features 08

The Salon [poole]
SIGGRAPH2008 [Los Angeles]
Art.ficial Emotion 4.0 [são paulo]
FOIB [portugal]
RealSnailMail [bournemouth]
Public Art [gateshead]
Digital Media [valencia]
Holy Fire [brussels]

RealSnailMail (2008)

Wish (2006)

Sky-Rail (2006)

more artwork

Vicky Isley & Paul Smith
Research Fellows in Computer Animation & Computer Art
NCCA, Bournemouth University
t: +44 (0) 1202 966699
e: info at boredomresearch dot net

boredomresearch is represented by [DAM] Berlin

Exhibition catalogue
Tumbling Dream Chambers catalogue is on sale for 7 euros + P&P to purchase contact [DAM] Berlin

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The Salon
boredomresearch exhibit a new work in development at The Study Gallery of Modern Art, Poole (4th-8th Nov 2008)

Untitled Sketch, 2008

boredomresearch are exhibiting their sketch as part of the current All Change events at the Study Gallery of Modern Art, Poole. An exhibition of new works by a group of artists from the Media School (NCCA Visual Research Group, The IPE Group), Arts Institute Bournemouth and The University of Winchester, who form a loose association called The Salon.

In boredomresearchs' sketch a pool of inky blackness is alive with the frenetic activities of countless curious and beautiful crystalline forms, fascinating, intriguing and serene. This imagined world takes its inspiration from microscopic sea life and boredomresearch continue to express their fascination with natural systems and computer modelling techniques. In this sketch generative techniques are used to explore the aesthetic possibilities of population densities. As time passes differing quantities and proportions of intriguing beings are released to drift pass the screen in an open ended composition that never loops or repeats.

boredomresearch will be discussing their work in the Study Gallery, Poole on Thursday 6th November at 2.50pm alongside other artists from The Salon including Stephen Bell, Susan Sloan and Neal White: Office of Experiments. The presentation session runs from 2.30 - 4.30pm chaired by Helen Sloan of SCAN.

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SIGGRAPH2008
boredomresearch premiered RealSnailMail on the 11th August 2008 at SIGGRAPH The 35th International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques. Held at Los Angeles Convention Centre, California USA.

Details of the venue & RealSnailMail on show in the Slow Art Gallery Exhibition

Visitors to the Slow Art gallery exhibition at SIGGRAPH2008 (11th -15th August 08) accessed the realsnailmail.net website on a terminal and could view the live SnailCam and prerecorded footage of the enclosure at Bournemouth University UK.

Emails travel at the speed of light to the realsnailmail.net server where they entered into a queue. Waiting until a real snail within the tank at Bournemouth wonder in range of a hot spot. The hot spot is the dispatch centre in the form of a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) reader. This reader identifies the snail from the RFID chip attached to its shell and checks to see it has not already been assigned a message to carry. If the snail is available it is assigned the message at the top of the list. It then slips away into the technological wasteland. Located at the other end of the tank is the drop off point. When, or if, the snail ever makes it here, it is identified by another reader, which then forwards the relevant message to the recipients email address; once again travelling at the speed of light. At each stage of the emails transit the sender is updated with the messages progress and when the email finally arrives at its destination it is appended with details of its carrier and a log of its journey.

The RealSnailMail tank currently contains eight Helix Aspersa snails (aka Fred, Agatha, Sean, Penelope, Francis, Beatrice, Walter, Reginald). Each snail is equipped with a 20mm diameter RFID disc tag. The disc tags contain a tiny chip and coil antenna that can be activated by the two RFID readers at a range of 5 cm. Two Phidget RFID readers are positioned either side of the tank (approx 50cm apart). One acts as a pick up reader and the other as a despatch.

For further information on the project please visit the RealSnailMail Blog

related links
RealSnailMail Webmail Service - http://www.realsnailmail.net
RealSnailMail Blog - http://www.realsnailmail.wordpress.com
Project Information - http://www.boredomresearch.net/realsnailmail
Slow Art Gallery Exhibition, SIGGRAPH2008
SIGGRAPH2008, Los Angeles

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Art.ficial Emotion 4.0 - Emergence!
boredomresearch exhibit the Biomes & RandomSeeds at the fourth edition of the international biennial on emergence in the field of cybernetic art at the Instituto Itaú Cultural, São Paulo Brazil (2nd July - 14th Sept 2008)

Details of the artworks on show at Instituto Itaú Cultural

"The exhibition presents artworks composed of real or virtual elements which, by constant interaction, give rise to complex events unforeseen by the artist. In this way, the works show emergent characteristics that may expand the traditional concepts of creation and authorship." Instituto Itaú Cultural

related links
biome information - http://www.boredomresearch.net/biome
randomseed information - http://www.boredomresearch.net/randomseed
Instituto Itaú Cultural, São Paulo Brazil
Artificial Emotion 4.0 - Emergence

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Forest of Imagined Beginnings [FOIB]
a new version of our online environment is on exhibition at CAe2008, International Symposium on Computational Aesthetics in Graphics, Visualization and Imaging Lisbon, Portugal 18-20th June 2008

Details from Forest of Imagined Beginnings, 2007

boredomresearch have been researching the potential for manipulating forum and BLOG technologies to encourage a more contemplative and rewarding experience. In FOIB users explore a landscape approach to managing and navigating the changing space of an online forum. The version which is being exhibited at CAe2008 can be found at:

http://www.boredomresearch.net/forest

boredomresearch developed new interactive generative software to create tree structures that recreate the decrepit appearance of fruit trees seen in Japanese Edo Period Paintings (1600-1868) and a 2D renderer that displayed a stylized graphic representation of these tree structures.

In this environment you can navigate through the forest and users can embed their own messages on selected trees which get permanently stored within a MySQL database. This online navigatiable environment creates a spatially oriented approach to allow alternatives to our established data navigation that respond more intimately to our inherent ability to return to and navigate a remembered space.

For further information on the development of the work please visit:
http://www.boredomresearch.net/forestofimaginedbeginnings

FOIB is an online artwork co-commissioned by Folly, Digital Arts Organisation, Lancaster UK & Enter_Unknown Territories, International Festival & Conference for New Technology Art, Cambridge UK (25 – 29 April 2007).

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RealSnailMail
boredomresearch are launching their prototype version of the worlds first webmail service to use live snails on Tuesday 17th June 2008 @ The Coyne Lecture Theatre, Bournemouth University

RealSnailMail, 2008

We have now completed a prototype version of the RealSnailMail webmail service and users can submit an email to the enclosure at Bournemouth University, where it will wait for a Snail Agent to pick it up. In the presentation tomorrow we will be discussing the concept behind the work - how we have been inspired by other artist's projects such as Jonah Brucker Cohen 'Crank the Web' and the Israeli Internet addicts who researched the speed in which an Africa snail could transport data accross a room in their project SNAP (SNAil-based data transfer Protocol).

All our research findings for this project will be published on the RealSnailMail Blog. Over the next couple of months we will be testing the prototype system in preparation for when the work is exhibited at SIGGRAPH2008 'Slow Art' Gallery Exhibition in Los Angeles, 11th-15th August 2008.

Happy slow emailing!

related links
http://www.realsnailmail.net
http://www.realsnailmail.wordpress.com
http://www.boredomresearch.net/realsnailmail

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Shortlisted for MetroCentre Public Art Commission
boredomresearch are developing a proposal for a public artwork to be permanently sited in the largest shopping centre in Europe

proposed artwork Floral-Falls, 2008

Floral-Falls will create a landmark focal point for visitors meeting in the MetroCentre, Gateshead Yellow Mall catering area. The work responds to the concept of the alfresco plaza with a contemporary re-imagining of an urban water feature with the stature of a clock tower.

The tower consists of four large screens enclosed in a glass column. Running down the screen will be a steady trickle of naturalistic floral vines generated live by software. The public artwork will harness the possibilities of computational techniques to create a compelling animation of ever changing floral blooms that will never repeat in the lifetime of anyone that sees the work. Unlike its traditional counterpart the abstract digital clock driving and morphing the forms in Floral-Falls will have cycles extending into millennia.

In computer animation we have the ability to combine ideas and qualities from varied sources to create new and unique entities. Floral-Falls will combine the physical motion attributes of water droplets running down a pane of glass with accelerated growth algorithms that have the appearance of time lapse photography. This will be combined with a generative system that will create floral forms. Each individual bloom will be unique and last only for the brief duration that the droplet takes to travel from the top to the bottom of the screen. The software we will develop to create the blooms will have the ability to create countless billions of unique forms that will rival even the diversity of forms found in nature. The system will shift through periods of subtlety and delicacy and also periods of electric vibrancy.

related links
http://www.metrocentre-gateshead.co.uk

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Digital Media 1.0
Boredomresearch are exhibiting a spanish version of their online wishing tree @ Digital Media 1.0, Valencia 17th April – 11th May 2008

Wish, 2006

“More than an exhibition, DIGITAL MEDIA, intends to be an intervention that will take over the headquarters of the former University of Valencia . The intervention aims to be the framework of the current artistic and technological scene as something interconnected. A challenge that involves the international participation of both artists and organizers, and that will show the heterogeneity and diversity of the contemporary art scene. An intervention resultant from the potential of communication that Internet permits, through the exchange of proposals and ideas, which will culminate in a project like this.” http://www.lasalanaranja.com/digitalmedia

related links
http://www.digitalmediavalencia.com
http://www.folly.co.uk/fwish2/spanish

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Holy Fire, Art of the Digital Age
boredomresearch exhibit Ornamental Bug Garden 001 @ iMAL Center for Digital Cultures and Technology, Bruxelles 18-30th April 2008

Holy Fire flyer & Ornamental Bug Garden 001 in the exhibition, April 2008

Holy Fire is a collective exhibition featuring a unique panel of digital artworks created in the last years by internationally known new media artists, and coming from galleries and collections from around the world (USA, Europe, Russia). Holy Fire is an attempt to explore how new media art, bypassing all the stereotypes connected with its presumed immateriality and difficulties of maintenance, was able to enter the art market. The exhibition wants to show that new media art is just art of this century, wants to reduce the gap between digital art and contemporary art, and to participate in a broader understanding and acceptance of digital media and cultures.

related links
http://www.imal.org/HolyFire/en/
http://www.boredomresearch.net/obg001
http://rhizome.org/editorial/fp/blog.php/590
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2008/04/holy-fire.php
http://www.flickr.com/photos/14618780@N07/sets/72157604703134682/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/holyfire/