Common Property opening

Posted on 28/01/2016 by hellocatfood

Common Property held its opening event at Jerwood Space on 14th.

Jerwood Encounters: Common Property seeks to demonstrate how artists engage with and relate to copyright through the work of six emerging and mid-career artists, including three new commissions. The exhibition and accompanying events programme seeks to generate new conversations about how copyright is currently impacting the way visual artists make and distribute their work, and demonstrates how artists are challenging the limitations of copyright through their practice.

The exhibition features new commissions by myself, Owen G Parry and Hannah Knox alongside existing works by Edwin Burdis, Rob Myers and SUPERFLEX.

I’m really impressed by curator Hannah Pierce‘s selection of artists and artworks that each deal with the broad topic of Copyright in very different ways.

For this exhibition I developed two new works, Transformative Use and a collection of four works, I Disappear, Blurred Lines, My Sweet Lord and Ice Ice Baby.

Photos in this post by Hydar Dewachi.

Transformative Use

This work builds upon the Dead Copyright piece made for the Permission Taken exhibition at Birmingham Open Media and targets one corporation.

I Disappear, Blurred Lines, My Sweet Lord, Ice Ice Baby

These four pieces use the sonification techniques developed in 2013 to create audiovisual data remixes of songs that are well known due to being involved in course cases about copyright.

Already there has been a writing and events surrounding the exhibition. a-n published an interview with myself, Owen G Parry and Hannah Pierce, and on 21st January a panel discussion took place at London Art Fair about Copyright and Intellectual Property. The panel consisted of myself, Hannah Pierce and Shane Burke and was chaired by Shonagh Manson. Future events include a fan club event by Owen G Parry on 29th January and a tour of the exhibition on February 15th that will conclude with a Sonification Studies performance by me.

Thanks

My thanks go out to Hannah Pierce for selecting me for inclusion in this exhibition and to the whole of the Jerwood Visual Arts team for their help installing the works. The exhibition continues at Jerwood Space until 21st February.

archiveremix.com

Posted on 27/01/2016 by hellocatfood

I’m happy to announce the launch of archiveremix.com. The site presents a small selection of artefacts from the archives from the University of Birmingham’s Research and Cultural Collections with the intention of them being starting points for new remixes.

There has been much movement towards encouraging galleries, libraries, archives and museums to open up their archives for use by the public. Quite often this is hampered by a variety of factors including cost, copryright and just having the resources to manage such a task. One approach to this, which served as a big inspiration for this project, came from Oliver Laric. In 2012 he started a project to make 3D scans of sculptural works from the Usher Gallery and The Collection in Lincoln. The resulting remix works that were made from these scans came in various forms including 3D models, videos, gifs.

Taking inspiration from this I set about making use of the archives from University of Birmingham in a creative way. Over the last year I have been releasing remix works on the Archive Remix tumblr site and at the Permission Taken exhibition at Birmingham Open Media. Although they, in some cases, lack narrative, in making these remixes I wanted to show the opportunities to be had from allowing artists to remix works. Of course, this is not a new practice at all with artists doing this in collages, in music and every other creative practice.

archiveremix_lillian

The selection made available obviously only represents a small amount of what is available. This was a conscious decision as I did not want to overwhelm artists with too much of a collection.

A number of remixes have already been made by artists that I invited to participate in the Remix Party on 20th January.

Remix of Portrait of Lord Hannay by Victor Arce

Remix of Janiform zoomorphic helmet mask by Morehshin Allahyari

Remix of Cathode Ray Oscilloscope by Carla Gannis

The party featured remixes by Dan Hett, Lorna Mills, Ashley James Brown, Shawné Michaelain Holloway, Michaël Borras A.K.A. Systaime, Benjamin Berg, Michael Lightborne, Morehshin Allahyari, Daniel Salisbury, Carla Gannis, Faith Holland, Nick Briz, Daniel Temkin, Adam Ferriss, Víctor Arce, Chema Padilla, Kate Spence, Jessica Evans, Emily Haasch. The approaches to working with this archive were very varied indeed. It featured still images, animated gifs, remixes based on compression, videos, and in the case of Nick Briz, an interactive website!

It is my hope that the archiveremix.com site, my exhibition(s) and the work made by the artists joins the case being put forth by websites such as OpenGLAM and encourages more institutions to free their archives.

Remix this

If you feel inspired by any of the works please download them and make a remix of your own! These can then be uploaded back onto the website.

This project couldn’t have been made possible without the support of the University of Birmingham’s Research and Cultural Collections and the amazing web design skills of Sebastian Lenton (you should hire him).

Over time new works from the archives of Research and Cultural Collections will be added, so check back often!

Remix Party photos

Posted on 25/01/2016 by hellocatfood

The Remix Party happened on 20th January to celebrate the closing of my exhibition, Permission Taken, at Birmingham Open Media.

Throughout the night remixes art artwork from the University of Birmingham were displayed in the main gallery space whilst Ryan Hughes took on DJ duties with soundscapes and the occasional R&B hit. It was really interesting to see how all the artists approached the archives and selected materials to work with.

Thanks to the following artists for taking part in the party:
Dan Hett, Lorna Mills, Ashley James Brown, Shawné Michaelain Holloway, Michaël Borras A.K.A. Systaime, Benjamin Berg, Michael Lightborne, Morehshin Allahyari, Daniel Salisbury, Carla Gannis, Faith Holland, Nick Briz, Daniel Temkin, Adam Ferriss, Víctor Arce, Chema Padilla, Kate Spence, Jessica Evans, Emily Haasch.

All of their remixes will be available online shortly and you’ll even have the chance to make your own! Photos from the party can be seen on Flickr.

Fin

Permission Taken at Birmingham Open Media officially closed on 23rd January 2016 after opening on October 23rd 2015. It was my first solo exhibition and I’m extremely grateful to Karen Newman/Birmingham Open Media, Clare Mullett/Research and Cultural Collections and Arts Council England for helping it be a great one.

The next iteration of the exhibition will be coming in March. Until then do check out Common Property at Jerwood Space for more work from myself and other artists following similar themes

Remix Party, 20th January

Posted on 15/01/2016 by hellocatfood

To celebrate the closing of Permission Taken, on 20th January I’ll be having a closing Remix Party at Birmingham Open Media from 19:00 – 22:00

remixparty

Artwork from over 20 national and international artists will be projected onto BOM’s walls, floors and ceilings in celebration of artists that appropriate, remix and rework. All this set against a backdrop of Copyleft/cut-up music from Ryan Hughes.

Artists include
Dan Hett, Lorna Mills, Ashley James Brown, Shawné Michaelain Holloway, Michaël Borras, Benjamin Berg, Michael Lightborne, Morehshin Allahyari, Daniel Salisbury, Carla Gannis, Faith Holland, Nick Briz, Daniel Temkin, Adam Ferriss, Víctor Arce, Chema Padilla, Kate Spence, Jessica Evans, Emily Haasch

During the evening Nomad, the newly opened restaurant next door the the gallery space, will be serving food from their ‘no rules’ pay-what-you-want menu.

Hope you can join in and celebrate remix culture!!!

Copyright and Intellectual Property, 21st January

Posted on 15/01/2016 by hellocatfood

On 21st January I’ll be in London for a discussion about Copyright and Intellectual Property at London Art Fair

This panel discussion will consider how contemporary artists contend with issues of copyright and intellectual property in their practice, taking the most recent Jerwood Encounters exhibition, Common Property, as its starting point.

Panel:

Hannah Pierce, Curator of Common Property

Shane Burke, current PhD candidate at Queen Mary University of London, who is researching the relationship between copyright law and conceptual art

Antonio Roberts, exhibiting artist in Common Property

Y’all can register for it here.

Remix Animation Workshop, 19th January

Posted on 12/01/2016 by hellocatfood

With the closing of my solo exhibition at Birmingham Open Media fast approaching, on 19th January I’ll be holding the final workshop. In the Remix Animation Workshop we’ll explore the art of remixing and reappropriation!

In this workshop I will introduce open source software programs and discuss ideas around free culture. You will then have time to rework images downloaded from the Copy Bombs and from the University of Birmingham’s archives. Participants need to bring their laptops with the following free and open source software installed:

Any things made in this workshop will be included in the Remix Party on 20th January (more info on that sooooooon). Places free but limited, so book now to avoid disappointment.

Open Online Six: Too Long for iTunes

Posted on 05/01/2016 by hellocatfood

On January 1st the sixth edition of the Open Online year-long online exhibitions from Fermynwoods Contemporary Art, titled Too Long for iTunes, went online.

Image: Emma Jarvis, Matigital Culture

Terre Thaemlitz’s 2011 album Soulnessless included a nearly 30-hour piano solo filling a single maximum length 320kB/s MP3 file of 4GB – yet the file playback was limited to the first two hours and 40 minutes! Challenging the era’s dominant media format the album was sold only as a 16GB microSDHD card, drawing a distinction between online culture and digital culture, honouring the authors ‘specificity of content’.

Our sixth annual curated open online exhibition seeks to examine whether there still exists a distinction between digital and online cultures following the advent of the Internet of Things, and what forms these may take.

The exhibition features new and existing works from Pete Ashton, Marc Atkinson, Emma Jarvis, and Sam Mattacott, and a text from Christine Lucy Latimer.

Back in October 2015 I was invited to be on the selection panel for the exhibition (after previously featuring in their Free Exchange discussion group about Art + Copyright). It’s great to see the exhibition finally realised. Go take a look at it now!

Antonio Roberts

(hellocatfood)

Monthly Archives: January 2016