ArTELIER: February 6th 2019 at The South Hobart Living Arts Centre led by Richie, Julia and Selina.
This session was titled Signals, Technology, Children and Young People, Grabbling with the challenges of accessible technology for children and young people. Examples of innovative arts practice with technology, communication and transmission.
This session started with a hands-on activity making contact microphones with Richie – DIY technology.
Provocateur: Dylan Martorell joined us from Melbourne via zoom.
Dylan outlined the development of his practice from early gallery-based works repurposing hard rubbish in to sculptural sound devices, to working collaboratively in the public space with community. Core to his practice is his background as musician, the desire to bring the energy of a gig to the art process, and his interest in found materials. Dylan referred to his collaborations as ‘cannibalised technology’ using existing technologies and materials in situations where the public often become the creators of the work. The works embody a fluid and dynamic approach where mistakes are turned into opportunities and result in works like speakers that mix spices to create a cocktail of scents using the reverb of the speakers, and drum kits activated by archery sets. After earing him speak it makes sense that Dylan’s works are public and collaborative works, Dylan points out galleries often have too many rules to allow the open approach he favours. He gave examples over many years of works done in Asia, particularly Indonesia and spoke of the ease of generating collective experiences there, noting observations in the cultural differences towards ideas of collaboration. Dylan spoke of his approach to working with kids as a kind of ‘survivalist camp’ where DIY rules. You can see solutions made structurally visible with such things as pulleys and triggers, wheels and sounds, like an anarchist adventure playground.
Julia making circuits…
Sharing Practice
Julia showed us examples of how our bodies conduct sounds and electricity, embedding a sense of curiosity, wonder and fun in all her demos. She had us hearing incredible vibrations using only fishing wire and coat hangers and showed us a 60’s device for healing through electricity. This was followed by a true collaborative lunch, tossing a salad collectively using an artfully designed bedspread ‘the egg-spread’ with a stitched in yellow yolk.
Tossing the salad
Selina demonstrated her wondrous bike powered generator that had us peddling to watch a film and shared with us the ways she runs workshops to increase awareness and appreciation of resources and our impacts.
She then led a discussion around the ethics of the use of technology reading a section of the Critical Engineering Manifesto. Point 10 for example is: ‘The critical engineer recognises that each work of engineering engineers its user proportional to that users’ dependency on it’. She shared with us the work environmental engineer Tega Brain as an example of an artist working to create systems that embed the ethics of duty of care. http://tegabrain.com/
At the start of the day Selina set us off on a digital detox, placing our phones in box for the day and leaving us with the challenge: ‘Choose a day of the week and for an entire month engage in cyber-dieting during that day, which means don’t use any technology/communications’ devices in your home’.
We finished with a jam using the bike power to create sound with our newly made contact microphones, the perfect end to the year.
The team also did a visual evaluation of the program to date.
What was the question?