Screengrab is an annual exhibition of screen based new media art curated from online submissions from around the world and submitted via the internet.  The 2009 theme was, "Intervention".



The work in the exhibition represents the shortlisted entries for the Screengrab International New Media Arts Award sponsored by the School of Creative Arts (SoCA), James Cook University and the eMerge Media Space.  The works for the inaugural award were curated by the SoCA Gallery Committee which is comprised of academic and professional staff

Gillespie, Richard

Goodwin, Mitch

Milledge, Russell

Murrell, Elly

Van Houts, Ben

English

ResearchOnline at James Cook University

S C R E E N G R A BPlace   |  Identity  |  Space  |  CommunitySchool of Creative Arts New Media Arts Prize  Focal Press Tertiary New Media Arts PrizeIncreasingly we live in a world which is marked by boundaries and difference. Our actions are categor-ised and labelled for reference, sign posting and evaluation.Intervention is the new catchcry of these troubled times and no one is immune to its pervasive reach. Whether they be remote indigenous communities, Wall St bankers, tropical forests, the built environ-ment, economies of the state, small gatherings in shopping malls, subliminal advertising, ISPs, online discussion forums or pop cultural sites like Facebook and the Sopranos.I N T E R V E N T I O N Screengrab’s inaugural exhibition and new media arts prize set out to uncover this socio-techno-cultural subtext by inviting digital practitioners working in screen based media to submit works which engaged with this theme.The results are an eclectic mix of interactive media, game culture, lo-fi viral video, genera-tive media and animation.  Some works demand the user to create their own aesthetic while others grab purposely at the pixels which would normally only register as a flicker or a meme in the user’s periphery.Artists and programmers tackled the theme from a number of positions, some were tech-nological interventions of the medium itself, while others placed notions of communica-tion and exchange formats at the centre of their critique while others pursued directly the politically mediated currents of our time.   eMergeMEDIA SPACEOPEN 8:30am Monday    |     Friday 4:30pm CLOSEAngus Smith Drive    |     Douglas Q 4811School of Creative Arts    |     James Cook University+61 4781 3142    |     gallery@jcu.edu.auMEDIA SPACEeMergesource the code @ www.jcu.edu.au/soca/Screengrab    |   InterventionSchool of Creative Arts New Media Arts PrizeFocal Press Tertiary New Media Arts Prize Friday August 7 - Friday August 21Deborah KellySydney,  AustraliaTank Man Tango :A Tiananmen Memorial (2009)Twenty years ago, a movement for change was bloodily crushed in Beijing. When a lone man de-fied the tanks armed only with shopping bags, he became a global symbol of courage - except in China, where the past has been erased and mem-ory outlawed. Tank Man Tango intervened in city-scapes, and in amnesia, to build a memorial made of dancing bodies in cities around the world.  Using the simple, ubiquitous vector of Youtube, instruc-tions for making the memorial were distributed in English, Mandarin, Cantonese and German. People adapted the information for their own needs and desires, and organised in their own communities to participate in their own ways.  On 4 June 2009, the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massa-cre, the Tank Man Tango was performed in cities and towns around the world*, to collectively bring life to this history, to forget to forget.  * Locations of project included: Athens, Auckland, Bielefeld, Erfurt, Mexico City, Philadelphia, St Cath-arines Ontario, Tucson Arizona, Perth, Brisbane, Hobart, Melbourne, Warrnambool, Belgrade, Brus-sels, Bristol, Weimar, Leipzig, Daylesford, Singapore, Dunkerque, Barcelona, Richmond and Virginia.___________________________Ger Ger (Sound Nomads)Berlin, GermanyLuxor (2008)This project is comprised of a combination of sound art, music, public art, performance, inter-active installations as well as video. The constant search for noises, sounds and rhythms lies as central to SOUND NOMADS as the creation of ephemeral interactive sensor based playgrounds. As planned - a m/hotel performance went down in Vegas. Luxor: rooms 4455, employees 4000, casino 120,000 square feet, 250 miles visible Xenon light shot. Room No. 22.145: sensor equipped bending mattresses, sound generating moving chairs, pitch shifting ironing and flickering lights.  Technology: Lamps become sound triggers and pitch shifters by means of light sensors, irons turn into turntables through pressure sensors, chairs become free-moving VST instruments through sensor combina-tions. Mattresses (bend it over), drawers (open/close), closet doors, curtains (movements) and the TV set (light intensity of a selected channel) be-come a sampler ... This performance consists of seven essentially dif-ferent superstructures and interactive scenarios. A night in the luxury hotel becomes a performance night.___________________________Jason NelsonGold Coast,  Australia  “i made this. you play this. we are enemies.” (2008)Each day the internet is humming with a million small interventions. From the humoresque mock-ing of community content sites like Fark, to the net gate keepers Yahoo and Google, partisan political portals like Huffington Post or the open source/file sharing ‘priates’ of  Mininova, the web is an easy tool/weapon for meddling/influencing and  sharing / forcing / alluring your opinion on whomever clicks. And yet this digiscape is a deceiving and uneasy place, with continual streams of generic expres-sion/content, cute dogs and accident clips, knocking against an incredible range of political/social beliefs hidden beneath the screen. Even short sequences of words, titled links or blinking ads can reveal the strange, wondrous and treacherous. “i made this. you play this. we are enemies.” is an art game, in-teractive digital poem which uses game levels built on screen shots from influential community based websites/portals. And using messy hand drawn ele-ments, strange texts, sounds and multimedia layer-S C R E E N G R A B07   08   09  -  21  08  09 Screengrab and the New Media Arts Prize are proudly supported by :   The School of Creative Arts   James Cook University   Focal PresseMerge Media Space Team :   Richard Gillespie   Mitch Goodwin   Elly Murrell   Russell MilledgeThe eMerge Team also acknowledge the sup-port of the following individuals for their as-sistance :Exhibition Install   Richard Gillespie   Ben Van HoutsEvents Managment   Elly MurrellDesign & Essay   Mitch GoodwinJudging Panel   Jak Henson   Bernadette Ashley   Dr Stephen CampbellOpenning Night Blips & Beeps   The Popli Kidsand melancholy, my arrangements act as visual commas—giving us a pause for breathe, letting us veer for a moment, indicating that there is still more to come. ___________________________Mathew RandallBirmingham, United KingdomThe Digital Harmonograph (2009)The Digital Harmonograph draws inspiration from a Victorian device called a Harmonograph, which drew patterns known as Lissajous curves using pendulums. The Digital Harmonograph achieves the same effects using sine waves. Sine waves are used to generate motion in the X and Y axis, which are plotted against each other to produce complex patterns. ___________________________Tomoyuki YagoKanagawa, JapanOne Two Three. Five (2009)This is a film about nothing, about time and inter-vention. Every person in these videos is silently imagining the seconds from 1 to 123.5 without the help of a clock. At the start they hear a metro-nome for 3 seconds, which gives them the precise duration for reference. When reaching what they believe is the duration of 123.5 seconds they clap once. For this exhibition, each of the nine videos have been randomly  selected from a larger pool of over 90 videos. This film is dealing with a negotia-tion between index time and subjective time in a person as well as relationships between differences of people in a system. ___________________________Hye Yeon NamAtlanta, USAWonderland (2008)Space takes on multiple definitions. For me, I un-derstand space as the sum of cultural and social forces that act on me. Through the space, my body feels all changes around me instantly and intimately. When I move from Korea to the United States, my body became a gauge that felt my displacement and recognized not only the conformity inflicted on me in the United States, but it also allowed me to deconstruct the rule from my hometown that I had taken for granted as normal. In my video piece, I attempt to convey the feeling of displacement and conformity by acting of walking. I perform walk-ing forward and other people seem to be walking backward. However, I was walking backward in the real scene and I made it simply reversed. The space of being neither here following correct rule nor there following incorrect rule is precisely what I try to convey in this video.___________________________ing, the artwork lets users play in the worlds hov-ering over and beneath what we browse, to exist outside/over their controlling constraints.  Your arrow keys and space bar will guide you, with the occasional mouse click begging for attention.___________________________Adam CrucesBrooklyn, USAVertigo (2008)My main interests lie within time and its affect on the perception and understanding of experience. In transforming those situations I hope to create an experience that can carry a similar impact for others through a related connection of things or events that they might engage with on a personal level. ___________________________Sharon LengerTel Aviv, IsraelTo Be There (2008)This is a film which crosses my own borders, my own life, invading the universes of others, placing lens amidst the borders of others. In my wander-ings in the streets of Tel Aviv, I invade the windows of residential apartments with my eyes, with my imagination. In my mind I am placing myself in a specific and private window. An intimate feeling, a life story,  an occurrence, an intervention. It is the window that acts as the mediator - between me their world and were I would like to be.  But for that specific moment, I am there. ___________________________Alison LockeSydney,  AustraliaTwins (2009)The body is a theme that runs throughout the his-tory of my work, be it the physical presence or absence, the internal or the external, the healthy or the diseased. This Screengrab theme of “interven-tion” inspired me to think of medical intervention during childbirth. There is much debate within the community about the extent to which the medi-cal profession intervenes in birth, and a divide be-tween the ‘natural birth’ promoted by midwives and the ‘ease’ of a planned caesarean section from an obstetrician. Other forms of intervention during childbirth that provoke an emotional response include epidurals, forceps or vacuum delivery and induced labour. The forms of intervention can be of great benefit to the health and well being of mother and baby, but can also carry their own risks. In thinking about these debates while creating my work, I have at-tempted to capture some of the anxiety and mys-tery felt by expectant mothers.___________________________Andrew SunderlandLondon, UKAutofocus (2009)By setting the camera to its most automated func-tions – auto focus and full zoom - I have permitted the camera to act as its own creator, without man-ual intervention of its physical control mechanisms. Struggling to find a focal point, the camera enters into a perpetual oscillation between focal plains, at-tempting to form some kind of ‘image’.  The work explores the power relationship between artist and technology. The image and sound both rely on a lack of intervention from the maker. Only through the initial ‘set up’ and the final edit can he make an impact on the outcome of the work. ___________________________Clint Enns, Winnipeg, USAputting yourself out there  (2009)A voyeuristic intervention into the lives of chat ad-dicted users.  This video is a commentary on the parasocial relationships often formed through in-ternet  communication.  Music by Nick Krgovich. ___________________________Daniel BlinkhornSydney, AustraliaBuilt Environment (2008)By situating all manner of kinetic and gestural ma-terial within an evolving, at times densely populat-ed environment, I hoped to create an audiovisual work that harnesses some of the potential energy and vitality of various built environments in which we live.  At times I sought to build interrupted or episodic trajectories that felt almost incomplete, in an attempt to convey a feeling of that which is un-finished, as with the flux of our many built environ-ments. Through addressing the theme of ‘Screen-grab : Intervention’, the work seeks to frame some of the less desirable aspects of the built environ-ment (i.e. noise pollution, industrialisation, mecha-nisation etc) in a more artistically engaging way, stimulating an intervention of possibilities rather than actualities; of possible frequency distribution, spectral motion, form, function and light, rather than the typically pervasive reality of the built envi-ronment; a seemingly indifferent landscape... facile, dispassionate and uninspired.___________________________Jessica WestbrookChattanooga, USAProduct Placement (2009)I am an artist working with photography, moving image, and site configuration. My projects explore desire, cultural artifacts, consumer habits, and con-tradictory sensations that vacillate between for-tune and catastrophe. I consider my work a section of visual language culled from a complex matrix of assets, reconfigured and repurposed per space and time. “Product Placements” are mashup forms of mundane drive-by nature scenes and non-nutri-tional food habits. Even with simulated lights and sparkles, this work is a spectacle of packaged noth-ingness, subverting conventional brand/message us-age, and become looming political containers. While attempting to communicate a sense of joy and optimism, this work cannot “escape” the un-derlying struggles for media, power, and meaning. I am interested in this state of absurd simulacra, as a delightful coping mechanism for what may or may not be an impending catastrophe.___________________________Karl MendoncaBombay, IndiaBombay_RGB (2009)In June 2006, I visited my family and home in Bom-bay, India, after spending a year and a half at gradu-ate school in New York. My return coincided with the implementation of large-scale redevelopment projects across the city fueled by a real estate boom that had developers scrambling to convert property into high-end housing projects. In less than two years, my neighborhood of modest family owned cottages, open spaces and smaller commu-nity gardens had been replaced by a strip of high-rise condos and luxury apartments. Bombay_RGB is a reconciliation of personal feel-ings of loss, nostalgia and separation with a political concern towards the largely unchecked develop-ment and the gentrification of Bombay. Combining clips of familiar landmarks, construction, archival images of mainstream media’s apathy towards the issues of over-development, and scenes that rep-resent my own memory of Bombay, the project attempts to preserve an imaginary homeland and (re)construct a narrative of place. The algorithmic separation of the video into red, green and blue channels as well as the digital processing of loca-tion based sound stands between objective real-ism and subjective experience, protecting the land-scape and culture from the medium’s propensity to codify representation as a map without a territory; a simulacrum of personal experience. ___________________________Katie BushSan Francisco, USAdestroyevil.com (2002 ongoing)Started in 2002 - the night after George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil’ Speech – this is an ongoing / deliber-ately (infinitely) incomplete piece of web art (ani-mations added daily).Destroyevil.com consists of thousands of self-righ-teous illustrations, sure to delight morally upright wonder people of all countries. This (angry, med-dlesome) ongoing art work addresses the endless stream of war-mongering ‘tinkering’ found in our anti-inspirational, fear-based myopic, hyper-para-noid world. The artist gags daily as she adds more and more and more threatening energy into this website - weaving together endless, cardiovascular-ily bankrupt digital tapestries – thematically fuelled by apathy, intervention and dominating force.  In-tervention-based imagery is prevalent throughout destroyevil.com, but here these pages specifically deal with ‘it’: ___________________________Jeanne JoNew York City, USAEphemeral Interventions (2007)Responding to the concept of panoptic surveil-lance, I chose the words of poet, Michael Collier, for a performative intervention.  I wrote messages to the surveillance cameras in my city, their ever-presence promising security but bringing paranoia. They stare relentlessly as I write words in white sugar. when I look up from my mind I see what you are: The wind, water, and traffic arrive and melt the words away, leaving them to exist in the memory of the surveillance system. ___________________________ Martin KohoutPrague, Czech RepublicMoonwalk (2008)The clarity of Moonwalk intervention has been most obvious in it’s original installment where the video had been uploaded to YouTube at a time when the site design still corresponded with the design you now see in the video itself. At this point it was impossible to distinguish the video and the player visually. The element of intervention drew directly from the site of its construction. The video has been produced by uploading ten sec-onds of black to YouTube, the video is then played and screen grabbed.  This video is then uploaded again and the process is repeated 69 times, (the whole production took four days). ___________________________Mary HillBrooklyn, USAFather and Daughter (2008)I am at home with the artificial and constructed.I grew up in Florida, an evergreen state, a place where the only indicators of season are imported and decorative—a tablecloth with the print of au-tumn leaves, a blanket of fake snow, a plastic Easter egg. In an ever sunny, ever blue-skied landscape, these familiar, objects stood in as markers of time. In my own work, these stand-ins are the real thing. They are still representations, but for me, they have become the thing itself. I use various holiday and fantastical materials with-out irony or cultural critique. I want to champion them as authentic. Teetering between celebratory 

2009 Screengrab International New Media Arts Award and Exhibition

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2009 Screengrab International New Media Arts Award and Exhibition

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ResearchOnline at James Cook University