Interfaces Monthly 062017: (Tele)Presence, (Tele)Communication

About

Speakers this month include -

Paul Sermon is Professor of Visual Communication at the University of Brighton. He has worked for over twenty years as an active academic researcher and creative practitioner, primarily in the field of telematic arts. Having worked under the visionary cybernetic artist Professor Roy Ascott as an undergraduate Fine Art student, Paul Sermon went on to establish himself as a leading pioneer of interactive media art, winning the prestigious Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica in Linz, Austria, shortly after completing his MFA at the University of Reading in 1991, an accolade that took Paul to Finland in the early 1990s to develop one of the most groundbreaking works of his career Telematic Dreaming in 1992. His networked arts practice explores the emergence of user-determined narratives between remote participants brought together within shared telepresent environments, exhibited throughout the world from the ICC Gallery Tokyo to the Ars Electronica Centre Linz and Eyebeam New York. Through the use of live chroma-keying, virtual environments, video projection and videoconferencing these geographically divided audiences converge in intimate social spaces to co-create new dialogues. "As an artist I am the creator of their environment and instigator of their narrative, which I determine through the social and political context that I choose to play out these telepresent encounters”.

Michael Takeo Magruder is a visual artist and researcher who works with new media including real-time data, digital archives, immersive environments, mobile devices and virtual worlds. His practice explores concepts ranging from media criticism and aesthetic journalism to digital formalism and computational aesthetics, deploying Information Age technologies and systems to examine our networked, media-rich world. His works have been exhibited at major events and institutions internationally. He is currently artist-in-residence at the British Library, undertaking an arts-research project - entitled Imaginary Cities - that involves the creative examination of digital map archives drawn from the Library’s 1 Million Images from Scanned Books collection.

Helen Benigson is a video and performance artist concerned with the presentation and construction of body within online space. Her research is configured around the metaphorics of space and places as associated with the Internet’s interface hardware and software. “I am interested in fattening spaces so they become full and chaotic, while at the same time flattening, compressing and reducing, so that the spaces themselves are nothing but screens or skins”. Benigson’s work has been shown at Serpentine Gallery, London; Tate Modern, London; Kunst Museum, Bonn. She recently co-founded the Ruskin Centre for Performance at Oxford University and is currently doing her PhD in Fine Art at Ruskin School of Art.

Doors open at 7pm - presentations start at 7:30pm - followed by discussion and drinks.

Interfaces Monthly is a regular get-together for people working at the junction of art and technology, organised by the Barbican and The Trampery. A platform for ideas and exchange, each event includes selected artwork, presentations and discussions in an informal social setting with a low-priced bar.