In 2021 we rolled out our new format for presenting accessible open-all-hours digital artworks in Finsbury Park called the People’s Park Plinth. In parallel, we launched our CultureStake collective cultural decision-making app.
Thousands of you showed up online and in the park to experience a set of interactive artistic proposals for larger artworks. Each one presented its own mini-experience in the park and online using web apps, free data, and AR technologies. Three times as many people got involved with our programmes and ultimately picked Based On A Tree Story for their summer 2022 art experience.
Since then we’ve been busy working with HERVISIONS and Bones Tan Jones, respectively the curator and artist behind Based on a Tree Story, to build the full digital art experience and install it in the park.
Now, we’re extremely excited to tell you that from 13th August the tree sprites of Finsbury Park will be ready for you to find them.
The trees of Finsbury Park bear witness to myriad happenings. Through deep time they wait, they watch, they grow – wiser, wilder…. In this new commission by HERVISIONS X Bones Tan Jones, the special stories of the trees are translated by three mystical sprites that live within the trees, becoming their voice. Use the map to locate clusters of trees and identify the amulet wearers among them. With the app open, scan the symbol to summon the sprite and release a cascade of tree wisdom – time travelling to the roots of their having-beens into the twiggy tips of their future-becomings. And as you crisscross the park, seeking out your next sprite, imagine the ley lines you draw onto and into the earth – and cast your own connective spell.
“We invite you to visit the tree, call forth the sprite and dance together. Let your feet connect to the soil and the movement of the sprite inspire your rhythms. Stomp on the ground and the layers of earth from years of life will reverberate with your sound! Hear their echoes!”
– Zaiba Jabbar, HERVISIONS
To celebrate this amazing news, we’ve invited you to join us for a magical sundown experience seeking out and – if they’ll let you – dancing with the tree sprites of Finsbury Park.
Furtherfield Gallery, Saturday 13th August 2022 from 5pm
HERVISIONS
Responsible for curating, commissioning, conceptualisation, and research HERVISIONS is a femme-focussed antidisciplinary curatorial agency supporting and promoting artists working across new and emergent technologies, and platforms with a strong focus on the intersection of art, technology and culture.
IG: @hervisions_
Bones Tan Jones
Responsible for conceptualisation, research, and artistic production, Bones Tan Jones’ work is a spiritual practice that seeks to present an alternative, queer, optimistic dystopia. They work through ritual, meditating through craft, dancing through the veil betwixt nature and the other. Bones weaves a mycelial web of diverse, eco-conscious narratives which aim to connect, enthral and induce audiences to think more sustainably and ethically. Traversing pop music, sculpture, alter-egos, digital image and video work, Bones sanctifies these mediums as tool’s in their craft.
IG: @yaya.bones
Studio Hyte
Responsible for the visual identity, 3D modelling and technical development, Studio Hyte is a South London-based design studio. Working between graphic design, interaction, and emergent communication. We specialise in forward-thinking, multifaceted visual identities and experiences within the arts and education sector. Our aim is to create meaningful, accessible and thought-provoking work.
IG: @studiohyte
State Machines is a programme of activities devoted to the investigation of new relationships between states, citizens and the stateless made possible by emerging technologies. Focussing on how such technologies impact identity and citizenship, digital labour and finance, the project joins five experienced partners – Aksioma (Slovenia), Drugo more (Croatia), Furtherfield (UK), Institute of Network Cultures (Netherlands) and NeMe (Cyprus) together with a range of artists, curators, theorists and audiences.
www.statemachines.eu
Every time a smartphone powers up, their user is tied inextricably into data, laws and flowing bytes to different countries. Their every personal expression is framed and mediated by digital platforms which now include those operating new kinds of currencies, financial exchange, and labour relations that bypass corporations and governments.
Meanwhile these same technologies increase governmental powers of surveillance, allow corporations to extract ever more complex working arrangements, and, although seemingly the epitome of globalization, they do little to slow the construction of actual walls along actual borders.
We ask how might the digital subjects of today become active, engaged, and effective digital citizens of tomorrow?
State Machines now launches an open call for a new commissioned artistic project.
We are interested in works that explore shifts in agency towards individuals, groups and commons from nation states and private companies. We invite proposals that draw on first-hand experiences in:
The call is open to artists, technologists, activists, inventors and individuals, groups and hybrid human- artificial intelligence collaborations.
We are interested in all art forms and actions that can be encountered and experienced across networks, online and in physical exhibition. We welcome diverse viewpoints, experimental and playful approaches.
Applications must be received by 23:59 (CET) on Wednesday 31 January 2018.
Complete application must include the following:
Please send ONE .pdf format including materials 1-4 above to marcela@aksioma.org.
For >5MB attachments, please use file transfer services like Wetransfer or provide a link to your own server space.
This project has been funded with the support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Furtherfield is delighted to announce the selection of Sarah Friend’s Clickmine for a new co-commission with NEoN Digital Arts Festival. The work will be exhibited Thursday – Sunday 9-12 November at NEoN Digital Arts Festival in Dundee.
Clickmine is a hyperinflationary ERC-20 token that is minted by a clicking game. Clicking games, like cookie clicker and cow clicker, are the reductio ad absurdum of a ‘game’ (brutalist with a sense of humour). Clickmine moves similar mechanics onto the blockchain, in a hypercapitalist frenzy that makes the generation of useless wealth via clicking more literal than ever before.
The cryptocurrency ecosystem, (particularly the Ethereum network), has been overrun by the phenomena of token sales or ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings). The fervor to purchase ERC-20 tokens (a meta currency that exists on top of Ethereum itself) has reached such an intensity that it stalls the processing time of the network. This has already prompted the creation of satirical coins UselessToken and Ponzicoin.
Clickmine was proposed by Friend in response to The CryptoDetectorist – hoards, coins and trades call for proposals from Furtherfield and NEoN Digital Arts Festival. While archaeology has often understood cultures through excavations of hoards and coins, we asked, what will today’s digital currencies tell future archaeologists about the way we live and trade?
This commission forms part of Furtherfield’s ongoing investigations into the politics of the blockchain, smart contracts, and cryptocurrency systems and NEoN Digital Arts Festival 2017 programme using ‘media archaeology’ to uncover and reconsider the obsolete, persistent, and hidden material cultures of the technological age. It will be launched online and presented at NEoN Digital Arts Festival in Dundee Scotland November 2017 then at the Digital Futures programme at V&A Museum and MoneyLab both in London in Spring 2018.
Friend is an artist and software engineer focused on the development of games, interactive experiences, and open source tools. Her work to-date has been concerned with the polar concerns of privacy and transparency, how to design ethical interfaces, and the political and environmental implications of technical systems.
She is currently working at a blockchain development studio on tools for accounting and analytics, while maintaining an art and game-making practice. Her work has recently been part of exhibitions at the British Public Library, The Center for Contemporary Art Tel Aviv, and Radical Networks, a conference in Brooklyn. She is a judge for Wordplay: the Festival of Writerly Games, exhibiting at Damage Camp, a games conference in Toronto, and presenting on the technical challenges of blockchain games at the Montreal International Games Showcase. Community organizations she is involved with include: Toronto Mesh, The Reported (a database of police-involved deaths in Canada), The Toronto Tool Library, and Dames Making Games.
Furtherfield
Through artworks, labs and debate around arts and technology, people from all walks of life explore today’s important questions. The urban green space of London’s Finsbury Park, where Furtherfield’s Gallery and Lab are located, is now a platform for fieldwork in human and machine imagination – addressing the value of public realm in our fast-changing, globally connected and uniquely superdiverse context. An international network of associates use artistic methods to interrogate emerging technologies to extend access and grasp their wider potential. In this way new cultural, social and economic value is developed in partnership with arts, research, business and public sectors.
NEoN
NEoN (North East of North) based in Dundee, Scotland aims to advance the understanding and accessibility of digital and technology driven art forms and to encourage high quality within the production of this medium. NEoN has organised 7 annual festivals to date including exhibitions, workshops, talks, conferences, live performances and public discussions. It is a platform to showcase national and international digital art forms. By bringing together emerging talent and well-established artists, NEoN aims to influence and reshape the genre. We are committed to helping our fabulous city of Dundee, well known for its digital culture and innovation, to become better connected through experiencing great art, networking and celebrating what our wee corner of Scotland has to offer in the field of digital arts.
State Machines: Art, Work and Identity in an Age of Planetary-Scale Computation
Focusing on how such technologies impact identity and citizenship, digital labour and finance, the project joins five experienced partners Aksioma (SI), Drugo More (HR), Furtherfield (UK), Institute of Network Cultures (NL) and NeMe (CY) together with a range of artists, curators, theorists and audiences. State Machines insists on the need for new forms of expression and new artistic practices to address the most urgent questions of our time, and seeks to educate and empower the digital subjects of today to become active, engaged, and effective digital citizens of tomorrow.
V&A Digital Futures: Digital Futures
V&A Digital Futures: Digital Futures is a monthly meetup and open platform for displaying and discussing of work by professionals working with art, technology, design, science and beyond. It is also a networking event, bringing together people from different backgrounds and disciplines with a view to generating future collaborations.
Creative Scotland
Creative Scotland is the public body that supports the arts, screen and creative industries across all parts of Scotland on behalf of everyone who lives, works or visits here. It enables people and organisations to work in and experience the arts, screen and creative industries in Scotland by helping others to develop great ideas and bring them to life. It distributes funding from the Scottish Government and The National Lottery.
This project has been funded with the support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Mycorrhizal Meditation is a sound-art work by Fiona MacDonald : Feral Practice, commissioned for the enjoyment of the people of Finsbury Park, as part of the exhibition Are We All Addicts Now?
It is designed to be listened to in the park, but can be listened to anywhere.
Mm is a guided meditation (approx. 15 mins) that choreographs a connective journey through the human body and down into a dynamic under-soil world. The voice of the artist entwines with sound recordings made in wooded places, using ambient and contact microphones, and techniques that convert electrical signals in plants and fungi into sound.
Feral Practice complicates a notion of nature as ‘ultimate digital detox’, and guides the user towards the startling interconnectivity of beyond-human nature, the ‘wood-wide-web’ that predates our digital connectivity by millennia. The mycorrhizal network is made up of fungi and plant tissue, and acts both as a woodland’s food store and communication centre.
Mm is suitable for ages 8 years and above.
It can be listened to alone or in a group.
Please tweet @feralpractice @furtherfield #addictsnow to share your experience of the meditation.
Children explored new ways of interacting with the local area and developed a tour of Peckham using a blog to document their experiences.
“I had lots of ideas for different ways for adults to have fun in the streets. Climbing lampposts, running up walls, throwing helicopter seeds and bounding up steps like an animal. All of these things would be good to do on the tour.” – Gafar, The Street Training blog.
Participants: six 10 year old children from Gloucester Primary School in Peckham.
Artists: Lottie Child (Street Training) and Ruth Catlow (Furtherfield.org).
In collaboration with Lottie Child, Furtherfield.org worked with six 10 year old children from Gloucester Primary School in Peckham exploring how, by focusing our thoughts and behaviour, we can affect our surroundings as much as they affect us. The project explored issues around how we behave to be joyful and how we behave to be safe in the streets, challenging conventional uses of public space and pushing the boundaries of social norms.
As part of the commission, Furtherfield.org created a website for Street Training with a special focus on the Peckham group. This provides a way to help Peckham Street Trainers and others to connect with each other (wherever they are) and share and develop their new techniques, long into the future. By documenting their experiences the children thought about public space (online and physical) as something that they could change, make an impression on for better or worse. The project culminated with a tour of the local area, demonstrating new techniques such as rolling down a grassy hill, climbing a lamppost, picking apples, the mobile limbo, looking for ants, bounding up steps like an animal, making a wish by blowing a dandelion clock and throwing helicopter seeds from a wall.
Partners: The project was commissioned by Peckham Space (a new commissioning organisation for socially engaged arts in South London) as part of the Open House London’s celebration of architecture and the built environment.
Related Links: Street Training.
Jeremy Bailey will be working as Artist in Residence at HTTP, Furtherfield’s Gallery and lab space, in Summer 2008. As part of the residency HTTP Gallery has commissioned a new satirical performance called Warmail which is the central piece in Bailey’s upcoming HTTP exhibition, The Jeremy Bailey Show in Autumn 2008.
The Jeremy Bailey Show, Bailey’s first solo exhibition in the UK, will present many of Bailey’s most recent works including VideoPaint 3.0 and SOS, alongside the new commission, Warmail, produced during his adjunct residency. This brand new performance work pokes fun at the value placed on “collaboration” in today’s art practice and policy-making. The performance will be staged live at the exhibition opening (Friday 19 September 2008, 7:30pm) and documented for viewing throughout the exhibition. Bailey plans to co-demonstrate, with his audience, new collaborative software that will allow participants to perform office related tasks such as email, word processing, or spreadsheets together while simultaneously composing a visual/musical score with matching choreography.
Jeremy Bailey received his MFA in Video Art from Syracuse University and an undergraduate degree in Visual Studies from the University of Toronto. He is co-founder of award winning artist video collective 640 480. His work has been described by Filmmaker Magazine as “a one man revolution on the way we use video, computers and our bodies to create art”. Bailey lives and works in Toronto, Canada.
5 short movies by 5 film makers about 5 networked art projects exploring imaginative and critical approaches to social engagement.
Furtherfield has commissioned 5 short movies about 5 UK-produced networked art projects which explore critical approaches to social engagement. These pieces offer alternative interfaces to the artworks and the every-day artistic practices of their producers. They introduce the motivations and social contexts of artists and artists’ groups who are working with DIY approaches to digital technology and its culture, where medium and distribution channels merge.
Original concept and production Furtherfield, London, UK. 2006
In association with HTTP Gallery [House of Technologically Termed Praxis], London, UK.
Made with the support of Stiftelsen Längmanska Kulturfonden and Mejan Labs in Stockholm, Sweden – Arts Council England and Awards for All in UK.
Free Media by Mongrel
This movie focuses on Mongrel’s digital workshop project, the MediaShed in Southend on Sea, 65 km east of London, where anyone can come to seek knowledge, use computers, suggest projects and attend lectures. More info >>
View movie >>
Polyfaith by Chris Dooks
Polyfaith.com provides a printable map and mp3 files to accompany a free tour of of his home town Edinburgh seen through the eyes of an unusual local character. In this short movie Polymath he introduces the beliefs and philosophies of his friend Erica Tetralix, as explained through the city’s landmarks. More info >>
View movie >>
VisitorsStudio by Furtherfield
This movie is about VisitorsStudio, an online place for real-time, collaborative, audio-visual mixing and networked performance, a tool for editing movies and images live with other people online. More info >>
View movie >>
Want and Need by C6
The London based artist group C6 believes in communication through action and the importance of creating alternatives to established uses of new technologies. Their project Want & Need is shown in Mejan Labs during autumn 2006 and has earlier been on a tour through Norway as well as being shown in New York, London and Eindhoven. More info >>
View movie >>
Golden Shot (Revisited) by Simon Poulter
The Golden Shot was a game show in British television in the 1960- and 70’s. The idea with the show was that the audience called the show to play a game and gave instructions to a camera man how to aim his camera to different targets. On the camera there was a cross bow attached. More info >>
View movie >>
Date: 31 August – 8th October 06.
Art & Activism Exhibition.
Mejan Labs. Stockholm. Sweden.
http://www.mejanlabs.se/article_en.asp?ID=54&KAT=CURREX&templ=2
Date: 3rd October 06.
Being Digital. Greenwich University. London. UK.
Date: December- date to be confirmed.
HTTP Gallery. 5+5=5 UK launch. London. UK.
http://www.http.uk.net/
Date: November – date to be confirmed.
MediaShed – Mongrel. Southend on Sea, Essex. UK.
http://mediashed.org/
Please contact us for details if you wish to show or screen 5+5=5 at a venue.
American ‘girl gamer’ artist and theorist, Mary Flanagan will be working as Artist in Residence at HTTP, Furtherfield’s Gallery and lab space in Spring 2006. As part of the residency HTTP Gallery has commissioned [giantJoystick] for the Game/Play exhibition, a national touring exhibition, in collaboration with Q-Arts (now Quad), Derby, which explores goal-orientated gaming and playful interaction in media arts practice.
[giantJoystick] offers a humorous reworking of the multi-player game. Visitors are invited to collectively play classic arcade games with a nine foot tall joystick modelled after the Atari 2600 one. The competitive goals of these classic arcade games are already familiar, however the dramatic change in scale of the joystick necessitates both an encounter of the whole body with the artwork and cooperation between a number of players in order to reach them.
Mary Flanagan is an artist, author, educator, and designer. Known for her theories on playculture, activist design, and critical play, Flanagan has achieved international acclaim for her novel interdisciplinary work, her commitment to a theory/practice dialogue, and contributions to social justice design arenas. Her research examines the boundaries between the personal and the public, perception, power, and what technology can teach people about themselves. Using the formal language of the computer program or game to create systems which interrogate seemingly mundane experiences such as writing email, using search engines, playing video games, or saving data to the hard drive, Flanagan reworks these activities to blur the line between the social uses of technology, and what these activities tell us about the technology user themselves. Her artwork ranges from game based systems to computer viruses, embodied interfaces to interactive texts; these works are exhibited internationally at venues including the Laboral Art Center, Whitney, SIGGRAPH, Beall Center, The Banff Centre, The Moving Image Center, Steirischer Herbst, Ars Electronica, Artist’s Space, Guggenheim, Incheon Digital Arts Festival, and and venues in Brazil, France, UK, Canada, Taiwan, New Zealand, and Australia.
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