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Storming the Reality Studio
Tofts attempts to redefine that which is commonly known as new media art, as he believes it is out of touch with what's actually going on in digital culture. He refers to a range of contemporary Australian artists utilising digital media to explore some of the ways old material is appropriated and remediated to present works that are new and unique. Amongst those are Josephine Starrs and Leon Cmielewski, Murray McKeich, Ian Haig, Nicholas Negroponte, David Carson, James Widdowson, Gregory Baldwin, Elena Popa, Greg O'Connor, Troy Innocent, Rebecca Young, Andrew Trevillian and Tina Gonsalvas.
Creating a Place: Western Australian Women Artists 1920 - 1960
Art Gallery of WA 12 April - 4 June 2001
Winterbodies
Agnieska Golda, Zofia Sleziak, Stephanie Radok, Frances Phoenix, India Flint, Lisa Harms, Julie Robinson Wayville Showgrounds Adelaide 17-24 June 2001
An Ecology of OZ Mutant Media
Wade Marynowsky, aka Spanky is a software engineer who has coded a new program which allows audio-video samples to be collated for the live performance of a particular song, triggered live through a preferably loud sound system and video projector. This innovation marks a step forward in the realm of audio-video intersection and hybridisation. The recent emergence of VJ's (Vidi-yo Jockeys), artists who combine computer and VHS source materials to play with visual rhythms, create atmospheres, tell stories, respond to the music and provide visual stimulus also play a crucial role in this new media arena. Other new media collectives such as Shut up & Shop, Kraftwerk, the Distributed Audio Sequencer Environment crew and Labrat are here discussed.
Interfacing Art, Science and New Media
Among the current metaphors used to describe the unfolding relations between art and science, the two ascriptions that have held sway most recently have been those of collaboration and/or intersection. Both art and science have sent out sets of feelers towards each others cultures which has in turn produced an overlapping sphere of cultural and intellectual activity. Following Lisa Jardine's argument, Munster tentatively proposes that we think through these connections as a process of hybridisation performed by the work of the technical-aesthetic objects themselves rather than to declare a glorious new age of harmony, unity and productivity between the two. Artists Oron Catts, Ionat Zurr, Guy Ben-Ary, Justine Cooper, Michele Barker and Patricia Piccinini are in reference.
Jon McCormack's Evolving Ethics
Most readers would probably have noticed that talk about A-life technology (or any technology for that matter) has a definite shelf life. Liminal Product [LP] quizzed internationally acclaimed computer artist Jon McCormack, whose paper [Re]Designing Nature given at dLux media arts FutureScreen symposium on Artificial Life in October 2000, and recent piece, Eden exhibited at Cyber Cultures, Casula Powerhouse, in the same year, articulate many of the concerns about A-Life that Australian artists grapple with.
Digital Drawing: The Same But Different
Drawing - the use of line and tone - is at the other end of a technology timeline currently unravelling in the digital age of information. The theory and practice of drawing ranges from a tool for honing perceptual disciplines to one that permits the free-flow of the obsessive-compulsive component of our personalities. Leggett looks at the works of artists Paul Thomas, Maria Miranda, Harriet Birks, Alyssa Rothwell, Mr Snow, Peter Callas, Simon Biggs and Damien Everett and the various digital tools they employ to assist in the documenting and drawing out of their individual ideas.
Out of Australia: International Exposure
This article poses the question of what new media art exhibitions, as international exports, can offer to us as a nation, as a new media community and as individual artists, and of how they can function in terms of the transmission and propagation of certain ideas and images into what might be called the world brain. To discuss this Wallace looks at the structure and outcomes of PROBE, the first large-scale exhibition of contemporary, new media art ever held in Beijing which featured the work of Patricia Piccinini, Justine Cooper, Leon Cmielewski/Josephine Starrs, Brenda L. Croft, Zen Yipu and Jen Seevink, as well as including a range of internet sites.
No access, Terry Summers Head-on, Kim Demuth Full stop, Sam Sexton
Soapbox Gallery, Brisbane 1-27 June 2001
Writing on the Net: Nodes and Hypertext
Many new media works contribute to the field of hypertext despite not being concerned with the literary. Corroli refers to Adrian Miles who likes to 'think of hypertext as being primarily about links and nodes and their relations, which may or may not privilege words'. This topic is examined using examples where hypertext has become a primary focus such as the partnering of eWRe, trAce Online Writing Centre and ANAT who developed a series of online writing residencies in the late 1990s. Artists also discussed: Anne Walton, Francesca da Rimini, Sally Pryor, Diane Caney and Robin Petterd.