DACS.Open.
A programme to look for ways the Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS) can help artists in the digital age.
Meet our Post-digital Workshop Artists
Simon Faithfull is a contemporary artist whose work has been exhibited extensively around the world. His work has been described as an attempt to understand and explore the planet as a sculptural object - to test its limits and report back from its extremities, to connect and collapse space and to understand how the far and mysterious relate to the everyday and mundane.
Recent projects include a video-work recording the journey of a domestic chair as it is carried to the edge of space (commissioned by Arts Catalyst), a drawing project sending back live digital-drawings from a two month journey to Antarctica (an Arts Council International Fellowship with British Antarctic Survey) and an animated film developed from drawings made on a mundane walk out of London along the A13 trunk road (a Channel 4 TV commission with Arts Council England). Recent exhibitions have included the solo shows at the British Film Institute (London), Harris Museum (Preston), Galerie Polaris (Paris), Parker’s Box (New York), Stills (Edinburgh) and Cell (London).
Faithfull was born in Oxfordshire, UK, studied at Central St Martins and then Reading University. His practice takes a variety of forms - ranging from video, to digital drawing, installation work and writing. Faithfull is also a lecturer at Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, London.
http://limbo.simonfaithfull.org
Kate Genevieve is a director and artist who works with moving image, sound and the human body to create immersive environments for audiences that explore the interaction between embodiment and perception.
Kate founded Chroma Collective in 2010 – a group of artists, animators and programmers specialising in interdisciplinary and interactive work – and directs animation performances and large-scale projections. Her practice based research is around virtual environments, immersive visuals and presence research. Her 2011 art commissions build on her collaboration with neuroscientists, most recently the Encephalo//Graphic performance (2010) for the Art of Life Science Festival and NOPLACE at Embassy Court (2011).
She curates events for the BANG network, as well as conceiving and co-directing large scale collaborations such as Dream Machine (2010) and Future Machine (2011) for the White Night festival.
Kate has a background in performance and digital production. Over the last decade she has worked as an animator, performer and director on digital installations and interactive performances for national and international arts festivals. On moving to Brighton she joined digital production company Plug-in Media and was one of the team to receive a BAFTA in 2009 for Big and Small Online and a BAFTA in 2010 for Zingzillas Interactive.
http://kategenevieve.wordpress.com
latest project: http://noplace1.wordpress.com/
http://vimeo.com/kategenevieve
Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva’s practice encompasses of national and international site-specific commissions, fellowships and residences. She has developed a respected and high-quality reputation for producing ambitious and complex works in sculpture and installation. Since graduating from Royal College of Art in 1998, she has exhibited internationally including the 51st Venice Biennale ; Swiss Embassy and World Bank, Macedonia; L’H du Siege, France; Kilmainham Gaol Museum, Dublin. She has taken part in European residency programmes including Gloucester Cathedral, ArtSway, Irish Museum of Modern Art and Berwick Gymnasium Fellowship. Public art commissions include ‘Transpire’, St Bede’s College, Bristol; ‘We Are Shadows’, Unit2, London; ‘Life Cycle’, Bristol; ‘Re|Sort’, Fabrica Gallery, Brighton; Ambush’, The New Forest. She has received many national and international awards including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, she is an AIR Council member and representative for South East England.
http://www.contemporaryartsociety.org/become-a-member/artist-member/elpida-hadzi-vasileva/1139
http://www.axisweb.org/seCVPG.aspx?ARTISTID=11268
http://www.artsway.org.uk/programme/artsway-associates/visit-the-artsway-associates/elpida-hadzi-vasileva/
LuckyPDF formed in 2008 as a project to develop new ways of funding, making and displaying art. Now working with a set core of four artists (John Hill, Oliver Hogan, James Early and Yuri Pattison) LuckyPDF work with an ever-shifting network of partners and collaborators to realise ambitious projects that combine live events with online video and broadcasts, commissioning and showcasing new performance and video works while intervening in and subverting the structures, institutions and economies of image production and distribution.
They were commissioned to produce four days of live online television at last year’s Frieze Art Fair and participated in the third Athens Biennial. In 2012 they will take part in Fierce Festival, Birmingham and Next Wave Festival, Melbourne.
Clare Strand is a British Photographic Artist. Her constant passion is the appeal of Utilitarian Photography where aesthetic issues are secondary to specific formulations and generic expectations. Research stimulates much of this dynamic. The hinterland to her image making is provided by a childhood upbringing where a family life in a suburban cul-de-sac was confounded by true crime magazines, ominous supernatural events, Paul Daniels on Sunday evenings, a father obsessed by exactitude and a flasher who lived in the house opposite.
Recent (2011) solo and group shows include, Signs of a Struggle, Photography in the wake of Postmodernism Victoria and Albert Museum, London ;Falling Up the Gravity of Art, The Courtauld, London; Sleight, Brancolini Grimadli, London and The Wonders of the Invisible World, Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art, Sunderland.
Clare Strand’s first monograph published by Steidl and Partners (2009) was launched with her first major show, Clare Strand Fotografie Und Video at the Folkwang Museum, Essen, Germany.
Strands work is held in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Arts Council, The British Council, The National Collection, The New York Library and private collections. She is represented by Brancolini Grimadli London.
http://www.brancolinigrimaldi.com/
Post-digital - First Workshop
Last week, on a cold winter’s morning we travelled to Brighton for the third cycle of our experimental workshop programme with artists at digital culture agency Lighthouse. The five artists participating – Simon Faithfull, Kate Genevieve, Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva, Clare Strand and artist group LuckyPDF joined Lighthouse’s Director Honor Harger to explore the theme of ‘post-digital.’
Housed in a former printworks, Lighthouse is located in the heart of Brighton’s North Laine, the city’s vibrant cultural quarter. Lighthouse is a leading arts agency supporting, commissioning and showcasing new work by digital artists and filmmakers. As well as being a vibrant venue for events in Brighton, Lighthouse supports artists and filmmakers by offering opportunities for development through commissions and mentoring programmes.
Once again the technologist Chris Thorpe led the discussion and took us on a journey through the potential of ‘post-digital’ and presented us with various objects manufactured using post-digital tools; a self-published newspaper from Twitter posts, an artwork dissected into multiples, 3D printing and a physical interpretation of data in the form of a snowman.
The conversation on how artists might employ post-digital tools began with some of the artists recalling their experiences and the challenges that face them. One artist told of their plans for an on-demand printed book of their digital images, whilst another told us of their work being proposed for use as a print on t-shirts but felt that the pricing and distribution model was to their disadvantage. Some artists questioned if there is a need for objects in a digitally advanced world. Would people even want objects, especially a generation that has never had them? “Why have a comforting teddy bear when you can have a mobile phone?”
Artists expressed concern about the value of a post-digital artwork. “The problem I have with 3D printing is why are we filling the world with all these multiples?” Other artists argued that it moves the object away from being a commodity to being meaningful. The issue of monetary value was also discussed with the artists questioning the perceived value a buyer has of a post-digital artwork. The experience of buying art changes: does the way people pay relate to the value a buyer attributes to an object? There is a certain validation when a buyer pays for work from a commercial gallery. Where is the validation when buying post-digital art objects over the Internet? The gallery system is about restricting access to art but this is at odds with that. Does experience, validation and positioning equate with value?
Later the theme of the discussion developed into broader themes around identity and how there is a division between the public and private ‘lives’ of artists. There was a sense of tension between space to create work, space to make money and space for the public. One artist told of their relationship with the online world and how it is focussed purely on their work. Another artist explained how social media is an integral part of their relationship with the public. “We’re still asking the same questions but with different tools”
Should we be humanising the online world? One artist proposed that by humanising the online world, we would make it more meaningful. “I think the humanising thing is making things more awkward, less easy…it’s using technology but actually doing boring, clunky, human, failing things. The human becomes the failing, boring ghost in the machine.”
