Download draft of the full three day program: Convergence Lab Program Overview (PDF 90KB)
DAY 1 – Wednesday 7 December 2011
SESSION 1: Art, Technology and Experience
Catalysts: Dr Lizzie Muller and Dr Lucas Ihlein
In this workshop Lucas Ihlein and Lizzie Muller discuss the way that new technologies transform art and life. They connect their artistic and curatorial practices with their experience of university teaching and curriculum development. The day has two parts: The first part focuses on ways of paying attention to the technological “here and now”: structures of technology, codes, data, transmission, and communication. The second part of the workshop looks to the future. It explores the way creative practice enables us to speculate on the future, and bring different possible futures into being.
PART A: The Art of Communication
Artists are increasingly operating in a "post-digital" manner - taking what works from new social media platforms, in combining with older technologies such as printed matter and face-to-face conversation. What emerges is an expanded definition of art, which becomes multi-sited, inherently variable in medium, and less dependent on traditional distribution systems.
In this workshop, Lucas Ihlein will discuss some of the methods he has developed for incorporating old and new media practices (blogging, lithographic printing, listening, walking and talking) in order to bring richer attention to the here-and-now. His talk will also explore the development of early message transmission systems, such as the telegraph. Importantly, such systems had to overcome not only technical issues, but also required strong social consensus before they could function at all. Thinking about messaging through the lens of art allows us to explore the creative possibilities of noise, miscommunication, and the inherent qualities of the transmission medium itself. Following Ihlein’s presentation, workshop participants will be developing their own experimental code-transmission system.
PART B: Speculative Futures
Technologies transform our everyday life and our experience of the world. Art offers ways of bringing attention to these transformations, and imaginatively speculating on their future impact. In this workshop Lizzie Muller discusses the recent exhibition Awfully Wonderful: Science Fiction in Contemporary Art, co-curated with Bec Dean at Performance Space, Sydney. She describes how the works in the exhibition combined real scientific discoveries and technologies with speculative projections to create new ways of understanding our present and preparing for our future.
DAY 2: Thursday 8 December 2011
SESSION 2: Creating And Executing Cross-Disciplinary Projects
Catalyst: Willoh S.Weiland
A discussion and practical interrogation of methodologies for the creation and execution of cross-disciplinary projects, with reference to Aphids projects Atelier Edens a series of field laboratories for sustainably creating networked arts projects in remote natural environments (Inter Arts Arts Lab, Parks Victoria, Champagne Valentine, Creative Environment Enterprises, Curtin University Department of Marine Technology) and Void Love (ANAT Synapse program, Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing Swinburne University).
DAY 3: Friday 9 December 2011
SESSION 3: Augmenting Production | Extending Our Reach
Catalysts: Leah Heiss and Greg More
This workshop will familiarise participants with the practice of working with next generation materials, processes and technologies. The day will be centred on the sensory body and its relationship to the environment, with participants developing strategies for connecting the body and its data to the world. We will investigate how sensors can be incorporated into body-centric artefacts to augment our perception in the world. Clusters will prototype devices, artefacts, wearables, objects that ‘extend our reach’ in the world, providing greater self-awareness, connecting people, and enriching our understanding of our environments. Through the workshop we will introduce participants to the ideas of 3D scanning (body and terrestrial), data visualisation, dynamic and responsive materials, additive and subtractive manufacturing, and natural and synthetic sensing.
