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Art @ Survive & Thrive

03 Sep 2013
Curator Nolwenn Hugain-Lacire introduces the artists at Survive & Thrive 2013 who are responding to the challenge 'So, it's the future already, all ready?'

Curator Nolwenn Hugain-Lacire introduces the artists at Survive & Thrive 2013 who are responding to the challenge 'So, it's the future already, all ready?'

Curator Nolwenn Hugain-Lacire introduces the artists at Survive & Thrive 2013 who are responding to the challenge 'So, it's the future already, all ready?'

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Collective and participatory art forms are becoming increasingly engaging and sophisticated. The artist programme for Survive & Thrive puts the audience in the centre of the art experience and reinforces the need to be active and curious to build a creative future. Five interactive works will be displayed.

The New Zealand screen based interactive works Acute Self by Interrupt Collective and Growth by Jeffrey Nusz amplify your body movements to give you a sense of your place in time, space, and in the collective stream.

The Auckland based artist Kim Newall's twelve Wandering Creatures can be found all around the building. Scan their houses and meet this mix of crafty and geeky creatures.

New Zealand is recognised internationally in the short film world for its creativity and a selection of short films has been hand picked by Show Me Shorts to inspire, entertain and delight the delegates of Survive &Thrive. Alongside these creative shorts the interactive film, BLA BLA, A Film For Computer by the Canadian artist Vincent Morisset will offer you to activate and influence the scenario of a delightfully animated story.

As digital tools are now a source of inspiration for creation, the Mix & Mash team from Digital NZ show a remix culture by offering a display of some of their works.

Being active is essential but challenging, so a series of performances will evolve around you and use you as a material. The roving dance performance The Business by Matt Gibbons will enliven your lunchtime on Friday, the dancer Lydia Zanetti will interface between you and Acute Self.

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Be part of the art

Acute Self by Interrupt Collective
[view on Fri 13 Sept @ Lvl 2 of Survive & Thrive]

Acute Self is based on Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending Staircase and investigates how a person occupies space as they move. The viewer’s movement generates a 3 dimensional geometric shape. This shape then changes its perspective as you continue to move from side to side. The viewer can experience the virtual space they have created through their movement. This project investigates how we interface with the amalgamation of the digital and physical space. Acute Self was originally commissioned by Digital Art Live.
 

Acute Self by Interrupt Collective from Digital Art Live on Vimeo.

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Growth by Jeffrey Nusz
[view on Sat 14 Sept @ Lvl 2 of Survive & Thrive]

Growth is an interactive ecosystem where people orchestrate the life and death of digital plants and trees through their own movement [or lack of it]. Through physical movements grass and bracken sprout from barren ground. As people continue to move, trees and bushes grow until finally the sky is choked by a dense jungle. Standing still or stepping back from the work causes the foliage to wither and die, eventually reverting to bare earth. The work explores the fluid conception of an “ideal” place and the continuous energy needed to maintain it. Between the extremes of an empty wasteland and a suffocating tangle lies the perfect garden. Through the work, the struggle to control and balance the natural environment is made more literal. Growth was originally commissioned by Digital Art Live.
 

Growth by Jeffrey Nusz from Digital Art Live on Vimeo.

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Wandering Creatures by Kim Newall

Grab your smart phone and get ready to discover 12 creatures hidden around our venue! They are staying in small houses but will wake up and play with you as soon as you scan their house with your phone.

Download the app here [android only]

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Happening now - live performance

Improvisation by Lydia Zanetti linked with Acute Self
6.30pm Level 2

Lydia Zanetti uses her body to establish a dialog with the interactive exhibition Acute Self by Interrupt collective and describes herself as sitting somewhere between choreographer, dancer, producer, curator and stage manager.

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The Business by Matt Gibbons and Boogiebot Zee
[view on Fri 13 Sept , 1 pm @ levels 2 and 3]

Two Auckland businessmen suddenly morph into an intensely physical choreographic performance. These dynamic performers will stop you in your tracks as they use their dance and acrobatic skills to defy gravity.

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Inspire yourself - as you Recharge

Stories / Show me short selection + BLA BLA, a film for computer by Vincent Morisset
[view on Friday 13 Sept @ Lvl 4 of Survive & Thrive]

A 75 min program by Show Me Shorts and the interactive story BLA BLA, a film for computer by Vincent Morisset will be showcased in turns.

Show Me Shorts artistic director Gina Dellabarca proposes a selection to inspire, entertain and delight the delegates of Survive & Thrive 2013.

Vincent Morisset's BLA BLA is  an interactive tale that explorers the fundamental principles of human communication. The viewer makes the story possible: without  him or her, the characters remain inert, waiting for the next interaction. The spectator clicks, plays and searches through the simple, uncluttered scenes, truly  driving experience.
BLA BLA film for computer is produced by National Film Board of Canada

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Digital / Mix & Mash selection
[view on Saturday 14 Sept @ Lvl 4 of Survive & Thrive]

A selection of works from Mix & Mash will be showcased.

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Information about the artists and other creative contributors

Interrupt is a collective of digital-media artists, interaction designers, live video performers and sonic artists working across a range of live performance projects and installations. The binding principle of the collective is to generate experimental work that explores the boundaries between architecture, video, performance, sound and interaction.

Jeffrey Nusz is an interactive artist, web developer, game designer and painter. Jeffrey co-founded Screens, an online gallery for interactive art supported by Creative New Zealand. He has collaborated with artists such as Seung Yul Oh, John Ward Knox, and Jae Hoon Lee to extend their practice into the digital realm.

Kim Newall is a multimedia artist living and working in Auckland, who uses traditional and new media with an interest in building a conversation between these two modes of artistic expression. His process is a flow from the hand drawn or painterly into the digital and back again; through this process the boundaries of digital and hand drawn become obscured and both media are reinvented.

Lydia Zanetti sits somewhere between choreographer, dancer, producer, curator and stage manager. She is a graduate of Unitec’s Contemporary Dance programme and DANZ with University of Auckland’s Producing Project. Since graduating she has choreographed for various shows, curated I HEART and Joan of Hearts under Sweaty Heart Productions, choreographed, stage managed and assisted in production for The Performance Arcade, Random Acts of Christmas 2011 and 2012 and The Living Room 2012. She is the artistic director of Show+Sweet Dance New Zealand 2013.

Matt Gibbons The Bizness is a choreographic concept from Matt Gibbons and performed with Boogiebot Zee. These two creatives both work in business and performance. Matt Gibbons currently mixes IT analysis, writing and directing on his feature film and working for several TV shows such as Spartacus and Super City Series 2. The key method these two performers share for approaching their collaboration is a practice of funk.

Vincent Morisset was born in Montreal. Director, programmer, inventor, he is looking for new ways to tell stories. Since the release of the Funeral album, Vincent has been collaborating with Arcade Fire. The interactive video for Neon Bible is considered by many as the first interactive music video. Vincent also directed their documentary MIROIR NOIR and developed the Synchronised Artwork for the album The Suburbs which change the way we present visuals related to digital albums. His work has been showcased in Wired, Creative Review, Pitchfork, Fast Company, Variety, Le Monde and The Guardian among others. Recently, Vincent directed a dance activated interactive video for Arcade Fire (sprawl2.com), BLA BLA, an experimental film for computer, and INNI, a feature film on the icelandic band Sigur Ros. Vincent is founder of the studio AATOAA.

John Ward Knox often employs the materials and transient phenomena inherent in a space, fashioning works such as “a projection of light” which employed light rays moving along the surfaces of abstract photographs, viewable throughout the course of an afternoon. Melding and shifting – coaxing rather than co-opting – his works reveal hidden forms inherent in surfaces and spaces. Indeed, viewing work such as Untitled Project, where the gentle arcs of a silver chain and steel wire trace a delicate wave at the Dunedin Public Art gallery, Knox sets up a gentle ebb and flow of the gaze. A constant shift occurs, focus drifting from the work itself outward, beholding anew the rectangular crevices and glassy reflections of the space surrounding it, before centering once again on the inscribed contour of the sculpture. With each cycle, each dialogue, the work seems to reveal something new, not so much about itself, but about this re-presented space it hovers in. As in Knox’s physical work, Untitled subtly renews it’s surroundings, highlighting screen space and our movement through it.

Mix & Mash is a programme organised by DigitialNZ, Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand the National Library of New Zealand  which encourages and celebrates the awesome reuse of open content and data. Mix & Mash has been promoting great Kiwi remix and mashup since 2010, and has an annual competition.

Show Me Shorts is New Zealand’s only Academy Awards accredited film festival and showcases the best new short films from New Zealand and around the world, in cinemas nation-wide every November.