Lab/Time-based residencies and Environmental Response

This month CRUMB celebrates it being summertime in the Southern
Hemisphere with the help of the artists, curators and theorists
taking part in SCANZ 2009.

Solar Circuit Aotearoa New Zealand (SCANZ) is a two week residency
organised by Intercreate.org for artists, producers, writers,
theorists and curators set in New Plymouth New Zealand (January 26th
to February 8th 2009). One of the residency themes is Environmental
Response. Occurring alongside the residency are a two day symposium
(February 7 and 8), performance evening & exhibition (opens February
7), and curatorial workshop, all held at the Govett-Brewster Art
Gallery. The Puke Ariki Museum and Library are also partners in the
production of new projects for Pukekura Park as part of their 60
Springs Project with local school groups. There is a lot going on!

This month we thought we would start with the underlying idea of the
SCANZ residency, that of "Raranga Tangata" - the weaving together of
people. Raranga Tangata is a Polynesian expression proposed by
Charlie Tawhiao and adopted by Sally Jane Norman and Sylvia Nagl to
describe the Internet. Contained within the expression is the
fundamental question of what are the necessary conditions for weaving
people together (technological or otherwise), and in particular in
this context - a time-limited residency in a specific environmental
and geographic place.

In the past the CRUMB list has discussed issues of lab-based models
of production and exhibition (how do you turn a lab into a show?),
and the question of time-based collaboration and residencies (how
long does it take to make it work?). See for instance the discussions
on Art and Science Collaborations (August 2002) and Open Source,
Residencies and Labs (June 2008). Further comments on these topics
from practical experience are always welcome.

However this month we'd like to discuss the conditions necessary for
a successful weaving together of artists and curators, set within a
specific locality. CRUMB has not, as yet, specifically discussed how
new media artists respond to place and local environmental concerns
when invited to participate in a residency (something which is often
presumed or hoped for within international exchanges but not always
made explicit as SCANZ is trying to do here). The CRUMB list did talk
about Locative Media Art in April and May 2004, but that's not
exactly what I mean here. Site-specific production of new media art,
for instance as Brett Stallbaum is doing with his mobile storytelling
project for Pukekura Park here, has particular challenges for both
curators and artists. How do you manage the successful delivery of
projects if the artist can only be onsite 8 days before the project
launch or has to leave the day after, or you only get access to the
presenting venue two days before the opening? How do you bring people
up to speed, both those local and those coming in from afar?

You are invited to chime in with your thoughts on how to respond to
place when you are in a new place, with new people, seeking to work
together in a limited time-period, mindful of existing relationships
and histories and geographical constraints to create something
meaningful and lasting. No small order then! We'll start with a
manageable chunk, with each of the participants here describing their
projects in relation to the topic.

This month's respondents (no doubt there will be more) include (and
bios follow)

Ian Clothier
Nina Czegledy
Trudy Lane
Local Time
Caro McCaw
Sally Jane Norman
Andrew Gryf Paterson
The Polytechnic
Melinda Rackham
Jacques Sirot
Brett Stallbaum
Mercedes Vicente
Addie Wagenknecht

With thanks for your input,
Sarah


References:

http://www.intercreate.org
http://www.govettbrewster.com
http://www.taranakiwiki.com/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Puke%20Ariki
http://www.pukeariki.com/en/stories/entertainmentAndLeisure/
parktimeline.htm

Bios:

Ian M Clothier is a Senior Academic at Western Institute of
Technology at Taranaki (WITT), Director of Intercreate Research
Centre (intercreate.org) and founding Director of SCANZ (Solar
Circuit Aotearoa New Zealand). He has been selected three times for
ISEA (Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts) and exhibited projects
with organisations based in nine countries. Thematically his projects
involve notions around cultural hybridity and nonlinearity, more
recently integrated systems. His written work has been published in
Leonardo, Convergence and Digital Creativity and he has given many
conference presentations.

Nina Czegledy, media artist, curator and writer works internationally
on collaborative art & science & technology projects. She has
produced time based and digital works, won awards for her artwork,
exhibited widely, lead and participated in workshops, forums and
festivals and published worldwide. She is president of Critical Media
a Canadian based Knowledge initiative, is a Senior Fellow, KMDI,
University of Toronto, Associate Adjunct Professor Concordia
University, Montreal, Honorary Fellow, Moholy Nagy University of
Design, Budapest, co-chair of the Leonardo Education Forum (LEF) and
ex-officio chair of ISEA.

Trudy Lane is currently a masters research student, studying ways to
develop a contextualisation of art online in a socially and
politically conscious way. She works with Ian Clothier as part of
Intercreate.org. She is also the much loved graphic designer of
CRUMB's identity.

Local Time is a NZ art collective consisting of Danny Butt, Jon
Bywater, Natalie Robertson and Alex Monteith. Danny Butt is an
educator, writer and consultant on culture and technology, based in
Aotearoa New Zealand. Jon Bywater is Programme Leader for Critical
Studies and Programme Leader for Studio One at the Elam School of
Fine Arts, The University of Auckland. He is also active as a
curator, and as a writer on art, music, and theory.

Caro McCaw is a Senior Lecturer and Academic Leader in Communication
Design at Otago Polytechnic. Her research interests include examining
situated creative practices, participatory art and design, and
particularly the relationship between material location and networked
culture drawing from examples in the fields of both art and design.
Caroline is studying extramurally towards a PhD in Brisbane, Australia.

Sally Jane Norman Born in Napier, Aotearoa, Sally Jane’s background
and interests are in live performance, art & technology, and
interdisciplinary research. She followed a Master of Arts from
Canterbury with a Doctorat de 3ème cycle (PhD) and Doctorat d’état at
the Institut d’Etudes théâtrales, Université de Paris III, funding
her research as a scientific translator. Commissioned papers include
publications for the Centre national de la recherche scientifique,
UNESCO and the French Ministry of Culture; she has led art and
technology events including the New Images Conference at the Louvre
(992) and performance research at the International Institute of
Puppetry in Charleville-Mézières, Studio for Electro-Instrumental
Music in Amsterdam (as artistic co-director), Zentrum für Kunst und
Medientechnologie (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, and IRCAM in Paris. Sally Jane
worked on EU Framework projects at the ZKM before becoming Director
General of the Ecole supérieure de l’image in France (Angoulême/
Poitiers), where she launched a pioneering practice-based Digital
Arts doctorate with Poitiers University. Since 2004, as founding
director of Newcastle University’s Culture Lab, a digital laboratory
working with Newcastle’s three faculties (Humanities, Science,
Medicine), her role is to seed and host a wide range of
interdisciplinary research projects. Sally Jane ensures consultancy
for numerous international research and policy bodies; as a stubborn
believer in the power of collaborative, interdisciplinary energies to
spearhead innovative cultural and technological processes, she tends
to work naturally in unclassifiable discomfort zones. http://
www.ncl.ac.uk/culturelab/people/profile/s.j.norman

Andrew Gryf Paterson is a Scottish artist-organiser, cultural
producer and doctoral candidate, based in Helsinki, Finland. His work
involves variable roles of initiator, participant, author and
curator, according to different collaborative and cross-disciplinary
processes. Andrew works across the fields of media/ network/
environmental activism, pursuing a participatory arts practice
through workshops, performative events, and storytelling.

The Polytechnic is an Arts organization based in the North east of
England which has an emphasis on hand-on and distributed approaches
to working with technology. Dominic Smith is an artist, programmer,
musician and currently studying towards his PhD with CRUMB at
Sunderland University. Sneha Solanki communicates her practice
through art which interrogates science and technology. Solanki often
works in process-based environments; producing events and projects
which utilise low-tech, open and collaborative methods. Her practice
extends to sound, web, broadcast, and time-based temporal works. Will
Scrimshaw works with and writes about sound, performance and
interaction. His work often makes use of interactive technologies and
is focused around theories of resonance, noise, feedback, embodiment
and materialism. He is currently pursuing PhD research into theories
of sonorous individuation in relation to the work of Gilles Deleuze.

Melinda Rackham writes regularly on the intertwining cultural issues
and aesthetic, technological and conceptual shifts in networked,
distributed, multi-user, game and mobile environments. She worked for
over a decade with emergent practices and innovative technologies as
a pioneering net artist, writer, curator, media consultant and
cultural producer. She was the first Curator of Networked Media at
the Australian Centre for Moving Image, and in 2002 she established
the -empyre- online critical theory forum. Currently she is the
Director of the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) -
Australia's leading cultural organisation working at the intersection
of art, research, science and emerging technologies to generate new
creativities.

Jacques Sirot is an independent French film-maker whose creations
over the past thirty years range from art works including graphic,
photographic and multimedia installation pieces as founding member of
CAIRN artists’ cooperative in Paris, to films on live performance and
creative technologies events, and documentaries commissioned by local
bodies and industrial organisations. Jacques has taught video and
multimedia in a variety of professional development and art school
contexts. His New Zealand productions include Tane’s Revenge, a film
on forest destruction by opossums which premiered on NZTV in 1992
with an ecological “possum rap” music video (co-production with The
Pauas), and a documentary on Tapu Te Ranga Marae and its founder,
Bruce Stewart (Island Bay, Wellington). Recent Aotearoa inspired work
includes audiovisual meditations on Raranga tangata, screened as part
of Sally Jane Norman and Sylvia Nagl’s joint conference presentations
at Duke University, US (2007) and the Center for Literary and
Cultural Research, Berlin (2008). Video works can be viewed at http://
www.dailymotion.com/user/keoracobus and http://idisk.mac.com/
mirlitant-Public. Jacques’ blog as an alien discoverer of Newcastle
upon Tyne is at http://vendredi.blog.lemonde.fr/

Brett Stalbaum is a full time faculty member in the Department of
Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego, where he
coordinates the Interdisciplinary Computing in the Arts Major. He is
a founding member of Electronic Disturbance Theater, C5 and
paintersflat.net. Current research involves generative locative
algorithms, the development of mobile software platforms for walking,
and their applications in art, activism and education. He lives with
his partner Paula Poole in an unincorporated area of Eastern San
Diego County, USA.

Mercedes Vicente is Curator of Contemporary Art at the Govett
Brewster Gallery in New Plymouth. Prior to moving to NZ, Mercedes was
an independent curator and art critic living in New York City where
she held curatorial positions in several art institutions including
the Whitney Museum of American Art. Vicente earned masters’ degrees
in Film and the Arts at New York University and in Curatorial Studies
at Bard College and was Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the
Whitney Independent Study Program.

Addie Wagenknecht is an artist and former fellow at Eyebeam. Her
'Shadow Project' which is a kinetic responsive system for creating
environmentally aware architectural spaces, is a collaboration with
Stefan Hechenberger under the name Nor_/d.