3.5 Artist Talks
Tracks
Track 5
| Monday, June 24, 2024 |
| 3:30 PM - 5:30 PM |
| Plaza P9 |
Speaker
Ms Robyn Backen
Senior Lecturer
The Univerity of Sydney
AT: On the Precipice of Forgetting
3:30 PM - 3:45 PMAbstract
This presentation examines the recent artwork On the Precipice of Forgetting. It captures the sensation of teetering on the brink of forgetting and is sited at a dam wall renowned for its unique acoustic properties. The artwork navigates memory lapses and fragmented conversational paths, while the immersive VR experience contemplates memory fluidity and virtual environments' perceptual effects.
Biography
Robyn Backen is an artist not bound by medium or scale, with large public commissions on the edge of land and water, contrasting against smaller interactive sound and light works. Her constructions and computer-generated systems often examine the cultural context of the spaces they inhabit. Conceptual continuity is the constant, allowing the translation of ideas and messages into an eclectically bound body of work—multi-faceted conversation. Drawing upon research into technology and materials, Robyn investigates patterns and systems within her practice, like language, nature, and remembering. She has shown extensively in national and international exhibitions and has completed many large public commissioned artworks. She has a history of being awarded residencies worldwide, most recently in Rejmyre, Sweden, and Beijing, China. She is a recipient of an Australia Council for the Arts, Fellowship.
Dr Gareth Jenkins
Director
Apothecary Archive/Macquarie University
AT: The Inclination Compass
3:45 PM - 4:00 PMAbstract
‘The Inclination Compass’ is an interactive artwork where audiences use hand gestures to control a digital image of a rotating compass. As the compass turns it samples a random selection of 23 lines from the book of the same name, The Inclination Compass. This artwork is the culmination of the narrative within the book and a way that audiences continue to ‘write/rewrite’ the narrative by creating their own ‘cut’ of the story. The artwork and the book are examples of transmedia storytelling.
Biography
Dr Gareth Sion Jenkins is a multimedia artist, writer, publisher and archivist. His research explores the work of creatives who experience mental illness and the digital archiving of handmade artists books. He is the founder of the archive and small press Apothecary Archive.
His latest book was published in 2023 and is a multimedia speculative narrative called The Inclination Compass. Along with collaborator Kathryn Cowen, he is a feature artists at Cementa24 where they will create an immersive UV light installation utilizing found text, sound and sculpture.
Dr Josh Harle
Tactical Space Lab
AT: Josh Harle Artists Talk
4:00 PM - 4:15 PMAbstract
In this artists talk, digital media artist, educator, and researcher Dr Josh Harle will introduce his practice, research, collaborative VR artists studio projects, and current work-in-progress.
Biography
Dr Josh Harle is a multidisciplinary researcher and media artist identifying as neurodivergent. His practice is informed by degrees in Computer Science & Cybernetics, Philosophy, and Fine Art, and a doctorate across Architecture & Design exploring representation of virtual space through an ARC scholarship. His recent practice investigates diverse forms of ‘sense-making’, technology as cultural practice, and the expressive potential of digital capture tools through hacking and repurposing.
Harle lectures internationally on the creative applications of digital technologies, including robotics and virtual reality, and co-edited ‘Technology as Cultural Practice’, an open-access journal featuring critical essays from international contributors, showcases of contemporary Indigenous Australian VR and AR art projects, and interviews with their creators.
Since 2017, as director of Tactical Space Lab, Harle has hosted an ongoing experimental VR studio program working collaboratively with established artists to explore innovative uses of virtual reality, photogrammetry, Computer Vision, Machine Learning and other emerging technologies.
Mr John Tonkin
The University of Sydney
AT: On the Edge of an Abyss
4:15 PM - 4:50 PMAbstract
John Tonkin will discuss his project Precipice (2024), a VR artwork that is informed by his personal experience of spatial phobias such as acrophobia (fear of heights) and claustrophobia. Precipice is part of a larger ongoing re-search project that explores anxiety, panic and space.
Biography
John Tonkin has been working with media art since 1985. In 1999-2000 John received a fellowship from the Australia Council's New Media Arts Board. His artworks have explored the creative possibilities of computation, particularly focused on interaction as a means of physical and conceptual play. They have included many participative works that were formed through the accumulated interactions of the audience. John's recent projects have included several large-scale public art commissions that have expanded his interest in interactivity into the public domain, as well as a series of interactive video works that investigate visual perception as being grounded in a sensorium of bodily sensations and activated through the dynamic movements of the body. He is currently ex-tending this research to explore the possibilities and problematics of VR technologies. John lectures in contemporary art at Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney.
Mr C.S. Roy
Producer/director
Scintilla
Co-presenter
Biography
A former film critic, journalist and digital media strategic advisor, Charles Stéphane Roy has been a film and XR producer since 2013. He co-founded the Montreal-based SCINTILLA studio in 2019 to foster stories propelled by digital and social innovation. V F C (2023), a bio-adaptive and augmented film, is his feature directing debut.
Mr Yann Harel
University of Montreal
AT: V F C: An Adaptive Cinema Experience Powered by Brain-computer Interface
4:30 PM - 4:45 PMAbstract
V F C is a live cinematographic feature-length experience that takes advantage of mobile electroencephalography (EEG) to provide the filmgoers with a customized soundtrack offered through a novel hybrid sound system approach. The movie takes viewers on an unsettling journey during which they follow a female neuroscientist facing the shadows of her own mind, instantiating a form of reversed mise en abyme which gives a role to the spectator’s mental states to play in diegetic and extra-diegetic sound elements. It relies on VFC BiomediæTM, a technological platform designed to support a multi-user adaptive media experience by tailoring the movie soundtrack in real-time to one’s reactions to the cinematographic content. The platform is composed of a data acquisition system with real-time signal processing capabilities, a modular soundtrack built and operated via live music software, and a dual audio system based on bone-conduction earphones supplementing typical cinema speakers. We hope this piece fosters innovative strides in adaptive storytelling, paving the way for future explorations into how technology-driven personalization can transform the cinematic experience.
Biography
Yann Harel is a researcher in cognitive neurosciences and PhD candidate in psychology, working on fluctuations of attentional states and videogames.
Session chair
Paul Sermon
School of Art and Media, University of Brighton
