BoredomResearch
A major new festival of new technology, digital and new media art is taking place in and around Cambridge from 25 to 29 April. Enter_ Unknown Territories will present interactive installations, workshops and talks on new technology art, as well as interactive and playful public art events, live performances, a conference and club nights. The festival hopes to find new audiences for the challenging and exciting things that happen when art and new technologies meet.
Among new works commissioned specially are several works of public art which will give visitors a unique and interactive experience of new technology art.
James Coupe, Digital Warfare Network
James Coupe, an artist who works with installation, electronics and digital media, addresses and questions the proliferation of surveillance in the UK in his new work (re)collector. Every day during the festival, CCTV footage will be gathered, and scenes of generic behaviour (e.g. greeting and saying goodbye) will be collected and grouped by an intelligent software system (i.e. software that builds up a profile of the images based on the way people and things behave in those images). Scenes will be randomly generated from the footage to build a storyline for computer-generated feature films which will be screened in the temporary structure on Parker's Piece during the festival and in the foyer of the Junction.
Coupe is currently an artist and Research Associate at the University of Washington's Centre for Digital Art and Experimental Media. His previous projects include I, Robot and Digital Warfare Network, which was selected for the highly prestigious New Contemporaries exhibition in 2001. Both explored the relationship between the individual body and digital system, and featured installations that allowed people to remotely control physical, robotic devices connected to a computer network.
Mark Dixon
Mark Dixon
Mark Dixon will develop a site-specific installation for the domes on Parker's Piece. He will explore the visualisation of the information that surrounds us but is rarely acknowledged. Using custom electronics and ultrabright LEDs Dixon intends to create a work that will visibly respond to mobile phone use in a public environment. 'My work is typically experimental and often collaborative. In 2001-2003 it involved combining art and science using high voltage static electricity and ink. This work involved collaboration with a science equipment supply company and with Southampton University. It has been exhibited at galleries locally, nationally and internationally. During 2004 I continued to experiment and worked with real-time digital video, animation and stills using wireless cameras and projection equipment. I continued by experimenting with physically interactive video projection. In 2004 Wolsey Art Gallery commissioned me to be artist in residence and to create an interactive maze at St Mary at The Quay, Ipswich. During 2005 I worked with Commissions East at the Great Eastern Hotel in London, as part of the Arts Council Escalator program. During this period I worked on a personal research and development program for 2005/06 to experiment with new technologies. In 2006 I started using LED's with circuits triggered by the use of a mobile phone for works shown at Wysing Arts Centre in collaboration with The Technology Partnership in Cambridge and Ipswich. The mobile phone triggers are also being developed further in a permanent public commission for Grafton House, Ipswich, installed in early 2007.'
Steve Symons, Aura
Steve Symons, a UK-based artist who works exclusively with technology as an art medium and is interested in the interaction between sound and environment, will develop an entirely new piece, Aura 2. Steve Symon's Aura system tracks the routes participants take on a walk through Cambridge with sounds evolving and changing based on previous users' routes through the town. If you'd like to be part of a continuing multi-layered soundscape immersive game, you can pick up an Aura backpack on Parker's Piece or at Kettle's Yard and join the trail.
To purchase tickets and find out more about Enter_Unknown Territories click here.
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