Technological advances expand the artist's expressive vocabulary
Exhibition: "Bruno Munari: My Futurist Past", Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, 39A Canonbury Square, London, N1 2AN, From 19 September 2012 to 23 December 2012.
Bruno Munari was a "founding member of the Movimento Arte Concreta (M.A.C.) in Milan, which was established towards the end of the 1940s. This acted as a catalyst for new developments in Italian abstraction, and aspired to bring about a 'synthesis of arts' in which traditional painting would be complemented by new tools of communication, demonstrating the possibility of a convergence of art and technology, creativity and functionality. Reflecting his belief that technological advances expanded the artist's expressive vocabulary, by 1950 Munari had begun to experiment with creating works by means of projecting light through compositions made from a wide range of materials such as coloured and transparent plastic, organic elements and Polaroid filters, producing beautiful and intriguing images of vast dimensions."
(Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, 2012)
Fig.1 Bruno Munari, Aeroplanes and Archers, 1932, mixed media, 34.8 x 24.8cms Courtesy Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive
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Boundary Functions: personal space exists only in relation to others and changes without our control
"Boundary Functions shows us that personal space exists only in relation to others and changes without our control. ...
By projecting the diagram, the invisible relationships between individuals and the space between them become visible and dynamic. The intangible notion of personal space and the line that always exists between you and another becomes concrete. The installation doesn't function at all with one person, as it requires a physical relationship to someone else. In this way Boundary Functions is a reversal of the lonely self-reflection of virtual reality, or the frustration of virtual communities: here is a virtual space that can only exist with more than one person, and in physical space.
The title, Boundary Functions, refers to Theodore Kaczynski's 1967 University of Michigan PhD thesis. Better known as the Unabomber, Kaczynski is a pathological example of the conflict between the individual and society: engaging with an imperfect world versus an individual solitude uncompromised by the presence of others. The thesis itself is an example of the implicit antisocial quality of some scientific discourse, mired in language and symbols that are impenetrable to the vast majority of society. In this installation, a mathematical abstraction is made instantly knowable by dynamic visual representation."
(Scott Snibbe, 1998)
Fig.1 Scott Snibbe (1998). "Boundary Functions".
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Practising Theatre History as Research
"Much current scholarship in the field of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, including my own, focuses on the actual performance of plays in their own or later periods, regarding the texts that survive as, in different ways, blueprints for performance, and exploring them in the context of their performance spaces, actors and theatre-practice and of other agencies such as audiences that impact upon those texts in performance. My own research in these areas is largely conducted through practice.
But let me just sketch a brief background. In 1998, a sea-change occurred in the lives of arts (as opposed to humanities) researchers in the UK, with the creation of the Arts & Humanities Research Board (now Council) which, for the first time, funded practice-led research in the creative arts. I cannot stress too heavily the impact this had on the landscape of research in the performing arts.
That's not to say, of course, that research through practice had not been conducted before then. If I take my own department at Bristol as an example, scholars such as Glynne Wickham, Richard Southern and Neville Denny were experimenting from the early 1950s by staging medieval and early modern plays, and using their findings in their published work.
But the arrival of the AHRB not only provided funding for practice-led research in the academy, but in so doing, confirmed it as being as valid and - not to be underestimated - as respectable as research conducted through more traditional or conventional means. And - a point to which I shall return - it opened up debates not only on how such research might most profitably be conducted, but how it might be disseminated in forms other than the books or journal articles that had predominated - and be disseminated, in fact, through the practice/performance itself."
(Martin White)
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What Dreams May Come: imagining a painted world through vfx
"Ward's 'What Dreams May Come,' starring Robin Williams was nominated for production design in addition to winning an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. The film, tells an epic love story of soul mates separated by death. The story would inspire Ward to envision the afterlife as a painted world, incorporating state-of-the-art, adapted, and entirely new visual effects technologies in an original, fully articulated, filmic view of imagined realms that may await us after death."
(Saville Productions)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
The Interactive Institute: Swedish experimental design research centre
"The Interactive Institute is a Swedish experimental IT & design research institute that conducts world-class applied research and innovation. With pioneering spirit and courage, we challenge prevailing norms in technology and design. Our process is based on people’s future needs and potential with a vision to improve everyday life for a creative and sustainable society. The results are developed in close collaboration with industry and society.
We develop new research areas, concepts, products and services, and provide strategic advice to corporations and public organizations. Our results are communicated and exhibited worldwide and brought out to society through commissioned work, license agreements and spin-off companies.
Over the course of a decade, the Interactive Institute has established itself at the forefront of research and development in design, data visualization, sustainability and entertainment, positioning Sweden as a leading force in the lifestyle technology research sector. The Interactive Institute has worked systematically to identify new research fields and to create pioneering projects within these with great potential for innovation. The projects have given rise to larger research programs and funding initiatives that not only have created renewal within Swedish research, but also played an important part for Swedish industry, regional development and the image of Sweden as an innovative nation.
Since the start in 1998, our work has been characterized not only in the way we conduct traditional academic research but also in our exploration of the borders between art, design and technology in industrial and academic settings as well as public and private sectors. With our expertise, we bring an innovative edge into policy work, we connect stakeholders for extraordinary synergies, we bring renewal to traditional industry and we add context and involvement to the processes we are involved in. In bringing together our knowledge of business and creative values with world-class research results, we offer a unique set of skills to the Swedish research and innovation sector in the international arena.
The Interactive Institute has 50 employees per December 2010, and is organized around studios localized in Piteå, Umeå, Stockholm, Eskilstuna, Norrköping and Gothenburg. The headquarters is situated in Stockholm/Kista. The Interactive Institute is a non profit distributing organization."
(The Interactive Institute)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
