1.00: Wednesday 11th July (concurrent with Conference afternoon session) followed by a presentation to the Conference at 4.50
FREE OF CHARGE BUT REQUIRES REGISTRATION
Organisers:
Dr. Ann Borda (JISC) a.borda@jisc.ac.uk)
Dr. Stuart Dunn (AHeSSC – Kings College London) stuart.dunn@kcl.ac.uk
Dr. Tobias Blanke (AHeSSC – Kings College London) tobias.blanke@kcl.ac.uk
This workshop, led by JISC (www.jisc.ac.uk) and the Arts & Humanities e-Science Support Centre (AHeSSC – www.ahessc.ac.uk ), aims to stimulate discussion around the creative and research uses of e-Science tools and methods (so-called grid technologies, and technologies integrated with them such as data-mining, simulation and visualization) in the Arts & Humanities within the UK.
The half-day workshop will focus on how the take-up of e-Science is developing new areas of research in the Arts & Humanities community, including the performing arts and humanities research.
There will be three plenary sessions to introduce key topics and provide contextual background information to a variety of work being undertaken. A set of presentations will further offer demonstrative examples of activity by projects funded by JISC, AHRC and EPSRC under the e-Science ‘umbrella’.
The outcomes of the workshop will contribute directly to a special issue in the Digital Humanities Quarterly, and a THES themed article.
Chair: Ann Borda (JISC)
Performing Arts
e-Science and Creativity (Gregory Sporton -Birmingham)
AMUC project (Sally Jane Norman –Culture Lab, Newcastle)
CSAGE Project (Martin Turner/Anja LeBlanc – Manchester)
Introduction: Intersections between Arts and the Humanities – (Stuart Dunn – AHESSC)
Frustration vs Adoption: Artists and ICT Tools (Mike Pringle – VADS)
Real-Time Expansion: the potentials of e-Science technologies within Contemporary Arts practice. (Michael Takeo Magruder – King’s College
London)
London Charter (Graeme Earl - Southampton)
SHORT DESCRIPTIONS of PROPOSED PRESENTATIONS/DEMONSTRATORS:
Gregory Sporton (University of Birmingham)
Presentation on the issues and value of e-Science processes in the Visual Arts based on a series of workshops which both explored and broke new ground in these areas, including a demonstrator of a dancer used as an HCI device.
Sally-Jane Norman (University of Newcastle)
Use of motion capture tools in the performing arts underpins activities ranging from staged productions to screen-bound works, choreographic notation and archiving, pooling artistic skills with competence from sectors including biomechanics, sensor development, information processing and display. Today's affordances opened up by Grid developments make motion capture a valuable area for interdisciplinary investigation twenty years after the animation industry first teamed up with biomechanics experts. In this project, users of motion capture resources from different disciplines are collectively devising novel annotation and retrieval methods for grid-enabled data; we thus hope to enrich the broader scientific debate with concepts and potential services enriched by Arts & Humanities perspectives.
Anja leBlanc /Martin Turner (University of Manchester)
This paper discusses research undertaken by an interdisciplinary team of academic researchers from the fields of dance and e-Science. The ‘Stereo-bodies’ project focused on exploring the ways in which choreographic practice and in particular live dance performance could engage with a stereoscopic Access Grid environment.
Graeme Earl (University of Southampton)
Mike Pringle (Visual Arts Data Service, Kings College London)
While healthy numbers of art practitioners and researchers are exploring revolutionary ideas through the use of new, computer-based, technologies, the larger majority of artists and art researchers are often frustrated with the difficulties that such advances can bring.
Frustration can be because of the seemingly steep learning curves that can be involved; due to the perceived lack of responsiveness of machines; or simply because of limited access to the necessary tools or to the funds required to make the most of them. How can the latest generation of advanced ICT tools, for example, grid technologies, help more artists to exploit, and even enjoy, technology rather than be frustrated by it?
Michael Takeo Magruder (King’s College London)
Although Contemporary Arts practice has embraced the utilisation of computer and communication frameworks for the creation of artistic products and outputs, work in this field is often limited by the potentials of mainstream technologies. This talk considers how the utilisation of HPC (high performance computing) can facilitate the progression towards complex, real-time artworks by providing an infrastructure that vastly exceeds the current computational facilities of consumer-level systems.
Bio:
Michael Takeo Magruder is an American artist based in the UK working with New and Technological Media within Contemporary Arts practice. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1996 receiving a BA (Hons) in Biological Science. He is a long-standing member of King's Visualisation Lab in the Centre for Computing in Humanities, King's College London. Through this organisation he undertakes research, development and implementation of emerging technologies; including motion capture, immersive space and virtual environments, for use in contemporary creative and academic practice. His artworks have been showcased in over 160 exhibitions and 30 countries, including venues such as the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, EAST International 2005, Georges Pompidou Center, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and Trans-Media-Akademie Hellerau. His works are regular inclusions in international New Media festivals, such as Cybersonica, CYNETart, FILE, Filmwinter, SeNef, Siggraph, Split, VAD and WRO. His artistic practice has been funded directly by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Arts Council England, The National Endowment for the Arts, USA and numerous public galleries both within the UK and abroad. He is also recognised for his on-line arts practice and has been commissioned by leading portals for Internet Art such as Turbulence.org and Soundtoys.net.
His current interests concern the simultaneous utilisation and dissection of new technology as a means to explore the formal structures and conceptual paradigms of the digital realm. He seeks to create artworks in which there are no divisions between technologies, aesthetics, and concepts.
Web: www.takeo.org
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