Thursday 17 May 2012

Field trip to Manchester, [Future Everything]

We planned a trip to Manchester's Future Everything festival which shows a series of technology inspired artists who looks at topics from social media to mass online sharing. It was a really inspiring trip, and originally our trip may have ended in disaster when we arrived and were told the exhibition was not ready for viewing public, but in return we were allowed to join their artists tour of the work, and the launch that evening. It proved even better to get a first hand account from the artists themselves to explain their concepts and the ideas behind their work.

There was a great interactive element in most of the works, that involved the viewer as part of the technology sharing experience. From pieces aiming to create ant ballet from pheromones, and live twitter feeds relating to life and death, there was a real diversity and playful ethic of the works involved, and its setting in the Manchester Museum of Technology. This is certainly not just an exhibition for those interested in art, its avenues relate to anyone and everyone in the modern age and our obsession with technological advances. There is an almost humorous undertone through some of the work that questions how far it is we go within these modern necessities we have now become so accustomed to. A lift filled with hundreds of Facebook profile pictures makes us smile and cringe in equal parts, as we see either parts of ourselves or people we know in those images. The public and private distortion between sharing personal information has become so blurred as uses of social media such as Facebook grows in popularity. We must ask ourselves whether these everyday online staples have become so out of context that we forget we are offering our private thoughts and information to the internet, and this is accessible by anyone. This is proved very much so in the interactive parts of the exhibition where viewers can tap into live feeds from twitter, ramblings and statements from real people offering their thoughts to the world.

The first initial interaction with the work is delightful, but its the sheer complexity of the technology used behind each piece of work that allots real credit to the artists and their impressive innovation. Some of the artists' explanations of their processes is rather mind blowing and challenging for the average viewer, which makes the work even more intriguing. Similarly to its setting in a museum, where new knowledge and understanding offer curiosity and intrigue, we were certainly fascinated by what was on display at Future Everything. Clearly the boundaries between technology and art are becoming less concrete as we know it. Just as our lives and technology continue to intertwine.

Tuesday 8 May 2012

The Way Forward Poster/Flyer

In the office last week I was given the task of doing some more designing for the marketing. I designed a A4 poster that would fold in half and become a information flyer for The Way Forward exhibition, it has all the details of the exhibition and the featured artists. It is a really satisfying and rewarding task to design promotional material, to see it go from design to print.

Open submissions for DUAL are now looking for artists!

Thursday 26 April 2012

The Way Forward is just round the corner!!!!

So earlier this week Viv and I spent another busy in the office. Our check list of things to do included collecting the information on the Open Call Monitoring forms and putting them into a spreadsheet. It is interesting to know who applies and how we might be able to target our promotional material to get more people to apply. We did things like research CRB checks and search for the cheapest printer and ink combo so if there are any suggestions, we would love to hear them! We also made the information sheets for the artists showing in The Way Forward exhibition. These sheets will be available at the exhibition as a way of giving the viewer a bit more background information. I personally enjoyed making these and found some about interesting pieces of work that the artists have produced in the past. One piece I particularly liked was the 'ghost-writer' by Neil Mendoza and Anthony Goh. It consists of a type-writer that writes on its own. It communicates with the viewer by writing things to them like 'Stop looking at me'.It is exciting to see all these artists come together in the one show, The Way Forward is just round the corner now!, 23rd May, a date for the diary! I am very much looking forward to seeing our commissioned piece, The 'Skywriter' by Institute for Boundary Interactions. This piece sees the local art group recreate old methods of encryption in a Skywriter situated on the roof of Nottingham Playhouse. I love this idea that the exhibition spreads through the playhouse and beyond the confinements of the building itself! Anyway, back to the listings, The Way Forward is going to be one not to miss!

Tuesday 17 April 2012

Finished CAST film progamme poster

Shortlisting from an Intern's point of view

Jo and I have been looking through the open submissions. It is our first time going through this process of shortlisting artists, and finding the submissions most relevant to the concept of The Way Forward. Feeling strangely like a judge panel on the X factor, Jo and I were both really inspired by the work submitted. This process is actually extremely rewarding. From a curatorial point of view, finding artists who have made work that has responded to the brief in the best sense, is really exciting. As Jo has said, the variety was extremely broad which just goes to show how a brief can be interpreted in so many different ways. We've had submissions from local Nottingham, to all the way from the US and Germany!

Good luck everyone who has submitted.
We will be looking through submissions for DUAL soon.

Monday 16 April 2012

Open Submissions!

We had a lovely day today looking through all the open submissions! The variety was massive, some were really good and some where a bit off topic but overall it was really enjoyable. We narrowed it down to our favourite seven so hopefully it will be good!!! I have also been thinking about the writing the play copy so have been researching various cheesy Artist based jokes.
Here are just a few that I found-
- What did the Artist say to the dentist? Matisse hurt!
- Vincent Van Gough walks into a bar and the bartender offered him a drink. No thank you, said Vincent, I've got one 'ere.

Thursday 12 April 2012

Workshops

This week as been pretty quite for the interns. We have just returned after the Easter break and unfortunately, due to lectures and the bank holidays we have not been able to get into the office this week. We are next in on Monday and are looking forward to catching up! I did however attend two meetings on Tuesday. One was about the workshops and I found it interesting. I am looking forward to being involved and will be writing up an information pack for the schools shortly.