SCIRIA News & Events

SCIRIA OpenMind Series - Mobile Technology

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 12:04:00 -0500

Thu 6th November 2008
2-5pm
@ Camberwell College of Arts
Seminar Room Basement
Wilson Road
London SE5 8LU

Please RSVP (use 'Send email' below)

2-3pm Presentation
3-5pm Practical Workshop

Melissa Bliss is an artist based in London. She has a long history of social engagement with technology and her work is often collaborative. Her key interests are people and place and internal and external geographies. Her works use a variety of media such as performance, installation, sound and video. She has shown work nationally and internationally in Peter Stuyvesant's Ghost in New York, Beacon Art Projects in Lincolnshire, FRED in Cumbria, EASTinternational in Norwich and node-l media arts festival in London. She has worked with young people for several years using mobile phones to make videos, take photographs and record sound. Her work can be found at www.livingcinema.org. She is also a director of Living Cinema, an independent film company which makes unusual documentaries www.livingcinema.com.

SCIRIA AppliedMind Series - Electronics Workshop

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:02:00 -0500

23-24 October 2008
10-4:30pm
@ Camberwell College of Arts
Seminar Room Basement
Wilson Road
London SE5 8LU

Please RSVP (use 'Send email' below)

You are invited to attend a two day electronics workshop conducted by Leon Barker (PhD Candidate SCIRIA, Camberwell).

Day 1: Introduction to electronics

Create responsive objects from simple electronic components
Making proximity sensors with Arduino, infrared emitters and detectors

Day 2

Making interactive objects from toys and electronic circuits
Programming interaction using Wiring / Processing

Please visit http://ccw-public.wikispaces.com/Electronics for updated information.

SCIRIA OpenMind Lecture Series - SCIRIA Research Seminar

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:00:00 -0500

Wednesday, 16 July 2008, 1-4.30pm
Ground Floor Seminar Room (G17)
Research Office
Wilson Road
London SE5 8LU

You are invited to attend a Research Seminar at SCIRIA. There will be presentations about Early Computer Art by Catherine Mason and Nick Lambert:

Lunch 1 pm, talks 2 – 4.30 pm

Catherine Mason will talk about her new book, ‘A Computer in the Art Room’:

The origins of British Computer Arts 1950 - 1980'. This uncovers the little-known history of early British computer art. Described for the first time is the crucial role played by art schools in fostering important cross-disciplinary digital collaborations. This was a unique period in which art students could learn to program computers and construct their own hardware, before the onset of PCs and 'user-friendly' systems.

Dr Nick Lambert from the Computer Arts and Technocultures Project (CAT), a joint venture between Birkbeck and the V&A, will discuss ‘Parallel Evolution’:

The development of computer arts in the 1980s to 90s’. The art show at the SIGGRAPH graphics conference was a major American and international venue for computer art. From the late 1970s onwards, the Los Angeles-based art historian Patric Prince collected a significant amount of early computer art that was closely linked with SIGGRAPH, and this was later donated to the V&A, becoming the research material for CAT.

SCIRIA appliedMind Workshop Series - Introducing Mac OS X Software Development

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 10:00:00 -0500

9-10 July 2008
10-4:00pm
@ Camberwell College of Arts
Seminar Room Basement
Wilson Road
London SE5 8LU

Participants will gain first hand experience of using the Developer Tools and Cocoa framework to build a fully working software application. The emphasis is upon utilising existing tools and functionality, requiring no previous programming experience. Conducted by Mark Hill (SCIRIA Research Assistant).

Day 1: Developer Tools
• Interface Builder
• Xcode

Day 2: Building An Application
• Step-by-step tutorial
• Additional resources (site, forums, and documentation)

Requirements: A Mac computer running OS X 10.4+ with the developer tools installed (these can be found on the OS X installation disc).

SCIRIA AppliedMind Series- Electronics Workshop

Mon, 12 May 2008 09:25:00 -0500

4-5 June 2008
10-4:30pm
@ Camberwell College of Arts
Seminar Room Basement
Wilson Road
London SE5 8LU

Please RSVP (use 'Send email' below)

You are invited to attend a two day electronics workshop conducted by Leon Barker (PhD Candidate SCIRIA, Camberwell) and Marcus Kirsch (RCA Interaction design graduate).

Day 1: Electronics workshop - Making interactive circuits with Arduino boards:

Driving motors
Using Sensors
LEDs

Day 2: Writing programs using Processing 1.0 / Java

Implementing code
Good practice
Troubleshooting

Please visit http://ccw-public.wikispaces.com/Electronics for updated information.

Tactile Perception and the Will to Figuration in Islamic Art and New Media Art

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 04:58:00 -0500

SCIRIA openMind Lecture Series - A talk by Professor Laura U. Marks

Wednesday, 23 April 2008,
6.30pm
Chelsea College of Art & Design
Banqueting Hall
16 John Islip Street
London SW1P 4JU

A striking parallel between contemporary algorithmic art and classical Islamic art is that both are full of examples of text trying to become figure, or image that reverts to its basis in text. In digital art, the medium consists of code, which may or may not be expressed as image, sound, action, etc. In religious Islamic art, the written and spoken word of the Qur'an are considered to be the direct speech of God. Yet despite the constraint of clear and unambiguous Sunni scripts, I observe a fascinating will to figuration in Sunni Islamic art whereby letters and words start to look like bodies. I will show examples Islamic artworks where the text seems inexorably to give rise to a figure, and digital artworks that struggle to make manifest code that wants to stay latent. I "explain" the "will to figuration" drawing from new media theory, the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, and the thought on latency and manifestation developed in Shi'i Islam.

Laura U. Marks, a Canadian writer and curator of artists’ media, is the author of The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses (2000) and Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media (2002). She is researching relationships between classical Islamic art and new media art, for a book prospectively titled Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art. Dr. Marks is Dena Wosk University Professor in Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University, Canada. www.sfu.ca/~lmarks

Image: Detail, Album containing the surah Al-Fâtihah, signed by Muhammad Kazim (Iran, 1802-3)

The Fundamentals of Digital Art

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 07:20:00 -0500

18 March 2008

An evening to launch and discuss Richard Colson's new book, Fundamentals of Digital Art, which examines how digital technology is forcing a rethink of creative priorities for artists today. Colson, senior lecturer in digital arts at Thames Valley University, has spoken to practitioners and theorists in digital arts across the world and, alongside examples of digital art from the last four decades, offers practical know-how for readers involved or looking to become involved with digital art.

A panel discussion will include: Ed Burton, research and development director at creative development agency Soda and creator of the Bafta-winning Sodacontructor (go to sodaplay.com to try it yourself); James Faure Walker, painter, digital artist, and writer, and research fellow at arts and science research group Sciria; Charlie Gere, author of White Heat, Cold Logic and director of research at the Institute for Cultural Research at Lancaster University.

£7 / £6 Concessions / £5 ICA Members.

ICA, The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH

Tuesday 18 March 2008 7:30 pm Nash Room

Candy & Code: Rachel Beth Egenhoefer, Barbara Rauch and Nicola Naismith at the ICA

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 11:02:00 -0600

Textile Futures Salon, 17 March, 2008 at the ICA – 6.30pm

TFRG - University of the Arts London

The Textile Futures Research Group, University of the Arts London (UAL) and the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) explore the coded enquiry of three artists and researchers. Rachel Beth Egenhoefer, TFRG Guest Artist, Dr Barbara Rauch, Deputy Director SCIRIA (Sensory Computer Interface Research & Innovation in the Arts), UAL and Nicola Naismith, Lecturer at Norwich School of Art and Design.

Following presentations, Dr Jane Harris , Director of TFRG, Helen Sloan, Director of SCAN and Jess Laccetti, Institute of Creative Technologies, will conduct a panel discussion with the artists.

Tickets are £10 / £8 Concessions / £6 ICA Members

Available from the ICA: www.ica.org.uk / Box Office: +44(0)20 7930 3647

Institute of Contemporary Arts, 12 Carlton House Terrace, London, SW1Y 5AH.

SCIRIA Research Seminar

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 09:06:00 -0600

SCIRIA OpenMind Lecture Series

Wednesday March 5 2008, 12.30 - 5 pm at Camberwell College of Arts, Research Office, Wilson Road

There will be four short presentations covering a wide range of subject matter, with interesting points of connection:

Eva Kekou (PhD Candidate, SCIRIA Camberwell) Wireless Artists’ Groups
Ilze Black (Curator, Watermans Arts Centre) New Media Projects
Bernie Law (PhD Candidate, Cranfield University) Luxury in Cars
Mark Hill (Research Assistant, SCIRIA) Digital Drawing

By James Faure Walker

Discovering Digital Drawing

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 08:32:00 -0600

A talk by James Faure Walker

February 20 2008, 2pm
Research Centre
The Centre for Drawing Project Space
Wimbledon College of Art