Image: Pia van Gelder

Van Gelder’s practice balances between two focuses for live performance and interactive installations – analogue audio/video synthesis and the modification or circuit-bending of pre-existing media-machines to facilitate their creation of unexpected and idiosyncratic outputs. She is interested in the idea of the “performing machine”, exploring the strange partnership or collaboration between artist and machine.

Van Gelder’s research is a form of media archaeology – discussing contemporary approaches to ‘composition inside electronics’ and new possibilities of ‘haunted media’ and ‘machine vision’. Van Gelder will be presenting some recent machines she has been working with and some ideas they are conjuring together.

PIA VAN GELDER
CCAS GORMAN HOUSE GALLERIES
TUESDAY 29 NOVEMBER 2011
6-8 PM

Tracey and Dave’s ISEA Odyssey
Wednesday November 9 at 6pm
CCAS Gallery Gorman House Art Centre

dorkbot cbr has been on study leave but worry not, in November its back – with back to back sessions. Both Tracey Meziane Benson and David Broker have been in Istanbul for the Istanbul Biennale and the 2011 ISEA, International Symposium on Electronic Art. First up, they will take you on a virtual tour of Uncontainable, the exhibition of the ISEA exhibition. Uncontainable was an impressive and comprehensive show in many venues across the city that included lots of Australian content. There were squillions of clever ideas and interesting uses of all sorts of technologies – old and new. Tracey, who gave a paper at the conference, will also talk about some of the bigger issues that are current in the zone of emergent media and her residency in Turkey. This is a great opportunity to catch up on the happenin’ things in the world of electronic art and too see what people doing strange things with electricity are actually doing.

Forget The Big Bang and come to dorkbot cbr, it’s the real thing !

Warren Armstrong is a new media artist whose web-based art, sonification and augmented reality works have been exhibited around Australia and New York. His most recent works include the Information Virus (2010), a 3D augmented reality work; and the Twitterphonicon/Twitter Hymn Book (2010) with composer Amanda Cole, an installation that converts Twitter updates into music.

He is also the curator of (Un)seen Sculptures, an exhibition of international 3D augmented reality art that is being staged in Sydney, Canberra & Melbourne throughout 2011.

Image: Warren Armstrong The Information Virus (Notitiaviridae internets) 2010

WARREN ARMSTRONG
CCAS GORMAN HOUSE GALLERIES
TUESDAY 26 JULY 2011
6-8 PM

Chronicles of the New Human Organism Ian Haig 2010

CHRONICLES OF THE NEW HUMAN ORGANISM

dorkbot cbr and ccas bring you a film and talk by
IAN HAIG

Thursday 30 June 6PM Canberra Contemporary Art Space Galleries Gorman House Art Centre Ainslie Avenue Braddon
bring cushions

Ian Haig works at the intersection of visual arts and media arts. His work explores the strangeness of everyday reality and focuses on the themes of the human body, devolution, abjection, transformation and psychopathology, often seen through the lens of low cultural forms.

His work has been exhibited in galleries and video/media festivals around the world. Including exhibitions at: The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne; The Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide; The Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Artec Biennale – Nagoya, Japan; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Art Museum of China, Beijing and The Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles. In addition his animation and video work have screened in over 120 Festivals internationally. In 2003 he received a fellowship from the New Media Arts Board of the Australia Council.

Chronicles of the New Human Organism
Short synopsis: part history, sci-fi / apocalyptic warning, contemporary spirit world, sect, nature documentary, post new age, futuristic vision, pseudo science, cult, mondo, recruitment, crank sci -fi, junk science, discovery channel from another dimension, educational video – exploring the extremes and the outer limits of human belief systems…
“Imagine putting a video camera into the hands of a Death Valley outsider artist convinced that the mother ship is about to land at any minute, and that when it does a new phase of human evolution will begin. Chronicles of the new human organism is such a film.

Taking the form of the nature documentary exploring the strangeness of the world around us as a starting point – Chronicles of the new human organism takes the viewer on a journey through a range of ideas, systems of knowledge and questions relating to the origins of the human species, the significance of the reptilian mind, new forms of human sexuality, parasites, the communication with the dead, and alien evolutionary technology.

The work references and cannibalizes ideas derived from Al Fry, JG Ballard, Rudolf Steiner, Wilhelm Reich, The Heavens Gate cult, Carl Sagan and Oscar Kiss Maerth. Delivered with a portentous, yet strangely soothing voiceover, Chronicles of the new human organism re-interprets the history of visionary thinking about the human species through the po-faced filter of Erich Von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods and the shockumentary style of Mondo Cane.

One of the aims of Chronicles of the new human organism has been to make a work that defies categorization or another way of looking at the categorization of the human itself. It is a perverse and compelling hybrid of educational video, new age recruitment campaign and cult manifesto: the Mondo movie genre with a good dose of pseudo science.
The sound and music for the video was composed by PH2 (Philip Brophy and Philip Samartzis). Like the visuals, it draws on a range of references in its production from Jerry Goldsmith sci-fi scores such as Logan’s Run to pulsating electronic noise from Forbidden Planet and textural location field recordings of some of the weirdest places on the planet”. – Darren Tofts

Kuuki is an art, design, and media production collective directed by
Gavin Sade and Priscilla Bracks.

In Japanese kuuki means air or atmosphere and is used colloquially in
phrases such as kuuki o yomu which literally means read the air, but
can be interpreted as understanding without explicit information or
unspoken moods or feelings.

Kuuki is also used to refer to “the things we take for granted, but
can’t live with out”, and for us this is one of it’s most important
meanings, because we believe that some of those things taken for
granted, are art and creativity…

Priscilla Bracks

Priscilla is a visual artist practising in photography, illustration,
installation, and new- media art. Her practice explores the world she
inhabits – from the interior landscape of the mind, to human
relationships, to the natural environment. She is interested our
experience of chaos and change as a force that shapes objects,
histories, cultures and personal identities. Her work also meditates
upon the notion that we bring the future to life through our
imaginations.

Before completing a first class honours degree in Photography at the
Queensland College of Art in 2002, Priscilla Bracks studied and
practiced law in Australia. This education was pivotal in the
development of her interest in relationships between human nature,
social justice, culture, media and contemporary issues.

She is represented by MARS Gallery in Melbourne Australia, and Edwina
Corlette Gallery in Brisbane, Australia, where she also lives and
works.

Gavin Sade

Gavin is a designer in the field of interactive computational media,
with a background in music and sonology. Gavin is currently a director
of Kuuki creative media, art and design, teaches part time at the
Queensland University of Technology and is working towards a PhD in
the field of interactive media design. Gavin has exhibited
interactive media works nationally and internationally.

Since 1997 Gavin has written, coordinated and run both undergraduate
and postgraduate classes on media technology, interaction design,
physical computing, virtual reality, contemporary issues in design and
technology, game design, and web development within the faculty of
Creative Industries at the Queensland University of Technology.

Other collaborators
Glen Wetherall – Programming
Matt Petoe – Electronic engineering

www.kuuki.com.au

Save the date: Tuesday 31 May
Time: 6 -7pm
Location: Canberra Contemporary Art Space,
Gorman House Arts Centre
Street: Ainslie Ave. Braddon

Hope to see you there!

Alex and Tracey

We hope you can join us in Dork for the first chat for 2011.

Stephen Barrass and Alexandra Gillespie will present a slideshow of
the opening of David Walsh’s
Museum of Old and New Art (mona.net.au) in Hobart in January this year.
MONA is notable as the first private museum of contemporary art in
Australia. Unfettered by sponsors, politics or curatorial constraints, Walsh
exhibits Dr. Nitche’s Euthanasia Machine (presented as My Beautiful Chair in
collaboration with Greg Taylor) that is too controversial for any other
museum in Australia to show, while just down the hall is Chris Ofili’s The
Holy Virgin Mary with elephant dung that was part of an exhibition cancelled
by the National Gallery of Australia…and also Stephen’s
collaborative work ZiZi the Affectionate Couch.

If there is time Stephen will also talk about work in progress for the
Embracing Innovation exhibition at Crafts ACT this month. Given even more
time he will also talk about a workshop on physical computing at the
University of Canberra this month.

Save the date: Tuesday 29th March
Time: 6 -7pm
Location: CCAS GALLERY, Gorman House Arts Centre
Street: Ainslie Ave. Braddon

Hope to see you there!

Alex

Times Up - Moving Information Machine

Tim Boykett and Pippa Buchanan will join us for a chat to finish off a great year in dork!

Save the date: Thursday 16th December
Time: 5 – 7pm
Location: CCAS GALLERY, Gorman House Arts Centre
Street: Ainslie Ave. Braddon

And you are also invited to CCAS earlier at 3pm to meet Vicki Sowry, Program Manager for the Australian Network for Art and Technology, ANAT. Vicki is visiting Canberra and she would love to meet you and answer any questions you have about ANAT’s Synapse residency program and your project.

For the past two decades, Vicki has established and delivered professional programs for artists and filmmakers in partnership with industry. She has worked at Metro Screen, the Australian Film Commission, ABC Television and the Media Resource Centre. In 2007 she joined ANAT to manage the Art Science program and, in early 2010, was appointed Program Manager for the full suite of ANAT programs. for more info on ANAT please visit http://www.anat.org.au

Where: Canberra Contemporary Artspace, Gormon House
When: Thursday 16 December 3pm – 4.30pm

Please RSVP for catering purposes david@ccas.com.au

And back to Tim and Pippa…

Tim Boykett, was born and grew up in Australia, has been living in Austria since 1991. Operating between the areas of mathematics and media art, performance and interaction: the boundaries have been and remain fluid.

Pippa Buchanan, runs the P2PU / MOzilla WebCraft project and will talk about this project http://www.drumbeat.org/webcraft

As a continuing founding member of Time’s Up, Tim has been involved in conceptualising, planning, building and presenting extended interactive mediated physical environments for the past ten years. There have been four main phases of work: the Hyperfitness Studio series, the BodySPIN series the Sensory Circus and the current series of Physical Narratives. Interwoven in these developments and installations have been a series of smaller experiments, workshops, performances and other events, including a series of “Closing the Loop” workshops. Essential to this work has been an ongoing theoretical development that rests upon a protoscientific world view (both for the development and for the participant) with an understanding of the axes of Control, Perception and Biomechanics. Parallel to this, Tim has been active as a researcher in algebra, combinatorics and computer science with several publications in international journals. His work here has included the analysis of computational models for physical processes, modelling of processes and the generation of combinatorial designs.

The cross-fertilization from the theories of mathematical and computational spaces and environments to the creation of experimental situations, leads to a abundance of possibilities. The problems of implementation and realisation are significant; one of the strengths of the Time’s Up work has been the continuing concentration upon reliable and solid physical structures for their spaces. Current developments include the development of character based physical narratives as well as investigating the parallels between mathematical and aesthetic research

Selected recent publications include:

“Notation und visuelle Musik” with Andrei Smirnov, in “Klangmaschinen zwischen Experimenten und Medientechnik” editor Daniel Gethmann and Elisabeth Shimana, September 2010.
“Aesthetic and Mathematical Research” in Bridges 2010 Proceedings, Tesselations Publishing, 2010.

“Designing performativity for mixed reality installations” with Andrew Morrison, Alex Davies, Geska Brečević, Idunn Sem & Robert Brečević, FORMakademisk, volume 3 number 1, July 2010.

“All difference families are derived from groups” in Algebra and Discrete Mathematics, Nr 2009-1, 2009.

“Conservation laws in rectangular CA” with Jarkko Kari and Siamak Taati, Journal of Cellular Automata, 2007.

“An Orderly algorithm to determine the UPP2 graphs of small order” Acta Math. Sinica 23(2), pp 249-264, 2007.

“Playing the Game: Notes on Games, Play and Gameplay in Interactive Installations” in proceedings of the Game-Art-Interface session, CGIE Conference, Perth, Australia 2006.

“Extensive multiscale interactive situations” in Proceedings of the International Digital Games Conference 2006, Portalegre.

“The Care and Feeding of Transient Realities” in TRG: On Transient Realties and their Generators, Edition TOX, Maribor, 2006.

“Sensory Circus: Yes, you will go to the Moon” in “Timeshift” edited by C Schöpf and G Stocker, Hatje Kantz Publishers, September 2004.

“Efficient exhaustive enumeration of reversible one dimensional cellular automata,” Theoretical Computer Science, Vol 325/2 pp 215-247, 2004.

“Space from Nonspace: Emergent spatiality in dynamic graphs,” Proceedings of Bridges 2005, edited by R Sarhangi.
“The development of SPIN or On the seeming impossibility to realise virtuality in the midst of virtual realities” in “Art&D,” V2 publishers, 2005.

Save the date: Tuesday 30 November
Time: 6 – 7pm
Location: CCAS GALLERY, Gorman House Arts Centre
Street: Ainslie Ave. Braddon

DAVID WORRALL is a freelance experimental composer and designer working in sound sculpture, sound design, software and immersive polymedia, as well as acoustic instrumental composition. He has won various awards and held composition and research fellowship positions in Australia, UK, Europe and the USA.

The Alien Garden immersive polymedia installation Floriade, Canberra. 2003.09-2003.10.

David joined the Faculty of Music at Melbourne University in 1979 where he taught twentieth-century music composition techniques and orchestration as well as undertaking research in computer music. In 1981 he designed and taught the first first undergraduate course in computer music in Australia.

In 1986 he was appointed Director of the Electronic Music Studios at the Canberra School of Music. He established and became the Foundation Head of the Australian Centre for the Arts and Technology at the Australian National University in 1989, a position he held for over a decade. During that time ACAT offered the first Australian postgraduate degrees in Electronic Arts.

David has held artist-in-residence and visiting fellowship positions in universities in Australia, UK, France, Spain and the USA. He was a founding member of the Music Council of Australia (MCA) and the Electronic Music Foundation and has served on a number of organisational boards, including the Australia Council’s Music and Innovative Projects (later Mixed Media) Boards, the Australian Music Centre and as president of the Australasian Computer Music Association. In 2009, the MCA awarded him honorary life membership “in recognition of his exceptional contribution to its activities.”

Worrall’s PhD was concerned with the development of a software framework for the sonification of information in large or high-frequency multivariate datasets. His creative practice encompasses a number of endeavours: instrumental and electroacoustic composition, sound poetry, sound and multimedia/polymedia installations including the design and construction of portable event theatres (PETs) and the development of software for frameworks for music composition, text transformation and the sonification of multivariate datasets.

Dr Keith Armstrong will join us from Brisbane via Skype for a dorkie
chat this month.

Save the date: Tuesday 26 October
Time: 6 – 7pm
Location: CCAS GALLERY, Gorman House Arts Centre
Street: Ainslie Ave. Braddon

KEITH ARMSTRONG has specialised for 18 years in collaborative, hybrid,
new media works with an emphasis on innovative performance forms,
site-specific electronic arts, networked interactive installations,
alternative interfaces, public arts practices and art-science
collaborations. His ongoing research focuses on how scientific and
philosophical ecologies can both influence and direct the design and
conception of networked, interactive media artworks. Keith’s artworks
have been shown and profiled extensively both in Australia and
overseas and he has been the recipient of numerous grants from the
public and private sectors. He was formerly an Australia Council New
Media Arts Fellow, a doctoral and Postdoctoral New Media Fellow at
QUT’s Creative Industries Faculty and a lead researcher at the ACID
Australasian Cooperative Research Centre for Interaction Design. He is
currently a part-time Senior Research Fellow (2 days pw.) at QUT and
an actively practicing freelance new media artist.

Keith’s web site is http://www.embodiedmedia.com/