About

Digital Media Labs offers ten chosen artists a week-long residency as part of a commissioning process for a touch screen art work for the new multi-million pound NHS Hull Wilberforce Health Centre. This commission and Lab will be a key part of their innovative and ambitious arts programme for the new city centre multi-use building.

Site of Wilberforce centre May 2010

There are a select number of arts agencies and organisations across the Northern Region (the North West, North East and Yorkshire) who have had the opportunity to nominate artists and be part of this exciting and experimental commissioning process.

From these nominations we will select ten artists to participate in our residential Media Lab, where they will explore new ways of working with touch screen technologies. This residency will be led by the Digital Media Labs team and other experts from the fields of visual arts and digital technology.

About the Digital Media Lab and Commission

The residential Media Lab, which will take place in autumn 2010, will bring together a mixed community of artists, designers and programmers in a dedicated environment. The focus of the residency will be on experimentation and exploration. Provided with time, space and equipment, resident artists will be able to learn, develop and experiment with the technology. The intention is to give the artists 7 days hands on, research and development with the support of professional technologists leading to interim exhibition showcasing the results of the lab.

The culmination of this residential Media Lab will be the opportunity for the artists to present and discuss their work at a dedicated presentation. Following the presentation of works the participating ten artists, and only these artists, will be presented with the commission brief for a site-specific touch screen artwork and invited to submit a proposal. It is key to the philosophy of Digital Media Labs for the actual presentation of the commission brief will not presented to participants till a period of experimentation has taken place.

Please contact info [at] digitalmedialabs [dot] org for more details

People involved:

Benedict Phillips

As an Artist, Writer and Curator, much of Benedict Phillips’ work is about investigating, researching and reacting to the places in which he finds himself. Benedict’s practice encompasses a broad range of approaches and methodologies to generate work as diverse as public art, installation, performance, photography, media art and creative writing. Dependent upon the geography of the project, Benedict’s responses have been floated, buried, placed, flown and exhibited. His work often involves placing artworks back into the spaces that influenced and informed their production.

Current Projects
Benedict is currently the lead artist for Wilberforce Centre, a prestigious NHS LIFT city centre Health centre development in Hull. He has been working alongside the design team since November 2008 to create an innovative and fully-integrated public arts programme for the community and the building, which is due for completion in November 2011. As part of this role he is working on collaborative public art works for the interior and exterior of the building, as well as commissioning landscape and portraiture photography, touch screen artworks and interactive light works.

Glenn Boulter

Glenn Boulter is a visual artist, musician and producer based in Cumbria. He organises events as a director of the artist-led organisation Octopus and performs regularly as a member of improvising collective Aurelie. Aurelie events have taken place in galleries, art centres, theatres and other unusual spaces such as a football ground, a corporate bank and Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbarn in Ambleside. Recent shows have included  two nights at the Royal Opera House Linbury Theatre and support slots with Volcano the Bear and Anti-Pop Consortium. Octopus was formed with in 2009 with the aim of organising cutting edge experimental music events in Cumbria and the North West. Octopus’ first project was ‘Full of Noises’, a seven day festival that invited four international artists to respond to the environment of Barrow’s shipbuilding district. The resulting works by Haco, Susan Matthews and Mobile Radio were presented during a weekend which also featured performances from Faust, Pram, John Wall and Richard Youngs.
Current projects include creating a sound installation for the NHS Hull Wilberforce Health Centre with community and patient groups, as well as co-producing a series of music events with FACT and the Liverpool Biennial as part of the PRS New Music Plus scheme.

Dave Lynch

Dave has been working with interactive, time based visual art in public, private and virtual spaces since 1999.  He is interested in the use of expanded cinema, interactive installation and devices as a means for social change.   His work seeks to explores the human interdependent relationship to technology, space and collective identity.   He works half his time as an artist projecting film from moving vehicles, mapping video projection on to architectural surfaces, creating time-based visual installations & experimental performances collaborating with Musicians, Composers, Writers, Illustrators, Programmers, Scientists, Architects, Engineers, Sculptors and other film-makers.

The other is split running his commercial company making films/ motion graphics, directing music videos and sometimes teaching.   He is also co-director of The Jam Jar Collective who create interactive, immersive environments and installations such as their initial project – Friispray, a virtual graffiti project using open source software and technology (featured on the BBC world service, at Future Everything, Thinking Digital & Apple euro creator workshops) amongst running workshops in creative electronics, they are currently developing FriiSpray v2 and getting ready for their product launch of V1 in 2010.