The Bristol Event

The Bristol event seeks to draw out some of the key issues and conflicts between art and commerce within the realm of the digital.

Venue - Arnolfini (Auditorium)

Date - 25th May 2010

9.:30 - 15.45

Speakers:

Marie-Anne McQuay will give an introductory talk on the digital and art.

The speakers presenting on the relationship between art and commerce within the digital realm and participating in the chaired debate are:

Geoff Cox

Clare Reddington

Kate Rich

Discussion Chaired by: Helen Sloan

PROGRAMME

09.30 - 10.00	Registration and Coffee

10.00 - 10.15	Introduction: Kate Southworth, Research Cluster Leader, iRes Research in Network Art, University College Falmouth Nema El-Nahas, Relationship Manager, Digital&Creative Economy, Arts Council England

10.15 - 11.00	Marie-Anne McQuay, Introductory talk on the digital and art. (followed by Q&A)

11.00 - 12.00	Art and Commerce. 3 x 15 minute presentation, each followed by 5mins. Q&A Geoff Cox Clare Reddington Kate Rich

12.00 - 13.00	Discussion chaired by Helen Sloan

13.00 - 14.00	Lunch

14.00 - 14.45	Breakout group for discussion [delegates and speakers]

14.45 - 15.15	Feedback session

15.15 - 15.45	Coffee/Networking

Biographies:

Marie-Anne McQuay is a curator at Spike Island, Bristol. She works across the Exhibition, Residency and Public Programmes and has initiated numerous exhibitions for the galleries at Spike Island, including Craig Mulholland’s solo show Grandes et Petites Machines (2008) and Working Things Out (2007) a group show with new work by Milo Brennan, Richard Forster, Sara MacKillop, Sophie Macpherson, Haroon Mirza, Jonathan Owen and Andy Wake. She also co-ordinates the Associate Programme - a network of artists, curators and writers based in the city which launched in March 2007 and now has over 80 members.

Previously Marie-Anne worked at FACT (Foundation for Art & Creative Technology), Liverpool developing collaborative commissions with artists that include Nick Crowe, Kristin Lucas and Dias & Riedweg before undertaking a Masters in Curating at Goldsmiths. She maintains an independent practice as a writer and is currently Guest Editor of Leisure Centre.

Geoff Cox is currently a Researcher in Digital Aesthetics, as part of the Center for Digital Urban Living, Aarhus University (DK). He is also an occasional artist, writer, and Associate Curator of Online Projects, Arnolfini, Bristol (UK), Chair of Cultural Studies, MFA New Media, Transart Institute, Berlin/New York (DE/US), and Reader in Art and Technology, University of Plymouth (UK) where he is part of KURATOR/Art and Social Technologies Research group. He is an editor for the DATA Browser book series (published by Autonomedia, New York), and co-edited 'Economising Culture' (2004), 'Engineering Culture' (2005) and 'Creating Insecurity' (2009).

Clare Reddington The Pervasive Media Studio in Bristol was set up to bring together artists, academics and industry partners to research new forms of mobile and wireless-enabled content in an open and collaborative setting. Two years in, Clare will use the studio as a case study to explore the opportunities and challenges for artists in working in this way.

Clare works with industry, academic and creative partners to deliver collaborative research around digital technology and the creative industries.

Clare joined Watershed in Bristol in 2004 to work with HP Labs on utility computing animation project SE3D. In 2007, Clare set up iShed CIC as a subsidiary of Watershed, to initiate and support creative technology research and development. Projects include the R&D investment scheme Media Sandbox, Theatre Sandbox, a new national commisioning scheme and Light Up Bristol, which mapped 400ft projections on to Bristol’s Council house.

Before joining Watershed, Clare organised the Cheltenham Festival of Science, an annual five day festival exploring, promoting and encouraging debate around contemporary scientific development.

Clare is a member of the advisory boards of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Advisory Board, Capsule and Hide&Seek. She was a finalist in the British Council's UK Young Interactive Entrepreneur 2009 and featured in Wired magazine's 100 people who shape the Wired world.

Kate Rich is an Australian-born artist & trader. In the 1990s she moved to California to work with the Bureau of Inverse Technology (BIT), an international agency producing an array of critical information products including economic and ecologic indices, event-triggered webcam networks, and animal operated emergency broadcast devices. The Bureau's work has been exhibited in academic, scientific and museum contexts.

Restless at the turn of the century, she headed further east to take up the post of Bar Manager at the Cube Microplex, Bristol UK where she launched Feral Trade, a public experiment trading goods over social networks. Feral Trade forges new 'wild' trade routes across hybrid territories of business, art and social interaction. She is currently moving deeper into the infrastructure of cultural economy, developing protocols to define and manage amenities of hospitality, catering, sports and survival in the cultural realm.

http://www.feraltrade.org

Helen Sloan has worked as a curator, researcher, writer, editor and producer in media arts and culture since late 1980s, contributing both as a freelancer and as a curator at organisations such as Camerawork, FACT, ICA and Site Gallery. She has directed festivals such as Across Two Cultures in Newcastle 1996 (an early event on the overlapping practice of creative thinking in arts and science) and Metapod, Birmingham 2001 - 2. Since 2003, she has been Director f SCAN, a networked organisation and creative development agency for media arts working on media arts projects and strategic initiatives in arts organisations, academic institutions and further aspects of the public realm. Based at Bournemouth University, SCAN's current projects look at digital arts and place; and high speed networks. Helen's other reas of interest and curatorial work include the points of intersection of science and culture, immersive environments, media arts and the creative economy, and nanotechnology.

http://www.scansite.org/scan.php

Kate Southworth is an artist and also leads the iRes Research Group in Network Art at University College Falmouth. Her current research interests focus on the use of distributed protocol in contemporary art and curatorial practices, the genealogy of protocol in art, and the historical relation between protocol and the feminine across different media and art forms. In 2007 she organised the Disrupting Narratives conference at Tate Modern that brought together some of the world’s leading media theorists, artists and researchers to explore narrative and protocol in contemporary art. Together with Patrick Simons she is a founding member of the art collective Glorious Ninth. As well as making audio-visual generative art, they devise DIY installations and everyday performances that are disseminated through distributed networks. Their work has been exhibited in academic, gallery and online contexts. With a background in Fine Art Kate received an MSc in Multimedia Systems in 1997. She has taught media arts at universities in London and Dublin, and from 2002-2007 was Course Leader of MA Interactive Art & Design at University College Falmouth.

www.ires.org.uk
www.gloriousninth.net