Digital artist and IOCT PhD student Sean Clark launched the Interact
Gallery on 5th September at the Fabrika Arts Centre. Leicester's newest gallery for interactive and digital arts
opened today on the first floor of Fabrika, in Humberstone Gate. It will act
as a showcase for the best art works in the East Midlands and will be curated
jointly by Sean Clark, De Montfort University and Adam Kirk of Fabrika.
The show runs until late October
and the organisers hope that would-be artists will offer their works to the rolling
programme, during which exhibits will be changed regularly.
Speaking at the opening, Sean Clark said "The transformation
of the upstairs space is still underway but it is hoped to be completed in two
weeks time. Over the next two months we plan to show the work of up and coming
digital artists."
On show at present are a number of works by Sean Clark, such
as his Memory Mirror, which captures video images of people walking
in front of it and plays them back as ghostly images.
His work Drop Sketch is a wall of graphical images
provided by people from their mobile phones, to which they have downloaded a
special app. that allows them to make a sketch and upload it to the central gallery.
Another panel shows a group of moving circles that nteracts with the viewer.
Also speaking the Launch event was Professor Ernest
Edmonds,
from IOCT De Montfort University, who told the meeting "innovations in interactive
arts have often involved small and select groups of people. This gallery is ideal for interactive work. Leicester
has had a strong tradition in this area over a long period of time. It was one
of the first cities to mount an early exhibition of interactive art back in 1970/71,
in what was then Leicester Polytechnic.
It was Albert Einstein who said that 'inventing the
problem is more important than solving it.' This very much sums up what this exhibition
is about.Leicester has for a long time been noted for its adventurous
and experimental artists. Buckminster Fuller came here in 1971", he said recounting some of the early approaches to interactive art experiments.
Fuller was an engineer, designer, inventor and systems theorist. He invented
the architecture of the geodesic dome.
A book is due out in November which Ernest Edmonds has edited
with Linda Candy: Interacting: art, research and the creative
practitioner, to
be published by Libri. In it, contributors will consider the many forms of interaction
involved in the arts and in creative processes.
"I look forward to seeing the gallery playing its
part in innovation and risk-taking as part of the artistic process, " Prof.
Edmonds said.
More information is available from the Interact
Gallery web site.
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