"Ab Initio" exhibition in Ballarat

I will be having an exhibition entitled "Ab Initio" as part of the Ballarat Foto Bienniale Fringe exhibition program. It is of digital prints related to my installation Cloud Drum, and generated from scratch in my computer. So they are not photographs at all, but they have been accepted for the Fringe.

My exhibition

Exhibition: Friday 4th September to Monday 5th October
Opening: Friday 4th September, 5.30pm.
Location: Radmac Gallery, 104 Armstrong Street (North), Ballarat VIC 3350.
Gallery hours: Mon-Fri 8.30am-5.30pm, Sat 9am-12 noon.
Radmac Gallery (which is also an art supply shop) is venue 26 on the map here. The gallery is a short walk from Ballarat railway station. Scrolling the map down will show, among other things, more than a dozen vineyards in the area.

The Ballarat Foto Bienniale

The Foto Bienniale, which runs throughout September, promises to be huge, with a Core of over 20 invited exhibitions, a considerably greater number of Fringe exhibitions, and various seminars and artist talks. The exhibitors include overseas and interstate people together with locals. Most events and exhibitions are free; they are mostly in Ballarat, but some are in Daylesford and other towns. Details at http://www.ballaratfoto.org.

"Biotope" photo

Here is a photo of my video Drum Mask playing on an external screen at Cube 37, Frankston Arts Centre, Melbourne.

Image courtesy of Jon McCormack

The video was also playing on an even bigger screen round the corner - the biggest screen I have ever seen my work on. This was part of the "Biotope" event showing works from the Centre for Electronic Media Art, Monash University.

"Biotope" at Cube 37, Frankston

Currently Cube 37, the large street display at the Frankston Arts Centre, is showing works from the Centre for Electronic Media Art at Monash University, including my new video Drum Mask.
A lot of the people involved have been out of town, so there will be a "closing" rather than an opening on Thursday 6th August.
"Opening": Thursday 6th August 6.30pm.
Frankston Arts Centre (Cube 37)
37 Davey St, Frankston VIC 3199
Works will continue to be shown until 9th August.
http://artscentre.frankston.vic.gov.au/

Back from Schloss Dagstuhl

I am still trying to assimilate the seminar on "Computational Creativity" at Schloss Dagstuhl.

The old buildings at Schloss Dagstuhl

There were two notable computer art pioneers present, Harold Cohen (San Diego) and Frieder Nake (Bremen); also the well-known philosopher Margaret Boden (Sussex), and quite a range of people who are predominantly computer scientists working on various ways that computers might behave creatively or generate output that we may consider "creative". A lot of them were also artists or musicians, and two informal concerts (one acoustic, one electronic and audio-visual) were organised during the seminar.

I have read papers by quite a few of the people there, and it was good to meet them in person. Unfortunately I came down with laryngitis, and could only whisper the whole time I was there. Nonetheless it was a great event to be part of, and it will undoubtedly influence my future work.

Schloss Dagstuhl

I'm off to Germany soon for a seminar on "Computational Creativity" at Schloss Dagstuhl in Saarland, Germany. Schloss Dagstuhl is a conference centre set up to hold conferences in computer science, though this particular conference crosses over into the arts and philosophy. The topics up for discussion centre around creative behaviour in artificial systems; the systems may operate autonomously or with guidance or collaboration from a human artist. A particular focus is on systems that are modelled on evolution in nature, and there is already quite a long history of "artificial life art", surveyed in the book "Metacreation" by Mitchell Whitelaw. There is also quite a long history of computer programs that can improvise music in concert with other (human) musicians.

The seminar is shaping up to be pretty exciting, and some well-known people will be there. The web page for the seminar is here.