Links to video clips of kinetic art works

Norm White-Helpless Robot

Joe McKay -The Big Job

Overview of the Show

Peter Flemming -Canoe

 

 

Schematic: New Media Art From Canada closes on December 19.  If you haven’t made it to SPACE to see the exhibition yet, this week is your last chance! SPACE is located at 129-131 Mare Street, London, E8. SPACE is at The Triangle adjacent to London Fields Park, 5 minutes walk from Broadway Market.

Bus D6, 26, 48, 55, 106, 236, 277, 254, 388.
Underground The nearest station is Bethnal Green on the Central Line. Continue along Cambridge Heath Road, past the Museum of Childhood and on towards Mare Street (15 minute walk or 10 minutes by bus).
Overground Trains arrive directly from Liverpool Street to London Fields Station, a five minute walk to SPACE.

Opening hours are: Mon-Fri: 10 am - 5pm. (SPACE is closed on Saturday December 20). Admission is free.

Image: The Big Job by Joe McKay, photo by Michelle Kasprzak 

Schematic: New Media Art from Canada is in all the major listings, and reviews are starting to pop up. Time Out London did a lukewarm review (with a positive comment), and Rhizome did a great and humourous review. When more reviews are spotted, they’ll be posted here.

Schematic: New Media Art from Canada opened on November 7, 2008 at SPACE. Thanks to everyone who attended the private view!

The exhibition is open until December 20, 2008. SPACE is located at 129-131 Mare Street, London, E8. SPACE is at The Triangle adjacent to London Fields Park, 5 minutes walk from Broadway Market.

Bus D6, 26, 48, 55, 106, 236, 277, 254, 388.
Underground The nearest station is Bethnal Green on the Central Line. Continue along Cambridge Heath Road, past the Museum of Childhood and on towards Mare Street (15 minute walk or 10 minutes by bus).
Overground Trains arrive directly from Liverpool Street to London Fields Station, a five minute walk to SPACE.

Opening hours are: Mon-Fri: 10 am - 5pm, Sat: 12 - 4 pm.

Admission is free.

Following the conclusion of the current exhibition at [ space ] media arts, a catalogue covering both Schematic exhibitions will be released. In the meantime, this short curatorial text by Michelle Kasprzak is being distributed at the gallery and here on the Schematic blog.

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Schematic: The Machine that Moves Us 

By Michelle Kasprzak

In 1738, Jacques de Vaucanson built what would become his most famous automaton, a duck consisting of over four hundred moving parts. The duck was able to flap its wings, drink water, “digest” food, and defecate. The duck delighted people who observed it and brought de Vaucanson the attention of some of the most important and wealthy people of his time. While it was remarkable for its technical ingenuity (it was said that de Vaucanson created the first flexible rubber pipe as part of its “intestines”), it was also amazing for its resemblance to a real duck. It was this very combination of technical ingenuity and resemblance that produced its capacity to entertain with actions that would be utterly banal when demonstrated by a real duck. Vaucanson’s duck is a very early version of the sort of work that would now sit comfortably on a spectrum with Disney Imagineers on one end, and new media artists on the other.  
(more…)

 

Featuring: Germaine Koh, Nicholas Stedman, Peter Flemming, Norman White and Joe Mckay

8 November - 20 December 2008 
private/press view 7 November

[ space ]

129 - 131 Mare St
London E8 3RH

Schematic is a group exhibition of work featuring the work of five emerging and established Canadian new media artists.
Schematic showcases the extraordinary creativity and technological innovation displayed by artists who incorporate invention and engineering in their practice, in order to explore the role that technologically mediated relationships play in shaping our attitudes towards leisure, work, the environment and each other.

The “Canadian experience” of landscape, weather and the environment is explored through technological innovation in the work of Peter Flemming and Germain Koh. Flemming’s Canoe (2003), contains a mechanized paddle apparatus. Powered by an electric motor and battery, the paddle propels itself the entire length of the water-filled interior of a mock canoe, paddling continuously back and forth. In Koh’s Fair-weather forces (water level) (2008), velvet ropes on stainless steel stanchions move up and down in relation to the water level mediated by an ultrasonic sensor installed in a nearby body of water forming part of a series of works using technology to enable everyday functional architectural features to reflect external environmental conditions.

Artists Norman White, Nicholas Stedman and Joe Mackay use 21st century craftsmanship, juxtaposing the ‘handmade’ with technology producing interactive and playful works. White’s seminal electronic kinetic sculptural piece Helpless Robot, (1988) is a freestanding robot that seeks interaction with spectators. Helpless Robot enlists the help of its human audience for its mobility needs through conversation that adapts to its sense of cooperation or lack thereof. ADB (after Deep Blue) forms part of Stedman’s ongoing effort to construct tactile, physical companions. Mimicking the movement of a snake, ADB contains sensors allowing it respond to the touch of its human handler.
Mckay’s work features awkward robotic simulations of the sleek computer trappings that enhance our lives. The Big Job, (2005) is a mechanical progress bar moved by a stepper motor and connected to a loading webpage. Once completed, The Big Job commences again, offering a tongue in cheek complement to the other robotic works in the show.

8 November - 20 December 2008 
private/press view 7 November

[ space ]

129 - 131 Mare St
London E8 3RH
link to Google Map

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schematic artists

Germain Koh is a conceptual artist working out of Vancouver. Her practice encompasses the use of everyday objects and familiar concepts. She has exhibited widely including the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, the Liverpool Biennial, Art Gallery of Alberta, Frankfurter Kunstverein and Bloomberg SPACE, London.
She is represented by Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver

Peter Flemming is an artist who has exhibited widely throughout Canada and the United States. He teaches Electronics for Artists and Electronic Arts Studio at Concordia University in Montreal. In addition, he has worked for several years custom designing and building electronic/mechanical devices and interfaces for artists.

Nicholas Stedman has integrated computers and electronics in his art
practice for more than 10 years. During this time he has made and collaborated on sculptures, installations, and performances which have been shown around Canada and abroad including at ISEA, Future Physical and Ars Electronica.

Norman White is a Canadian new media artist and pioneer of using
electronics and robotics in art. He introduced classes in electronics and robotics for students at the Ontario College of Art & Design from 1978 – 2003, greatly impacting the new media art landscape in Canada He is frequently cited as one of Canada’s most influential new media artists. The Helpless Robot won him a Prix Ars Electronica prize in 1990. Currently, White teaches at Ryerson University in Toronto

Joe Mckay makes work with and about digital culture. He grew up in Ontario and studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, and more recently graduated with an MFA from UC Berkeley. He has shown extensively throughout Canada and the United States Including VertexList, New York. The Berkeley Art Museum, the National Gallery of Canada, the ICA in San Jose, the Pacific Film Archive, and the New Museum; he is currently doing a residency at the Headlands Center For the Arts.

 

 

The final week of Eric Raymond’s exhibition at Canada House Gallery, Trafalgar Square.
Open Monday- Friday 10 - 6.

Please visit Eric Raymond’s website for more information about the artist and his work, and his future exhibitions.

Scribes by Eric Raymond. Photo by Michelle Kasprzak. 

After an extremely successful launch on April 24, we are beginning to compile some documentation of the exhibition online.

There are photos of the exhibition available on Flickr, and a video of one of the works, Linescape, available on YouTube.

More to come! 

 

SCHEMATIC: ERIC RAYMOND

Canada House
Trafalgar Square, Cockspur Street
London SW1Y 5BJ

April 25 - June 6, 2008

A solo show presenting the work of the Montreal-based media artist, featuring his most striking robotic and electronic installations. Curated by Heather Corcoran, Michelle Kasprzak and Gillian McIver. Co-presented by Kinetica Museum.

Eric Raymond has been active in the field of electronic arts for over a decade, having exhibited widely in Canada and internationally, including the Absolut LA International Biennial Art Invitational (US) and Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria).

Raymond’s solo show explores the dynamic between technology and our natural world, and represents the first part of Schematic: New Media Art from Canada, a group exhibition opening in London later this year.

Schematic: Eric Raymond is part of Québec 400 celebrations in London.

Supported by:

THE CANADA COUNCIL FOR THE ARTS

Heather Corcoran is an independent producer/curator and formerly Emergent Technologies Producer at Space Media Arts in London. Recently she has curated "Tha Click" at E:vent Gallery featuring American artists Paper Rad and Beige (Cory Arcangel and Paul B. Davis); the game hack exhibition "Controller" at InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre in Toronto, where she was Communications Manager until 2005, and the "Tagged" series of eventsat Space Media Arts.  She is a core organizer of NODE.London, co-organizer of Dorkbot London and a member of OpenLab. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in New Media at Ryerson University in Toronto. She recently joined FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) as curator.

Michelle Kasprzak is a curator, writer, and orator based in Edinburgh. Michelle has exhibited and lectured across North America and Europe. She has been featured in numerous publications and on radio and television broadcasts syndicated worldwide. She completed her MA in Visual and Media Arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal in spring of 2006, and later that year was awarded a curatorial research residency at the Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art in Finland. She has written critical essays for Spacing, CV Photo, Public, Mute, and several online journals. Currently, two video programmes that she has curated are on a worldwide tour. Formerly the Programmes Director of New Media Scotland, Michelle is now a Visual Arts Officer for the Scottish Arts Council. michelle.kasprzak.ca, www.curating.info

Gillian McIver is a UK-based Canadian writer, curator and film/video artist. Following studies in History and Philosophy in Canada (UBC, U of Toronto), she studied Contemporary Media Practice at the University of Westminster. She is a founder of international art collective, Luna Nera, dedicated to site-specific media and live arts. Her recent projects include curating an exhibition of video art, "Postindustrial Baroque"; co-curating an exhibition of book and video art "Prospero’s Library" (Moscow 2007).  In 2006 she curated video programmes for the Vidifest Valencia,  and for the "Generalized Empowerment: Urban Interventions" conference at UCL, with Saskia Sassen et al. She has written for Variant, Crosswalk and Contexts, and for online journals. She recenlty lecurtred and presented work at "Digital Media 08" in Valencia.
www.luna-nera.com    www.artsite.org.uk