Digital Media Labs 2015
After the success of Digital Media Labs 2014, it seemed inevitable that there would be another one and with the support of a new sponsor, the University of Leeds, our 2015 edition ‘Digital Outsiders’ came into being.
With the third iteration of digital media Labs, we created a conceptual structure around the theme of the ‘digital outsider’, providing a starting point or provocation for the participating artists to explore if they wished. The concept of the ‘digital outsider’ first poses the question of ‘are you on the outside or the inside?’. Thinking about the notion of the digital out- sider for us was about taking a distinctly personal perspective from which to examine the digital world and that which is thought of as being ‘outside’ of the digital! our your ideas digitally inclusive or digitally exclusive? See all the artists’ journey from their blog posts over the week.
Partner organisation Octopus hosted the lab in their Barrow-in-Furness studio, situated in a widely used Victorian park on the industrial fringe of the Lake District, that functioned as a testbed for ideas and prototypes.
‘If you’re not lost, how are you going to find yourself ?’
Artists 2015
On the first day of the Lab we hold a symposium made up of presentations by the participating ten artists. They have all met the night before (many for the first time) and have been introduced to where they will be working and to the history and ideas that brought the Lab into being.
Our 10 artists for the ‘Digital Outsider’Â edition nominated by
Digital Outsiders
The artists who have left their comfort zone and their familiar practice and kept going are now deep into a new landscape; seeing how they can literally stitch, stick, glue and dovetail their ideas of making and working with the digital. Other artists have worked out how they can utilise the resources to generate a new work or new draft. Other artists have perhaps found them- selves using this time to reflect on their practice as a whole, the impact of not delivering to brief and being outside of your comfort zone with no need to make breakfast lunch or dinner can leave you with very few places to go!
For some, it was clear to my mind, that the time and context had given them a tangible creative path or tool that they would not have encountered without meeting and working alongside the others of us there; for others, and I include myself here, the week seemed to have given us breathing space.
Artists’Â Diary
Presentation day is an opportunity to reveal the experience of being on the Lab to the other artists and guests who attend this final activity. As I stressed to the artists over the course of the week, there is no pressure and no need to apply the process of being on the Lab to a product or an outcome.
I want to capture some of the curiosity again. That drive to explore and experiment. This DML’s been so good for that. I’m curious about things – and want to be start sowing seeds.
Presentations are not a pitch, they are an opportunity for personal perspectives, an opportunity to open up and share your experience. This does not mean that artists don’t give presentations for work made or in development but it does mean there will be a variety of outcomes. If there is to be work beyond the this rare opportunity to reflect on their practice and debate it with people with a fresh perspective, then it is most likely to be a product or project that grows out of the experience and the new networks which have been set up through the Lab. As is our way, we would always suggest that if you want to know what the artist did during the week and perhaps what they thought and did, then there is a blog for that…
Already Sunday - 3rd day into the residency. I have been trying to be offline & low-tech as much as possible this year - going through a bit of a…
First Day The sessions are happening in this amazing space Octopus collective at Barrow-in-Furness  literality inside a huge green park. The city is full of tranquility and very melancholy it reminds me…
On returning from Barrow-in-Furness, my Digital Media Lab experience was somewhat truncated by the immediate need to retrieve my daughter from her grandmother's, pack her off somewhere else again to enjoy…
I spent much of Tuesday wrestling with code; how to get data out of the headset and how to interpret it visually. On Monday night, armed with the collected EEG…
We started the day with an intro to all the kit at the Lab with Dave. Super exciting fun stuff to play with! A lot of the kit list terms…
I have been quiet, if not silent, in disclosing the process I have been going through during the Digital Media Lab experience. Not for any reasons of secrecy but purely…
That boulder was heavy. I am hoping he reappears before the week is out. To myself I say, "Spend more time in boats."
I arrived at Digital Media Labs with an open mind, which it turns out, was probably a wise approach. Only 2 days in to the lab and it is refreshing…
Most of Saturday was about Ben Dalton's charity shop challenge. I teamed up with Gina to scourge the second hand market to explore the digital outside/r. We had £10 to blow…
I always enjoy listening to other artists talk about their work - I find it fascinating finding out what others are interested in. It’s an opportunity to see the possibilities,…
A trip to Piel Island - I’m thinking about blurred edges, the sea fading into the sky. These sorts of places always make me think about scale, in the vastness…
(I posting my last few diary entries a few days after returning home - I do keep very detailed notes of what I get up to, I just tend to…
We were Outside; They were Inside. In the end, the separation was important. Comfort Zone is a difficult concept. It is also the name of a shoe shop. I had…
Play time! I got partnered with James for a junk shop challenge. We were talking about micro generation gaps and the speed with which cultural reference points change in the…
Yesterday I commented on the amount of energy and resources tied up in physical media – objects that we’ve repeatedly created and abandoned in the wake of rapidly changing technology…
Interesting day today - felt like I started the day well with a clear idea of getting one of the Kinect cameras to work, calibrating it to a Gopro to…
Day 2 Ben Dalton was around at the DML and proposed an exploration through the charity shops of Barrow-in-Furness which seems to be one of the cheapest I've ever been. They…
Up until now I haven't said anything about the past three nights and two days. Mainly because I hadn't quite known exactly what it was i'd been thinking. Along the way…
Picking up on the #digitaloutsider theme, we were treated to a day out to Piel Island on Sunday afternoon. We divided into three vehicles for the 15 minute drive and regrouped at…
This charity shop task from Ben Dalton was pretty intense. Â I was teamed with Shelly and we had intense few minutes staring at a One Direction board game aimed at…
We began the morning with a group session, sitting in the sunshine, discussing our thoughts and problems - it felt like something between group therapy and an art school crit…
I began a conversation around the dinner table earlier in the week about the cultural and technological alienation I'm beginning to feel from people 5 years younger than myself. As…
The Sunday was mostly an adventure day through the Piel Island @radamar
This morning I was keen to get cracking with gathering some data and playing with some tech. Dave had showed me the Mindwave EEG headset, which is more accessible than…
…Maybe i could use some sort of tweezers to guide the needles into places I can’t get my fingers because adding an extra level of manual difficulty is always a fun game….
Oh and I’ve got to pull apart a CD player when I get home to get the lense out to stick to the camera module to make it super macro… And I must get online and find a decent MUD emulator…And start playing with pattern compression… wonder if I could add more cameras to the glove… And while I think about it…
Lab Book 2015
To order a copy please email:
Glenn [at] DigitalMedialabs.org
I’ve tried to think about my work as perpetually in the experimentation phase. Some- thing that doesn’t have an end – and therefore can’t be fails – yet/ever. It’s comforting to delude myself to this state – something that’s not really grounded in reality. But that’s what this week is. Suspended and cut off from the day to day real world of consequenc- es, criticisms and repercussions.
Talks
Digital Media Labs presented the works from the lab at :
3rd Nov 2015 | ODI Summit 2015 | BFI London
19th Nov 2015 | Access Space SheffieldÂ
21th Nov 2015 | Crumb Newcastle
Digital Media Labs 2015 is kindly sponsored by
