Please join the Faculty at the Digital Media and Arts Research Centre for four short workshops and a talk that explore the theme of Art and Technology. Participants will engage in a hands on exploration of multichannel audio systems, creative computer coding, and sensors and electronics followed by a short talk entitled Shaping expectations: Context, Interdisciplinarity and Technology.
This event will be of particular interest to those considering applying for the recently created Masters Degree Programme in Art and Technology, but all are welcome. Following the talk and hands-on workshops there will be a Q&A and Discussion. Further details below.
Technologically enabled works of art may be appreciated in dramatically different ways, with context significantly shaping audiences’ disposition to aesthetic experience. In this talk Jurgen Simpson discusses the importance of how such encounters are framed, and how expectations across different fields can support or hinder an engagement when working in the inherently interdisciplinary space of art and technology.
The idea that any aesthetic experience can be reduced to numbers (and hence coded) is neither new nor outdated. In his book from 1933, George D. Birkhoff asserted that any aesthetic experience can be mathematically described as M = O/C. In this short workshop, we will draw and code (using Processing ) a series of geometrical shapes and structures. We will then evaluate, comment and critique the results in light of Birkhoff’s formula. Lastly, we will point to where such mathematical attitude in aesthetics is present today.
Nicholas Ward and Ed Devane will guide participants through some interactive systems created by students and faculty at DMARC. In this hands-on workshop you will explore opportunities for simplifying the development of interactive artwork based on a newly developed expansion board for the Arduino Teensy (a low cost platform for physical computing designed for artists and designers) developed by Ed Devane. We will explore a range of sensors and outputs and look at strategies to simplify the creation of interactive work.
High-Density Loudspeaker Arrays (HDLAs) are massively-multichannel environments that musicians and researchers use to explore perception of acoustic space and for creative expression in the sonic arts. In this workshop Kerry Hagan will point out some interesting facts about how we hear sound in space and present examples of music written for the Spatialization and Auditory Display Environment (SpADE).
The modular synthesizer is considered to be a seminal technological contribution to music making. Within the current resurgence of its usage, it can act as conduit for creation, as a vehicle of sound exploration. In many cases, it has facilitated the musician or producer to take a more functionary role within the art of record production by simply becoming a controller, allowing the synthesizer to become the primary compositional voice. Composer and producer Neil O Connor explores this theme with a discussion and performance.