Supported by the Goldsmiths GRADUATE SCHOOL and the Goldsmiths DIGITAL STUDIOS

6pm until 8pm, Seminar Rooms at Ben Pimlott Building (Ground Floor, right), Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, SE14 6NW

FREE, ALL ARE WELCOME. No booking required.

17 APRIL with RACHEL BETH EGENHOEFER

Knitting Intangibles

Rachel Beth considers her Commodore 64 Computer and Fischer Price Loom to be defining objects of her childhood. She creates tactile representations of cyclical data structures in candy and knitting and is currently exploring the intersection of textiles, technology, and the body in contemporary art practice. Rachel Beth is currently working as an Artist in Residence at the University of Brighton, Lighthouse Brighton, and Furtherfield London as part of the Arts Council England Initiative, commissioned by Distributed South and curated by SCAN and Space Media.

Rachel Beth will be presenting work in progress from her residency that explores the motion of knitting and the motion of code. Some of the work includes a knit zoetrope, interactive virtual knitting, knitting with the Nintendo Wii and others.  She describes the interactive virtual knitting as demonstrating “the motion from the knitting actions are tracked and translated into a visualization of “knit code” displayed on screen (and eventually on the web). The action of engaging or knitting with the piece naturally produces a physical cloth, while it also shows that code is constructed from the same types of patterns to create a type of virtual cloth (or software). Visually the piece will reflect our bodily interaction with machines, tracing the circular motion of the needles to our body’s give and take of working at a machine.  Cloth is often seen as an element of comfort and protection. Machines are perceived to assist us with advancing technology and communication while they are also harming our bodies with carpel tunnel syndrome, back pain, sore eyes, and other strain as we interact with them. This piece explores that delicate space in-between.”

RACHEL BETH EGENHOEFER received her BFA from the Fiber department with a concentration in Digital Media from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and was an MFA fellow at the University of California, San Diego where she also was a graduate researcher at UCSD’s Center for Research and Computing in the Arts (CRCA). Her work has been exhibited internationally in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) London, the Banff Centre for the Arts, ISEA 2004 and others. She formerly worked on the editorial staff of Artbyte Magazine in New York City, and continues freelance writing on art, modern society, and media culture.
www.rachelbeth.net
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24 APRIL with KATE PULLINGER & CHRIS JOSEPH

Flight Paths: a networked book

“Flight Paths” seeks to explore what happens when lives collide –an airplane stowaway and a fictional suburban London housewife. This project will tell their stories; it will be a work of digital fiction, a networked book, created on and through the internet. The project will include a web iteration that opens up the research process to the outside world, inviting discussion of the large array of issues the project touches on. Questions raised by this project include: what are the possibilities for new narrative forms? How do we “write to be seen” or “write to be heard” when creating multimedia narratives, and can we imagine writing to be smelled, tasted, felt? What are the effects of collective authorship across multiple forms?

KATE PULLINGER works both in print and new media. Her most recent novels include A Little Stranger (2006) and Weird Sister (1999). Her current digital fiction projects include ‘Inanimate Alice’. Pullinger is Reader in Creative Writing and New Media at De Montfort University.

CHRIS JOSEPH is a digital writer and artist who has created solo and collaborative work as babel. His past projects include ‘Inanimate Alice’, ‘The Breathing Wall’ and ‘Animalamina’. He is currently Digital Writer in Residence at De Montfort University, Leicester.
—

8 MAY with CAMILLE BAKER & MARILENE OLIVER

MINDTouch
&
Making DICOM Dance – The Digitised Body as a site for performing subjectivity

MINDTouch explores ideas of non-verbal transference, telepathic collaboration, and the participant as performer, using biofeedback and mobile phone technology under meta-goals of studying “liveness” within mobile networked environments. MINDTouch involves creating a mobile networked performance that utilizes a database of streamed and/or archived video-clips created by video-enabled mobile phones, to then be retrieved, streamed and remixed during (a) live visuals performance(s). The participants invited to contribute to the video blogs are asked to explore their own consciousness, non-verbal emotional /affective senses and dream states, embodiment and communication.
www.smartlab.uk.com/2projects/mindtouch.htm

CAMILLE BAKER is a Ph.D. Candidate at SMARTlan, University of East London, conducting research on Networked Performance Media, funded by BBC R+D.
www.swampgirl67.net

&

Making DICOM Dance: Marilene Oliver’s practice-based research looks at medical and laser imaging technologies that scan bodies and break them down to bytes. Oliver examines from an artist’s perspective, the processes needed to convert flesh to pixel (digital photography), flesh to voxel (MRI, CT and PET) and flesh to xyz co-ordinates (3D laser scanning). Oliver will present a selection of artworks made using MRI data (where the subject of the scans is bespoke) and CT data (where the subject of the scans are either infamous or anonymous). The presentation will be both technical and theoretical, concentrating on the performative puppeteering activity that emerges when working with MRI and CT data.

MARILENE OLIVER is currently a research student in the Fine Art Print department at the Royal College of Art. Oliver has exhibited widely in the UK and Europe including the Victoria and Albert Museum, Royal Academy, Royal Institution, Science Museum (UK). Oliver was awarded the Royal Academy print prize in 2006 and the Printmaking Today prize in 2001.
—

15 MAY with COLM LALLY & VERINA GFADER

Condensation revisited: strategic walking / access to knowledge / economics of things / conversation pieces

In June 2007 Colm and Verina were invited to take part in the residency programme: Reference Check, a co-production lab taking place at the Banff New Media Institute in Banff, Alberta, Canada.
During the residency they expanded the notion of “interface” associated with various forms of online communication and exchange, to other, perhaps more radical, forms of spaces between different entities. At the core Colm & Verina’s actions emerges the search for where a site of potential resides beside of technologies’ restrictive mode of ex/inter-change and so-called collaborative or networked practices. Colm & Verina will present the “document” of the process that their project Condensation took during the residency at Banff. This includes questions of: the necessity of temporary frameworks; the character of dialogical communication processes; the failure as a site of potential. In an informal setting the “document” will take the format of a line, or “walking” – of virtually making a tour through various landscapes…

COLM LALLY is founder and director of E:vent. Since 2003 Colm has taken a hands-on role developing the E:vent programme, focusing on media art; video; performance; and electronic music. Colm was a co-organiser of Node.London 06 and is co-director of Arts in Action artists community.

VERINA GFADER completed a practice-based Ph.D. in Fine Arts at Central Saint Martins College, London in 2006, and recently joined CRUMB (web resource for new media art curators) as post-doc research assistant.
—

29 MAY with RICHARD COLSON

Linking the Senses

Richard Colson considers the role of gesture as part of any process of making art and reflects on its use in his painting and in his work using digital technologies. The talk will try to unravel aspects of experience that have a direct bearing on the interdependence of vision, auditory phenomena, gesture and spatial changes in both the creation of art and its reception by the viewer. Richard will use visual art works and examples of creative writing and will try to show how an awareness of spatial position can have a critical influence on the nature of what is perceived.

RICHARD COLSON is the author of The Fundamentals of Digital Art (AVA Publishing Uk Ltd) and co-curated Sense Detectives at Watermans Arts Centre. He is a Director of the annual Takeaway Festival of DIY Media at the Dana Centre, Science Museum. His paintings are in collections at the House of Lords, the House of Commons, Royal Dutch Shell and Pearson PLC.
www.kwomodo.com
—

5 JUNE with ALEX MCLEAN & DAVE GRIFFITHS

Live Coding

Live coders program in conversation with their machine, dynamically adding instructions and functions to running programs. Here there is no distinction between creating and running a piece of software - its execution is controlled through edits to its source code. Live coding has recently become popular in performance, where software is written before an audience in order to generate music and video for them to enjoy. McLean and Griffiths have played around Europe together with Adrian Ward as the live coding band “slub”. They will talk about the history and practice of live coding, and give some demos of their own live coding environments.

ALEX MCLEAN has been triggering distorted kick drum samples with Perl scripts for far too long. He is a PhD student at Goldsmiths Digital Studios.

DAVE GRIFFITHS writes programs to make noises, pictures and animations. He makes film effectis software and computer games.

Dave & Alex are both members of the Openlan free software artists collective and the TOPLAP organisation for live algorithm promotion.
slub.org ; toplap.org ; pawfal.org/openlab ; pawfal.org/dave ; yaxu.org
—

THE THURSDAY CLUB is an open forum discussion group for anyone interested in the theories and practices of cross-disciplinarity, interactivity, technologies and philosophies of the state-of-the-art in today’s (and tomorrow’s) cultural landscape(s).

For more information email Maria X at drp01mc@gold.ac.uk

To find Goldsmiths check http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/find-us/

INTIMACY

Across Visceral and Digital Performance

www.intimateperformance.org

Goldsmiths | Laban | The Albany | Home | Online

7, 8 & 9 December

THREE DAYS OF PERFORMANCES, WORKSHOPS, SEMINARS, SHOW & TELL PRESENTATIONS, HAPPENINGS and a 1-DAY SYMPOSIUM

LOADS OF FREE EVENTS
LAUNCH: FRIDAY 7 DEC., 6:30-11PM @ GOLDSMITHS

INTIMACY is a three-day digital and live art programme made to elicit connectivity, induce interaction and provoke debate between cutting edge artists, performers, leading scholars, respected researchers, creative thinkers and local communities. INTIMACY is designed to address a diverse set of responses to the notion of ‘being intimate’ in contemporary performance and as such, in life. You are personally invited to enable the interrogation and creative exploration of formal, aesthetic and affective modes of performing intimacy now.
Please note: Knowledge East is offering 2 BURSARIES worth 500 GBP each, for student workshop participants who will submit a successful application for an enterprise project inspired by any of the 4 INTIMACY workshops. Grab the chance!
INTIMACY features:

FRIDAY 7 DEC:
One-to-one performances with Adrian Howells and Helena Goldwater @ Home (Booking Required | Limited Capacity)
http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/intimacy/programme.php#friday
Workshops with Prof. Johannes Birringer (Ticketed | Book Now, Limited Capacity) and Kira O’Reilly (Sold Out) @ Laban, Godsmiths campus
http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/intimacy/workshops.php
Seminars with Mine Kaylan and Tracey Warr @ Goldsmiths (Ticketed | Book Now, Limited Capacity)
http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/intimacy/seminars.php
Launch with Live Performances & Gigs @ Goldsmiths from 6:30pm. FREE, come along!
Featuring: SUKA OFF, Blind Ditch, Atau Tanaka, Ernesto Sarezale, Adam Overton, Avatar Body Collision, Joe Stevens, Mark Cooley, Leonore Easton & Boris Hoogeveen, Frank Millward, Eva Sjuve & Chantal Zakari
http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/intimacy/programme.php#friday

SATURDAY 8 DEC:
Workshops with Kelli Dipple (Sold Out), Alan Sondheim and Prof. Sandy Baldwin (FREE, booking required) @ Goldsmiths and Second Life
http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/intimacy/workshops.php
Seminars with Dominic Johnson and Paul Sermon (Ticketed | Book Now, Limited Capacity)
http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/intimacy/seminars.php
Performances with Fran Cottell (booking required), Lauren Goode (booking required), Helena Walsh & Chris Johnston @ Goldsmiths. FREE
http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/intimacy/programme.php#sat
Show & Tell Presentations, Screenings and Posters @ Goldsmiths. FREE, come along!
Featuring: body>data>space, Jaime del Val, kondition pluriel, Nikki Tomlinson, Jan van der Crabben,
Branislava Kuburovic, Lena Simic & Gary Anderson, Clara Ursitti, Jo Wonder, Anna Dimitriu, Elena Cologni, Georgia Chatzivasileiadi, Freya Hattenberger, Nancy Mauro-Flude, Eva Sjuve Daniel Agnihotri-Clark, Donna Rutherford, Annie Abrahams & Nicolas Frespech, Michael Pinchbeck & Claudia Kappenberg. Chairing: Teresa Dillon, Ghislaine Boddington, Simon Donger, Roberta Mock, Tim Jones.
http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/intimacy/show-tell.php
Performances @ The Albany. FREE, come along!
Featuring: Martina von Holn (booking required), Michelle Browne, Leena Kela, Sam Rose, Jess Dobkin, Pierre Bongiovanni, Camille Renarhd & Gael Guyon, Rachelle Beaudoin, Caroline Smith, Jaime del Val (ticketed).
http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/intimacy/programme.php#sat
Premiere of Suna No Onna by Dans Sans Joux @ Laban. (Ticketed | Book Now, Limited Capacity)
http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/intimacy/programme.php#sat
Intimacy Meal @ The Albany, £10 p/p. Booking required, email Owen: performintimacy@googlemail.com
SUNDAY 9 DEC:
Symposium @ Goldsmiths (Ticketed | Book Now, Limited Capacity)
Featuring: Amelia Jones, Paul Sermon, Tracey Warr, Mine Kaylan, Dominc Johnson, Kelli Dipple, Kira O’Reilly, Johannes Birringer, Adrian Heathfield, Janis Jefferies, Lizbeth Goodman, Jess Dobkin, Simon Jones, Ang Bartram, Anita Ponton. With performances /events by Adam Overton, Rachel Gomme, Hiwa K. & Anaesthesia Associates
http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/intimacy/symposium.php

ALSO:
7 & 8/12: Urban Workshop with Pierre Bongiovanni, Camille Renarhd & Gael Guyon (Booking Required) FREE
http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/intimacy/programme.php#urban
Throughout: Online Performance by Susana Mendes Silva (booking required); Phone performance by Bernadette Louise; One-to-one event by Chris Dugrenier; Promenade performance by Lisa Alexander
http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/intimacy/programme.php#thro
We hope to see you at this event that -between you and me- you just cannot miss….

INTIMACY is co-directed by: Maria X [aka Maria Chatzichristodoulou] & Rachel Zerihan.

The INTIMACY Board are: Prof. Johannes Birringer, Prof. Janis Jefferies, Gerald Lidstone, Prof. Adrian Heathfield, Hazel Gardiner

INTIMACY Across Visceral and Digital Performance is supported by: AHRC ICT Methods Network; Goldsmiths, University of London [Digital Studios, Graduate School, Dpt. of Computing, Dpt. of Drama, Dpt. of Media and Communications, Dpt. of Visual Cultures, Dpt. of Music, Centre for Cultural Studies); Knowledge East; Laban; The Albany and Home.

INTIMACY PROGRAMME:

FRIDAY 7 DECEMBER

10:00-17:00 [Home London]
One-to-One Performances - Programme TBC soon, check website for regular updates

10:00-14:00 [Graduate School Seminar Rooms]
SEMINAR: THE TIME IT TAKES TO TRUE
Leader: MINE KAYLAN, Goldsmiths/University of Sussex
The seminar will investigate a poetics of live interaction with particular attention to time as a significant vector in ‘meaningful’ exchange. Within the context of proximal and of telematic /virtual environments, how does the play of time work in what we might identify as poetic exchange, which we yearn for, recognize as precious, pay good money to experience? What is ‘intimacy’ within these terms? What can we learn from cinema makers about structures of time and visual rhythm in interactions through telemotion? These are some questions I am sucking on, still.
Tickets: 7.5 GBP, concessions 4.5 GBP
Book Now at: http://intimacytimetotrue.eventbrite.com/
LIMITED CAPACITY

11:00-17:00 [Laban Studio at Goldsmiths Campus]
WORKSHOP: BODIES OF COLOUR
Leader: PROF. JOHANNES BIRRINGER, Brunel University of West London
For this workshop, Prof. Birringer suggests a reflection on the art of Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica (see show at Tate Modern, June-September 2007): “Oiticia moved from abstraction and 2D work to increasingly 3D works, sculptures, then boxes, installations, architectural models and social projects. His work of the 60s and 70s culminates in the Penetraveis and Perangolés series. In the late 70s, just prior to his premature death while in exile in New York, he created several installations called ‘Quasi-Cinema’ (audio visual installations for the audience-participants, based on his utopian and metaphysical principles of vivencia and the supra-sensorial). The Perangolés have always attracted my attention, as they are ‘wearables’ (inhabitable fabrics, colours-in-action). I see them as extraordinary forerunners of our contemporary experiments with wearables. For INTIMACY I will invite the participants to explore the contemporary (technologically augmented and supported) wearable sensorial interface for performance, by wearing special garments with sensors, and interacting in the tactile sensorial manner within the media environment (images, sounds, colours).”
Tickets: 11.5 GBP, concessions 7.5 GBP
Book Now at: http://intimacybodies.eventbrite.com/
LIMITED CAPACITY

10:00-18:00 [Laban Studio at Goldsmiths Campus]
WORKSHOP: INTIMATE DETAILS ONLY
Leader: KIRA O’REILLY

Dispersed, elaborated and localised intimacies cluster and move between the complex webs of you and I.
Drag lines and spindles of utterances.
Radical tangos.
Scalpels teasing tissue apart.

Peculiar occurrences of confidence and trust, wonderment and astonishment manifest, unannounced from our reassembling and disassembling of events that unfold, processes that cascade in our designed moments of actions, performances, makings and unmakings.

Sometimes it means that someone thinks I love them. Or that they have love me. It gets all mixed up.

Perhaps we can figure out how to occupy some of the pauses, lapses and moments within this conflicting and confusing concept of intimacy.
Perhaps not.
Perhaps we initiate wilful failures and radical dissociations.
Perhaps we will break our hearts in some disastrous dissasemblage.

Tickets: 11.5 GBP, concessions 7.5 GBP
Book Now at: http://intimacydetails.eventbrite.com/
LIMITED CAPACITY

14:00-18:00
SEMINAR: AT RISK [Goldsmiths: Graduate School Seminar Room]
Leader: TRACEY WARR
Body Art puts an other human body in your lap in live performance, photographic document or on screen image. It has often made hard looking for audiences. It asks what is it to be human and what is it to be humane. In this workshop we will examine our own responses, responsibilities and complicities in relation to a range of historical and contemporary artists’ work, including Chris Burden, Gina Pane, Bruce Gilchrist, Marcus Coates, He Yun Chang and Mark Raidpere. We will consider our responses in relation to differing modes of proximity – as viewers of live performances, photographic documents and on screen images.
We will examine a range of theoretical positions on the issues of empathy and responsibility. In the 1930s psychologist Paul Schilder argued for a shared ontology between bodies, claiming that ‘the laws of identification and of communication between images of the body make one’s suffering and pain everybody’s affair’. Does Rosalind Krauss’ contention of an aesthetics of narcissism which she applied to video in the 1970s apply to the digital now? Kathy O’Dell’s critical work explores the notion of a contract of complicity between artist and audience. For Nelly Richard the body is ‘the meeting place between the individual and the collective … the boundary between biology and society, between drives and discourses’. Philosopher Elaine Scarry has demonstrated how the body has the status of being our most definite material reference point and is therefore used to give substance to ideologies or to take it away. The body has been the site of both ideological control and resistance.
Digital technologies have been a key influence in bringing the embodied consciousness and a metaphysics of the body back into focus. What qualities of human interaction are enabled or disabled by digital technologies? If our contemporary co-existence in both real and digital habitats is increasingly removing the distinction between real and fictional or simulated, fantasy and fact, how is that affecting our values? The computer or TV screen turns the live human into a digital object, an avatar. The digital tends to the specular, the solitary, the pornographic, the onanistic, the commodity. Can we play responsibly with each other in the digital domain?
Tickets: 7.5 GBP, concessions 4.5 GBP
Book Now at: http://intimacyatrisk.eventbrite.com/
LIMITED CAPACITY

18:30 - 23:00
LAUNCH OF INTIMACY - FREE, no booking required!

Come along for a very exciting evening of cutting-edge performances and a few glasses of wine, and SPREAD THE WORD.

An eclectic programme of live performances taking place at Goldsmiths Campus: Ben Pimlott Foyer & Seminar Rooms, George Wood Theatre and Studio 3.

With artists: SUKA OFF (Poland), Tale of Tales (Belgium), Avatar Body Collision (International) among many others.

Full Programme TBC soon - check website for frequent updates.

SATURDAY 8 DECEMBER

10:00-14:00 [Goldsmiths: Graduate School Seminar Room]
SEMINAR: PERFORMANCE AND PORNOGRAPHY
Leader: DR. DOMINIC JOHNSON, Queen Mary University of London
This seminar will address representations of erotic and sexual intimacy in performance. Performance will be explored as a staging of forbidden or otherwise troubled intimacies, thinking through works that figure intimacy between queers, intimacy with animals, and intimacy with children. Works for discussion may include Ron Athey and Lee Adam’s
/Revisions of Excess/ event, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s /Porcile/ and /Salo/, Kira O’Reilly’s /Inthewrongplaceness/, Tennessee Williams’ /Suddenly, Last Summer/, and the photography of Slava Mogutin, Robert Mapplethorpe and Richard Kern. In approaching these diverse performances of difficult intimacies, critical frameworks will be set up, deploying Emmanuel Levinas’s idea of the infinite intimacy that is the epiphany of the
face-to-face encounter; William Haver’s imagining of “the pornographic life” lived within the proximate horror of intimate risk; and Georges Bataille’s writings on the threat of intimate interiors as a “scandalous eruption”. In exploring these varied cultural practitioners, odd contiguities, favourable mutations and unfamiliar critical intimacies
may hopefully arise.
Tickets: 7.5 GBP, concessions 4.5 GBP
Book Now at: http://intimacypornography.eventbrite.com/
LIMITED CAPACITY

10:30-14:30
WORKSHOP: INTIMACY AND RECORDED PRESENCE [Goldsmiths: George Wood Theatre]
Leader: KELLI DIPPLE, Tate
This workshop will explore intimacy and presence within the context of the recorded image. Using as a basis for form, instruction based action and one to one performance. The camera is often the interface between performer, action and technology. It is a key element in the relationships between kinaesthetic forms and digital outputs. It is an important starting point and often under estimated. The relationship between performer and camera operator, whether working towards a pre-recorded or live output can be a creative and conversational partnership. With attention and development it can be a complex dialogue involving the intimate exchange of much knowledge. Participants will
explore the power of cinematography in the creation of intimacy and presence. Sound will also be discussed as an integral element.
Tickets: 7.5 GBP, concessions 4.5 GBP
Book Now at: http://intimacypresence.eventbrite.com/
LIMITED CAPACITY

11:00-18:00 [Goldsmiths: Small Hall /Cinema] - FREE, no booking required!
A MARATHON of SHOW & TELL presentations and SCREENINGS with selected artists from around the world.
Programme TBC soon - check website for frequent updates.

11:00-18:00 [The Albany: Community Rooms & Studio]
Performances with artists Sam Rose (UK), Mary Oliver (UK), Leena Kela (Finland), Rachelle Beaudoin (USA), Pierre Bongiovanni & Camille Renard (France) and Martina von Holn (UK), among others.
Programme TBC soon - check website for frequent updates.
Many of the performances are FREE to the public.

14:00-18:00
SEMINAR: (Dis)Embodiment
Leader: PROF. PAUL SERMON, University of Salford.
This seminar will identify and question the notions of embodiment and disembodiment in relation to the interacting performer in telematic and telepresent art installations.
At what point is performer embodying the virtual performer in front of them? And have they therefore become disembodied by doing so? A number of interactive telematic artworks will be looked at in detail during the seminar, establishing case-study examples to answer these questions. Stemming from Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz seminal work Hole-in-Space to Paul Sermon’s telepresent experiments with Telematic Dreaming and to the current immerging creative/critical discourse in ‘Second Life’ that polarizes fundamental existential questions concerning identity, the self, the ego and the (dis)embodied avatar.
Tickets: 7.5 GBP, concessions 4.5 GBP
Book Now at: http://intimacydisembodiment.eventbrite.com/
LIMITED CAPACITY

14:00-18:00
WORKSHOP: AVATAR PASTE AND CODE SOUP IN FIRST AND SECOND LIFE
Leaders: ASS. PROF. SANDY BALDWIN, West Virginia University & ALAN SONDHEIM
This workshop will take place in the virtual world Second Life, and will be conducted by Alan Sondheim and Sandy Baldwin, with participation by other artists and performers in Second Life. Participants from the Intimacy conference will be supplied with location and others details within Second Life. The workshop emerges from Sondheim and Baldwin’s ongoing exploration of analog and digital bodies, using a range of technologies to remap the solid and obdurate real of bodies into the dispersions and virtualities of the digital, and then back again into real physical spaces. The “avatar paste” of the title means at least three things.
Firstly, the pasting of viewpoints together, the suturing of the subject into the avatar. Secondly, paste as glue, as half-liquid and half solid, as a materiality of renewable and infinite pliability. This is the chora of the avatar, the body matrix that is less a framework than a smearing of paste. And thirdly, paste as pasty and dis/comfortable substance, paste as slimy and dripping. While this abjection is already implicit in paste as glue, the pastiness of paste involves the projection and dreaming through of the avatar, the inhabitation of avatar bodies and the emptying of real bodies into the avatar.
“Avatar paste” comes out in avatar motions and behaviors. Firstly, these are formed by symbolic orders, presenting surfaces to read in terms of sexuality, power, emotion, and other projections. At the same time, the pasty avatar body tends towards collapse and abjection. Work on the avatar becomes a choreography of exposure and rupture, modeling and presenting inconceivable and untenable data, within which tensions and relationships are immediate and intimate. One might imagine, then, this inconceivable data as a form of organism itself: as part of a natural world or a world already given; out of this we might think through new ideas of landscape, wilderness, hard ecology, the earth itself.
The workshop will theorize and demonstrate these topics. The first part discusses theoretical frameworks. Alan Sondheim will introduce the topic of dismemberment and telepresence in terms of the presence or appearance of abjection in Second Life avatars. He will connect this to the epistemology of emptiness vis-a-vis sheave theory and Buddhist philosophy, and then to the problems of motion and behavior of avatars. Sandy Baldwin will discuss the topography of limits in Second Life, both body limits and spatial limits, an connect this to issues of the hunt and animal display.
He will also discuss the dynamics of performance and audience in Second Life. The second part of the workshop will show off Sondheim and Baldwin’s approach to re-mapping live bodies into Second Life performances, including: video and other
examples of motion capture and scanning; intermediate processing of files (e.g. editing .bvh data or working with Blender); and then the resulting works, including documents of Second Life performances and re-mappings back into “first life” spaces with dancers and other live performers. The final part of the workshop will include avatar performance by Sondheim, Baldwin, and other participants in Second Life.
FREE!
Book Now by emailing: drp01mc (at) gold.ac.uk
LIMITED CAPACITY

19:30 [LABAN Studio Theatre]
World Première: SUNA NO ONNA (Woman of the Dunes)
Dans Sans Joux has been commissioned to create a new movement-design performance for Intimacy. Suna no Onna, adapted from Hiroshi Teshigahara’s mysterious 1960s cult movie, is a dance installation that merges virtual and real images of a life of existential entrapment in an inhospitable habitat. The ominous sand dunes of Teshigahara’s desert are transformed into virtual realities that shape the unconscious ground where the Woman (Katsura Isobe) meets a scientist-foreigner who stumbles into her life to become a captive.
The work combines dance, interactive video and animation, fashion design, and electronic music created by an ensemble of artists from diverse creative backgrounds. The integration of the various elements of this performance follows an experimental fashion design concept for the development of sensorial and interfacial garments (built with intelligent materials) which respond to movement qualities, energies and emotional gesture.
Conceived and directed by Johannes Birringer and Michèle Danjoux, the stage production features new fashion concepts by Danjoux and digital designs by a group of collaborating artists including Paul Verity Smith, Doros Polydorou, Maria Wiener, and Jonathan Hamilton. Original music is composed by Oded Ben-Tal, and the scenography is by Hsueh-Pei Wang. Lighting design by Miguel Alonso. Suna no Onna is performed by an international cast of three – Japanese dancer Katsura Isobe, British dancer Olu Taiwo, and Chinese dancer Helenna Ren.
Tickets: 12 GBP, concessions 8 GBP
Book Now at: https://www.purchase-tickets-online.co.uk/peo22430/default.asp
LIMITED CAPACITY

SUNDAY 9 DECEMBER

INTIMACY SYMPOSIUM

9:30-10:00
REGISTRATION & COFFEE

10:00-10:30

INTRODUCTION: RACHEL ZERIHAN & MARIA X

10:30-11:15
KEY SPEAKER: PROF. AMELIA JONES

11:15-13:15
Erotics of (Dis)Embodiment
Panel & Seminar Feedback
Speakers: Prof. Professor Paul Sermon, Dr Dominic Johnson, Ang Bartram, Kelli Dipple, Prof. Thecla Schiphorst
Chair: Prof. Janis Jefferies

13:15-14:15
Lunch Break – Cooking event with Hiwa K. (Iraq/Germany) and live performance with Adam Overton (USA)

14:15-16:00

AT RISK
Panel & Seminar Feedback
Speakers: Tracey Warr, Mine Kaylan, Kira O’Reilly, Dr Simon Jones, Jess Dobkin

Chair: Prof. Adrian Heathfield

16:00-16:30

Coffee Break

16:30-18:00
INTIMACY Open Discussion
Chair: Prof. Johannes Birringer

18:00-19:00
Live Performance with Anesthesia Associates (NZ)
Tickets: 14.5 GBP, concessions 9.5 GBP
Book Now at: http://intimacysymposium.eventbrite.com/
LIMITED CAPACITY

Supported by the Goldsmiths Graduate School and Digital Studios

 

6pm until 8pm, Seminar Rooms at Ben Pimlott Building (Ground Floor, right), Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, SE14 6NW

FREE, ALL ARE WELCOME. No booking required.

11 OCTOBER with CHRIS BOWMAN

GEO Landscapes and other sites of investigation…

 

 

 

Chris Bowman (University of Technology Sydney, Australia) gives an overview of his recent project GEO Landscapes. This presentation is an introduction to Phase 01 of the GEO Landscapes project which was recently demonstrated at BetaSpace, an experimental exhibition venue for interactive artworks at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney and explores prototype narrative structures which simulate ‘on-site’ engagement by a
potential visitor to a given site ( in this instance the Brickpit Ring walk at the Sydney Olympic Park) or multiple sites of investigation. The long-term aim of GEO Landscapes is how to create an augmented interactive audio-visual story-telling experience using interpretive mobile technologies and this will be defined over an iterative series of
phased developments. The ultimate experience is designed to be accessed through three principle technologies; a) handheld mobile devices, b) interactive audio visual public display and c) and web-community.

Bowman’s creative work for GEO Landscapes and other ‘sites of investigation’ features an exploration between corresponding video sequences, selected narratives and site-specific information (GPS) captured across two or more locations. Socially, this drawing together
of the virtual and the augmented space is designed to enrich the presence of the individual in the spaces or places and thereby enhance the interconnectivity of the user in the associated environment that supports remote creative collaboration and information access.

CHRIS BOWMAN is an Australian based artist, writer, director and teacher who works with film, and convergent media display systems. His research interests include interactive narrative systems, schematic representations of spatio-temporal interactive artworks and related film theory. Chris currently lectures in the Visual Communication Program in The Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building at UTS. He is an active
member of the Creativity and Cognition Studios and Co-Director of the Digital Design Group both at UTS.

–

 

1 NOVEMBER with VERONIQUE CHANCE & RACHEL STEWART

Live Run(ner) & Thinking Blue Sky

 

Veronique Chance’s research project (PhD Candidate Goldsmiths) considers
the dynamic relation between the physical presence of the body and its
presence as a screen image, through which she examines the impact of
visual media technologies on our conceptions and perceptions of the body
as a physical presence. The effects of these technologies on traditional
notions and conditions of physicality and representation mark, she
suggests, a shift in our relationship to, and understanding of the body
as a physical presence as we become more used to interacting and
communicating with the body through the immediacy of screen images. This
has led to questions regarding the body as a material presence and to
the technologically mediated image becoming associated with notions and
ideologies of disappearance and disembodiment. Chance understands the
condition of the body as being very much embedded in the material world
and approaches her project through the proposition of what she calls
‘the physicality of an image’, through which she argues for a
reconceptualisation of the materiality of the body through its physical
presence as an image.

For the Thursday Club Chance will present Live’ Run(ner), an artwork in
progress that will record and transmit live the Great North Run through
her own live experience of running the event. The idea is to recreate a
live transmission of her eye-view in real-time, as she run the course,
(literally ‘moving image’). Viewers would experience the event through
her eye-view as she runs, through being able to ‘pick up’ a signal on
their home computers and at wireless hotspots in the City.

VERONIQUE CHANCE is an artist practitioner and educator working across a
range of media. She is currently a PhD Candidate in Fine Art by Practice
at Goldsmiths. She also works as a Mentor for Artists in Residence
Project, Morley College, London; Associate Lecturer, Foundation Course,
Wimbledon School of Art; and Visiting Tutor, Fine Art/ArtHistory,
Goldsmiths.

&

Rachel Stewart’s research (PhD Candidate Goldsmiths) is based around an
engagement with the psycho-geography of the everyday sky and its
representation with contemporary visual culture. Stewart is interested
in how experiences of freedom, imagination, spirituality, orientation
and weight are contextualised within manifestations of the skies of the
post-human landscapes of C21st.

Her research addresses the literary and visual trope of the sky,
specifically the blue sky. The specific material she will discuss is an
index of sky photographs that she has been collecting for a number of
years. The photographs all detail a sky at the occurrence of ‘a sky
event’ i.e. the sky above the screening of James Benning’s Ten Skies, or
the Whitechapel exhibition of Gerhard Richter’s Atlas, or the sky above
Manuel de Landa talking of the sky as a painting of intensive different
at the Creative Evolutions Conference in 2005. The photographs detail
only the particular sky and contain no other visual information. They
could be construed as ‘eventless’. However, seen together these images
create a visual subject, a subject that works in a familiar way but also
starts to describe a new set of relations with this space.

RACHEL STEWART is a contemporary art curator and PhD candidate at
Goldsmiths Visual Cultures. As a curator she has worked both in
partnership with Helen Hayward and on behalf of other organisations on
commissions that include working with Mark Wallinger, Amy Plant, Lothar
Goetz, Daziell+ Scullion, James Ireland, Simon Periton, Mark Titchner,
Florain Balze and Rose Finn-Kelcey. From 1994-1998 Stewart set up,
edited, published and distributed independent arts magazine ENGAGED.

–

22 NOVEMBER with JOSEPH TABBI

Toward a Semantic Literary Web: Three Case Histories

Supported by Goldsmiths Department of English and Comparative Literature

 

 

 

In this talkm, Joseph Tabbi introduces a new literary and arts collective, Electronic Text + Textiles,whose members are exploring the convergence of written and material practices. While some associates create actual electronic textiles, Tabbi has explored the text/textileconnection as it manifests itself in writing produced within electronic environments. His online laboratory consists of two literary web sites, EBR, a literary journal in continuousproduction since 1995, and the Electronic Literature Directory , a project thatseeks not just to list works but to define an emerging field. Rather than regard these sites as independent or free-standing projects, Tabbi presents their development in combination with the current (and similarly halting) development of semantically driven content on theInternet (e.g., The Semantic Web, or Internet 2.0).

 

His purpose is to determine to what extent concepts can flow through electronic networks, as distinct from the predominant flow of information. The latter, in which documents are brought together by metatags, keywords, and hot links, is arguably destructive of literary value. Where tagging and linking depend on direct, imposed conectivity at the level of the signifier, the creation of literary value depends on suggestiveness, associative thought, ambiguity in expression and intent, fuzzy logic, and verbal resonance. At a time when powerful and enforced combinations of image and text threaten to obscure the differential basis of meaning as well as the potential for bringing
together, rather than separating, rhetorical modes, Electronic Text + Textiles seeks to recognize and encourage the production of nuanced, textured languages within electronic environments.

JOSEPH TABBI is the author of two books of literary criticism, Cognitive Fictions (Minnesota, 2002) and Postmodern Sublime (Cornell, 1995). He edits EBR and hosted the 2005 Chicagomeeting of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. He is Professor of Literature at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

–

 

13 DECEMBER with ALEX GILLESPIE, BRIAN O’NEILL & ROBB MITCHELL

Cyranoids…

 

 

How can “speaking the thoughts of others” enhance and subvert social
interaction both face-to-face and remotely ?

What is a cyranoid ? Cyranoids are people whose speech is being
controlled by another person. The term comes from the character Cyrano
de Bergerac in Edmond Rostand’s 19th Century play. Cyrano, who is ugly
but articulate, helps his handsome but inarticulate friend win the heart
of Roxane by providing eloquent and witty prompts from the sidelines.
The outcome is that Roxane falls in love with Cyrano’s mind through
interacting with the body of his friend. Stanley Milgram, a social
psychologist, in the 1970s coined the term cyranoid to describe a person
whose utterances were being controlled by a second person, the source,
via radio transmission. The cyranoid wears a headset which receives
input from a microphone in a different location. The source then speaks
into the microphone, and the cyranoid just has to repeat what they hear
in their ear. So that the source knows what is going on, the cyranoid
also wears a microphone which transmits everything it hears back to the
source. In this way one person can control the utterances of another
unbeknownst to other people. While the headsets used by Milgram were
conspicuous and limited to transmitting verbal data, now, it is possible
to use incredibly inconspicuous equipment to transmit both verbal
instruction and for the source to receive a video stream of what the
cyranoid is seeing. The internet means that the cyranoid and the source
can be separated by huge distances, with sources simply ‘logging in’ via
the web to a given cyranoid, being able to see and hear what the
cyranoid hears and sees, and then being able to transmit thoughts to the
cyranoid or living, breathing avatar.

The audiences are invited to participate in a social event cum
performance seminar and experience being cyranoids, synchronoids or
sources…

ALEX GILLESPIE holds a PhD in Social Psychology from the University of
Cambridge. His research concerns the Self and self-reflection and
explores the social interactional and cultural basis of the self. He is
a Lecturer at Stirling University and, currently, Co-chair of the
Organising Committee for the Fifth International Conference on the
Dialogical Self.

BRIAN O’NEILL is a clinical psychologist at Southern General Hospital,
Glasgow. He is interested in cognitive impairments, the disability they
cause and how assistive technology for cognition might provide useful
treatments. He also is founding member of Thunder Bug sound system.

ROBB MITCHELL is an artist, curator and events organiser who has
exhibited and lectured widely in the UK and abroad, among other venues
in: Market Gallery (Glasgow), Edinburgh College of Art, Intermedia
Gallery (Glasgow), Galerie Bortiers (Brussels), Artspace (Sydney), FACT
(Liverpool), Mediabath (Helsinki), ICA (London), CCA (Glasgow), National
Museum of Scotland (Edinburgh), Ars Electronica (Linz) and Eyebeam (NYC).

–

THE THURSDAY CLUB is an open forum discussion group for anyone
interested in the theories and practices of cross-disciplinarity,
interactivity, technologies and philosophies of the state-of-the-art in
today’s (and tomorrow’s) cultural landscape(s).

THURSDAY CLUB BOARD

MIGUEL ANDRES-CLAVERA PhD Candidate Goldsmiths Digital Studios; Member of Social Technology and Cultural Interfaces Research Group.

MARIA CHATZICHRISTODOULOU [aka MARIA X], Thursday Club Programme Manager; PhD Candidate Goldsmiths Digital Studios; Sessional Lecturer Birkbeck
FCE; Curator; Producer.

BRONAC FERRAN Director of boundaryobject.org; Member of DCMS Research and KT
taskgroup; Director of Interdisciplinary Arts at Arts Council England until March 2007.

JANIS JEFFERIES, Thursday Club Convener; Professor of Visual Arts, Department of Computing, Goldsmiths; Co-director Goldsmiths Digital Studios; Director Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in Textiles; Curator; Artist.

SARAH KEMBEDr.; Reader in New Technologies of Communication, Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths College; Writer.

MICHELA MAGAS PhD Candidate Goldsmiths Digital Studios; Co-director Stromatolite
Design Studio.

CARRIE PAECHTER

Professor of Educational Studies, Goldsmiths College; Dean of the
Goldsmiths Graduate School.

ROBERT ZIMMER Professor of Computing, Goldsmiths College; Co-director Goldsmiths
Digital Studios.

For more information Maria X at drp01mc@gold.ac.uk

To find Goldsmiths check http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/find-us/

NTIMACY
Across Visceral and Digital Performance

OPEN CALL FOR PAPERS, POSTERS & PERFORMANCES
INTIMACY Across Visceral and Digital Performance is supported by the AHRC ICT Methods Network, Goldsmiths Graduate School, Goldsmiths Digital Studios, Goldsmiths Drama Department, Goldsmiths Department of Visual Cultures and LABAN.

ABOUT
INTIMACY is a three-day interdisciplinary programme of events made to elicit connectivity, induce interaction and provoke debate between makers, participants and witnesses of works that explicitly address proximity and hybridity in performance. It will feature workshops, seminars, performances, posters, and a 1-day symposium. INTIMACY will employ digital and live art practices as agents, aiming to further practical exploration of and vibrant discourse into notions of intimacy in contemporary performance. It is framed as a forum for artists, scholars, community workers, performers, cultural practitioners, researchers and creative thinkers.

INTIMACY will provide a platform for the discussion of live art/performance practices concerned with displaying intuitive, intimate and visceral relationships between artist and other. It will explore performance practices that engage in intimate encounters, raising issues around bodies of data and flesh; presence as aura and representation; desire as embodied condition and disembodied fantasy; the human and posthuman self. Confirmed contributors include: Johannes Birringer, Kira O’Reilly, Tracey Warr, Janis Jefferies, Amelia Jones, Kelli Dipple, Dominic Johnson, Paul Sermon.

SPACETIME
INTIMACY will take place on the 7th, 8th and 9th December in and around Goldsmiths University of London, LABAN and The Albany (South London).

CO-DIRECTORS
Rachel Zerihan and Maria Chatzichristodoulou [aka maria x]

BOARD
Prof. Johannes Birringer, Chair in Drama and Performance Technologies, School of Arts, Brunel University of West London; Artistic Director of AlienNation Co.
Hazel Gardiner, Senior Projects Officer, AHRC ICT Methods Network; Researcher.
Prof. Adrian Heathfield, School of Arts, Roehampton University; Writer; Curator.
Prof. Janis Jefferies, Artistic Director, Goldsmiths Digital Studios; Director Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in Textiles; Artist; Writer; Curator.
Gerald Lidstone, Head of Drama Department, Goldsmiths University of London.

PROPOSALS
All participants will be selected on an open submissions basis. Proposals will be peer reviewed by the INTIMACY Board and Advisory Panel. Proposals must not exceed the word limit specified. You may provide additional info such as links to digital material including online video, photos and websites. Further supporting documentation such as hard copies and discs are welcome; if you want these returned please enclose a SAE. We are accepting proposals for:

Paper presentations or Performance Lectures
Poster presentations
Live performances -physical and/or digital

Proposals should be concerned with the relationship between visceral and digital environments/methodologies being explored in contemporary performance practice. Specifically, topics of interest include but are not limited to:
The politics of intimacy in contemporary performance
Risk in relation to intimacy in contemporary performance
Pornography/erotics and performed intimacy
(Dis)embodiment, (tele)presence and intimate performance encounters
Technologies as affective instigators of intimacy
Intimate aesthetics in contemporary performance
Interfaces of performed desire

Accepted proposals will be published on our website. Further publishing possibilities are being explored.

HOW TO SUBMIT
Submit by email to Maria X at <drp01mc@gold.ac.uk> and Rachel Zerihan <intimacyrachelz@yahoo.co.uk> writing INTIMACY SUBMISSION in the subject line.
Send hard copies to INTIMACY c/o 22 Dutton Street, London, SE10 8TB.

Performances: Submit 1) 500-word statement detailing your project; 2) 200-word CV; 3) Tech Drive; 4) Any other supporting material as described above. Please note that only limited technical support can be provided.

Papers/ Performance Lectures: Submit 1) 500-word abstract. This contribution would form a 15 minute paper to be presented at the Symposium on Sunday 9th December; 2) 200-word CV; 3) Any other supporting material as described above.

Posters: Submit 1) 300-word abstract /summary; 2) 200-word CV; 3) Any other supporting material as described above.

DEADLINE
Deadline for submissions: 19 August 2007.
Notification of acceptance: early October 2007

ADVISORY PANEL

Daisy Abbot, AHDS Performing Arts Glasgow
Sylvette Babin, Artist, Editor, Canada
Gavin Barlow, The Albany
Alice Bayliss, School of Performance and Cultural Industries, University of Leeds
Lauren Berlant, Department of English, University of Chicago, USA
Ghislaine Boddington, Performer, Body>Data>Space
Susan Broadhurst, School of Arts, Brunel University of West London
Brian Brady, LABAN
Teresa Dillon, Polar Produce
Simon Donger, Central School of Speech and Drama
Anna Furse, Drama Department, Goldsmiths University of London
Marc Garrett, Artist, Furtherfield
Gabriella Giannachi, Centre for Intermedia, University of Exeter
Joe Kelleher, School of Arts, Roehampton University
Roberta Mock, Faculty of Arts, University of Plymouth
Morrigan Mullen, Re-Write
Chris Salter, Artist, Hexagram; Department of Design and Computational Arts, Concordia University, Canada
Jennifer Sheridan, BigDog Interactive
Igor Stromajer, Artist, Slovenia
Bojana Kunst, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Tony Thatcher, Choreographer, LABAN
Helen Varley Jamieson, Performer, New Zealand

For more information on INTIMACY also check http://www.intimateperformance.org or contact intimacyrachelz@yahoo.co.uk or drp01mc@gold.ac.uk for full details of the call

INTIMACY is a culturally urgent series of events designed to address an aesthetically and formally diverse set of responses to the notion of ‘being intimate’.

Intimacy has been constructed as a three-day interdisciplinary programme of events made to illicit connectivity, induce interaction and provoke debate between makers of and witnesses to works that explicitly address proximity and hybridity in performance. Digital and live art performance practices will be used as agents to further practical exploration of and vibrant discourse into intimate inter-actions. Resisting rigid forms of communication such as paper-giving and conference proceedings, collaborative techniques have instead been adopted to platform interactive strategies including workshops, seminars, roundtable discussions and performances. Intimacy is framed as a forum for artists, scholars, community workers, performers, cultural practitioners, researchers and creative thinkers.

Performance and live artists appear to be making work which addresses the disparity and isolation that breeds throughout communities facing direct and indirect conflict. Responding to the cultural climate of acute (in)security, current live art practice is explicitly addressing our relationship to one another in environments of extreme closeness and heightened connectivity. The current explosion in One to One performances (a performer, literally performing to an audience of one), for example, is an encounter that’s becoming increasingly rife in new performance festival showcases. Intimacy will provide a platform for the discussion of sub-cultural practices concerned with displaying intuitive, intimate and visceral relationships between artist and other. As such, it affords contemporary practitioners, theorists and students the opportunity of practical and critical engagement with co-ordinates that currently define these practices.

“How are bodies represented through technology? How is desire constructed through representation? What is the relationship of the body to self-awareness?” [Stone, Allucquère Rosanne The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age Cambridge, Mass. & London: MIT Press, 1995, p. 17]

Intimacy will employ these questions as a starting point to explore performance practices that engage in intimate encounters, raising issues around bodies of data and flesh; presence as aura and representation; desire as embodied condition and disembodied fantasy; the human and posthuman self. At the same time, it will explore technologies that can enhance ‘closeness’: networking technologies such as the Internet, wireless networks, telecommunications and Web.02; sensor technologies; virtual reality and other digital multi-user environments. These technologies of inter-subjectivity generate heterotopias that can function as the settings for beautiful and threatening encounters. Intimacy will allow for a hands-on exploration of such technologies as a means for intimate inter-actions in digital and hybrid performance practices.

The final outcome will be an online publication in the form of a media wiki which will host papers, reports, and AV documentation of the diverse events. Parts of the publication, such as the reports and documentation, will be made accessible to everyone to rewrite, re-edit and reuse. Intimacy’s open, collaborative and process-driven publication, rather than offering a fixed outcome edited by a sole author, will aim to ensure a multiplicity of voices and initiate an ongoing discussion and exchange among members of the communities.

Featuring performances, workshops, seminars and a symposium, Intimacy invites established scholars, current researchers, leading and emergent artists and eager audiences to enable the interrogation and creative exploration of formal, aesthetic and affective modes of performing intimacy now.

Intimacy is co-organised by Maria Chatzichristodoulou [aka maria x] , PhD Candidate at the Goldsmiths Digital Studios and Drama Department, University of London & Sessional Lecturer at Birkbeck College FCE; and Rachel Zerihan, PhD Candidate at the Performance and Live Art Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University.

Intimacy Committee:

• Prof. Johannes Birringer, Chair in Drama and Performance Technologies, School of Arts, Brunel University of West London; Artistic Director of AlienNation Co.
• Hazel Gardiner, Senior Projects Officer, AHRC ICT Methods Network; Researcher.
• Dr. Adrian Heathfield, Principal Research Fellow (Performance and Live Arts), School of Art and Design, Nottingham Trent University; Writer; Curator.
• Prof. Janis Jefferies, Artistic Director, Goldsmiths Digital Studios; Director Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in Textiles; Artist; Writer; Curator.
• Gerald Lidstone, Head of Drama Department, Goldsmiths University of London.

The Thursday Club is an open forum discussion group for anyone interested in the theories and practices of cross-disciplinarity, interactivity, technologies and philosophies of the state-of-the-art in today’s (and tomorrow’s) cultural landscape(s). The Club is supported by the Goldsmiths Digital Studios (GDS) and the Goldsmiths Graduate School.

Originally set up in October 2005 by GDS as a more informal setting for research discussions, it has grown to include over 150 members, artists, technologists, scientists, in fact, a growing diversity of people from different communities worldwide, that are now connected via a mailing list and online forum.

There are also regular meetings in ‘real’ space at the Ben Pimlott site of Goldsmiths, University of London. Anyone can attend these events. By keeping these meetings free, informal and open to all, we provide a platform for diverse and open ended discourse, for people who perhaps would not have the opportunity to discuss ideas outside of their chosen discipline.

The Thursday Club brings together people from diverse fields and degrees of expertise, aiming to initiate discussion and debates among postgraduate students, researchers, academics, artists, theorists, and other cultural practitioners.

Since it focuses on interdisciplinary practices, the Club is interested to experiment with innovative formats of presentation that are appropriate to the nature of the subject. We particularly welcome the proposal of round table discussions, panels, screenings, ‘hearings’, live gigs and performance lectures as well as more traditional presentations. We are also interested to platform experimental work-in-progress, of both practical and theoretical nature.

Submission Materials

1. An A4 size page with your proposal (about 500 words); any relevant links; 1-2 pictures if relevant.

2. A 200 words CV

3. Your contact details: name, address, email and telephone number

4. Selected additional audiovisual information (e.g. audio and video files) preferably as a link.

Please send any submissions by email to Maria X at <drp01mc@gold.ac.uk> writing ‘Thursday Club Submission’ as a Subject.

The deadline for the submission of proposals is 29 JULY 2007. The submissions will be reviewed by the Thursday Club Board.

THURSDAY CLUB BOARD

Miguel Andres-Clavera
PhD Candidate Goldsmiths Digital Studios; Member of Social Technology and Cultural Interfaces Research Group.

Maria Chatzichristodoulou [aka Maria X], Thursday Club Coordinator
PhD Candidate Goldsmiths Digital Studios; Sessional Lecturer Birkbeck FCE; Curator.

Bronac Ferran
Director of boundaryobject.org; Member of DCMS Research and KT taskgroup; Director of Interdisciplinary Arts at Arts Council England until March 2007.

Prof. Janis Jefferies, Thursday Club Convener
Professor of Visual Arts, Department of Computing, Goldsmiths; Co-director Goldsmiths Digital Studios; Director Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in Textiles; Curator; Artist.

Dr Sarah Kember
Reader in New Technologies of Communication, Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths College; Writer.

Michela Magas
PhD Candidate Goldsmiths Digital Studios; Co-director Stromatolite Design Studio.

Prof. Carrie Paechter
Professor of Educational Studies, Goldsmiths College; Dean of the Goldsmiths Graduate School.

Prof. Robert Zimmer
Professor of Computing, Goldsmiths College; Co-director Goldsmiths Digital Studios.

Shadow puppets, flights of fancy, air guitar and a visit to a London building site will be some of the virtual attractions at 070707 UpStage Festival - a feast of online performances on July 7, 2007 to celebrate the release of UpStage 2.

New Zealand and international artists are creating work specifically for the UpStage environment, which will be performed for an online audiences and simultaneously screened at the New Zealand Film Archive in Wellington.

UpStage is software that allows audiences from anywhere in the world to participate in live online performances, created in real time by remote players. Audiences need only an internet connection and web browser and can interact through a text chat tool while the players use images to create visual scenes, and operate “avatars” - graphical characters that speak aloud and move.

The diversity of proposals for the festival has impressed the organisers. “It’s exciting to see UpStage being used in such a variety of ways,” said UpStage project manager Helen Varley Jamieson. “We have all manner of artists - writers, musicians, dancers, performers, videographers, story-tellers - experimenting with how they can use the internet as a creative medium and a site for their work.”

The full list of performances and artists is attached and is on the UpStage web site. Performance times will be publicised on the UpStage and New Zealand Film Archive web sites soon, and live links to the stages will be accessible from the UpStage web site on July 7; online audiences just need to click!

The performances will be screened live in the the New Zealand Film Archive mediagallery where visitors can buy a coffee, take a seat and watch the performances taking place from remote locations around the world. Exhibitions Manager Mark Williams says “It will be like watching a live movie, as the shows unfold in front our eyes.”

UpStage workshop facilitator Vicki Smith has been providing graphic, technical and tutorial support for artists and education groups who are creating performances, and says that the level and range of work being produced promises breathtaking cyberformances (online performances) for audiences to view and take part in.

UpStage 2 is funded by the Community Partnership Fund of the NZ Government’s Digital Strategy, with the support of partners CityLink, MediaLab and Auckland University of Technology, and developed by programmer and digital artist Douglas Bagnall.

The launch takes place on 28 June and will be accompanied by an exhibition at the NZ Film Archive from 28 June to 15 July, and the festival on 7 July.

For further information and images, contact:

Helen Varley Jamieson, helen@upstage.org.nz

Vicki Smith, vicki@upstage.org.nz

In the summer of 2006, Adnan Hadzi and I did some interviews of Deptford.TV participants. Our aim was to use this material in order to write an essay as well as create a video-essay for the book:
Yiakoumaki, Nayia & Karaba, Elpida Feedback 4.0 London: OpenMute (forthcoming, 2007)

The video-essay is available to view and download at http://www.deptford.tv/bm/ 

You can also access the rough video material of the interviews on Deptford.TV once you register as a member. All the rough material is available to download, re-use and re-edit.

We also used the interview materials to write a different version of this essay for:

Deptford.TV The Deptford.TV Diaries London: OpenMute, 2007

This is a book you can order online, but it is also available to download for free at:

http://www.deptford.tv/about/diaries/DeptfordTV-diaries1.pdf

http://www.deptford.tv/about/diaries/DeptfordTV-diaries1-cover.pdf

Here you can find transcripts and notes on the interviews, which you can use for your own work, or indeed to rewrite our essay from your own perspective.

::

Interview with James Stevens (JS) by Maria X (MX): transcript

MX James thank you for taking the time. Can you briefly introduce yourself –although of course we know who you are…
JS I’m afraid I can’t do it briefly…
MX Oh, OK!
JS I’m James Stevens and here we’re sitting at GiftSpace which is one of a series of public media labs and open activity spaces that opened in London over the last ten years. (00:27). It’s the second in this area, in Southeast London. There is one called DeckSpace which is in Greenwhich, and SPC is an organisation which fosters open spaces and public access media and technology projects. (00:4 It’s a subscriber system which allows people to come and get involved at any sort of level, be it on peacemail (?) or deeper engagement like Deptford.TV. (01:04)
MX Why is it that you decided to support Deptford.TV?
JS From all of the strands of activity that have been the most consistent through the SPC I guess are the use of video, Internet and access to technology, which are the key threads. So when Adnan approached me with his proposal it just seemed to fit in in many many ways and I was enthusiastic that I could give him maybe help.
MX OK. (01:3 Which were your expectations of the project to start with , and I was also wondering whether they’ve changed through the last few months that it’s been running.
JS Well, I’ve gathered now a much deeper understanding of what the ambition is (01:56) and we’ve sorted out on all sorts of levels how I can help, how we can work together, and how I can bring other people in to actually make some contribution as well. And although the bases of collaborative practices are well-known, I think it’s only when you get down to the business you want to do with somebody that you realise which is the best way that is going to be effective in that time. (02:23) I’ve been doing that for quite a long while so I’m quite adaptable, and that’s what I like. I like to be able to do this, to adapt almost as much of the system as we’ve got in any time to suit almost any project (02:3 requesting help. So, yeah, we’ve been able to access all sorts of resources to fit Adnan’s way and obviously that of all the other collaborators of the project. So there’s the physical spaces in Greenwich where they’re doing workshops and the production space upstairs in DeckSpace and hopefully we’re also aiming towards some of the wireless network infrastructure for them to distribute their material (03:07), there’s lots of different aspects.
MX And your expectations in terms of… I mean, I asked why you’re supporting it and you mentioned access to technology, and so is this your main expectation of the project? (03:19)
JS Well, I think, if you’re trying to develop a sort of interest with people which is potentially for my benefit, which is one of the best ways to demonstrate functionality, and if you do that leaving the door open for them to walk in, they’ll almost accidentally pick up the pieces and have a go themselves. (03:39) Any effort that steps in that direction has got to be ….(?). So my expectation is, and I think we’ve realised that at an early stage, that people can come without previous experience and have a go, in making a film, cutting it down in little bits and then putting it back together in a different order (04:00), playing and annotating… And of course with a proposal like Deptford.TV you have quite an advanced scheme, can process it in high level, and make it available in a way that others can pick up and use. I think it’s right across the grading, that’s what is interesting about it. I’m not sure I understand, I’m not familiar with all of the processes (04:25) that have been recommended so I’m a student as well. I’m happy to be so.
MX In which way do you mean?
JS Well, in terms of, I mean, I don’t have that much experience in collaborative editing for instance.
MX Right.
JS And that’s the focus of the whole project. So how you go about that, how you put those ideas in place, how you actually introduce them to get people familiar with… It’s quite a delicate process of putting one thing next to another and making sure the name is…
MX Sure (04:57)
JS Or that the attributions are accurate and the references about the way the movie is shot and what format was it originally in, putting the tapes in order… You know, these are all things that when you’re working on your own, in terms of film-making which is a quiet experience, you end up putting the tape in your bag, and resort to your memory later on. And you know, if you get a chance to edit the film, which is not always possible, you sort of retro-fit some kind of production model to that. Whereas Adnan’s recommending something very particular, (…) that is quite a good example of collaborative effort. (05:40)
MX OK. So, the first part of the questions was about the project. The rest is also about the project but it’s kind of breaking down into three bits: there’s one bit about collaboration, another about authorship, and another about community. (05:56) And so, I’m kind of aware that we’re using these terms that are like time-bombs like Gordon was saying… He said ‘oh, don’t say the term diversity, don’t…’
JS Diversity?
MX Diversity, yes. Someone else was like ‘oh community, my god, these are the people you don’t want to meet’… (06:12) So I’m kind of asking people to define these words…
JS OK
MX …that are heavy with a lot of connotations and everybody uses them for their own agenda.
JS Yeah, yeah
MX So let’s strip them down to basics and see..
JS OK
MX So what does collaboration mean to you? You’ve worked a lot on collaborative projects and so it’s quite valuable to get your take on that. (06:33)
JS Collaboration is when you reach some consensus with others around you to pursue a single or a collective aim. I think that as much as creativity is the construction of something out of nothing, collaboration supports that activity by enriching it with different influences. (07:11) It is a partner if you like to creative practices.
MX I’m going to ask you what you think you contributed to the project as a collaborator, and of course that’s quite a silly question…
JS Well
MX …because you’ve supported it in so many ways. (07:27) But, you know, I’m talking with people, for example Gordon was saying ‘oh James, he’s got his fingers in many pies’.
JS Yes, it’s true!
MX Or Janine was saying ‘oh James, he’s a legend’. So your name has come up a lot… So I’m asking what you contributed in terms of technical, tangible stuff, but also, you know, in terms of your unique personality, who you are, your experience… You know, you have a very unique background. (07:57)
JS I have an interest in making things possible. I’m trying to lift the (cloud?) over people’s ambitions, aims. I think, in the beginning, when I started exploring those specific activities for myself, it was about helping musicians to get their music heard or with the production, or to make a record. That’s sort of a punk ethos if you like. (08:27) It’s been a long experiment in terms of trying to reduce the obstacles that people feel they face when they’re trying to get involved in complex or expert areas of practice like music production, or making a web page. These sort of things that seem very simple these days by comparison but in the early 1990s there wasn’t much experience. (09:00) So people felt these obstacles were in place and they presumed other things would interfere with their dreams if they weren’t able to get them – if they had no money… That is one of the most important fears people face (09:13) as an obstacle. The secondary one is what sort of space they have available to work on a regular basis. That led to setting up all the public spaces so that people didn’t have that as an obstacle any more. Maybe they couldn’t monopolize it, but they could come on an incidental basis and meet other people, share resources and ideas. That worked very well with BackSpace in the first instance and more latently with DeckSpace and this space here, Gift in Deptford. (09:47)
MX So you’ve kind of made accessible the process in a way.
JS Yeah. I mean, if I’m ahead at all I’m only one step ahead of everybody else’s practice, and that’s just because I want to make sure that some kind of facilitation can be made. (10:02) So I have an interest in all sorts of technical things obviously, but GiftSpace is orientated toward radio development and the exploration of spectrum, because radio transfers power, and that’s why it’s legislated so closely. And so, our experience with that is very limited, because it has been one of the most closely guarded aspects of media. There are changes being made to the legislation at the moment which suggest that some more power is being handed back to the people. But if you think of the history of radio, it’s 100 years history and how it started, it hasn’t even returned to a full circle in terms of the access people potentially have (10:5 to this ubiquitous medium. You know, the aether, the air to operate in.
MX Yeah… I do remember when I was a teenager, there were all these pirate radio stations in Greece…
JS Right
MX …and we’d kind of listen to them really obsessively… Within a year’s time they were all gone, there was nothing left. (11:22)
JS You think that was due to the Goverment?
MX Yeah, sure, it was
JS They clamped them down?
MX Yeah, yeah
JS Well, you know, there’s a sort of perception, isn’t there… which is broken in London, I guess it’s quite a unique space in that respect… but there are local pirate stations in every district and all of the spare frequencies in the FM band are taken for establishing independent broadcast, and that’s fascinating. (11:55) I haven’t travelled that widely to find out if that’s happened elsewhere. It’s the same in Greece, it’s been stamped on.
MX Yes
JS Elsewhere in the UK it’s also closely guarded
MX Ah, right.
JS Here in London somehow… It’s not permissive but there’s such a volume of it that the authorities just have to pick and choose when they act and when they drop it. (12:1 I guess if you’re thinking about the emergence of wireless LAN that’s been a success in exploiting just a very tiny thin slider of the radio spectrum that is available for us to use. And also that’s why a lot of manufacturers have produced equipment that use that band. Even from the outset the perception was that somehow we were really committed to using this stuff. (12:4 And when we first begun Consume (?) which is an advocacy for free network, it’s using WiFi and other technologies, which we started in 2000, the response was ‘oh my god James, you’re trying to get me into another legally indistinct practice (13:13) that maybe is a law-breaking thing’. And that really is a bit of space that we can use. And I guess, you know, back to this issue of space, I guess that’s the other big agenda: it’s to identify usable public space, (13:2 and exploit it.
MX James you were saying at the beginning that your aim was to help people make things happen, and to facilitate access to technologies and to processes that used to be for experts only.
JS Yes
MX What do you gain out of that? Why do you do that?
JS Well, I like doing that, I like exploring those spaces myself. (13:52) And this is not a solitary practice, it is something that works best collaboratively because you can’t know everything about these areas. The more people you engage with the wider your experience and knowledge growth. I mean, you can’t really do it any other way. I think you’d be rather arrogant to just sit there and assume that you have all the answers. (14:15) So I try to be as open as possible about how we approach things. But, you know, I guess I’m getting trapped in my own way about my own methods. For example, I’m quite anti-funding in a way for a good reason.
MX Yeah, I’ve heard about that. (14:29)
JS There are influences on our practices that we have to learn to run away from. And one of the biggest influences and destructions from really good practice is the question of funding. And if you are working… if you’re actually around the centre of the operation you’re preoccupied with the funding of all those operations. So you’re maybe not spending your time effectively because you really need to be with people, investing in relationships and just acknowledging what else is going on.
MX Yeah, I have experienced that…
JS I think everyone who has been involved in some kind of funding project has experienced that. It’s some kind of whiplash (15:18), and it’s not readily perceptible what that actually is.
MX It has to do with sustainability as well, doesn’t it?
JS Well, there are definitely sustainability issues that arise once money is introduced that hasn’t naturally come up through the project, at the point when that money expires, and then what happens, you know…
MX Yeah
JS You crash and burn, or do you seek new funding or (15:49) you build on something that sits more naturally in the landscape which doesn’t necessarily need extra support and sustenance all the time. But yeah, I can definitely be opportunistic about resources. If you find a new pool, you can dip into that and drink from it but you need to always look beyond to find any means of self-support that fit in the landscape of this operation. (16:21) It’s sensitive stuff.
MX I’m aware of time so I’ll move on and ask: you have done a lot of collaborative projects and that’s a collaborative project as well, so do you think it is diverse enough? And you can also tell us what ‘diverse’ means for you. When we were writing that we were thinking in terms of, you know, age, race, all that kind of stuff that normally are what we mean by diversity, but…
JS Cultural diversity?
MX There’s also disciplines, so people coming from different disciplines working together (16:59) and bringing together different fields like software, content, technical expertise or whatever.
JS The cultural diversity thing is a funding preoccupation if you like
MX Is it only a funding preoccupation?
JS Well it’s part of a measurable process, isn’t it? A measure of success or a measure of engagement. You can demonstrate some contact with either indigenous or transient populations in an area where you are seen to serve the community end. (17:36) So I’m not an expert to judge whether a project meets these ends but I think in Deptford it’s easy to observe how widely diverse the population is. As a white middle-class boy you’re not necessarily privileged in Deptford. You know, there’s a huge Vietnamese community here, Somalian… (18:04) And they’re somewhat resistant, or have a compassion of their own that doesn’t allow for someone to go strolling in. Now if anybody… I mean I will if I find this thread leading me there. But there’s a sort of privacy about the way a lot of communities co-exist. (18:31) You can’t just cross that threshold very easily. Even in an Estate. I’ve done some work very recently with an Estate here called Crossfields. I’s a very mixed community, and the characters who have opened it I think are the characters that historically have been the ones that stepped forward and actually said things or asked questions. (18:54) So the question of community is a hard thing to actually measure the success of. Because the people who you really want to get involved generally don’t get involved because they don’t feel they’re invited. They never hear the voice of your intention even if you are well placed. Even if you live in the Estate it’s really hard probably to speak to everybody or even half the people. And that’s the comment I’ve heard back from some of the people living there. This is a very micro-examination of one aspect of this area. (19:34) If we extend that and take it across the area – I mean Deptford stretches from Greenwhich on one side to Southward on the other side and I think there’s Bromley… The Deptford area is a bit of a vague border so…
MX Yeah it is…
JS …and it really has a huge variety of communities in it. (19:54)
MX Do you think a project like Deptford.TV or other collaborative projects of this kind that have… because the subject of this project as well has to do with communities, it’s about the regeneration of this are so it’s kind of localised or whatever this is called, specific in terms of locality or whatever… Do you think such projects should be concerned with issues of diversity in any way? I mean should they be developing new strategies of approaching this issue specifically (20:22), which don’t have to do with funding, or measuring, or statistics or anything like this?
JS How do you prove diversity?… You know, as soon as you’re in public presenting the product, which is what we’re after, and you can close the circle, or at least one loop, so you can express all of the processes involved and bring it to an audience because those who have been involved take it forward themselves…(20:55) You see, the danger is that with a strong project that has a very specific thrust or intent like this one, it gets a bit preciously guarded if not by the originator then by the first group who have arisen to support or get involved in it. Because there’s so much to it, they’re not really able to carry the whole thing forward and it ends up circulating around the originator and not really been taken up and championed effectively by others who would be the ones able to feed it back best into the system. (21:40) What is done is done, so when it is introduced into the system, can it be taken the whole circle and then lost into the community in a way? ‘Cause that’s kind of what you want to happen, you want people to feed in and modulate it themselves. (21:55) And that is a huge ambition or aim for the project that might take five or ten years to realise so, you know, shall we all be able to sustain and support it by then? And is it about community TV or is it just about exposing tools and opportunities to people, to then use in a completely different way than what was anticipated? I think that is perhaps more likely. (22:20) It may be that this is just about people discovering that they can do something, enable them to express an anxiety more specifically to the council. If that ends up being the outcome, and that can be done by a couple of people using video cameras, because they had a little bit of practice speaking to a camera and recording it and looking back at it, and looking through the things that were important that can convey the message, this is a result that you can be satisfied with.
MX Yeah
JS That isn’t necessarily the whole remit of the project, but that may be the sort of residue that comes out of it. (23:00) And people have access to all this equipment, they can much more readily find whatever in order to do this… So they don’t need a video camera like this one.
MX OK!
JS And I think they should be directed towards the easiest means of producing a useful product. (23:20)
MX OK, now I want to go on to authorship. And I am sure you remember, at the conference that Adnan organised there were some film-makers raising the issue of authorship in relation to control. For example they were saying ‘what happens if we contribute our footage or our edited material and then someone take it over and uses it for a completely different purpose we don’t agree with, like an ideological purpose we don’t agree with, or for commercial purposes or whatever. And people we have been interviewing seem to be quite cool with that, they say ‘that’s fine, that’s what I contribute my material for’. They’re aware that this can happen and that’s the risk you take. (24:03) But it seems to be that in a broader context this is quite an important issue and people keep raising it, maybe people that are not that experienced with open source software or collaborative projects, or stuff… So what, you know, what you think about that? (24:20)
JS It was funny, that was quite an amusing bundle of contradictions when people talk about their rights and what they perceive they’ve guarded already, and what they’re gonna get out there… Because if you’re talking through the whole process if you like of origination, and then you know, manipulation, and production and something else, they’re all happy to actually make things available for nothing, they’re not looking for a remuneration or a financial award or whatever. (25:01) And it’s a rarity that the work will get to a finished state, so there’s that side of it, and then there’s the collaboration. Well, people aren’t all that familiar with putting all their stuff in a pot and having it remixed but that’s a process, as soon as you get involved then you realise the benefit of it. (25:22) Then there is this rights issue, which is being terribly machine-gunned around the place…
MX Yeah
JS …as if we don’t have any rights. But of course we all have a really strongly litigated and robust set of legal rights in the UK and elsewhere in the Western Europe and many places around the world, (25:49) which bound in law or protect our material rights as producers of media or whatever. The introduction of more modern licenses is to try and navigate the open space – it’s not about describing a true openness, it’s a kind of restricted openness what it’s trying to describe, it’s about saying ‘I’m happy to share this material on the basis that you remember who they are who’ve made it, and in case you find some informational opportunity you have to tell me in case I want to change the licenses so we can share the money. (26:31) I think that’s behind it. I think if people were aware of the intricacies of the Creative Commons and some of the other licenses that have been suggested, then they would never really get the point of releasing it into this space to be shared. If they knew all the intricacies of it, if they were actually interested enough to go through it all, they’d be horrified (27:04)
MX Right!
JS …at the implications of what there is ahead in terms of commercial systems starting to identify with these resources if you let them to their own ends. Because they won’t need to be paying anybody any money back. There will be some way of machine-stitching available material together, it will be published on the Internet into a form that will benefit them or whatever, and seem to upset the advocate of libertarian ideas (27:43)

I guess in terms of my own thing about copyright, I don’t like to be misrepresented. I’ll very vigorously contest that if I think people are doing it. So in the end of the day, I think what I’m saying is: if you feel that you want to assign a license or a special copyright to the material you’ve produced, you’ve got to be prepared to stand up if you feel somebody is contravening your licence. (00:36) And that of course is the difficulty step that you have to face if you really want to be part of the commercial landscape or if you want to defend (your work) against commercial exploitation. You have to get into litigation, there isn’t anything in between. You got to expect that (….) for everybody on the planet, because Commons licence is not gonna be practical. If the law is… and the exploitation of all these licences hasn’t started to happen yet, but it will. And someone is going to be doing an engineering job on the whole thing, an awful lot of public media. (01:12)
MX So did you contribute film as well to Deptford.TV?
JS No I don’t think I have. I really kind of stood back in a way. Because there were possibly enough people with preconception about how to shoot film and put it in involved in it. And I could see that I should help to get those people as much support as possible.

Interview with Janine Lai (J) by Maria X (MX): transcript

MX Can you introduce yourself briefly?
J My name is Janine. I’ve lived in Peckham for a very long time, near Deptford, and it’s got a similar background: it is a poor area. Both areas are being regenerated and I think they’re going through the same kind of phase, maybe Peckham is a bit more advanced in that it had more money spent on it. I know Peckham very well.
MX How would you describe Deptford.tv as a project?
J It is a very interesting project. When Adnan told me about it I thought it’s a cool idea. The politics and the people I’m involved with like to think that we could share everything (01:29) including film, and sound. So I was already in that mindset. A lot of people as soon as they film something they want to own it and they don’t want to share it because it could be abused or whatever. But I think that all these different laws that protect your film… I don’t know, for me I want my film to be seen from as many people as possible really and I know that I’m not going to become a rich person by making films, it’s not why I’m doing that. I was already in that mindset, I wanted to work collaboratively and to share.
(02:19) MX So I suppose you answered the question of why you decided to take part in the project, I suppose it was because of the politics of sharing and collaborative working.
J Yeah, that’s quite important and I think, you know, even in my class a lot of people still don’t really get it, you know, they want to own the thing they’ve shot but I don’t feel like that.
MX Was the subject also a reason you chose to take part in the project, the fact it deals with the regeneration in Deptford, (02:52) or if it would be dealing with something completely different you would still be interested because of the politics of sharing?
J Hmm, that’s really interesting question. I have been through a regeneration process. Where I lived with my mum our flat was demolished and we were rehoused into a new space and I literally saw the area coming up from rubble and then it all very quickly came up. (03:1 So I was interested personally in the regeneration, in taking loads of pictures of the area ’cause I knew it would disappear. It was automatic for me to want to preserve bits of where I used to play and where I used to live. So I had a mini-art project in mind, I wanted to take photos for 8 years. I did actually make a High8 film, it was like a ghost-town of an estate, you know all these boarded up windows, it was really scary. (03:57) I filmed for a couple of weeks over the summer and it was just completely empty, there were a few pigeons everywhere… And I’ve got some film somewhere, someone probably will want it some day…
MX OK
J I’ve got this as my own personal history (04:15) as I used to play there, my friends used to live at the estate, so… So with Deptford, with the regeneration, I would expect that people would feel the same as I felt back then.
04:31 Which were your expectations of the project and which still are your expectations of the project since the project is still at an early stage?
J I still feel it’s quite an early stage actually. I looked at the website Adnan put up and, for me, I find it quite difficult to find all the bits…
MX To navigate?
J To navigate, yeah… So maybe that could be improved ’cause it has to look pretty for people to want to use it (05:04) and understand how to use all the techniques e.g. If I want that clip how do I download it.
MX So it has to be more accessible really, more user-friendly somehow
05:16 J Yeah, more user-friendly. You should try and only click 3 buttons to try and get to where you want to, to be able to download the film. I don’t really know how to do that, maybe I haven’t looked properly but I think it’s not really obvious, you know, I want that thing what do I need to do, that kind of thing (05:44) But it’s such an early stage, I’m sure that will be developed.
MX So your expectations for the future in terms of the project would be that all the material is accessible and easy for people to use?
(05:59) J Yeah, people need to be able to use it because this is a long-term project, and I see it as a history project. People don’t realise now how important this is until it is all gone and then some historian will say ’so what happened with old Deptford’ and will find this website with all these things on! (06:22) So you don’t realise the importance of it today, while everything is still here -until it’s all gone and then it’s all going to be really important and people will want it. So it’s a historical documentation.
MX I know the project is still on an early stage but the experience you had up to now, the filing, taking part in the workshops, whatever else you have done, how was this?
J I only really went to one workshop (07:04) but I really enjoyed it. I was with a woman I hadn’t seen for a long time and she’s a film-maker, so that was really nice, it’s nice to meet people who have, you know, the same ideas…
MX like-minded
07:21 J yeah, like-minded people… And it was good to see all the different shots of people, that was really interesting.
MX So you thought the actual material is interesting in itself?
J Yeah, I think so, very interesting. I mean, it all looks like random pictures at the moment and you don’t really… If you’re a local person then it would make sense to you. But you know, for someone who comes from America to look at these pictures, they would think ‘my god this is really crap’, ’cause it has no…
MX context?
(07:56) J Yes, no context, but for local people it has got a weight. And the fact that someone has actually bothered to take a picture of it makes them feel ‘right, this place is quite interesting’. So I quite like the idea.
MX Can I ask you a difficult question? What does collaboration mean to you? And I ask about your personal take on that, what it is for you? (08:40) I’m not interested in a dictionary definition, just what you think?
J I think personally, collaboration can be really fantastic and great, but it can be really difficult ’cause if you work say with a team of 10 people, or even 4 people, everyone has got different ideas, you know, everyone has got their own idea of what they want for the project to work. So collaboration takes longer, and it’s kind of a richer experience, it’s more long-term. I think if you want something quick and easy then maybe you shouldn’t collaborate. (09:24) If you’re in for the long road and you’re prepared to work in maybe difficult circumstances… ’cause you know, you can work with difficult people some times. But that’s all part of learning I think. And I think if you care about the project… I don’t know, film-making is always part of a collaborative process anyway. I mean I like that.
MX Is it though? I mean, normally you have a director (09:57)
J Yeah…
MX It is collaborative but it’s very specific in terms of people’s roles and responsibilities, hierarchies, all that kind of stuff…
JI think that is a good point. (10:07) Yeah, some times in a collaborative team people all want to play the director all they all want to do the same job so it’s kind of quite important to maybe share roles. For me I still find that this is part of a creative process. Of course there is one person that can lead the project but you can take that in terms, next time someone else will lead it, you know, it’s a different way of working. (10:35) I think it’s quite important to give people different roles… But it can be quite difficult.
MX What you think you contributed to the project as a collaborator? I mean of course you contributed film, right?
J Yeah, I shot.
(10:56) MX So I mean I can already answer the question I asked you, but I still ask the question because you might want to say something else as well.
J What I feel I have contributed?
MX Yes, what was your contribution?
J The day of the workshop I went out in a team of 2 people, and I though we shot some really nice stuff, so I was quite proud that those things I shot were there… It might sound a bit selfish but it’s kind of nice that different people can say I did that, I shot that.
MX Right.
J You know, if we got about 20 people that’s quite a good team. I think individually it’s important to put the things you shot on the web for other people to see. And then for people to think otherwise too you know, like ‘god that’s really crap, I can do better’ that’s a valid reaction as well, and I don’t know, they might want to get involved in the project and do something themselves. (12:03) They might think ‘I live in Deptford, I could do that’ something like that.
MX You said that you went with 2 other people to film?
J Well, it was just me and him, so it was just 2 people.
MX OK. Would it be different if you would just be on your own?
(12:22) J Maybe, but I never film on my own anyway. It’s always 2 people, you got to carry the equipment, you know, it’s kind of safer for 2 people.
MX OK. The next question is: do you believe that people who contributed stuff to the Deptford.TV project –and I don’t just mean content, I mean any kind of contribution that went into the project– were diverse enough in terms of everything from gender, to age, to race, to class, to educational level… I am sure you don’t know all of them but just your feeling from your experience of whatever you took part in.
(13:16) I think so. I mean, I only took part in one workshop but then my class was involved in the first bit of filming and my class is quite diverse, in fact there are more women than men, more non-white people than white people… So our class anyway was very diverse
MX Is this your class at Goldsmiths?
J Yeah, they were involved in the first stage. I don’t know, I never really thought about it, so maybe that’s a good thing – I didn’t feel out of it so maybe that’s a positive thing, I didn’t feel that I was different. I think it’s good to have diversity. I think people should make an effort. They should seek out and look for women or people that might not be able to represent the community ’cause it’s quite easy to forget about them… So yeah, I think that we should really make an effort.
(14:27) You’re OK? Can you go on?
J Do I like gorgeous?
A Very gorgeous! Berlin ha ha!
(14:50) J Yeah, it’s dangerous to wear that now!…
MX OK. If you think some questions are not relevant you can tell me so, OK?
J OK.
MX So you think that you benefited from taking part in the project in any way? Because we discussed what you contributed but now I would like to see if you got something out of it.
(15:19) J Yeah, well, I think as we were saying before I like the process, the idea that you can put everything on a website and you can share stuff with other people. So I like that idea. And I have kind of heard about it previous to this project but I have never actually seen it happen.
MX Right, OK.
J I don’t know, shall I talk about Kasper’s project? He is going to do this thing where he’s got to upload, I think it’s 170h worth of footage that has been kept at the British Library for years and years, of people that were in asylums back then, mental health patients. And they were interviewed about, I don’t know, how they felt about it. So all this footage has to be put on the web for it to be accessible, for film-makers to be able to make film from that footage.
MX OK
(16:35) J Everyone’s signed release forms and what have you so it’s all there to be released. So I can see that there are a lot of applications on that kind of thing. You know that one idea you can build on and then have different communities that can relate to it, you know, the mental health community, and this community and that community… They can all build their own archive of stuff, which is very important I think. And make it accessible. ‘Cause there is all this stuff and no-one can access it ’cause it’s kept in the British Library or it’s somewhere, I don’t know, some box or…
(17:17) MX Yeah…
J So I think the more we talk about collaborative work and sharing a film it’s a good thing.
MX OK. So now I’m gonna ask you some questions about authorship, which is an issue that quite often comes up in collaborative projects of this kind. And the first question is, when you log on the website are you able to distinguish what’s your contribution in terms of the contribution of the other people and if that’s important to you, that you are able to distinguish what you’ve filmed or what you’ve contributed.
(18:03) J It’s kind of curiosity really, I want to see if things I have filmed are up there… Actually I think there was a problem with mine, I would click on it and I… I can’t remember actually… I couldn’t open it and I was really disappointed ’cause I think it had my name and I thought ‘oh no, nobody can see what I filmed’… But I looked at Elvira’s stuff and that was really interesting, people bouncing on a pit(?) or something… (18:30) and they were bouncing off the wall, that was all very interesting. So it’s kind of nice to see what other people have shot as well.
MX And you think it’s important to be able to identify who contributed what is some way?
J I think there’s just a curiosity factor, you want to see what kind of style maybe people shoot, if they do close-up or, you know, do they like the larger picture, do they let things run on their own time… I’m just curious about different styles. And I kind of like for other people to see that I did that. Yeah, for maybe it’s important.
(19:22) MX Yes, OK. So, is it the same as well that as a contributor but also as an audience, when you go on the website of a similar project you want to be able to know who is the person who contributed something or..
J Yes, I think so… It’s quite a difficult question. Yeah… There is a fine balance ’cause it’s still your identity as a film-maker, the things that you shot, but you’re willing to put it out as a group (19:59) and then it’s kind of, you know, you can be swallowed up by the whole mass of stuff… So I don’t know, yes, thinking about it I think that if you are a film-maker you would want to be identified in relation to your work.
MX And what happens when your work is being re-used and re-edited? How do you feel about that and how do you feel about yourself and your identity being identified within this later version of it?
(20:30) J I think I feel all right with that. Well, I ‘ve had discussions with other people and they say ‘oh no, you know, you put your stuff out there and they might turn it into some sort of freaky thing, or it might be an anti- thing, or it might be a racist thing or whatever’. But I don’t know, I think… I don’t feel like people would want to use my footage as something that would be bad. I just feel like I’m a positive person, I don’t feel that anyone would want to do that.
(21:19) MX That’s a very positive point of view!…
J Yeah, I can’t even imagine anyone would want to make a Nazi film from images of Deptford… I mean, yeah, it could happen but… I don’t know really. I had this discussion with a classmate of mine, you know when some people see the negative side of things…
MX That came up at the conference as well, that’s why I’m asking. There were film-makers at the conference Adnan organised saying, you know, ‘how does it work when you lose control, when people can use your work for any purpose, including commercial purposes or ideological purposes you might be against, or whatever’. (21:59) And I think that’s quite a delicate issue.
J It is, yes. You just have to trust that your stuff will be used in a good way because people know what kind of person you are and would think ’she wouldn’t do that’. And if someone used your stuff to make that propaganda I don’t think you should agree to that. But I don’t know, I trust that the world is good enough for me to release my stuff. I don’t really think about that. But yeah, I can understand why people would want to…
MX But this is not a main concern to you.
J No it isn’t. (22:40) And I think people who are too concerned about that, they just hold on to something that will probably never happen. They never share their stuff, nobody sees it… For me this is more important, I want people to see my stuff instead of holding on to it because in theory someone could mistreat it. I don’t think I’m that important that people will want to use my stuff…
(23:10) MX Yes. OK. Another question that I wanted to ask is whether you consider your contribution to be creative, which I know it is, but I am asking this question because people are contributing film but also other things like software, technical platforms etc., but also because it’s not an artist’s film. It’s a documentary footage that can be reused and so, in that sense, do you consider it to be creative? And in that sense are you happy for your ‘creation’ to be altered?
(23:51) J Yes. I think it is creative. I think editing and making a film is very creative. The style and genre of documentary is changing so much now that people merge fiction and a lot of digital stuff like animation with documentaries. It’s all blending into one thing now. I mean, I think that’s the future, that’s what it’s gonna be like, you won’t know whether something is fictitious or, you know, it might be shot in a very documentary-style way but it can be part of a fictional story. (24:40) I think it tends now to become a mixture of that kind of stuff, as far as I can see. And I think that’s good. I think the field of documentary is becoming really very creative now, and people have noticed that.
(25:05) MX Since you consider this to be creative, how do you situate it in terms of other people’s contribution so, for example, the people who contributed the software for the project, or James and Deckspace who contributed the technical platform, Boundless, Adnan