UCL Digital Humanities Excursion to the Slade
The UCL Digital Humanities Excursion to the Slade involved a series of presentations from artists/researchers at the Slade working with digital matter as part of their practice.
Jon Thomson (Thomson & Craighead) presented two works created from live online data; one a 'narrative documentary artwork' titled A Short Film About War and the other, London Wall, a 'poetic snapshot of social networking traffic'.
Lilah Fowler showed images of her sculptures created using computer aided design (CAD) and rapid prototyping.
Martin John Callanan presented his work, A Planetary Order (Terrestrial Cloud Globe), a sculpture depicting earth's cloud cover on precisely the 2 February 2009 at 0600 UTC. This data was extracted from NASA and ESA's satellites, transformed into a 3D virtual model and built/printed as a model.
A video was presented by Kai Syng Tan on the online/offline realities of a hyperfictional character Kaidie. This was followed by a presentation with Dr Jamie O'Brien discussing their collaborative research that aims to create mappings of online experiences or realities.
Brighid Lowe showed works utilising the information architecture of the internet as part of her installations.
Simon Faithfull presented his public artwork, Liverpool to Liverpool (2010), where his palm pilot drawings - depicting aspects of a journey to Liverpool (UK) to Liverpool (Nova Scotia) - were permanently etched onto the pavements in Liverpool (UK). He also showed Grand (2002), a work that transcribed his palm pilot drawings onto a New York gallery's window using post-it notes.
Laura Cinti introduced her two works-in-progress exploring imperceptible aspects of plant behaviour. The first, the Growthoscope (2008-), is an interactive installation that allows us to experience virtually, what we normally cannot, (plant) growth and the second that utilises nanotechnological interfaces towards the development of novel human-plant interactive artworks.
After showing works by Tim Head and Melanie Jackson, Dr Susan Collins presented her artworks that included Fenlandia (2004-5) and, more recently, Seascape (2009). These works explores our perception of landscape and technology over time, where images are gradually generated using image data captured from webcams installed remotely at different coastal or landscape locations in UK.
