ISEA2013 Art Event Overview

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research would it?  _Albert Einstein

Presented by ISEA2013, the Australian Network for Art & Technology and the Powerhouse Museum. Synapse is an initiative of the Australian Network for Art & Technology (ANAT) and the Australia Council for the Arts that supports collaborations between artists and scientists.

Artists and scientists approach creativity, exploration and research in different ways and from different perspectives; when working together they open up new ways of seeing, experiencing and interpreting the world around us. For the past decade the Synapse initiative has provided over 30 Australian artists with the opportunity to pursue speculative creative research projects with scientists and medical researchers in Australia and beyond. This exhibition provides a snapshot of the diverse and fascinating research that participating artists and scientists have pursued over the past five years.

semipermeable (+) looks at the membrane as a site, metaphor and platform for a series of artistic interventions and projects, some commissioned specifically for the show and others selected from the many projects developed at SymbioticA since 2000.
SymbioticA brings together 14 artists from different disciplines to present, culturally articulate and re-visit, metaphorically and actually, the notion of the membrane – from Protocells, infection and DNA through skins and garments to borders and state control. Artists: Guy Ben-Ary and Kirsten Hudson, Andre Brodyk, Oron Catts, Ionat Zurr and Corrie van Sice, Tagny Duff, Benjamin Forster, Sam Fox, Donna Franklin, Verena Friedrich, Nigel Helyer, Cat Hope, Svenja Kratz
From the earliest to the newest forms of life to be created, the membrane has acted as the definition of self; maintaining integrity, protection and acting as the interface to the world. The membrane is active, selective and fragile. However, the selective membrane can also be a human construct, as humans have evolved a high dependency on edge detection. The strongest visual (and auditory) cues deal with where one thing ends and another begins. This is also how humans tend to arrange – from perception of individual self to societies and nations. SymbioticA brings together 15 artists from different disciplines to present, culturally articulate and re-visit, metaphorically and actually, the notion of the membrane. The artists investigate protocells, infection and DNA through to skins and garments to borders and state control.

Presented by ISEA2013, SymbioticA and the Powerhouse Museum. symbiotica.uwa.edu.au
powerhousemuseum.com/exhibitions/isea2013

SymbioticA, the Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts  at the School of Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology, University of Western Australia, is an artistic laboratory dedicated to research, learning, critique and hands-on engagement with the life sciences. It is the first research laboratory of its kind, enabling artists and researchers to engage in wet biology practices in a biological science department. It also hosts residents, workshops, exhibitions and symposia.

This suite of projects focuses upon experimental use of mechanisation (in particular robotics) in both representational construction and in furthering the impulse for deconstruction, even destruction. Collectively the projects present both live processes and outcomes associated with robotics within contemporary practice, ranging across the construction and presentation of images and painted forms through to the erasure of architectural form and alteration of material structures.

An exhibition of old and new media. Campbelltown Arts Centre has brought together 5 creative innovators from the analogue and early digital eras to mentor, collaborate and exchange ideas with 5 ‘new generation’ artists from various disciplines – art, sound and performance – who have chosen these technologies as the most appropriate channel of enquiry for their current work, or have a practice reliant on engagement. The focus is on conversation, participation and interaction as a means of informing us, the audience, how we communicate, or respond to art. Presented by Campbelltown Arts Centre and ISEA2013.

Firstdraft, in association with ISEA2013, present this new edition of Firstdraft’s NIGHT DEPOT series. This work will focus on the notion of ‘advanced technology’ – after Sydney writer / thinker Nick Keys – and feature artists who build sound-making devices from readily available items in order to ‘advance’ their own artistic and musical goals – in a sense also ‘advancing’ towards a form of technological equilibrium.

Brisbane collective Golden Solution, in residency at The Depot in the lead-up to this event, will present new work developed on-site. Performing alongside alongside Golden Solution, each with their own unique sound making apparatus, will be some of Australia’s most exciting practitioners in this area: Benjamin Kolaitis, Peter Blamey, Alex Cuffe and Pia van Gelder.(Kolaitis, van Gelder and Michael Candy (of Golden Solution) are also participating in Campbelltown Arts Centre’s Catching Light project for ISEA2013.)

We now collect huge amounts of data – about energy and water usage, about waste and about the various programs we have like green roofs and car sharing. It’s vital information, and we duly publish it on our website and in regular reports. But frankly, it’s hard to get people interested or excited by it. So this is where artists come in.

For the City Data Slam we asked twelve artists to bring the figures to life in ways that illuminate and celebrate our collective efforts to deal with environmental challenges.  The City Data Slam at ISEA 2013 has been one giant jam session, with the brief to turn boring data into beautiful art.

It’s about finding ways to engage people, to make them care, to show how all those tiny, almost invisible actions can actually amount to significant changes in our world. Artists can play a key role here, opening our minds to new possibilities, as recognised in our recently released Creative City discussion paper.

The City of Sydney was delighted to have joined with ISEA 2013, with Carbon Arts and Object Gallery to launch Sensing Sydney, a project to communicate sustainability through the arts, open data and public space.

I’d like to thank all of the participants in the City Data Slam and indeed, in this international symposium of electronic arts. Artists really do make a difference.

– Jenny Green, Independent Team Councillor with the City of Sydney

Presented by the National Institute for Experimental Arts (NIEA) and ISEA2013, Running the City is an experimental, interactive exhibition in which artists deploy a range of electronic media and tactics to both map and move throughout the city. Connecting with the ISEA2013 theme – Resistance is Futile – Running the City plays on the relationship of virtual to real space, exploring how boundaries and points of resistance are circumvented. Running the City explores through new media art, our movement through the urban environment and the reconfiguring of its operations in ways that are variously liberating and disturbing. The exhibition features Australian and international artists, and combines laboratories and workshops with new and existing video and interactive projects that address the psycho-physical dynamics of our inhabitation and utilisation of city spaces. Running the City is part of the Curating Cities research project at the National Institute for Experimental Arts (NIEA), supported by an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Grant in partnership with the City of Sydney and Object: Australian Design Centre.

Sydney, Australia: The 5th International Biennial of Media Art, Experimenta Speak to Me at ISEA2013. This exhibition is where technology and creativity collide at the cutting edge of experimental and emerging art. This year’s program at ISEA2013 presents work by 19 artists and collectives from across Australia and around the world, including four commissioned artworks by leading Australian artists. Working across diverse disciplines including robotics, animation and digital video, each of these artists will present a new work of significant ambition and scale to provide a dynamic showcase for artistic excellence and innovation. This year Experimenta will for the first time present its central exhibition at ISEA2013, in partnership with the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. The 19th International Symposium on Electronic Art, presented by ANAT and supported by Destination NSW to align with Vivid Sydney, will showcase the best media artworks and future-focused ideas from Australia and around the world, in June 2013 at venues across greater Sydney. Digital art has moved from the margins to become part of the fabric of everyday life. At once ubiquitous and unnoticed resistance to electronic art has proven futile — it now lies embedded in the heart of our contemporary cultures. The symposium events will infuse the city’s social, digital and physical infrastructure. Experimenta Speak to Me is also presenting work by a number of high profile international artists. International artists featuring work include Natalie Bookchin (USA), Shih Chieh Huang (Taiwan/United States), and Scenocosme (France). The exhibition will also showcase works by a diverse group of Australian artists, including Archie Moore, Charlie Sofo, Priscilla Bracks and Gavin Sade, SODA _JERK, and Yandell Walton and others.
For Experimenta Speak to Me, Experimenta is also presenting four newly commissioned artworks by Australian artists: Christopher Fulham, Jess MacNeil, Wade Marynowsky and Katie Turnbull.

The Portals is presented by ISEA2013 in partnership with Darwin Community Arts. The Portals is a curated program of five telematic artworks linking the two cities of Darwin and Sydney. The project connects these two communities in realtime through networked and interactive artworks which require the physics of high speed broadband. Darwin and Sydney are the two key sites, as Darwin is a regional centre which is part of the first stage roll-out of the national high speed broadband, while Sydney is the host city for ISEA2013, an event designed to showcase the work of Australian and international media artists. The ISEA2013 theme ‘Resistance is Futile’ is addressed in this program both directly through concepts around surveillance, social media and tracking embedded in many of the artworks, and indirectly through the public broadcasting of the work and the ubiquitous nature of the technology used to co-create the interactive pieces on screen. The media art work in The Portals includes live art, visual art, sound art, e-literature, interactive performance, augmented and virtual reality, social media art and community engagement. The Portals as a curated program ultimately showcases the cultural possibilities that can emerge when some of the most renowned media artists in Australia create works linked in realtime to two distant geographical sites via high speed broadband. These developments not only herald future opportunities for creative practitioners using high speed networks as they are rolled out across Australia, but also help insert culture and diversity into the heart of the debate on what this new infrastructure can deliver. There are five works in The Portals program. Each work addresses slightly different art practices and genres, and engages with the different capacities of a dual site, networked space. Some of these works will run continuously on screen and on-line, while others will be one-off performance events in Darwin and Sydney.

This project is presented by ISEA2013 and the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) as part of the 19th International Symposium on Electronic Art, Sydney.

The Portals Project Team

1. Ricardo Peach – The Portals Creative Producer
2. Kathryn Gray – The Portals Northern Territory Producer
3. Britt Guy – The Portals Northern Territory Producer
4. Bong Ramilo – Executive Officer, Darwin Community Arts
5. Chris Rodley – Communications
6. Glenn Harding – Managing Director at Urban Screen Productions and Technician/Manager Chatswood Urban Screen
7. Emma Shearman – Operations Director at Urban Screen Productions Technician/Manager Chatswood Urban Screen

Producing & Presenting Partner
Darwin Community Arts seeks to promote grassroots arts development in the Darwin region. DCA started as Brown’s Mart Community Arts in the 1970s, and has focused on neighbourhood-based work since 2007. DCA also promotes new technologies in community arts, including interactive media and digital arts.

Sponsors

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body, as part of the Broadband Arts Initiative. This project is supported by Arts NT and the Australian Government’s Regional Arts Fund. This project is also supported by Willoughby City Council and the managers of the Chatswood Urban Screen, Urban Screen Productions.

DisSentience speculates on a future where digital technology has pervaded all aspects of daily life, infiltrating even the most mundane and intimate of domestic rituals. The home as we know it, as a refuge for the self and family, is peeled apart to reveal our complacent acceptance of the invasion of technology into our everyday domestic routines and interactions. Every action we make is surveilled by the prying eyes of networked digital technologies, embedded in domestic products, furniture and architecture. The lines between public and private, convenience and infantilisation become ever more blurred, as digital sentience and solicitude take over human agency, outthinking, outwitting and outperforming us.

Within the sonic world there is no separation; sound enters our bodies as vibration, immersive and continuous. Sound is the one fundamental phenomenon that we are immersed in – every living, moving thing is producing sound continually – it flows between distinct elements and binds them together. We experience it both actively, by listening, and also subliminally – and from it we draw conclusions about our world. EchoSonics investigates the close relationship between sound and natural, biological and environmental phenomena through the work of four artists practising within the field of sound art, and combining cultural and environmental issues in their audio-installations. Many of the works suggest the subtle ways in which sounds address us. Presented by ISEA2013 and the University of Technology Sydney.

ISEA2013 is profiling this year’s Anne Landa Award. Whilst the Anne Landa’s support for video and new media arts is close to ISEA’s own mission, this year’s exploration of the undeniable force of performance in contemporary art also resonates with ISEA2013’s theme ‘Resistance is Futile’. The biennial Anne Landa Award was established in 2004 to honour a former Art Gallery of NSW trustee and enthusiastic supporter of the arts. This year’s exhibition (the fifth) explores performance as a force in contemporary art through the nexus of new technologies.

Test physical and psychological boundaries through challenging feats, exercises in endurance, repetition and risk-taking.

“The 19th [International Symposium on Electronic Art] was recently held in Australia. As part of this large festival, six different artists gathered in front of a live studio audience at the ABC, and we recorded the event. I’ll play four of the acts this week and the remaining two next week. Artists and a description of their work follow in the order that you’ll hear them in this program.” abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/soundquality/sqy-28-06/4720872

• ABC Radio National shares Australia’s best conversations across a diverse range of topics, including arts and culture, business and current affairs, health, science and technology, Indigenous culture and issues, and religion and ethics.

Urban Screen Productions and Streaming Museum are pleased to present three exhibitions at ISEA2013 Sydney, curated for public space: Nordic Outbreak, Artistic License in Silicon Valley and Arrival – Departure. This project has been assisted by Willoughby City Council. This project is presented by ISEA2013 and the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) as part of the 19th International Symposium on Electronic Art, Sydney.

Streaming Museum launched an international tour of Artistic License in Silicon Valley at the ZERO1 Biennial Urban Screen, San Jose, California, in September 2012. The exhibition presents perceptions of global digital culture by seven internationally known contemporary artists: Michael Najjar, Sophie Kahn, Maurice Benayoun, Scott Draves, Multi-touch Barcelona, Ursula Endlicher, and Mark Amerika.

Streaming Museum produces and presents contemporary-themed exhibitions of international multi-media arts and related programs to a global audience via mobile devices, a network of big screens worldwide, and at cultural and public centres. The museum was founded in New York City by Nina Colosi. Since its launch on 7 continents on January 29, 2008 exhibitions have been viewed on screens in over 55 locations worldwide.
streamingmuseum.org

Urban Screen Productions curate and produce content and events for public screens and manage the Concourse Urban Screen in Chatswood, Sydney. urbanscreens.tv

ISEA2013 and Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority present Electronic Art at the Rocks Pop-up, a special feature in the ongoing pop-up program at The Rocks. ISEA2013 has selected seven outstanding interactive media works from across the globe to occupy five pop-up spaces that bring the latest in contemporary art into the heart of this historic area of Sydney.

The Rocks Pop-up is a Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority initiative which activates temporarily vacant buildings by providing creative workers with access to affordable space to produce and showcase original work, and host unique events. The Rocks Pop-up is proud to connect Sydney’s broader arts and creative community with the living heritage that is The Rocks.

• Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority (SHFA) is a statutory authority that owns and manages some of the Government of New South Wales most significant Sydney harbour foreshore assets, including Sydney’s heritage and cultural precincts at The Rocks and Darling Harbour. The Foreshore Authority is also place manager for a number of culturally significant sites in Sydney, including Rozelle Rail Yards, White Bay Power Station and Ballast Point Park.

Sydney will once again be transformed into a spectacular canvas of light, music and ideas when Vivid Sydney takes over the city after dark from 24th May – 10th June 2013. Vivid Sydney will colour the city with creativity and inspiration, featuring the breathtaking immersive lighting of the iconic Sydney Opera House sails, performances from local and international musicians at Live LIVE, and a free large scale multimedia outdoor exhibition of interactive light sculptures and building projections around the harbour precinct. vividsydney.com

• New South Wales (abbreviated as NSW) is a state on the east coast of Australia. New South Wales’ state capital is Sydney, which is also Australia’s most populous city.
• Destination NSW is the lead government agency for the New South Wales tourism and major events sectors.

Electric Nights transforms Parramatta’s River Foreshore with interactive artworks, performances and food. Experience the River at night as the foreshore lights up, bringing together some of the world’s most engaging and thought-provoking artists. Over two evenings, audiences will be captured by striking physical and visual performance and an electronic spectacle. A cross-cultural dining experience through food, film and dance brings the bustling streets of Java to Parramatta. Audiences can interact with a mass of led lit balloons, participate in a kinetic sculpture on bikes to generate energy and watch stilt performers with roaming projection. Don’t miss this opportunity to experience electronic art after sunset on the Parramatta River. ISEA2013 celebrates Parramatta’s commitment to artistic innovation and culture.

• Parramatta City Council. Parramatta, the city at the heart of Sydney. Western Sydney’s capital has undergone 10 years of rapid growth, and has emerged as a dynamic contemporary city with a busy business and social scene that reflects the cultural diversity of Greater Sydney. Parramatta celebrates the traditions and festivals of the diverse, multicultural community that call this city home.