The World Needs Forms

Leonardo Electronic Almanac’s digital media exhibition platform was inaugurated by a pair of projects developed by two established artists who throughout their respective careers have produced works that respond in highly personalised ways to the interdisciplinary potential afforded by creative technologies. In deciding to present Paul Catanese and Jane Prophet together during the autumn of 2010, LEA’s curatoriate had hoped that some connections might be drawn from their respective artistic projects and that these resulting insights would be more than fortuitous. While the serendipitous relationships that did eventuate cannot be claimed fully by design on the curators’ part, it is wholly welcomed nonetheless

Radical Immersions: Navigating between virtual/physical environments and information bubbles - DRHA 2019 Conference Proceedings

This publication consists of the peer-reviewed papers and posters presented at the DRHA 2019 Conference "Radical Immersions: navigating between virtual / physical environments and information bubbles". The conference was held at Watermans Arts Centre, London (8-10 September 2019). For further information: http://www.2019.drha.uk

Notes on Demonstration Exhibition: The Ammonite Order, or, Objectiles for an (Un)Natural History

The demonstration exhibition, The Ammonite Order, Or, Objectiles for an (Un) Natural History (2008–09) explores a non-deterministic relation between digital mediation and spatial practice that supplants the primacy of real objects present in gallery space. The outcome of a research residency in London, the theme for this work evolved out of imaginatively projecting a ictive ”˜correspondence’ between two local personages: the architect George Dance (the Younger) and naturalist Charles Darwin. Drawing implicitly upon a creative curatorial impulse in order to pursue this narrative fabula, the exhibition space unfolds as a multidimensional installation that combines physical elements with an accompanying set of media content. The exhibition promotes a model for a diferent type of aesthetic experience through defamiliarising how the art object is modulated at the intersection of the exhibition

Beyond the Museum Walls : Situating Art in Virtual Space (Polemic Overlay and Three Movements)

In recognition of digital communication’s profound effects on social relations and institutions, this paper explores the influence of digitisation on our notions of art through the design of its institutions. No longer can the museum, as the primary technology of art, be viewed as just a physical container. With the additional of the hidden infrastructure of electronic and multimedia technologies that are to be found “behind the walls”, as it were, the architectural issues of negotiating spaces and manipulating locative settings for displaying artworks are as much virtual as physical.As a contribution to the negotiation of a distributed aesthetics, this paper entertains the possibility that transplanting art to the virtual site of the Internet disrupts our understanding of art itself. From presence on the gallery wall to the plane of the screen, if this translation offers an alternative way of seeing, then what does the Web offer to a different apperception of art? How to position the digital in the discourse surrounding art and the role it plays within contemporary cultural practice?In an attempt to ground these concerns, I will frame the subsequent discussion by focussing my attention upon one particularly representative instance: The National Gallery of Victoria’s Ian Potter Gallery of Australian Art; recognising in this localised, site-specific experience a microexample of a much more ubiquitous phenomenon

FCJ-122 Anxious Atmospheres, and the Transdisciplinary Practice of United Visual Artists

The transformative impact of digital culture on practices associated with artistic production, curation and audience is distinctive of the continued evolution of new media arts. Through this text I propose to initiate an open exploration of the variegated term transdisciplinarity developing from the idea of it as an intersectional discourse between traditional art disciplines (Architecture, Design, Fine Art) and Electronic Media Art. Of particular interest will be extending this to an investigation of the socio-cultural experience of digital mediation, spatial practice and temporality – both as experience related to dynamic artwork as well as an influential factor in reinterpreting the aesthetic conditions associated with exhibition.In order to do so I will focus directly on London-based art and design practice United Visual Artists, or UVA. Founded in 2003, UVA's work spans architectural and responsive installations, public art, live performance and moving image

Distributed Spatial Practice, As Applied to the Art of the Exhibition

This article addresses the association of curatorial process with digital technologies by investigating the relationship between distributable media and exhibition space. By discussing the critical and creative application of curatorial design, this paper directly focuses on the ways in which meaning and experience are created in exhibition space. This practice is informed by digital aesthetics and how the characteristics associated with networked culture might translate in spatial narratives associated with gallery-based exhibition. In order to do so, this text will overview the curatorial project, Remote . Exhibited at Plimsoll Gallery, University of Tasmania , Hobart in June 2006, the exhibition inventory incorporated digital media artworks by an international range of selected artists together in a mixed reality installation. The PDF (portable document format) publication of this article is designed specifically to extend the discursive aspects of this text. This visualization forms an integral part of the exposition of key themes under discussion. In keeping with the “distributed” nature of the topic, the reader is also encouraged to access a fuller range of supporting visual documentation currently available on the exhibition website: http://www.remoteexhibition.com/ . Through this short paper and associated digital publication: * Theoretical perspectives on the digital mediation of social interaction and interpretative experiences in a site-specific exhibition setting will be discussed; * Spatial considerations applied to the exhibition's themes will be outlined; and * The translation involved in developing the installation's scenography will be shown to involve both critical and constructive design thinking. This research is drawn from an overarching project that focuses upon virtuality and the art of exhibition. My larger project entails an interdisciplinary investigation combining practice-based research methodology with reflective and speculative critical theorization