1.5 Artist Talks
Tracks
Track 5
Monday, June 24, 2024 |
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM |
Plaza P9 |
Speaker
Ms Van Sowerwine
Isobel Knowles & Van Sowerwine
AT: Recreating Memory in Miniature
11:00 AM - 11:15 AMAbstract
We have discovered a unique way to connect with communities, people and place through the creation of transmedia experiences of memory, objects and space. Our current work centres around reinterpreting memories through miniature domestic spaces, created using simple materials. We translate these miniatures into virtual reality via photogrammetry, forming resonant and uncanny memory spaces. These spaces are further brought to life through voice-over stories and the movement of the viewer’s body through these life-sized virtual replicas of the original miniatures. In this artists’ talk we will explore the development of this creative process through our current work-in-progress on flooding, memory and the climate crisis.
Biography
Isobel Knowles & Van Sowerwine’s work blends three-dimensional miniatures, photography, animation and immersive technologies in unique and emotionally charged, surreal environments. They create technologically adventurous, elaborately detailed animated storytelling through immersive installations, expanded cinema and VR. They are fascinated by tension that lies beneath an apparently calm surface and how stories and the way they are told can change our perception of the world.
Knowles & Sowerwine’s practice includes deep research and community connection. ‘Night Creatures’ (2022) had a diverse range of film enthusiasts creatively telling their moving stories of how film and festivals changed their lives. For their 2019 VR work ‘Passenger’ they interviewed taxi drivers and recent migrants to shape the story of arrival in a new land. Their 2016 work ‘Out In The Open’ portrayed a fictional story of a trader at Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne, devised after spending extensive time with stallholders and workers.
They have exhibited work at major institutions including the ICA, London, the Seoul New Media Biennale, the Art Gallery of NSW and at QAGOMA. They have premiered work at major international film festivals, including at Cannes (where they were awarded a Special Mention), Chicago, Sundance, Rotterdam and Venice.
Their installation ‘You Were In My Dream' won the 2010 Premier of Queensland's National New Media Art Award. Their 2011 interactive installation, 'It’s a jungle in here', won an Award of Distinction (Interactive Arts) at the 2012 Prix Ars Electronica.
In 2021 they were commissioned by the Museum of Australian Photography to create ‘Can't Do Without You’, blending three-dimensional miniatures, photography and animation to explore the psychological impact of lockdown in Melbourne. Their 2022 Melbourne Film Festival XR commission ‘Night Creatures’ won awards at the Australian International Documentary Conference in 2023 and Tricky Women Austria in 2024.
Ms Isobel Knowles
Isobel Knowles & Van Sowerwine
Co-presenter
Biography
Kenneth Lambert
Artist Director
Ink Lab
AT: Stasis-Exploring Displaced Narratives through the Medium of Technology
11:15 AM - 11:30 AMAbstract
In Stasis, the synthesis of generative art and data visualisation brings to light the experiences of refugees and asylum seekers. This essay explores the project’s creative process of crafting narrative-driven data portraits, which aims to deepen empathy and understanding among viewers. It also considers the ethical responsibility entailed in representing such stories, highlighting the art’s impact on broadening the discourse around social justice and humanitarian advocacy.
Biography
Kenneth Lambert’s experimental practice embraces disintegrated matter and the inexorable expressions that reflect the human condition. Lambert’s conceptual approach captures the contemporary zeitgeist by transposing themes found in science to illuminate current social issues and rising anxieties of our time. At the intersection of technology and the humanities, the artist’s investigations have led to works utilising particle acceleration to relate to climate change and data translation technology to investigate digital autonomy. Lambert’s cross-disciplinary practice encompasses digital, film, expanded drawing, painting, installation and performance.
With a professional background that encompasses museum and exhibition design and filmmaking, Lambert draws on diverse skills to thread through his artistic practice. Since 2016 he has regularly exhibited in solo and group shows with notable Australian ARIs and commercial galleries, including Artereal, Articulate project space. COMA and Galerie pompom. His work has been featured in award shows in Australia and the USA. In 2019 he was named Grand Prix Prize Winner of the One-Self competition, which resulted in his work Data Blue being featured at the Scope Art Fair in Miami. In Australia, he has been a finalist in the Churchie Emerging Artist Prize, The Alice Prize, Dobell Drawing Prize, Incinerator Gallery Prize - Art for Social Change, The Fisher’s Ghost Prize, Kilgour Art Prize, Lumen Art Prize and Mosan Art Prize.
He has participated in various various artist residencies across Europe and Australia. Most recently, he completed a 6-month self-directed residency with Amnesty International in Australia and the Bundanon Trust on the south coast of NSW, culminating in the development of my latest series, ‘Augmented Intervals.’ This new body of work is a testament to his ongoing exploration of themes that convey a sense of displacement.
Dr Gail Priest
Independent Artist
AT: Vibrant Mattering
11:30 AM - 11:45 AMAbstract
Vibrant Mattering explores the artistic practice of Gail Priest and Thomas Burless working as the Institute for Non-Empirical Results. Their collaborative ventures develop contexts to test the capacities of cause and effect via the interactions of sounds and materials. Based on historical research, they then use intuitive experimentation to explore how things work (or not). This presentation focuses on their latest project, the exhibition Five Self-Vibrating Regions of Intensities which explores sound as energy and vibration.
Biography
Dr Gail Priest has a multidisciplinary practice that focuses on the aural realm. Working across installation, composition, recording and performance she is interested in creating works that dwell in a liminal zone between figuration and abstrac-tion. She has performed live electro-acoustic compositions and exhibited sound-based installations nationally and inter-nationally including in Japan, Hong Kong, Germany, France, Norway and the Netherlands. She also curates events and exhibitions and writes fictively and factually about sound and media art.
Mrs Galit Ariel
Phd Candidate
York University
AT: Biodigital Being(s): Speculative Work-In-Progress
11:45 AM - 12:00 PMAbstract
Antonio Gramsci famously stated that "(A) crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born." [1]. Such a crisis is situated within our emerging biodigital selves due to our inability to comprehend digital materiality or to let go of our embodied physical representa-tions within digital space.
Digital Being(s) is a research-creation project that applies speculative design frameworks stemming from our novel biodigital state. The project utilizes digital and immersive technologies to fiction emerging modes of embodied pres-ence.
Digital Being(s) is a research-creation project that applies speculative design frameworks stemming from our novel biodigital state. The project utilizes digital and immersive technologies to fiction emerging modes of embodied pres-ence.
Biography
Galit Ariel is a scholar, technofuturist, author and creative, exploring the wild & imaginative side of bleeding-edge technologies. Through her experimental art/tech practice Galit challenges resemblances, gaps & glitches across digi-tal, physical, and cognitive spaces. Her award-winning work spans across Mixed Reality installations, subversive animations and speculative digital interactions.
Currently a research-creation PhD candidate at York University, her research focuses on the intersection between embodied technologies, culture and imagination. Galit is an OGS (Ontario Graduate Scholarship) recipient, a gradu-ate research fellow in York’s Sensorium Centre for Digital Arts and Technology, and York’s Feminist Digital Meth-ods Research Cluster.
As a stream leader at the Feminist Digital Methods Research Cluster, Galit explores trans-feminist presence within digital spaces. The group’s 2023 research-creation project utilizes location-based AR to discuss femme digital appropriation, representation, and harassment – as Toronto public-facing walk-n-learn immersive activation. The project was features at the 2023 HASTAC conference and the 2023 Humanities Congress.
Dr Sarah Neville
University of South Australia
AT: Scenario Design for Embodied Digital Experiences
12:00 PM - 12:15 PMAbstract
This artist talk reflects on artistic insights gained through artistic process, user trials and presentation of dance works created for virtual reality and augmented reality. I will describe the practice and process of creating choreo-graphic works for virtual and augmented reality as scenar-io design for embodied digital experiences, within the context of an expanded view of dance. Research and prac-tice are developed through observations and feedback that clarify the central role of participatory experience and social engagement in designing the user experience. Challenges in working with embodied digital experiences include presentation, form and context will be discussed in hand with success in motivating creativity and mobili-ty. Current works, Spheres; a Dance for Virtual Reality and Glasshouse be referenced and Evocation will be dis-cussed and demonstrated.
Biography
Dr Sarah Neville is an Australian choreographer and scenario designer who devises new media performance, instigates inter-disciplinary practices and invests in multi-platform processes and production outcomes. In 2021 Sarah was awarded an Arts SA Fellowship to create dance for virtual reality experiences. In 2022, Sarah received a PhD from Deakin University/ Cov-entry University researching embodied participation in im-mersive digital environments. In 2023 Sarah presented Evoca-tion AR trials at Liverpool Gallery and MOD, Transmittance at The Mill for Illuminate Festival and Glasshouse at MOD for SALA Festival. Sarah is currently a research associate at UniSA Creative/ IVE.
Session chair
Zohar Spatz
Head Of Community & Experimental Art Practice
Creative Australia
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