Issue 56

ANAT is pleased to welcome members to our new magazine Filter. The magazine has replaced the Newsletter and will be produced three times a year. Filter will include more articles on art, science and technology practice both in Australia and internationally. (more…)

The multifaceted and whimsical collaborative art and science project Fish-bird created by Dr Mari Velonaki, an interactive media artist, and her three colleagues at The Australian Centre for Field Robotics, Drs David Rye, Steve Scheding and Stefan Williams – all three are roboticists- is a fine testament to the fact that art and science can engage with each other in a highly creative, poetic and democratic manner. (more…)

Artists and scientists, in different but equally fundamental ways, seek out patterns in the natural world and sensitise others to them. Scientists, like artists, validate their work aesthetically, and both make intellectual choices that are governed by a sense of concordance with nature. Science and art together are needed for full description of the world. The belief that they are dissonant and incompatible distorts and misrepresents them both. (Frank Oppenheimer, 1972 in The Museum as Laboratory, The Exploratorium). (more…)

The Australian Network for Art and Technology has been supporting artists working in the areas of art and science engagement since its inception in the late 1980s. A founding principle of the organisation is ‘to establish and develop the interaction between the arts, sciences and technology’. This goal is realised through creating opportunities for artists to access technology and resources through science organisations as well as supporting collaboration and interaction between artists and scientists. (more…)

In November 2003 I attended a two week training workshop in a new community network, software and resource base called Nine(9).  The workshop was one in a series convened by the artist group Mongrel Inc, and was held at the Jelliedeel Shop in Southend-On-Sea, the infamous Cockneys’ Escape, sixty minutes due east of London, overlooking the slave/pirate/smuggler mud where the River Thames becomes sea.  (more…)

Ars Electronica was my first international new media festival and a blast on many levels which started even before I’d landed. As I was reading the program on the plane somewhere between Canada and Europe, I looked out of the window and saw laid out in the landscape, a giant circuit board in the pattern of the roads and fields. A portent of thing to come… (more…)

For three days in January 2004, a Masterclass with Blast Theory (UK) was held at the well-equipped Technology School of the Future, Hindmarsh SA. Participants from across Australia spent their time discussing previous works of Blast Theory and their place within the gaming performance and art realms; learning the basics of various handheld technologies, their uses and restrictions; formulating game structures and rules using mapping, instructive clues or messages, visual indicators and performance. (more…)

Visiting the Transfigure exhibition at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image gave me a real sense that new media technologies are important for more than just the “wow” factor and are able to deliver something more than escapist entertainment. (more…)

With a glass of white wine in one hand and a hunk of bread topped with a quivering dollop of hummus in the other, several gallery patrons including myself stood with headphones on, watching an endoscopic video installation exploring what looked to be freshly excavated tunnels within a pot of Rose’s Lime Marmalade.  (more…)

A walk through any research lab can be an assault on the senses. It could be learning the structure of a particular cell or an arrangement of laboratory glassware ready for sterilisation that makes an impact on you. Having access to this facility has been a luxury. It has opened up a whole new range of materials, tools and paths of investigation.

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