Thanks for the question Marialaura

We can't reveal too much yet about the programme but without giving too much away I think I can respond.

We are having to deal with some of the usual challenges in respect of sourcing required technologies. There are numerous headaches to deal with, such as finding an industrial scale robot or a couple of tons of waste computers. There will be issues with having the event at two sites which, whilst not far apart will create a split experience, with some works in neither place due to their site specificity. One or more works will be situated to make connections between the spaces, across the city. There are the challenges you want to have, such as considering the catalogue design and how to incorporate electronic data into it. There are also the conference track issues - for example, how we ensure remote participation that is both effective and enjoyable for all involved, far away and in the room; how we integrate academic style presentations with live artistic activities; how we weave the social dimensions of the event into all the other threads and the role of technology in that.

One of the main venues is a gallery space and this is where we will have many of the installation works, many of which incorporate live elements. The other main venue is a large lecture theatre but with an extremely large sculpture court attached. This spreads across two levels and consists of a large open space with colonnades and cloisters on all four sides as well as colonnaded balconies all round on the next level up. This creates a spectacular space and a great opportunity to do something with. At the moment this will be the social focus of the event but will also be where one of the largest and most ambitious of the commissions will be located, a piece by Judd Morrissey and Mark Jeffrey. This is a live work involving numerous participants and their activities are of a kind that it will often be difficult to distinguish between normal conference related activities in the space and those associated with the work. Hopefully this will facilitate some strange moments. The same participants are also involved in similar activities embedded around the city (in fact, each month for a year in advance of the event there are such activities, which began last year) and, through mobile technologies, elsewhere - so there is a blurring of time and space. When the event arrives in November these activities will start to make some sort of strange sense for those who have encountered them in some manner.

Other artists have previously done similar things, of course. However, this is quite an ambitious project that engages audiences at all sorts of levels, where technology is operating in multiple ways to engage, diffuse, document and enable. Is it old or new technology? Depends on your definition, but I'd suggest it is new technology, in that mobile systems incorporating tempero-spatial and dynamic sensors, integrated with internet connectivity, are relatively new to the mass market.

Other projects, such as that by Annie Abrahams, will operate in time and space in similarly ambitious and complex but very different ways - but perhaps I should let Annie say something about that...

best

Simon


On 25 Feb 2012, at 20:46, Marialaura Ghidini wrote:

> Simon, it would be great to hear more about your project; for example, what are the challenges, or concerns, you are facing in relation to commissioning and displaying "live networked projects" in gallery spaces? And maybe, how do you see this in relation to the above points? Can these technologies that are now often considered 'old', or perhaps they are just mass-media, potentially be used in a different way to generate innovative approaches to distribution, and thus process of production - which seems is what you are doing with the new commissions side of it?


Simon Biggs
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[log in to unmask] Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh
http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ http://www.elmcip.net/ http://www.movingtargets.co.uk/