Seduction and the Sinister - Donna Franklin

Imagine clothes that grow with you - that change colour from season to season, something that require nutrients - fashions that entice - yet are of a substance usually associated with skin.

Following the theory of the garment as a vehicle of communication - these living clothes aim to confront the viewer through spectacle and by the physical actuality of forms that parallel the existence of our own bodies. The garments interface biological (fungi) and digital surfaces to raise questions about the futures of bio-textiles and their application; through interaction, beauty and the implications of manipulating living entities.

This project would not have been possible without the assistance of BEAP, ArtsWA and The Government of Western Australia, John Curtin Gallery, CCA Contemporary Performance Students, Edith Cowan University. Filmed at FNAS by Sharon Custers.

Donna Franklin
Donna Franklin is currently teaching Cultural History and Theory, in The Faculty of Communications and Creative Industries at Edith Cowan University.

She will be exhibiting the work Fibre Reactive , previously shown as a part of BEAP 04 Bio-Difference, Hatched 05 PICA www.pica.org, at the ENTRY 06 Festival, "Second Skin" Exhibition in Zeche Zollverein, Essen at the Vitra Design Museum, 25Aug - 3Dec06 www.entry-2006.com   This living garment created from fungi was completed during her Master of Arts at Edith Cowan University and artist residency with SymbioticA The Art and Science Collaborative Research Laboratory at The School of Anatomy and Human Biology and The Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, at The University of Western Australia.

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Concrescence - Mark Cypher

Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow

T. S.Eliot The Hollow Men (1925)

The installation Concrescence enables participants to accumulate virtual objects onto their shadow, generating hybrid compositions of subjects, objects and sounds Concrescence is a term used in biology and refers to the growing together of related parts or growth by the increase of the addition of particles. Similarly the term is also employed by the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead to designate the growing together of diverse elements into a newly evolving entity, that never fully congeals.

Likewise, the installation Concrescence is a metaphor for the hybrid combinations of object and subject that are formed through a lifetime of intimate relations with objects: where do we start and where do they begin?. Marx defined human social relations as constructed through relationships we have with commodities. Likewise, the collective force of social, economic and personal interaction with these "economic cell forms" (commodities) changes the identity and meaning of both objects and subjects. Concrescence suggests that the relationships that we have with objects are far more mutable and intricate, inevitably involving many more materials, ideas and agencies than current definitions of subjects or objects can explain.

 

Mark Cypher
Mark Cypher received a Master of Visual Arts in Sculpture, in 1995, from Sydney University, Australia, and is currently a Senior Lecturer and Program Chair for Multimedia at Murdoch University - Western Australia. Mark also began his PHD in 2004 researching Actor Network Theory in relation to interactive artworks. Cypher has participated in several international exhibitions, including "404" II International Festival of Electronic Arts, Rosario, Argentina, and "Beapworks" at the Perth International Arts Festival, Curtin University, Western Australia. In 2006 Cypher has been selected for several major International exhibitions including, "VII Salon International De Art Digital", Cuba; "Siggraph2006", Boston, America ; "File06" Sao Paulo, Brazil; "NewForms06", Vancouver, Canada and "Collision06" , Victoria, Canada. Cypher has also exhibited work in various museums and galleries across Australia, including , the Western Australian Art Gallery, Sunshine Coast Gallery, Melbourne Contemporary art show and the Casula Powerhouse, Sydney. Cypher's work is also held in several state and national collections such as the Art Gallery of Western Australia, ArtBank-Sydney, Casula Powerhouse-Sydney, Curtin University of Technology and University of Western Australia.

Website: http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/multimedia/mark/

 

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The Living Screen - Tanja Visosevic - Guy Ben Ary - Bruce Murphy

The Living Screen is a new species, a living cinematic apparatus. When we gaze through it, we are engaging with a machine-organism. This work is a research and development project exploring what occurs when we cinematically engage with a living screen. It therefore employs film theory to bring into question ones spectatorship with Bio-Kino. The screens are grown from different tissues and Nano-Movies are projected over these living canvases, via a Bio-Projector (The projection is 500 µ (microns) in size) The Living Screen has many connections to primitive cinema, early motion pictures that pre-date 1905 that fall under the category of the 'cinema of attractions'. Tom Gunning defines the 'cinema of attractions' as a form of confrontation that addresses the audience directly. "Rather than being an involvement with narrative action or empathy with character psychology, the cinema of attractions solicits a highly conscious awareness of the film image engaging with the viewers' curiosity."1 The screens will transform, react and change over time and eventually die. This is the confrontation that the spectator must face. "Confrontation rules the 'cinema of attractions' in both the form of its films and their mode of exhibition. The directness of this act of display allows an emphasis of the thrill itself - the immediate reaction of the viewer."2 What thrill will the spectator receive when it clearly confronts the spectator about life, death and the Other. Fairgrounds and vaudeville houses were where early cinema found its audiences. It was also a form of safe house for the Other. With Bio-Art proliferating throughout the world, the art galleries of today are no less a freak show, as is The Living Screen.

1. Tom Gunning, "An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)Credulous Spectator" in Linda Williams, ed., Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing (New Jersey, Rutgers University Press, 1997), p.121. 2. ibid, p.122.

Tanja Visosevic
tanja visosevic: [aka. tanya vision & tanya V] is currently completing her PhD. at Murdoch University, is a film and video lecturer at Edith Cowan University and a film critic for ABC720 radio. a moving image artist & film theorist, her work spans installation through to video phone micro-movies and television documentary. most recently her work has screened as part of Microcinema's Touring International Screening Program, 'Independent Exposure'. TV often cross-pollinates her work with bio-art and/or performance.

Guy Ben Ary
Guy Ben Ary: Artist, working with emerging medias in particular in the area of art & biology. Currently living and working in WA. Guy is an artist in resident in SymbioticA - The Art & Science Collaborative Lab, since 2000. He is the manager of the CELLCentral in the School of Anatomy and Human Biology, UWA. He specializes in microscopy, biological & digital imaging & artistic visualization of biological data. His Main research area is cybernetics and the interface of biological material to robotics. Member of the core SymbioticA Research Group that developed "MEART - the semi living artist" project (http://www.fishandchips.uwa.edu.au).

He collaborated with the Tissue Culture & Art Project for 4 years (1999 - 2003). Guy was worked as a Research Fellow in the neuro-engineering Lab, Georgia tech, Atlanta, USA, 2006. Together with Phil Gamblen & Dr. Steve Potter developed the next generation of MEART. The "living screen" is one of his newly developed projects. Guy is taking a MFA course in the school of arts, UWA and has a law degree from Tel Aviv University .

Bruce Murphy
Bruce Murphy is an Optical Engineer working in the field of biomedical  diagnostics. A Perth native with degrees in Computer Science and  Electronic Engineering he is currently completing a PhD at the  University of Western Australia in tissue modelling and the design of  spectroscopic diagnostic tools. BioKino is his first major art  collaboration but he has preexisting interests in electronic music,  human performance interfaces and Artificial Intelligence.

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Bypass - Nicola Kaye - Stephen Terry

Nicola Kaye and Stephen Terry's collaborative research spans over a decade culminating in their present investigation into digital 3D imaging incorporating realtime 3D video interfacing with Internet and webcam technologies. Their exhibition Bypass displays constructed 3D video narratives of specific Perth sites of desirable and undesirable spaces which make reference to social inequalities. The viewer is placed involuntarily into these contexts through Realtime 3D editing. This forces a re-negotiation of the space, as the viewer is now inserted within the narrative. By making the viewer complicit within the projection the artists hope to create a level of discomfort paralleling issues of social concern.

Nicola Kaye
Nicola Kaye researches contemporary visual interrogative practices attempting to raise ethical and social issues about the potential for the Internet to become a kind of social virtual space. Her recent 'web residency' Physical / Virtual Sites at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA) October 2005-March 2006 culminated in a digital projection in Screen Space. The video projection displayed various routes through the city encompassing aspects of social, historical, cultural and architectural significance. Recent exhibitions include a residency and exhibition Facade and Histories at the Art Gallery of Western Australia's Centenary Galleries, 2 spaces at Fremantle Arts Centre, a joint exhibition in Melbourne's Span Galleries and a collaborative video installation at the 2002 Shanghai International Arts Festival. She presented lectures in 2004 at the Glasgow School of Art, UK and at The Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth 2005 discussing digital technologies, social space, webcam and the Internet. She is currently involved in a collaborative project with Superchannel (FACT) in Liverpool, UK, researching community, creativity and the Internet. She is a Lecturer in Cultural History and Theory and Printmedia at the School of Communications and Contemporary Arts, Edith Cowan University in Perth and is currently undertaking PhD research at the College of Fine Arts in Sydney. Nicola Kaye's website physical / virtual sites can be located at:

Stephen Terry
Stephen Terry's digital print explorations have resulted in numerous exhibitions and prizes both locally and nationally. Terry's background in the arts has been one of research both in digital video and digital print technology. Terry has been a recent recipient of the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA) R&D grant to explore digital printing onto organic material. Terry's research includes digitally printed religious iconography onto organic surfaces such as butterflies seeking to impose the cultural value of the renaissance image onto them, thus altering their significance. Exploring the digital print process on these materials developed new visual and technical vocabularies. He has considerable experience in interface programming and digital interactive design, assisting in the programming requirements of Kaye's recent Physical/Virtual Sites exhibition and residency at PICA (2005-2006). Terry is a Lecturer in Printmedia at the School of Communications and Contemporary Arts at Edith Cowan University in Perth.

Website: http://www.soca.ecu.edu.au/physicalVirtual/

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