Jonah Brucker-Cohen October 2009 Dorkbot meeting

New York based media artist Jonah Brucker-Cohen

will join us on Skype for a video chat about his work

6:00:00 p.m. Tuesday October 27, 2009

Canberra Contemporary Art Space

Screenshot of Jonah talking to us at Dorkbot Canberra.

Jonah Brucker-Cohen

Jonah Brucker-Cohen is a researcher, artist, and Ph.D. candidate in the Disruptive Design Team of the Networking and Telecommunications Research Group (NTRG), Trinity College Dublin. He is an adjunct assistant professor of communications at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). He worked as an R&D OpenLab Fellow at Eyebeam in NYC from 2006/7. From 2001-4 he was a Research Fellow in the Human Connectedness Group at Media Lab Europe. He received his Masters from ITP in 1999 and was an Interval Research Fellow from 1999-2001. His work and thesis focuses on the theme of “Deconstructing Networks” which includes projects that attempt to critically challenge and subvert accepted perceptions of network interaction and experience. He is co-founder of the Dublin Art and Technology Association (DATA Group) and a recipient of the ARANEUM Prize sponsored by the Spanish Ministry of Art, Science and Technology and Fundacion ARCO. His writing has appeared in numerous international publications including WIRED Magazine, Make Magazine, Neural, Rhizome.org, Art Asia Pacific, Gizmodo and more, and his work has been shown at events such as DEAF (03,04), Art Futura (04), SIGGRAPH (00,05), UBICOMP (02,03,04), CHI (04,06) Transmediale (02,04,08), NIME (07), ISEA (02,04,06,09), Institute of Contemporary Art in London (04), Whitney Museum of American Art’s ArtPort (03), Ars Electronica (02,04,08), Chelsea Art Museum, ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art (04-5),Museum of Modern Art (MOMA – NYC)(2008), and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) (2008).

Projects and Work: http://www.coin-operated.com/projects

Talk Title: “Deconstructing Networks”

Jonah will discuss his projects and work in the theme of “Deconstructing Networks”  in both physical and screen-based instantiations. He will introduce his projects that attempt to challenge and subvert accepted notions of network interaction and experience from software manipulation and rule-based systems to translating virtual processes and conventions into the physical world. Some projects he will discuss include “BumpList”, an email community for the determined, “Alerting Infrastructure!”,  a website hit counter that destroys a building, “PoliceState” a fleet of radio controlled police cars who’s movements are dictated by keywords sniffed on a local network, “Wifi-Hog” a portable system for regaining control of public wireless networks, “Wifi-Liberator” an open source toolkit to broadcast free access to pay-per-use wireless networks, “Thwonk” an online tool and social network for creating user-defined social systems,  ”SimpleTEXT” a dynamically generated performance that is controlled by participants through texting messages from their cell phones, and several more projects.

September Dorkbot CBR meeting – Torben Sko

We are very happy to announce that Torben Sko will be presenting his interesting work on portraiture at our next meeting – Tuesday 29 September 6pm at CCAS in the main gallery space.

Torben was a finalist in the 2009 Youth Self Portrait competition and his work is currently on display as part of the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery until September 13.

Torben Sko self portrait

Biography
Driven by both his artistic and technical interests, Torben Sko is currently conducting a PhD into alternative forms of interaction for computer games. His work to date has focused on the use of facial movements as a way to both control and alter the gaming experience, in an effort to increase player enjoyment. Through his work, he has collaborated with several industries partners, including game developers and computer vision specialists.

Prior to conducting his post-graduate work, Torben completed a Bachelor of Software Engineering at the ANU’s School of Computer Science. During this degree, Torben studied computer animation in the Arts faculty. In his final year, Torben combined the two disciplines to create a virtual simulation of the campus. Since then, he’s gone on to publish several papers, which he has presented around the world and has even has some of his PhD work exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery.

Artist Statement
“Combining art and technology this work challenges the nature of portraiture and the way we view it. Embracing the theme of replication, the piece uses a computer game engine to present a vivid virtual version of the National Portrait Gallery inhabited by a three-dimensional incarnation of the artist. Developed specifically for this work, the system uses binary as brushstrokes, which not only
enables rich, realistic visuals but also enables it to break free from traditional art by incorporating movement and even behaviour into the piece. Using facial tracking the portrait takes on the physical behaviour of the viewer, encouraging them to explore, interact and inhabit the work. In doing so, this work invites the viewer to not only look at the artist, but at themselves too.”

Look forward to seeing you there!

July 2009 meeting – Mitchell Whitelaw

Announcing our July meeting in association with Canberra Contemporary Art Space (CCAS), Dorkbot CBR presents Mitchell Whitelaw.

Date: Tuesday, 28 July 2009
Time: 6:00 pm – 7:30pm
Location: The Fireplace Room, Gorman House Arts Centre
Street: Ainslie Ave. Braddon

This month we would like to welcome long standing Canberra dorkbot affiliate Mitchell Whitelaw to talk about a recent project he has been working on with the National Archives of Australia under their Ian Maclean Award.

The Visible Archive is a research project in the visualisation of archival datasets, supported by the National Archives of Australia under their Ian Maclean Award (2008). It explores the potential of interactive visualisation to navigate, interpret and analyse large cultural and historical datasets. In this talk Mitchell will present interactive sketches from the project, visualising the Archives entire collection – made up of some 65,000 Series – and navigating a single Series, A1, containing thousands of pages of digitised records.

http://visiblearchive.blogspot.com

Mitchell Whitelaw is an artist, researcher and writer with interests in data aesthetics and generative systems in art and design. He leads the Master of Digital Design program in the Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Canberra.

Dorkbot CBR June 2009 meeting

Announcing our June meeting in association with Canberra Contemporary Art Space (CCAS), Dorkbot CBR presents Fiona Hooton.

Date: Tuesday, 30 June 2009
Time: 6:00 pm – 7:30pm
Location: The Fireplace Room, Gorman House Arts Centre
Street: Ainslie Ave. Braddon

Fiona’s career has involved employment as an artist, educator and administrator in both state and national collecting institutions. Over this period of time she has acquired an ongoing interest in Australia’s still and moving image heritage. Currently manager of Picture Australia www.pictureaustralia.org
Fiona will talk to us about how artists can utilise/interface with the Picture Australia Collection.

Dorkbot CBR May/June Meeting

Dear CBR- Dorks,

As we had a meeting earlier this month presenting Tim Plaisted and his work we will skip this months meeting and reconvene on Tuesday June 30. At this meeting Fiona Hooton is scheduled from the National Library’s Picture Australia project. Fiona will talk to us about how artists can utilise/interface with the Picture Australia Collection.

More details to follow in June.

Best Regards,

Alex

Dorkbot Canberra April/May Meeting

Dear CBR Dorks and friends,

We have held over April’s Dorkbot meeting to host an artist talk by Tim Plaisted on Thurs 7th May in the CCAS gallery.

Tim Plaisted is an artist living in Brisbane working with media art. Plaisted’s work has been exhibited in Australia, Mexico, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, UK, USA and reviewed in Artforum. His current work, Careful Messenger (2008) continues an exploration of realtime 3d and game tools in media art from recent works, River’s End (2007) and Handheld (2006). His earlier work, Surface Browser (2004), was commissioned for the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts UK gallery launch and included in “2004: Australian Culture Now” national survey of contemporary art. Surface Browser as well as networkdposition (1999) and 24Hr Coverage (2000) were included in three MAAP (Multimedia Arts Asia Pacific) Festivals in Australia and Singapore.

Tim is in town to install and open his recent work Careful Messenger in the Cube space at CCAS the show opens on Friday May 8 at 6pm.

“Careful Messenger was inspired by my grandfather Stirling Blacket’s time as a dispatch rider in Gallipoli, relaying and confirming messages from command on his horse. In the two-channel work a horse gallops in the left
panel while in the right panel the horse pants exhausted with closed eyes, turning its head towards the viewer. Here Blacket’s horse appears as a modern day messenger, a search engine working overtime for research. In formally combining these two resonating images, the work suggests that the labour and commitments of research and information delivery, is just as critical to us today as Blacket’s missions and should be approached with the same caution and vigilance. “

Tim’s website is http://www.boxc.net/

Date: Thursday, 7th May 2009
Time: 6:00pm – 7:00pm
Location: Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Gorman House Arts Centre
Street: Ainslie Ave. Braddon

Hope to see you there!

Alex

Dorkbot CBR February Meeting

This month at Dorkbot Canberra we welcome Tim Brook.

From Tim’s web site:

Most of the photographs that I use display a basic technical competence, but not all of them. Photographers often ask me why I show photographs that are overexposed or badly composed. The answer, of course, is that I am not showing photographs, I am showing transitions between photographs. It is the relationship between the images that interests me. As individual photographs they may or may not be well composed. I remain fascinated by the subtlety and complexity of spatial relationships when they are juxtaposed in time. A slide-tape piece invites a viewer to make new connections. (http://hingstonbrook.com/01av/tb0101.htm)

Biography

Tim is an independent audio-visual artist—among other things, he makes slide-tape works. He blends colour slides on a screen one after the other to produce a sequence of slowly changing images. He describes each slide-tape work as ‘an invitation to make connections’. He’s been making them since 1980, working with composers, performers, theatrical directors and with other visual artists. Once he worked with a reggae band and once with a Nigerian Rastafarian and four drummers. Now he works mainly with recorded sound and commissioned music.

As a photographer, Tim was originally known for documenting the work of visual and performing artists. Since 1994, most of his work has been a close study of surfaces—their textures, patterns and colours. His corrugated iron series is one result of this study. More recently he has been photographing reflections.

Tim has undertaken researched into online and onscreen communication. He has identified features of new form of language for education online, a language growing out of spoken and written language but going beyond them. Some of these developments involved word usage but many more involved the use of non-verbal elements to make meaning, for example the systematic layering of information in metaphoric learning environments.

Currently, Tim is a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University School of Art and a member of the board of PhotoAccess.

Tuesday Feb 24 at 6.00pm in the Fireplace Room, Gorman House.

Be there and be square!

Tracey

Dorkbot CBR Wed Jan 28 meeting cancelled

Dear Dorkbot CBR People,

We have been unable to secure a speaker for this month ( wed 28th January) so we will have to cancel this months meeting. Sorry about this but hope to see  you at the Feb meeting -speaker almost confirmed. ( =

Best Regards,

Alex and Tracey

Call for Talks/Workshops Dorkbot CBR 2009

Dear CBR dorks,

Happy New Year! I hope that 2009 is treating you well.

Are any of you keen to give a talk or presentation this year to your fellow CBR dorks
on an interesting bit of technology/software/materials or project past or present?

Or can you suggest someone who we should approach to do a talk/ workshop?

If so please drop me a line and suggest a date that would suit you from the options below.

We will be meeting in the Fireplace Room at Gorman House in collaboration with Canberra Contemporary Art Space  for Dorkbot this year all times are 6-8pm; have moved the slot to 6pm so that people coming straight  from work can make it.

Jan 28 (wed)
Feb 24 (tues)
Mar 31 (tues)
April 28 (tues)
May 26 (tues)
June 30 (tues)
July 28 (tues)
Aug 25 (tues)
Sept 29 (tues)
Oct 27 (tues)
Nov 24 (tues)
Dec 15 (tues)

You can contact me on ad.gillespie at gmail.com and alex at alexandragillespie.net

Best,

Alex
–
http://www.alexandragillespie.net
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexandragillespie/
http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotcbr/

Dorkbot Canberra November Meeting

For this months Dorkbot we are heading to Ice Lab!

Icelab is a small commercial design studio specialising in interactive onscreen work, mainly websites and interactive pieces for museums, public and private-sector organisations. Icelab [and Dorkbot] members Michael Honey, Nathan McGinness and Max Wheeler will show some recent projects, and talk about working in the commercial design world and how it both connects and distances one from the dorkbot milieu.

Location:

3/1 Gordon St
The Metropolitan
Canberra City, ACT 2601
61620241

http://icelab.com.au

Date:

Tuesday 25th November
5:30 pm

Hope to cyu there!

Alex