geek update

it's been a while since i've written about the geeky goings-on at CIA studios. possibly because i've been so caught up in it, and because we had a couple of weeks' break there that i forgot to keep writing about it. sorry about that.

we're into the second term and are now really starting to get a rhythm with our little project - large projects are starting to take shape and the smaller ones are starting to have an effect, which is lovely.

some of these things may still make little-to-no-sense outside the bounds of the centre for interdisciplinary arts, but here's a bit about our work in progress

project socrates: the interdisciplinary arts wiki

one of the qualities of CIA that jumped out at me immediately was the importance of connections between practitioners that was facilitated by pvi and the CIA. as we were developing building each other the world, our strategic project, it became apparent that we could visualise and capitalise on the myriad of connections through using a wiki.

over the last 6 weeks, we have installed a dokuwiki wiki on our local server and begun to 'dig tunnels' connected to the building, each other and the world. 

the small picture is a helpful repository for practical information about having a residency here - network info, keys, security, emergency, maps and timelines.

the medium-sized picture is to provide a more-public place that residents can frame their practice, discuss their work and the works created as part of the residency, as well as highlighting the relationships and collaborations as part of that practice. it is also a site that unpacks the nature of the sector - information about our peers, publications, organisation and critical research.

the big picture is an interdisciplinary arts wiki that will serve the international sector. where anyone interested in interdisciplinary arts practice will come and find out more information about artists, research, practice, organisations and publications. it will be an archive for interdisciplinary arts practice across the world.

the langley screen

at CIA, there hasn't really been a place to check out what other residents are doing, researching or inspired by. we've started working on a 'channel' that uses web tech to make a navigable slide-show of works from the various places that residents post their works. 

we didn't really want to have to give people too many more places to hang out and get distracted, so we're streamlining and broadcasting on a screen in the CIA lounge. it will broadcast from residents' vimeo, twitter, instagram sites and their pages on the wiki.

the testing for that this week has been fun - playing movies on the projector and establishing the site as a space to watch stuff from. less about the tech and more about behavioural changes and 'placemaking'.

we're trying to raise some funds for CIA to be able to purchase a big screen for this project, so if you're reading this and have been wondering where to invest a lazy $1000 you've got kicking around, get in touch with the kids at CIA.

other fun stuff

-website

obviously we need to fix the website. the workflows are all out and the intergration with the blogging format of wordpress needs work. the nice thing is that steve berrick does website work with his eyes closed, so he's working on that with the pvi crew behind my back. it's great.

- the building entrance

this week i'm going to work on some not-online things related to the building. although the geek project is focused on arts in a digital era, part of being a geek is also focusing on that reference from online to real life and back again. you know - how we all love those 'no place like 127.0.0.1' mats, or '10 types of people in the world' shirts. well, i'm going to focus on the entrance of the building and making some works and installations related to CIA-aesthetic, a bit of technology and some fun things related to the residents in the building.

- stairwell cam

this is a little pet project of ours - a timelapse 1fp7s camera that is starting to capture the movement on the stairs. CIA is a two-storey studio space, with 3 studios, the CIA lounge, hub and the kitchen upstairs. the stairwell is a place that sees people out of their studios and either passing each other, or heading to the other space. it will become a fun reflection of what's going on in the building and a fun way to check out random happenings, especially when you're elsewhere.

- the isolat-o-meter

remember that crazy meter that i wanted to put in the building? well i think we're going to make it. we've started designing a combination of an iOS app, with an arduino-powered servo that turns on daily basis. it's gonna be way fun.

- movies in the lounge
we've borrowed ololo's mac mini to do some testing for the screen and in the mean time we've started showing cool movies. i've been having a jason bourne marathon. hey, so that i could get into the swing of CIA-style aesthetics! and we also checked out the arcade fire/spike jonze suburbia love fest. it's been pretty fun and has felt like the centre is active and alive.

sadly, not much time left

my role has been as a catalyst for the project, with steve berrick, who will stick around to implement the rest of the projects. i've only got 2.5 weeks left, which came around quite quickly. but, unlike the last geek project which felt unfinished after 3 months, i don't feel like i'm leaving an unfinished project behind. not only am i leaving our projects in capable hands, but the pvi crew and resident artists are all open to the things we've been doing, and i feel pretty confident that they'll continue.

i'll still keep in touch with the project occasionally, and will be coming back to perth in december to finish it all off and have a christmas party :) and i may even cross-post steve's blogs from here, so they anyone who has been following what's been happening can keep up to date.


links:
CIA studios facebook
CIA studios twitter

wired for sound

i haven't had a lot of time to blog lately - i'm trying to be very good with having time to make stuff and do my own admin, as well as come to the last 4 weeks of my intense residency.

and then this weekend, i'm squeezing in a quick trip to cootamundra (from perth) to participate in a very exciting workshop at the WIRED lab with joyce hinterding and david haines (you may remember me talking about joyce's work at ISEA in 2010).

i'm stupidly excited, feel wildly unprepared, but naive enough to be open to whatever the hell i learn. i'll probably be the least sound-specific nerd there, but i'm hoping to do some new listening and have a ball anyway.

a couple of things i'm interested in are the methods for listening to a non-urban, or even a non-earth-based space, and what the experience is of listening to the past - which is what stars are, really -  (extending this idea that sounds don't disappear).


I'll try and take some decent pics too - especially because the geek-in-residence project is now heavily into HTML land and very un-photogenic. :)

see you under the stars, kids.


image credit: turner_andi from flickr

was it successful?

so, the listening and being exhibition is over and to be honest, i don't really know how to assess it. which has prompted some interesting thoughts about how to value performative/experiential works.

so, how do i know if my work was successful?

i haven't come from a performance or even a contemporary art background, so a lot of what i'm learning through my arts practice is having to stretch over from tradition image-making and art-historical language. which, naturally, doesn't quite fit.

old-fashioned parameters of quality mostly include sales, or publishing. people's opinions matter too, but seeing as i was hardly available to to hear them, it's hard to say. and i haven't put in place a formal process for getting feedback by my peers yet (more on that later).

added to that, during an exhibition, as the work gets realised, and i spent time with it, the goalposts shifted slightly. i think i would have initially felt the work successful had people interacted with it, and a few of the catalogues had been taken.

but once i decided to perform the work myself, i realised that i also wanted to research more deeply the nature of listening reflectively and that set up new parameters. and then as i listened, i thought about the work even more, and built in even more ways in which the work could be meaningful and they added another layer of 'is it working'-ness to it.

so now i'm properly confused :)

in short, i think the work worked.

and yet it still has some life in it yet - as an object, as an 'instrument', as a set for more performances, and as a means of greater research. i think this might be what's called 'setting the bar higher'.

and i think this self-critical process is also good and perhaps a mark of my own maturing -  years ago i would have been crippled by the 'not enough-ness' of it all and not coped with the greyness of achieving success.

in fact, years ago, i'm pretty sure i just would have wanted you to like it and leave it at that.
how depressing.

now i think the greatest disappointment for an artist is to have completed everything that she wanted to say.






feedback etc.
all of these thoughts and some of these questions have actually fuelled a desire to create a better format for feedback for my work. and perhaps for others like it.

i've had the pleasure of being part of the feedback, etc group that has started up in perth and i really missed it when i was in melbourne. and, i became aware that the clubs model it uses works best for static, gallery-based, exhibitions that can be observed and discussed easily in real-time. this is not so easy for works like listening and being, or even the how to do things with words event from last month.

so, tomorrow night i'm going to head up a discussion about developing a model for feedback on work of this kind. we'll start to unpack what we consider 'meaningful' for an audience, and what our own parameters are. and even ask where performative work really resides - is it in real-time, or is it in our memories?

and if any of you guys have any ideas, please, chuck them in the comment section:

how to you assess the success of an experiential or performative work - especially if you were not there at the time?


i'll post the results here (and probably cross-post on the feedback, etc site too.)

cold and icy. yes.

being back in melbourne for 10 days, it was nice to see stuff again.

like, I had to miss exhibitions* because there were clashes, too many things on at the same time. and of course quite a bit of that time was spent putting together, performing and invigilating my own show.

i feel like i haven't written about other people's shows for ages, so here are a couple of shows i saw, with a strangely icy theme:

this is before that
kiron robinson and sanja pahoki at sarah scout


it felt like the first time I have seen more than one artist per show at SS and i liked it. there was a polarity and/or synthesis that was art of the show that hasn't been before.

the simple concept of kiron's used hours/wasted hours prints were OK: coloured block prints with scratch marks - like days of labour are tantamount to prison term or gallery visitor numbers.  they're short, sharp and to the point.

however, the sentiment of the work was really not my thing -  I prefer to subscribe to the pollyanna view that 'time wasted is never wasted time'. perhaps i'm losing my cynical edge. perhaps i'm just feeling quite grateful for being able to spend all my time on my art practice at the moment.

I did really like sanja's icy photographs of frosty scando landscapes and cold, empty stares of portraits, mounted on the wall around cool, white neon text 'i have loved' 'i have been loved'

this tableau, or scene, actually, was in balance and still edgy without wanting to fall over itself. tick.

my personal tip of the iceberg would have been a sculptural ice-based work in the gallery - even just for opening night. i imagined a big block of ice melting, or even stalactites dripping down the windows. this may have been influenced by the condensation on the windows of the gallery that night, but I couldn't shake it.

kim jaeger at seventh


I may be biased because i think almost everything kim does rocks, but this little work was properly BEAUTIFUL. yes, i said beautiful.

nothing like that image above, it was a diorama created in a blacked and blanked out project space with a large-ish peep-hole at a low eye-level, to create a dramatic and mystical landscape. the landscape was filled with large, white, iceberg-like spikes, appearing to rise up out of a still, dark water. this 'grotto' was perfectly and cool-ly lit, with the scale of it just right. it was like being on a boat, making my way through the floes of scandanavia, or the dark arctic.

it was so succinct and so clear - it actually took my breath away. for real.

sadly, the show finished on sunday, so you can't go and see it anymore. but hopefully there will be images online somewhere that will come closer to doing it justice than this little blog.


*like christopher hanrahan's show at tristian koenig, the vienna show and those egon schiele's at the NGV and the shaun gladwell extravaganza at ACMI.

image credits: sanja pahoki and kiron robinson from the sarah scout site 
kim jaeger you geysir crazy from the seventh site

listening and being live

hey peeps,

here are some links to some live channels i've set up for the listening performance today (28th june).

it's the first time i've done anything like this, so please forgive tech difficulties or straight-up operator errors that may occur.

ustream:

UPDATE : I CAN'T GET USTREAM TO WORK WITH MY iOS DEVICE stay tuned..


Live streaming video by Ustream

but you can video call me

skype:lauren.listen

listening and being thoughts

my exhibition is open at bus now and i've done two small performances there. and i feel OK about it so far.



after opening night and a two-hour intense performance amongst a packed room full of artists and art-lovin' hipster-types i felt fantastic! i thought the work looked good and conveyed something of what i'm trying to say about the place of listening in public.

and then in the few days since, and after a second performance on friday - a four-hour durational task cut short due to pain and logistics - there's been the ubiquitous doubt creeping in around the edges. it's so boring -  the nagging question about whether the work says what you want, and the discovery that sometimes it says things you don't want it to.

but, here are some of the little surprises, ideas and snippets of something-or-other that have been raised in the long hours of listening to my own dialogue, some of which might be interesting to you guys. and, if you've seen the show, i'd love to get your feedback.

things about listening i considered
what am i really listening to?
am i thinking things in order to have something to listen to?
listening to oneself is a frightening concept for many. under the guise of "not understanding", many people are afraid of what the work asks them to do.


things about being i considered
if i wasn't here, at this time, doing this work, could i exist?
being didactic and direct does not necessarily achieve understanding. and neither does being loose and aloof. can art ever purport to give understanding?
is listening the action between the nothing and being?

things about art and performance i have since considered

1. tino sehgal makes work in which movement and energy (including singing/sound) changes the dynamic of a space when a person enters it, creating a situation.
i noticed that when i am sitting and listening in the space, and someone enters the space, a situation is similarly created, in a subtracted way: stillness and the sound being absorbed by me changes the dynamic and the nature of the space and their relationship to it.

invariably people quieten themselves and become aware of their own sounds.



2. a lovely elderly painter came into the gallery the other day and whilst the work reminded him of happenings from 40 years ago, his criticism was that the work was too reliant on text. we discussed the lack of imagination in audience and the academic nature of art. and he suggested that artists who were doing those happenings in sydney all those years ago, were doing them because they found it the best form of expression.

i took it to mean that i am not performing these works because it's the only way to express what needs to be said, but that i'm doing it this way because i'm responding to written work. ouch.
i can see his perspective, but i have to say it was nice, at midnight last night, sitting up in the bath and saying out loud 'no, fuck you, listening IS the only way to talk about listening. and text ISN'T a substitute - it's just the next best thing.






i've posted the list of what i heard (recall only, not direct transcription) on the listening to the city blog, which i have started updating. i'll upload some pics there too.


on tuesday 28th june, i'll be doing an 8-hour performance at the gallery, between 7am and 3pm. if you're in melbourne, you're welcome to come and join in.  i'm also going to be setting up a video stream so that you can 'come in' to the gallery, even if you're not physically there.

it will probably via skype and ustream.

keep an eye out and i'll be spamming the networks on monday with the links.



photographers:
sarah barber
jared harris

blatant self-promotion #243

for those who are heading to melbourne any time soon, i have a solo exhibition at bus gallery. listening and being is a simple installation and a series of performances about the act of listening and reflecting.

i will be doing a performance on opening night, plus on the 24th and 28th june. and it's the kind of installation that i encourage gallery-goers to interact with. it's a massive mirror that disects the space, and expect loads of ear-prints on it.

you'll see what i mean when you go there.

there'll be a little catalogue you can pick up at the gallery, but if you can't make it, and would like one - leave a comment, or email me lauren [at] sheseesred [dot] com and i'll send it to you.


here's a little reference material [heidegger warning]
and an earlier version
and a map of where the gallery is

deets

listening and being

where: bus projects
basement
673 bourke st
melbourne

when: 21 june - 9 july, 2011
opening: 21 june 6 - 8pm
gallery: wed - sat 12 - 6pm
performances: 21, 24 and 28 june

how to do things with words

last friday night, my flatmate leigh and i put on an art event in our house: how to do things with words.

it started with my whinging about not really being able to find that many places to have exhibitions in perth, to which leigh replied: "why don't you just have one here?". of course!

so, we made it a joint effort, with all the works and activities about text and art.

the evening went a little something like this:

first light, last words
a wall-work by me which now lines our Victorian hallway. a series of six painted rectangles, mostly yellows with one blue which are symbolic of what i wake up to see each morning. i have a window above the doorway that my bed faces and each morrning, when i awake in a darkened room, all i can see is the refraction of the sunlight (or cloudy light) that comes in from the front door window.

underneath these 'light' works, is a string of words. these are the last words i heard before i fall asleep in the weeks leading up to the show:



library of annotated books
a work benjamin forster and i did, in which we found and collected only books that were annotated - where people had underlined or made marks in an effort to remember, or determine important ideas or valuable points in a book. We rearranged leigh's shelves in the loungeroom and the kitchen, making them into a library. having only books that were annotated surrounded the room with meaning and important information. none of those books were superfluous or ambivalent.

both of us made further notes about the notations on the wall. benjamin created a poem within the notation, by directing the reader to sections of each book. like a choose-your-own-adventure novel, except benjamin already chose it. and it's more narrative than adventure. my notes grouped the books in which sites were described by sound, referred to texts of previous works and highlighted the meta-notation of two books. ie. notated books that contained imagery of notation (by bruce nauman and claes oldenburg).

12-hour reading club
lead by leigh, the 12-hour reading club chose somebody to read an excerpt, or a work, on the hour, every hour, for twelve hours. with general discussion session starting at 7 and our first solo reader was robert cook, who read some of roland barthes' the fashion system. i kicked off the final session at 6am on saturday morning, reading the introduction from j.l. austin's how to do things with words (see what we did there?) and in between was a variety of poetry, silliness and seriousness.

when each reading started, the room full of people was quiet, then there would be some questions from the 'audience', which would kickstart well-behaved discussion. which would then generally descend into hubub and chit chat for the rest of the hour, slowing down just in time for the next reading.

the evening was a great mix of formal, critical readings - those ones we always mean to read, but never quite have time - and hilarious pop-culutral humourous pieces, revealing more about us than we perhaps like. we had a loungeroom and kitchen full of people, with wine, chai, hot chocolate and leigh's home-made soup. it was warm and cosy and a fantastic atmosphere.

there were waves of guest who arrived too - some who came right on time at 7pm, those who filtered through after dinner at about 9, then the late-comers - the young whippersnappers who turned up at midnight. one of them, joanna, stayed all the way until the end! what a champion!

during the evening's proceedings, visitors were encouraged to create their own catalogues, using leigh's collection of vintage typewriters. few did - more interested in the active discussion and chit chat about words than creating them. similarly, we set up a print station from which people could choose a section of annotation to have transcribed and given to them. it wasn't so popular. but that's OK - the excitement and camaraderie of the evening was fabulous enough as it was anyway.




when leigh and i finally rose, after midday the next day, we chatted over a champions breakfast and were quite pleased with ourselves. we had a house full of intelligent, interested, erudite and amiable people who enjoyed each other's company and had the opportunity to think and talk about interesting things for an evening, learning how to do things with words.



NOTE: there are more images coming. i just left them at the studio, it's late and i really wanted to just post this tonight. stay tuned for illustration soon.

CIA term one

today is the last day before a two-week break for the CIA studios geeks.
steve is heading off for some paternity leave.
I'm heading back to melbourne to install a show - childbirth of a different kind.

this seems like an appropriate time to give you an update and overview of the things we've been working on to date.



even though the chair of the board suggested we focus on one deep project, we decided to stick with our matrix approach and do lots of small-ish things, with a focus on two decent-sized projects. one each, kinda.

this method was because we felt that when there are lots of new, exciting, manageable changes, it was easier to engage with the residents across a diverse range of practice, commitment, timing, finances and relationships. and, looking back on term one, i think we went with the right approach.



in the seven weeks we've been working together as geeks, we've started 14 projects, including two major projects that are ongoing:


major projects

wiki (this is my baby)
screen (this is steve's baby)

*we'll go into these next term, as we haven't really 'released' them yet





minor [but important] projects

facebook group
facebook page
resident morning teas
starting online networks (skype, posterous, instagram, vimeo)
workshops
library
geek party




works in progress
website/hosting/email
isolat-o-meter
more of those online networks

overall ideas


Building each other the world is the ethos of our project - where we're all helping to build and support each other a world of interdisciplinary awesomeness. It is a gradual, compound approach in which we're 'empowering' (for want of a far-less self-help term) the residents to focus on helping themselves, which flows into helping each other, which flows into helping the whole studio, which flows onto helping the rest of the sector.






And we also acknowledge that this 'flow' is also two-way. The sector's contribution influences the studios', which influences the residents as a whole, which influences each individual practice.


informal feedback so far is proving positive - there is definitely a sense that residents are more engaged with each other and each others' practice, they are sharing information and there is an external interest in our workshops and informations sessions.


report card



i made a little report card, even. as a nice, simple matrix-type way to get a sense of how we're tracking. is that too geeky?

each project or 'thing' we've done is on the x-axis and our 'goals' on the y-. Building Each Other and The World are the three concentric areas of interaction that is underlying our strategy. The other six items are the six points of provocation that CIA gave us when we first arrived.

like any kind of 'box-ticking', this doesn't necessarily cover quality well, or assign any kind of weight to particular projects, reflect the time spent developing them, or the value given by the residents, but it's small and petite and easy to capture quickly.

we'll be back in two weeks to start on the next stage of the project, which is to introduce the major projects to the residents, do some training, play a little more and to set up a workshop on some vital digital stuff: hosting/servers/email/websites.

hungry

good to know.

from learn something every day. excellent, as ever.