Nine artists selected from across the UK joined us at Anglia Ruskin University for our week-long residential Data Culture Lab in January 2017. This densely packed week of speakers, workshops and discussion led to fantastic emerging ideas.
Following the welcome and introduction on day one, day two was seminar day. We were joined by post-grad ARU students for a day of talks, hearing from a broad range of speakers interested in data culture including Dr David Stillwell (Judge Business School, University of Cambridge), Dr Trevor Woods (Cambridge Consultants) and Mark Farid (artist, Data Shadow). Day three included two practical workshop sessions on how live data could inform work, for example use of LIDAR data in Minecraft and JSON feeds for visualising data. Delegates also visited the Scott Polar Museum.
The second half of the week provided time for artists to contemplate the various stimuli and start putting together their early ideas, which they then presented to an invited audience of 50 people on the afternoon of day five. These included representatives from Arts Council England, Arm, Cambridge Consultants, Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority, University of Cambridge Museums, FACT, Furtherfield, local authorities and FE colleges.
Following the lab, Collusion selected two of the participating artists to work with us on R&D projects, allowing them to further develop their emerging ideas. Filmmaker Jo Lawrence developed bespoke animation project Datacosm, working with Cambridge Consultants and their expertise in artificial intelligence. This project has since been commissioned for our Collusion 2019 showcase. Media artist Henry Driver experimented with VR and AR towards new immersive artworks and as a result received an Alt-Barbican Accelerator programme award. Henry went on to create TEO with artist Barbara Dougan as part of our Bury St Edmunds R&D project, which has also been commissioned for our Collusion 2019 showcase.
Artists
Participating Artists
Anna Brownsted, Jane Glennie, Jo Lawrence, Marcus Dyer, Hwa Young Jung, Rosie Munro Kerr, Henry Driver, Richard DeDomenici, Heinrich & Palmer
