Handbook is an up to date, reliable and accessible source of information that introduces you to different tools, resources and ways of working related to digital art.

The goal of the Handbook is to be a signpost, a source of practical information and content that bridges the gap between new users and the platforms and resources that are available, but not always very accessible. The Handbook will be slowly filled with articles written by invited artists and specialists, talking about their tools and ways of working. Some articles are introductions to tools, others are descriptions of methodologies, concepts and technologies.

When discussing software, the focus of this Handbook is on Free/Libre Open Source Software. The Handbook aims to give artists information about the available tools but also about the practicalities related to Free Software and Open Content, such as collaborative development and licenses. All this to facilitate exchange between artists, to take away some of the fears when it comes to open content licenses, sharing code, and to give a perspective on various ways of working and collaborating.

download the Digital Artists Handbook pdf.

Furtherfield.org

Xavier — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 05:52:56 +0000

Furtherfield.org was founded in London in 1996 and is the collaborative work of artists, programmers, writers, activists, musicians and thinkers who explore beyond traditional remits; dedicated to the creation, promotion, and criticism of adventurous digital/networked media art work for public viewing, experience and interaction. Developing imaginative strategies in a range of digital & terrestrial media contexts, Furtherfield develops global, contributory projects that facilitate art activity simultaneously on the Internet, the streets and public venues.

An artist-led group that utilizes networked media to create, explore, nurture and promote the art that happens when connections are made and knowledge is shared – across the boundaries of established art-world institutions and their markets, grass-roots artistic and activist projects and communities of socially-engaged software developers. This is a spectrum that engages from the maverick media-art-makers and small collectives of cross-specialist practitioners, to projects that critique and change dominant hierarchical structures as part of their art process.

Furtherfield

Neil Jenkins

Xavier — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 05:39:09 +0000

Neil Jenkins is an artist whose current practice is heavily engaged with electronic media, language, programming and networked communication. I am particularly interested in the use of networks (both real and virtual) toward creating hybrid interactive installation pieces. Born and raised in the UK, he is now living and working in Sydney, Australia.

Whilst developing an online studio of work at devoid, together with commercial projects and interactive design and programming for arts organisations, he works extensively with Furtherfield, an London/net based artists collective, using the internet and networked technology as a focal point for creative discourse, events and production. Projects including Visitors Studio and FurtherStudio (an online artists residency programming) and ‘Skin/Strip Online’ (a collaboration between Furtherfield and Completely Naked, commissioned by BBC Shooting Live Artists 2003).

Neil also teaches and held the position of Senior Lecturer in Interactive Media at Bath Spa University (Graphic & Screen Design) from 2000 to 2008.

Visit his website www.devoid.co.uk

Ross Gibson

Xavier — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 04:13:06 +0000

Ross Gibson is a teacher and writer who also makes films and multimedia systems. He has curated several acclaimed exhibitions. Ross devises artistic content, architectural design and ICT systems for museums, public spaces and large dynamic databases. Examples include the Museum of Sydney where he was senior consultant producer between 1993 and 1996, and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image where Gibson was Creative Director during its estabishment phase between 1999 and early 2002. He was Research Professor of New Media and Digital Culture at UTS and now is now Professor of Contemporary Art at the the Sydney College of the Arts ,University of Sydney.

Somaya Langley

Xavier — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 03:35:53 +0000

Somaya Langley is a sound and media artist and former co-director of Electrofringe festival. Her work has been presented and performed in festivals and conferences throughout Australia and internationally including the International Symposium of Electronic Arts (ISEA), Transmediale.08, Tuned City, New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME), das kleine field recordings festival, Liquid Architecture 6, the International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD), Sound Lab Channel III, Electrofringe, the Australasian Computer Music Conference (ACMC), the Australasian Sound Recording Association (ASRA) Conference, the Totally Huge New Music Festival, the Melbourne Fringe Festival and Skylounge at the National Museum of Australia. In 2005 she completed commissions for Experimenta’s New Visions and the National Film and Sound Archive’s Ten Minutes of Passion, for which her piece Passion in the Protest also received a finalist’s award. Highlights over the past three years include surround-sound compositions for tele path, a trilogy of video works by media artist David McDowell, funded by artsACT and sound for the solo theatre work The Minutiae of Inertia, as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival. She also participated in the Performance Space’s Time_Place_Space 5 workshop, which was supported by an artsACT 2006 Travel Grant and participated in the Australian Network for Art and Technology’s Create_Space 2005 New Media Lab, which was supported by an ANAT workshop grant. In 2007, she attended the Australian Network for Art and Technology’s re:skin Media Laboratory that was supported by an ANAT workshop grant. Subsequently, she travelled overseas to attend the New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) conference in New York, the International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD) in Montreal plus a collaborative residency at STEIM in Amsterdam ,which was made possible by an Australia Council for the Arts Run_Way grant.

Christopher Salter

Xavier — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 23:53:59 +0000

Christopher Salter is a media artist, director and composer based in Montréal, Canada and Berlin, Germany. Salter develops and produces large-scale, multi-media and interactive environments which merge space, vision and sound. These environments respond in complex and subtle ways to the audience’s presence and activities. His works transfer visitors into an audio-visual scenario with strong audible as well as with dramatic elements.

Salter studied economics and philosophy at Emory University and completed a Ph.D. in theater+computer-generated sound at Stanford University in 1997.He was awarded the Fulbright and Alexander von Humboldt “Bundeskanzler” grants for research/work in Germany between 1993-1995 where he collaborated with Peter Sellars and William Forsythe at the Ballett Frankfurt( Eidos:Telos, 1995, Sleepers Guts, 1997).

In 1997, he co-founded the art+research organization Sponge, an interdisciplinary association of artists and researchers who are exploring the nexus of investigative art, speculative design and techno-scientific research. His work with Sponge has toured internationally to festivals and exhibitions such as Ars Electronica, SIGGRAPH 2000, Mediaterra-Athens, the Exploratorium, Mediaterra-Athens, the Exploratorium, Banff Center and V2 Rotterdam and has received recent grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Daniel Langlois Foundation and the LEF Foundation.

Dynamic Media Project

editor — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:48:28 +0000

Screenshot from ‘Assemblage for Collective Thought’ VJ and networked remix project. Performed at International Symposium for Electronic Arts and ZeroOne, San Jose, USA, August 12 2006.

Dynamic Media: Innovative Social and Artistic Development in New Media in Australia, Britain, Canada and Scandinavia since 1990 is an international, ARC funded project that provides information for Australians to more extensively implement dynamic media within a social context. Based at the Centre for Contemporary Arts and Politics at UNSW’s College of Fine Arts, the project is a collaboration between Anna Munster (CoFA/CCAP), Andrew Murphie (Media, Film & Theatre, UNSW), Brian Massumi (University of Montreal) and Adrian MacKenzie (Lancaster University).The project focuses on the international strategies for social use of dynamic media, and will form the basis of an online database that will profile and be accessible to Australian artists, arts organisations, new media researchers and social innovators. This study highlights the innovation of Australian artists and researchers in the development of dynamic media and positions these internationally.

Centre for Contemporary Arts and Politics, College of Fine Arts, UNSW