Category Archives: Events

Events

Conference session: Histories of Digital Art

Cliff Lauson (Hayward Gallery) is the convenor for Parsing the Pixelated: The Histories of Digital Art, a session within the AAH2014 conference at Royal College of Art on 10 – 12 April 2014. The session features papers including:

  • Beryl Graham (University of Sunderland) Exhibition Histories of Critical Participatory Systems
  • Cary Levine (The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) Net Works: Jodi and the Early Days of Internet Art
  • Douglas Dodds and Melanie Lenz (Victoria & Albert Museum) Documenting the New Medium: The V&A’s national collection of early digital art
  • Cadence Kinsey (University College of London) Discipline, Determinism and ‘The Digital’
  • Charlotte Frost (City University of Hong Kong) Hacking Art History

The session will explore the definitions of and approaches toward digital art. It will be primarily concerned with the digital as an artistic medium and its relationship to and within art history.

Although digital art precedes the creation of the world wide web in the early 1990s, it is only more recently, facilitated by affordable and widely distributed connected technology, that digital art has become firmly established as an artistic category. Yet the term remains nebulous, including many disparate forms and types of art: from manipulated photographs to interactive installations to works existing on or made by a computer.

Furthermore, the history of art has yet to substantively account for digital art, frequently deferring to the tools and methods of visual culture studies in recognition of a broader cultural phenomenon. Repositories of digital art have also recently been founded: on the one hand, the Museum of Modern Art, New York has started to acquire video games for its collection, on the other, the Google Art Project gathers together a virtual mega-collection of artworks drawn from the world’s leading museums.

About the conference

Events

Electronic music festival in Brockley

Link to sonicueb tickets websitecueB Gallery in Brockley hosts three days of experimental and electronic music from Monday 24 March 2014. The festival, curated by composer Luca Nasciuti, will showcase a wide range of practices combining sound art, noise, drone, acousmatic, ambient, electroacoustic, and electronic music.

Where: cueB Gallery at Brockley Mess Cafe, 325 Brockley Rd, London SE4 2QZ
When: Mon 24 March – Wed 26 March 2014
More information and tickets

Events

London CryptoFestival: tools and analysis for a post-PRISM internet

Saturday, November 30th

Doors open 10.30 / Start 11am sharp

Location: New Academic Building

Free, all welcome

What happens to the internet after the Snowden revelations?

Do we just sit tight and let the most important cultural and economic force of the last two decades get turned into a giant surveillance honeytrap?  London CryptoFestival is the biggest public and academic manifestation in the UK after the spy-network has been exposed.  The unique day-long festival is aimed at showing paths beyond the logic of fear and coercion offered by the state on the one hand, and business models based on Continue reading London CryptoFestival: tools and analysis for a post-PRISM internet →

Events, Students

Now Here 13: Computational Arts Degree Show

Nowhere 2013, a unique and compelling show by Masters students in Computational Studio Arts, Goldsmiths, Department of Computing, University of London.

Nowhere 2013 showcases a diverse range of work by twenty five international practitioners, who are shaping the use and understanding of applied technologies and their role in society alongside wider cultural practices. Nowhere 2013 is a highly captivating experience set in one of Goldsmiths’ newest exhibition spaces, a former church at the heart of the campus.

All the practitioners are engaged in wide-ranging research: from augmented reality to storytelling, from traditional arts and crafts to theories of perception, from the self to the technological ‘other’; the resulting works span from audio-visual composition to large scale installation, from live performances to photography to dynamic computational systems.

They variously describe themselves as fine artists, artist-programmers, sonic artists, musicians and performance artists. Others eschew these terms completely and instead seek their own definitions for practices that are always engaging and often challenging.

The exhibiting students have each developed their individual practices, merging existing specialties with innovative computational approaches whilst maintaining a critical eye on the wider social implications.

The Computational Studio Arts programme awards degrees at two levels, a one-year Masters (MA) and a two-year Master of Fine Art (MFA), both of which are represented in this show. Based in the Goldsmiths Digital Studios, the Computational Studio Arts programme exemplifies the strong interdisciplinary identity at the core of the Computing Department’s world-leading research.

 

Practitioners:

Fabio Lattanzi Antinori, Pradeep Balasubramanian, Damien Borowik, Joowon Chung, Jeffrey Ferguson, Andrea Fischer, William Goodin IV, Steph Horak, Haydn Jones, Parinot Kunakornwong, James Leahy, Kain Leo, Richard Lockett, Matthias Moos, Jonathan Munro, Samson Ng, A. Nuttall, Nelmarie du Preez, Ladan Razeghi, Stefan Ritter, Jonathan Shohet Gluzberg, Jen Sykes, Ronan Tuite, Catherine M. Weir, and Cedar Zhou.

 

Private View: 6pm to 9pm, 12th September

Performance times: 7pm and 9pm

 

Open to the Public: 13th to 16th September

Open daily: 10am to 7pm

Sunday 15th September: 10am to 4pm

Performance times: 2pm to 3pm & 6pm to 7pm (except Sunday)

Find out more, visit the Now Here 13 website

 

Events, News, Students

Goldsmiths Computing Expo 2013: interesting people doing interesting stuff

The annual Goldsmiths Computing Expo is where we open our doors to everyone and offer them a chance to come and see some of our technological innovation and meet the staff and students behind it.

This year’s Computing Expo was a fantastic showcase of the work of our department at all levels from first year undergraduate to PhD and staff research. The diversity of work was impressive, from a durational performance recreating in digital form the collaboration between Marina Abramović and Ulay, to an app that suggests clothing and make-up colours to complement your skin and hair. There was also a first year collaborative music making systems that many attendees mistook for a final year project!

These were all projects that were very creative and well thought out but also highly technically challenging. What was particularly impressive was the number of students who were getting their work out in the real world from iPhone games on the app store to collaborations with Choreographers and open source hardware.

In the early evening, a range of professionals, students and academics took to the Ben Pimlott Lecture Theatre to hear a series of short presentations from some of the departments brightest undergraduate students. Martin Roth, head of research at interactive music company RjDj, and Research Fellow in the department, chaired a panel of industry experts including Lisa Long – Director of Soniq Play , Alan Stuart – Director of Wow Elite, Brendan Quinn from Clueful Media Ltd, and Justin Spooner, Director of Unthinkable consulting. Martin Roth said “It was great to be able to see what Goldsmiths students are up to and how the College is thinking about entrepreneurship.”

Check out some of the projects below:

The Department of Computing at Goldsmiths is arguably Europe’s leading interdisciplinary computer science department for research, teaching and enterprise across the arts, music and social sciences. Our success has been based on a strong strategic focus with London’s creative industries and realised through strong partnerships with other departments in Goldsmith such including Art, Music, Sociology, Design, Visual Cultures, Theatre and Performance and Psychology.

We are already looking forward to EXPO 2014 where, you never know, it might be your work we’re showing off!

See our Expo pics on Flickr

 

Events

Congratulations to our Postgraduate Students – graduation 2012

What a wonderful way to end 2012  – with a celebration of the achievements of our wonderful postgraduate students. We are so proud of them and wish them all the very best of luck for the future. Please stay in touch!

Above: Patricia Afari – MSc Computing.Well done to Patricia and all our new graduates.

What programme of study are you graduating from?
MSc in Computing, Departing of Computing

Tell us a bit about yourself: where are you from, what led you to university, why did you pick Goldsmiths?
I was born in south London and have spent most of my life there, working self-employed for more than 10 years as a driving instructor. I felt the need for a change in career, to pursue the things that I am really passionate about, which are sound and computing. In 2011, I received my BA Hons in Digital Music and Sound Arts from the University of Brighton. It was on this course that I learned audio programming which I found fascinating. I wanted to continue studying this area in more depth and it was one my lecturers there who spoke highly of Goldsmiths and encouraged me to apply to do my Masters here.

How did you find your course?
The course was great and I think one of the most flexible of the computing programmes available in terms of subject choices. It was highly interdisciplinary – which is another reason why I chose to study here.

What is the best thing about studying at Goldsmiths?
The first thing I noticed when walking around was the relaxed atmosphere and great mix of people of different ages. I really enjoyed speaking with the lecturers and professors; they are all extremely knowledgeable in their fields of practice, always willing to give advice, and to introduce you to their contacts and people within the industry.

What advice would you give to a student considering a postgraduate degree a Goldsmiths?
Be prepared to be challenged, at times it can feel very intensive, but remembering why you are there will get you through it. Don’t be surprised if your initial ideas and research plans flow into completely new and unexpected areas – come here with an open mind.

What are your plans now you’ve graduated?
My plan is to find a role where I can develop gestural interactive educational software for children with physical and learning difficulties [read more about Patricia’s work with gestural interfaces in The Daily Telegraph].

What words would you use to describe Goldsmiths?
Flexible, open, interdisciplinary, challenging, creativity, self-discovery.

This interview with Patricia is courtesy of the Goldsmiths Comms team and originally posted here