Melbourne
Melbourne Lab Particants
6th, 7th September 2007 at Digital Harbour
Anna Helme
Anna is a media activist and artist, currently a projects manager at EngageMedia.org, developing a FOSS participatory media platform for video about social justice and environmental issues in Australia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. She was an organiser for the Transmission meeting of online video projects for social change in Rome 2006 and is working on An R&D project into FOSS video compression.
She is an audiovisual artist, having collaborated with Coldcut and Undercurrents, and featuring as part of the Nextwave, Electrofringe and Teknikunst festivals. She co-directed “Snap” with Arlene Textaqueen - an ACMI/SBS co-production screening currently on SBS TV.
Alex Gibson is a visual artist and computer programmer researching online artistic collaboration for a Master of Fine Art (MFA) at the University of Melbourne (VCA). He received his Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) at the Victorian College of the Arts (2006) after living and exhibiting in Tokyo, Japan (2005).
He completed a Diploma of Visual Arts at the Box Hill Institute of TAFE (2001). He has received the Stoll Trust Award (2001), Friends of the VCA Award (2003), George Hicks Prize (2004), LWL Award (2006), Orloff Family Trust Award (2006) and the Australian Postgraduate Award (2007-2008).
John Sanderson
Research scientist (CSIRO), PhD in Chemical Engineering; current areas of work involve greenhouse gas reduction technologies and new production methods for titanium alloys. Previous career in film and television industry doing physical special effects (8 years). Artistic works: Have created a number of arts/science fusion works in various genres (see next section); I think that artistic and scientific pursuits often ask the same questions about life but from different places, realities or belief systems. I attempt to integrate these belief systems through my works in order to better understand how beliefs affect realities.
Julie Clarke completed her PhD in Cinema Studies at the University of Melbourne in 2004, where she currently holds the title of Honorary Fellow in the Department of Culture and Communications. She has been published in catalogues, journals (online and in print) and books in Australia and Internationally. She has exhibited her own artwork in over thirty exhibitions and has curated local exhibitions as well as installing an exhibition for Beijing artist Sheng Qi.
Just as mysterious to himself as he is to others, Proske has taken on the ambitious task of rendering computers accountable to our sometimes misplaced but inevitable humanity. As an electronic artist he has turned to open source technologies for practical, aesthetic and ethical reasons. Pierre’s background in music, engineering, literature, design and performing arts have provided him with sufficient options to keep himself perpetually occupied in a self-inspired quest to weave together several unrelated threads of activity. The result - art, confusion and a slow but steady output of digital chicanery.
I trained in Contemporary Dance, Film and Interactive Multimedia, and worked across these art forms as an Artist, Festival Producer, Coordinator and Collaborator. I have a particular interest in creating work for unsuspecting audiences, often using technology to support the communication of the artwork. I produced the SALA Festival’s Moving Image Project for 2 years, exhibiting over 160 works in public environments. I am currently Managing the Visual Arts & Digital Media Program at Carclew Youth Arts in North Adelaide, developing training & employment projects, public artwork commissions & exhibition opportunities for young artists working with digital media.
Scott Mitchell
Scott Mitchell’s art practice focuses on modding, hacking, and DIY activities. As modes of production these activities are often marginalised within ‘consumer society’. Through projects such as the “iPod Social Outreach Program” Scott uncovers the consumer agency at work within the act of consumption. These projects contribute to open information resources and seek to remake objects as public spaces. The projects privilege amateur practices and engage with gift economies. Project details can be found at www.openobjectproject.org
Originally a kiwi, Nic has spent the last four years making mischief in Melbourne. As well as co-directing the National Young Writers’ Festival and writing for various Australian publications, he makes interventionist installation art for festivals around the country, runs a web/graphic design practice (DISLOCATED), is co-editor and designer of the Nomadology travel writing project and in his more lucid moments sits on the curatorial board of the Next Wave arts festival. He is also currently finishing his first novel as part of a Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Melbourne.
My non-professional arts practice is in the field of underground/ political/ community media activity. My main skills are in the areas of VJing, Circuit Bending, Remixing and Non-hierarchical creative collective organization.
Ben Eltham is the founding Director of Straight Out of Brisbane, or SOOB, which is Queensland’s largest festival of independent and emerging artists. The festival has always had a strong new media, gaming and online perspective and previous curators I have supported at the festival have included Thea Baumann (MAAP festival), Maura Edmund (ACMI) and Rachel O’Reilly (Australian Cinematheque). Ben is a widely published arts writer across many artforms and is currently Fellow of the Centre for Policy Development, where he is researching a new paper on Australian cultural policy.
Kerrie-Dee Johns is a curator and arts writer based in Melbourne. Kerrie-Dee’s has curated exhibitions such as I Need You, As You Need Me, as part of the Sustainable Living Festival in 2007 and Mind Games (Keep Playing Those ___ ___ Forever) as part of the 2006 Next Wave Festival. As an emerging arts writer, she has contributed articles to Photofile, UnMagazine, RealTime and Flash, as well as catalogue essays for Eyes, Lies and Illusions at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in 2006 where she assisted with future exhibitions research.
I am a Ph.D. candidate and lecturer in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. My thesis, entitled ‘Network Aesthetics,’ critically investigates key examples of locative media, networked art and software modification from the perspective of poststructural theory and political philosophy. I have contributed to journals such as antiTHESIS, Cultural Politics, Animation and Media International Australia.
My interests lie in hybrid arts and convergent media practices and how these forms can be utilised for art making and the dissemination of ideas.
I have worked in CCD now for seven years and new media for four. I have extensive professional experience working with youth at risk in Victoria. My CCD work has included large scale corporate & community theatre, publishing and new media for local government, job network and private interests.
I am an active new media and theatre artist, working around Victoria in various capacities. In 2005/2006 I was employed as an EPIC Intern with the Frankston Arts Centre, and am employed curently as artist in residence with Artful Dodgers Studio, Visionary Images & the Frankston Arts Centre.
Boo Chapple
Boo Chapple is a practicing artist and researcher. In 2006, Boo completed a year-long residency at the SymbioticA art/science research laboratory at UWA. Throughout 2007 she is working as Artist in Residence in Bio-Spatial Design initiative at RMIT. Previous work has been done in the areas of sound design/performance, network-mediated communication and performance installation. Her work has been exhibited at the Beijing Biennale of Architecture, and in an exhibition of Australian sound art at the San Fransisco MoMA. Boo writes regularly for national and international audiences and was a member of the Next Wave Festival Curatorial Committee from 2004–2005
Seth Keen
Seth produces video theory and practice. He has written, directed and produced a number of primetime television documentaries, short drama films and experimental videos. Seth is a lecturer in the Media department at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. His teaching role involves developing the nexus between New Media and Broadcast Media. He has a research Master of Arts in Media Arts (2005). The thesis examines the structuration of multilinear narratives in New Media video practice. He is currently in candidature on a project-based PhD that investigates Internet video practice and theory.
Justin Schmidt
Simeon Moran
Simeon is a director of Horse Bazaar, a Melbourne bar built around a panoramic projection system. Simeon is involved in producing Digital Fringe, an open access digital arts festival that utilises Creative Commons liscencing. He has a Phd thesis that seems to never finish, dabbles in music, wants to know more about video production and likes playing with culture and ideas.
Mark Whiting
Mark Whiting is a fourth year industrial design student at RMIT currently working on a final project which engages global individuals in a free distributed collaborative network aimed at performing design tasks. His reason for addressing this issue is fundamental interest in collaborative systems, network of friends structures, and attention economy as a method of making more of our world free for more people more often.