Mediashed on Southend

ENTER_WINTER NETWORKING EVENT at THE MEDIASHED, SOUTHEND on 7.12.2006

Council members of Southend, very concentrated listeners and community enthusiasts.

Enter at Junction The enter festival, Unknown Territories: Adventures in Space, will take place from 25-29 April 2007 and feature showcases and a conference.

Anette Wolfsberger, Felicity Alwell and Richard Wright.

Graham Harwood: What Is Free Media, and why did Mongrel choose the MediaShed model for Southend?

The Mediashed
was set up as a "free-media" space late last year after a workshop involving local artists, designers, arts organisers, computer engineers and technicians.

Richard Wright: Telephone Trottoire, an art project for Congolese cellphones

Telephone Trottoire
Mongrel and the MediaShed develop ideas from our research programmes, our contacts in the media art world and, of course, our own members. Telephone Trottoire is an example of how we work with partners in the arts and in academic research to create innovative free-media projects that are designed to grow and grow.

David Valentine: The Free Media Video Toolkit

Video toolkit research
The Free-media Video Toolkit project (FMVTK) is a collaboration with Eyebeam in New York to create a video toolkit and web site which will provide the region with a resource for people to make low budget videos using free and open source software. The website will be a hub where people can talk about and exchange the films they have made and help contribute to new tools.

Professor Karel Dudesek: Do It Yourself Media
MAZINE
Takeawayfestival

Karel will be talking about different approaches to DIY Media within the contexts of philosophy and anthropology, and the tension between creativity and open-source.

Rory McPherson: LEDFun

“LEDFun” is an enterprise conceived by Rory McPherson and Derek Shaw inspired by some of the ideas gained from Eyebeam OpenLab in NYC. The aim is to teach kids to build imaginative light sculptures in the time it takes to peel an apple.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES

Graham Harwood

Harwood is best known for his collaborative work 'Rehearsal of Memory' (1995) produced with maximum security mental patients at Ashworth Hospital (permanent Collection Centre Pompidou et du Musée National d'Art Moderne).

He has taught in France and the Netherlands and conducted workshops throughout the world. During his time at Artec (The London Art and Technology centre)(1995-1997), where he ran the ground breaking training for the long term unemployed, Harwood founded Mongrel, which has won numerous awards including the ICA London’s Imaginaria award and the Clarks Digital Bursary. Mongrel is best known for the National Heritage and Natural Selection projects which explored racialisation and the new eugenics, and is closely associated with the formation of social software and software art through its development of Linker, HeritageGold and BlackLash.

Harwood received the first online commission from Tate Gallery London for 'Uncomfortable Proximity' for which he won the Leonardo New Horizons Award for Innovation in New Media.

Richard Wright

Wright is a media artist whose work has been exhibited and broadcast numerous times over the last twenty years. He has a PhD in the aesthetics of digital film and has published nearly forty papers, articles, and reviews.

Previous films include Heliocentrum - a cross between a political documentary and a Seventeenth century rave video, LMX Spiral - a conceptual music video about the eighties and Foreplay - a “porn film without the sex”. Multimedia projects include The Bank of Time - a BAFTA nominated online screensaver made in 2001 and the recently completed Mimeticon – a “baroque search engine”.

David Valentine

Valentine is a self-taught filmmaker interested in exploring the changing and available technologies in society. He has worked in a variety of commercial, corporate and artistic fields and has a long history of community filmmaking projects. He writes regularly for international film industry magazine Showreel exploring developing technologies or unusual ways of working and has many years of experience in organising film and music events.

Previous film projects include: Video Sniffin’ where CCTV networks are hacked or hijacked to create environmental TV studios; exhibited at Tupakkamakasiini, Pietarsaari City Museum – Cue Music Video a course he developed for the YMCA giving young people the opportunity to make music videos to their own songs and gain qualifications – the nationally distributed Killer in a Can anti-solvent abuse video developed with The Prince’s Trust – 5+5=5 NetArtFilm documentary project exhibited at the Mejan Gallery, Stockholm.

Rory McPherson

With a keen interest in computing and Linux (Slackware) in particular McPherson has been a Southend-On-Sea Linux User Group (SoSLUG) member for 3 years and a core member of the MediaShed since its inception.

In a previous life he worked in the food and automotive industries and was an HR Consultant specialising in resourcing and Training & Development interventions.

Professor Karel Dudesek

An ex-performance artist, musician, TV and radio activist, Dudesek is currently Professor at Ravensbourne College leading the postgraduate courses in Interactive Digital Media and Networked Media. He re-established the department for Visual Media at the University of Applied Arts Vienna where he was Director and Professor. He became known with Minus Delta, The Bangkok Project, IUPA, Van Gogh TV , Web3Dart and the Ponton Media Lab.