Skill Share: A Northern Lights.mn Symposium

Skill Share: A Northern Lights.mn Symposium
March 27-28, 2015 at the Soap Factory
Free, registration required for both days on EventBrite
Sponsored by the Jerome Foundation

Join us for a conversation on art, surveillance and narrative plus an afternoon knowledge-share of information every artist working with media in the public sphere needs to know.  Part artist talk, part skills fair and part happy hour, this gathering aims to build knowledge, peer learning and expand networks around contemporary digital art in conjunction with Art(ists) on the Verge.

Friday, March 27, 7 pm
James Coupe: Metadata and Metanarratives
Co-presented with What’s Up Pop Up by Sarah Lutman and Associates

Using surveillance systems, social media, and neuroscience, James Coupe makes art that approaches narrative in unusual ways. Some works are composed by using pre-existing literary or cinematic templates as a framework; others take social media as a narrative framework in itself. For example, in (re)collector, a city-wide surveillance camera network attempted to reconstruct Antonioni’s classic film, Blow Up, from people’s everyday activities; and in Today, too, I experienced something I hope to understand in a few days, Facebook’s profiling algorithms are used to generate films that use people’s status updates as scripts.

The talk will consider the use of narrative in Coupe’s work alongside a discussion of metadata, surveillance and autonomous systems.

James Coupe is an artist and associate professor at the University of Washington’s renowned DX Arts program.

Read James Coupe’s 2015 essay, “Metadata and Metanarratives” here.

Saturday, March 28, 12:30 – 4:30 pm, happy hour 4:30 – 5:30 pm

Do you have a question about wireless electricity or guerilla projection? Local and national artists lead skill-shares on a variety of topics designed to assist artists working in public art, digital and networked technologies and interactivity.

Bring your questions to ask and experiences to share with the presenters on these topics:

Metadata and Metanarratives with James Coupe

Learn about strategies for working with metadata to build dynamic narratives including building your own surveillance network, Facebook app or EEG interface. What are the legal issues at play in such work, such as consent, and how to approach them with integrity?

James Coupe is an artist working with surveillance systems, social media, and neuroscience.

Portable Power and Co-opting Public Energy with Aaron Marx and Andrea Steudel

Power up your portable project with solar powered and other batteries, or find electrical sources in the city to “borrow.”

Andrea Steudel is an event producer, technical coordinator, electrician, and artist specializing in public dissemination of light-based media.

Aaron Marx is a Twin Cities based artist / designer working in architecture, painting, sculpture, public art, new media, and interaction.

Get Precise! Digital Fabrication with Wil Natzel and Molly Reichert

CNC machining, laser cutting and 3-D printing — how to use these tools and to what end? Learn different approaches to digital fabrication to design and build with a range of materials — cardboard, wood, plastic, vinyl, you name it.

Wil Natzel, with an architectural degree from Cranbrook Academy of Art, uses digital fabrication tools to produce works which circulate around the periphery of eclectic architecture, counteracting the banal.

Molly Reichert is an architectural designer and an educator, she incorporates technology in both research and design practice with computational design and fabrication. Her practice engages in an interdisciplinary form, moving fluidly between the disciplines of architecture, art, design, urbanism and our relationships to each of these.

Demystifying Working with Commercial Property Owners with Joan Vorderbruggen, Max Musicant

Empty storefronts are for artists! Hear practical tips and hilarious stories from organizers who are working directly with commercial property owners to give temporary exhibition space to artists.

An artist and organizer, Joan Vorderbruggen envisions possibilities for the most dejected spaces, transforming vacant storefronts into showcases of MN based creativity.

Max Musicant is the Founder and Principal of The Musicant Group, a placemaking firm that helps communities and the commercial real estate industry transform underutilized spaces into great places where people want to be.

How to Avoid the Pitfalls of Projection in Public Space with Michael Murnane

From lumens to troublesome ambient light, bring your questions about how to project your work on the streets, including permits and technical challenges.

Michael Murnane is a Minneapolis based lighting, projection and event designer.

Reconstructing Me: Bodies in Code with Anthony Tran

Get an overview of specific body and gesture detection technologies (i.e. Kinect and LeapMotion) and learn about examples of how these platforms have been used in recent installations.

Anthony Tran is an artist and technologist who thinks about digital surveillance of the body and the future of text; he was a past recipient of the Art(ists) on the Verge fellowship in 2011.

Playfully Aesthetic: Making and Exhibiting Game Art with Eddo Stern and Tyler Stefanich

Discuss emerging practice of game art with examples drawn from the UCLA Game Lab, a leading organization for advancing game aesthetics, genres and contexts across all types and forms of gaming, from tabletop to digital. Issues include the challenges of game art design and exhibition, gamification, polemics in games, and more.

Eddo Stern, Founder and Director of the UCLA Game Lab, is an artist and game designer who works on the disputed borderlands between fantasy and reality, exploring the uneasy and otherwise unconscious connections between physical existence and electronic simulation.

Tyler Stefanich, Manager of the UCLA Game Lab, is an artist and designer based out of Los Angeles.

Virtual Reality: Now More Than Ever with Chuck Olsen

Virtual Reality has been called an “empathy machine” and “the final medium.” Cut through the hype and learn what’s possible in VR today, from headsets to 3D games and immersive film experiences.

Chuck Olsen is co-founder of virtual reality startup Visual, creating the first social media experience for Samsung Gear VR. Chuck and Taylor Carik also co-founded digital video agency vidtiger, creating a range of digital media projects including the in-person social game Futurekave. Before that? 15 years as a public television web producer, videoblogging pioneer with MN Stories, and co-founder of The UpTake.

Special Session:

Let’s Make a Shareable New Media Theory Bibliography with John Kim, 1-hr only!

Networks, free labor, cybernetics, protocol, infoglut, 24/7, the virtual — what are some contemporary theories of new media and why should we care? Bring a list of your favorite books to contribute to this user-created bibliography building session.

John Kim has published widely on issues surrounding the history of the computer and our changing experience of the natural world. As an artist, John has shown work internationally, including MassMOCA, DiaCenter for the Arts, ISEA and Northern Spark.

 

Sponsorship for Skill Share is generously provided by The Jerome Foundation.