Interact'18
Friday 7th - Friday 21st December 2018
Lightbox Gallery, LCB Depot, 31 Rutland St, Leicester LE1 1RE
Interact'18 is an exhibition of digital artworks and digital arts projects curated by Sean Clark of Leicester-based arts company Interact Digital Arts. It aims to showcase the range activities Interact is involved in, as well as provide a platform for local artists to show their work.
Work is broadly connected to three of Interact's geographic areas of interest. First, work produced by artists from Leicester. Artists were selected to reflect the variety of digital and digitally-related artworks produced in the area. Second, work produced by artists associated with De Montfort University and in particular the Institute of Creative Technologies. Last, work produced in China relating to Sean's ongoing role as International Professor in the School of Art and Design at Guangdong University of Technology.
The work is diverse and varied and it is hoped that by bringing it together as part of Interact'18 patterns and connections can be made that will inspire both the artists involved and the exhibition audience.
The exhibition is running in parallel with Innovation Connections: East Meets West in Guangzhou, China.
Opening Event - 7th December 2018
Interact'18 will open at 6pm on Friday 7th December. At 6:30pm there will be a short presentation about the work on display followed by the launch of Leicester Digital Artists, an informal network of creative practitioners focussed on creating new opportunities for digital artists in Leicester to exhibit their work. Join the Leicester Digital Artists Facebook Group for more information. From 7:30pm until 11:00pm there will be live music and visuals from the R10 collective. A bar will be available. FREE Entry.
https://www.facebook.com/events/318931382032252/
1. James Chantry
James Chantry creates multimedia installations, incorporating drawings, interactive technologies and sound. His recent work explores new Queer worlds, extrapolated and reimagined from history and folklore. Originally from the Fenlands of East England, this liminal land is often a backdrop.
Part of a series of installations, the first being Troposphere 2018 (pictured) its setting is a remote abandoned, Cold War era Parabolic Tropospheric Scatter Dish Relay station, close to where the artist grew up. The protagonists, two males drawn from a found negative, are heard as the viewer is invited to touch objects within the installation. Borrowing tropes from Science Fiction, these are contrasted with the practice of conversion and aversion therapy.
Theurgy 2018 featured in Interact'18 presents two male witches, digitally drawn and life size. Their story is taken from arrest documents from 1465, for summoning a demon to help them find buried treasure. Script derived from spells and carved in wood, are sensitive to the viewers touch, conjuring a sound work.
James has recently been awarded an MA in Fine Art (Distinction) from De Montfort University. His first degree in Mixed Media Fine Art was achieved at University of Westminster in 2003. He has shown work in London, Edinburgh, Yorkshire, East Midlands and China. James also works in socially engaged arts at Charnwood Arts.
3. Sean Clark
Sean Clark is an artist, researcher and technologist with an interest in systems theory and connected digital art. The work on display in this exhibition is a print taken from the digital work Haze which contains four interacting images composed of concentric circles that exchange colours as they "breath" inward and outward. Sean is a Visiting Research Fellow at De Montfort University and an International Professor at GuangDong University of Technology. He is also the founding director of web/app company Cuttlefish Multimedia Ltd and digital arts company Interact Digital Arts Ltd. In 2016 he was the co-winner of the Lumen Prize for 3D/Sculpture in London and the inaugural ArtCHI Award in San Jose, California.
Sean Clark
Four Circles (2017)
Digital Print
5. Ernest Edmonds
Ernest Edmonds was born in London in 1942. He now lives and works in central England and in Sydney, Australia. In 2017 he was awarded the ACM SIGGRAPH Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement In Digital Art and the ACM SIGCHI 2017 Lifetime Achievement Award for the Practice of Computer Human Interaction. He is Professor of Computational Art at De Montfort University. Routledge have just published "Generative Systems Art: the work of Ernest Edmonds" by Francesca Franco. Ernest Edmonds' own latest book is "The Art of Interaction: What HCI Can Learn from Interactive Art", Morgan&Claypool.
Ernest Edmonds
Dazzle (2018)
Digital Print
7. Anoushka Goodwin
The essence of Anoushka Goodwin's artistic practice is experimenting with what our personal mobile devices can be pushed to do creatively. She asks the question what can an artist do with this gadget? A video editing app? A clip on selfie mirror?
The tools are simple, everyday items we might take for granted. The works on display in Interact'18 are examples of either end of the possibilities. Nude with a Dolphin gives the appearance of a traditional charcoal drawing, but it is actually a collage with a sketch filter applied in the PicsArt app. Cleansing Circuits is a screensaver animated in the Cute Cut video editor app.
Use the QR code provided to access the file to download. Part of #LeicesterArtWeek2018.
9. Leila Houston
Leila Houston (London, 1977) is a visual artist whose work investigates the social, political and historical aspects of a place and the impact we have on our environments. Houston uses site and object-specific installations to explore connections between the external atmosphere and the internal sensation within places, providing reflections on the language of architecture and the associations we draw through memory and the senses.
Houston is a multidisciplinary artist, working predominantly with video, sound and structure, much of her artwork cultivates immersive atmospheres for the spectator, often inviting them to take part or contribute to the work.
Using the age old music box, Houston has reappropriated it to explore conflicting emotions of pain and protection, comfort and fear, familiarity and the unknown.
The work is at the end of a 6 month project, kindly supported by Arts Council England. Shown as part of City Festival at Newarke Houses (2018) the work since, has gone on to develop and change. Originally looking at the Jack and box has led her to investigate the history of music boxes and the first influential technologies going back to clocks that chime and our desire to measure time by day and night.
Houston has contrasted recorded sounds with the rhyme 'Pop Goes the Weasel', which dates back to the 1700s and originates in cockney rhyming slang (weasel and stoat for 'coat') for the poor at the time pawning their coat for money in hard times.
Water is a recurrent theme in her work, perhaps a symbol of creativity and emotion depicting the conflicting feelings of excitement and dread.
Leila Houston
Lunar, Liminal Music Box: Between Pain and Protection, Comfort and Fear (2018)
Sound, Arduino, Wood, Clay
Recorded sounds, edit and composition Leila Houston. Synth score created by Andrew Johnston. Technical support David Wilson Clarke. Supported using public funding by Arts Council England.
11. Yi Ji
Yi Ji is an Associate Professor in School of Art and Design, Guangdong University of Technology, he is an interaction design, digital artist and curator. In 2014, he was nominated by the Hong Kong Dragon Foundation to be 100 young Chinese leaders. In recent years, a total of eight papers have been published, among which seven are published in international academic conferences. Research results and design works are exhibited around the world (Sydney, Singapore, Shanghai, Beijing), and workshops are held at several academic conferences and art exhibitions. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) member, member of the Australian Interactive Design Association, members of the Singapore Computer Information Association, the user experience design association will have (UXPA, the United States), Chairman of 2017 Chinese CHI, Chairman of 2016 Australia HCI exhibition.
Yi Ji
Smart Chinese Digital Culture (2017)
Digital Print
13. Ashokkumar Mistry
Since graduating in fine art at DeMontfort University in 1996, Ashokkumar Mistry has worked across visual arts, moving image, writing and performance. His work consists of a multifarious mix of both physical and digital media.
However, more importantly, his central discourse deals with how we as human beings make sense of the world around us and the dichotomous nature of humanity. This extrospective focus comes from his experience of being different in one way or another and looking for the seams of his reality to gain an understanding of the outside world that sits in contrast to him.
'Through Other Eyes' is part of a body of work titled 'Half life', exhibited at A-Glow Space in Taiwan as part of 2018 NEXT ART TAINAN. The artwork consists of a series of twenty-five algorithmically manipulated photographs taken of the artist across the course of his life by other people. The nature/nurture debate is explored, by dissecting the convention of the portrait to understand the relationships between the images and the person at different stages of ones life.
Ashokkuma Mistry
Through Other Eyes (2018)
Digital Print
15. Dachhu aka David C Hughes
Dachhu aka David C Hughes is a digital visual artist concerned with technology and aesthetics of live performance, working with video projection and virtual reality to explore live image manipulation and the perception of reality. He has worked with local audio artists as a VJ and live performance artists as a technical specialist. His work has included video mapping buildings in Leicester's Cultural quarter, live video mixing for well known DJs, stage design for live performance and live VR events. He is currently employed by as a live performance technical instructor at De Montfort University, where he has just finished studying his Masters. Dachhu will be co performing with Andrew Johnston and then improvising visuals as part of the R10 collective.
Live performance at the opening
2. Andrew Johnston
Audio reactive visuals made using Max/MSP and Jitter. The 3D space shifts dramatically utilising dynamic camera angles and audio driven movement to provoke a visual response in real time.
Andrew Johnston
Experiments in Virtual Space (2018)
Digital Prints and live performance at the opening
4. Thierry Miquel
Thierry Miquel's paintings are instinctive with paint colour dictated by emotion. There is very little use of a sketch book, instead he prefers to work directly onto board with layer upon layer of paint to build up textures. The process of constructing and deconstructing the painted surface allows the finished painting to emerge.
Through exploring perspectives to reveal the hidden, Thierry might use fine abrasives or use a jigsaw to rip paintings apart to make things happen. Through successive cycles of control and freedom every possibility is permissible.
Rather than using text to convey meaning Thierry explores the text itself: A word in isolation being given the space to assert itself, free of the constraints of context. Thierry Miquel studied furniture design at Loughborough College of Art & Design and has worked on many private commissions.
Thierry's work has featured in The Sunday Telegraph for his figurative furniture designs. Thierry is based in Loughborough and works from his attic studio.
Thierry Miquel
What I Feel About You Is Just A Series of Ones and Zeros (2018); Joy In Repetition (2018)
Reworked Digital Prints
6. Joe Moran
Joe Moran is a visual artist and researcher exploring the use of Light and transient media as a primary medium who has exhibited work around the world (with exhibitions across Europe, China and India), he is currently researching the effects of excessive lighting in public areas upon the development of lighted artworks intended for these environments.
Working with a combination of analog processes and audio-visual tech from a variety of eras, he concentrates on finding new ways to exploit a variety of visual phenomena resulting from the interplay between light sources and the catalysts he employs, raising questions around our ability to capture or extend such fleeting moments of vibrant imagery.
Current (Red/Blue) on display here, is the result of experiments with holographic film, Fresnel lenses and projection, exploring how different materials diffract and separate light across a surface.
Joe Moran
Current (Red/Blue) (2018)
Digital Print
8. Fabrizio Poltronieri
Fabrizio Augusto Poltronieri (São Paulo, 1976) is an award-winning computer artist, designer, researcher and curator with a special interest in the relationships between Art, Design, Digital Media, and Technology. His expertise lies in the development of creative coding and its exchanges with philosophical questions.
Two of his artworks from the 'Visual Theogonies' series (Dionysus and Calliope) are in the V&A's – Victoria and Albert Museum – collection, in London, UK.
Fabrizio is a permanent member of the IOCT (Institute of Creative Technologies) at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. He is currently researching Creativity & Artificial Intelligence, applying machine and deep learning techniques to the production and design of narratives, moving images and objects.
"my ai self #02" (2018) is part of a series of self-portraits generated using deep learning, artificial intelligence, techniques.
Fabrizio Augusto Poltronieri
my ai self #02 (2018)
Digital Print
10. Michele Witthaus and Paul Rudman
Michele Witthaus: This work plays with notions of impermanence and context, inviting the viewer to engage with an ever-changing configuration of colours and shapes. Layers of translucent sheets engender varying moods as changing illumination is projected through the artwork.
Paul Rudman: I have worked with several artists to complement their artworks with computer-controlled lighting. 'Coalescence' uses carefully matched lighting to hide and emphasise patterns, creating a temporal perception in the viewer that is otherwise hidden in the artwork.
Michele Witthaus & Paul Rudman
Coalescence (2017)
Cellophane, Acrylic, Electronics
12. Alice Tuppen-Corps, Dave Everitt and Fania Raczinski
Alice Tuppen-Corps is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher and scholar interested in generating new forms of community through immersive, networked and performative technologies. Her practice produces new qualities of empathetic space and affective touch, empowering individuals through collective stories, engagement and connections. Dave Everitt has worked in art-technology practice since 1998 with a special interest in the interface between human creativity and computing, and Fania Raczinski is a computer science researcher and artist whose PhD creates computer-generated poetry, and whose research includes the evaluation of computer creativity.
Alice, Dave and Fania worked as co-creators of "Personal Space", which processes the raw text from personal accounts gathered for Alice's Transformational Encounters: Touch Traction: Transform (TETTT) project. The text is continually refreshed from over 500 of these intimate accounts and recollections, with the intensity of the phrases filtered according to the intensity of solar geomagnetic activity and solar wind. The nine panels are refreshed according to the numerical order of the Chinese mathematical "magic square" of three (the Lo-Shu) historically used to lend order to cultural activities.
Alice Tuppen-Corps, Dave Everitt & Fania Raczinski
Personal Space (2018)
Projected/Screen/Mobile and Dynamic Data
14. Peter Flint
Meditation for Piano is an interactive sound sculpture that explores the sensory experience of music. It invites the listener to explore and create sound with a tactile object. The circuitry of Meditation measures the electrical conductivity of the interactor, composing a unique response for each player. The sculpture serves as a response to traditional methods of music production and performance, which too often reduce role of the audience to that of a passive group of consumers.
16. Sean Clark
Sean Clark has been commissioned by LCB Depot to install the first version of his new series of light works in the window of Grays Café for the duration of the exhibition. "LOL" (Lots Of LEDs) is a collection of 20 separate, but connected, light pieces that communicate via the internet. In the configuration shown, the light pieces are presented as 20 strings of LED lights that exchange patterns an colours with each other and can be triggered by a viewer's mobile phone by scanning the QR code in the café window.
Sean Clark
"LOL" (2018)
Digital light work in Grays Café
17. East Meets West
East Meets West is a developing series of exhibitions being co-curated by Sean Clark at Guangdong University of Technology in Guangzhou, China. Creative Connections: East Meets West took place in April 2018 and Innovation Connections: East Meets West 2 is taking place at the same time as Interact'18. An important goal of the exhibition series is to bring artists from the UK and China together in order to find areas of common interest. The exhibitions will continue to provide opportunities for artists from Leicester to exhibit in Guangzhou, and vice versa. Join the Leicester Digital Artists Facebook group for more information.
interactdigitalarts.uk/creativeconnections
interactdigitalarts.uk/innovationconnections
Information Panels and VR experience at the opening
18. CAS50
The Computer Arts Society was established in the UK in 1968 by George Mallen, Alan Sutcliffe and John Lansdown and pioneered the development of computer arts in the UK and worldwide. To help celebrate 50 years since the founding of the society Interact Digital Arts organised a celebratory CAS50 exhibition that premiered at the LCB Depot in July 2018.
computer-arts-society.com/cas50
Information Panels
Photographs
