Welcome to Digital Media Labs
DM Labs is an ongoing series of research and development labs for artists working with technology to apply their processes to new contexts, to hothouse ideas, and create new collaborations within a specially nominated peer group.
Here’s Looking at You – R&D is a creative research project investigating technologies and possibilities for creating artworks in the public domain using CCTV. This will be explored through a series of different processes including creating a first prototype of what an artist-run CCTV platform might look like and then experimenting within this system. HLY will interrogate the usefulness of this process and the systems employed alongside wider concepts of overt and covert technologies. This interrogation and exploration of ideas and technologies will be carried out collaboratively by a group of artists, curators, and technologists. The project is only intended as a starting point or reference for opening up a discussion about seeing and being seen by technology and the role of ‘the controller’ of ‘the subject’ in this relationship.
The function of the Lab will not be to create a specific work or outcome based on using CCTV, but rather to interrogate the idea and hopefully go beyond it to explore new possibilities. A series of presentations including talks, performance and blogs will give access to the ideas discussed and explored by the project, Here’s Looking at You.
Up-and-coming events in October 2021 will take place at Yorkshire Sculpture Park (23rd October) and online at Disability Arts Online.
Here’s Looking at You R&D is: lead artist Benedict Phillips, working with artists – Ben Dalton, Hwa Young Jung, Holly Norcop, John O’Shea and Andrey Pissantchev.
Here’s Looking at You Lab is the fourth lab delivered by the digital media lab’s team. and ACE with project consultation by Immersive Networks Collective.
Artists Blog Posts Below
What did CCTV mean? I think the closed-circuit technical limitations of the original CCTV contributed to a sort of safety and intimacy. Without the leaky indeterminacy of contemporary cloud-networked surveillance…
Are there ways of obligating a networked camera to take more responsibility for care? "Apple … revealed … a new technique it had developed called 'perceptual hashing' to compare photos…
Yesterday afternoon the idea emerged for a kind of game that could be played using the 6 CCTV cameras which make up the core hardware of Benedict's prototype - setting…
Who do we need to hold accountable? And, meanwhile, what critical infrastructures are important to us – our communication networks, mutual aid, playgrounds, energy systems, childcare – that we need…
On Tuesday there was a discussion regarding a proposed kind of automated camera system, which Benedict has been developing with Andrey. This stimulated thoughts regarding the purpose and scope of…
I have been thinking about what it means to try and work with networked cameras as a material, whether as part of critical infrastructure studies, or as a now well…
On the first day we each gave a short update on our individual work/practice - all impacted to greater or lesser extents by events of the last 2 years. Being…
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This is where Digital Media Labs comes in. We invite practitioners from across a range of disciplines to develop new skills and prototype works in a dedicated environment in order to advance their practice along new lines. Part of our approach at Digital Media Labs is simply about removing the everyday obstacles that sit between focused creativity, multi-media play and new creative works. We primarily work with practitioners specialising in visual arts, sound and moving image but participants have also included makers, musicians and animators.
Artists
The DMLabs Network has 30 artists so far, with far ranging practices, skillsets & backgrounds. Each Lab purposely has a diverse demographic so artists of all experiences can learn from each other.
Below are a selection of five random artists from across the labs,  see all 30 of them here.
That’s the magic of the Lab – the ability to share ideas and desires with others who all have different skill levels and come at problems from different perspectives. There is an altruistic current flowing through everyone here.
Participant in Digital Media Labs 2015
Each lab produces a book with a visual essay depicting the weeks’ activities with artists reflections on their experiments and research through collective play.
Contact: glenn_at_digitalmedialabs.org to order a print copy (100 pages / perfect bound)
2015
2014
 Collaborators
Some of the organisations we have collaborated with over the years as either commissioners, partners or supporters.
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