Location:
The Digital Hub, Learning Lab, Thomas Street, Dublin, Ireland
Presenters:
Anna Hill
Digital Artist
Anna Hill is currently directing Space Synapse Systems- Space Art project with support from the European Space Agency and Enterprise Ireland. The intention is to place an interactive sculpture, the Symbiotic Sphere in orbit with the European Module of the International Space Station. Using communications links to connect the Symbiotic Sphere with other information synapses located on Earth, a Space Synapse System will be created through which and with which life, both on Earth and in space, will be able to interact. Hill has been resident in Dublin four years, working as artist in residence at the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Fire Station Artists Studios who provided her with the support to initiate the Space Synapse project. In March 2003 Hill made an R&D trip to Lapland, Finland where she documented and took recordings from the aurora borealis for “Aurora Synapse” an interactive art installation that premiered at the Kilkenny Arts Festival in August 2003 (www.kilkennyarts.ie) The work in progress was presented at the Tate Modern on the 9th May at User_mode, an International Symposium exploring Emotion and Intuition in Digital Art & Design (www.usermode.net)and was nominated for an interactive BAFTA award in 2003 in the category of interactive art installation. A short presentation of the installation work will be shown.
http://www.spacesynapse.com
Honor Harger
Digital Artist
Honor Harger is artistic practitioner from Zealand working with design, curation and education. She is one of the co-founders of r a d i o q u a l i a , an artistic collaboration with Adam Hyde. r a d i o q u a l i a work with digital art and sound art. Their work addresses ways that broadcasting technologies can be used to create new artistic forms, and in ways that sound art can be used to illuminate abstract ideas and processes. r a d i o q u a l i a’s current work is a radio station and installation, Radio Astronomy which focuses on the sonic qualities of space. Radio Astronomy was recently awarded second prize in the UNESCO Digital Art Awards.
Honor was the inaugural Webcasting Curator at Tate Modern Britain’s National Museum of Modern Art. Working within the Interpretation and Education department, Honor initiated and curated Tate’s webcasting programme and many e-learning initiatives. She also produced many conferences, seminars, courses, events and concerts, such as user_modefor Tate Modern.
In the mid 1990s while based in New Zealand, Honor edited the artistic publication, SPeC, co-founded sound art collective Relay, worked with radio station, Radio One, and the art gallery, Artspace in New Zealand. In Australia she worked with the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT). After relocating to Europe in 1999, she undertook projects with the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation in Germany, the publishing house, Arkzin in Croatia, and the Kiasma contemporary art museum in Finland. She also co-curated the Communication Front 2000 in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, and was one of the producers of Net Congestion: the International Festival of Streaming Media, held in Amsterdam in October 2000. She has curated exhibitions of digital art at The Physics Room and Artspace in New Zealand, the ICA in Cape Town, South Africa, the HDLU in Zagreb, Croatia, and the Queens Gallery at the British Council in New Delhi, India.
Patrick Gyger
Science Fiction (SF) is often perceived as a genre that describes the future and more precisely technologies that could appear in the future. But isn’t SF pure ungrounded imagination and therefore quite often wrong in its depiction of things to come ? Should we rely on writers’ and artists’ visions to help give ideas to scientists and engineers ? These questions have been raised as the European Space Agency has recently the Maison d’Ailleurs (museum of SF, Switzerland) to conduct a study (ITSF – Innovative Technologies from Science Fiction for Space Applications) in order to survey SF works and retrieve usable technological information.
The relations between technology and imagination should be discussed; It may be that Science Fiction does not create new concepts, but prepares us to accept new ways of using technologies, giving us the urge and the motivation to master them. SF may be after all about the beauty of science and its accomplishments and could then work as an inspiration for both scientists and the public. Furthermore, a study like the ITSF might help getting cultural projects done in relationship to an official space agency.
http://www.ailleurs.ch
