A panel discussion as part of the Event Two prequel evening hosted by the EVA conference
Curated and chaired by Aphra Shemza.
Speakers:
MARIA ALMENA | NICOLA PLANT | STUART BATCHELOR | PAUL FRIEDLANDER
Curated and chaired by Aphra Shemza.
Speakers:
MARIA ALMENA | NICOLA PLANT | STUART BATCHELOR | PAUL FRIEDLANDER
FLUX Events are delighted to present a panel discussion featuring four of the artists who are exhibiting in the ART IN FLUX curated selection for Event Two, a groundbreaking exhibition featuring works from the CAS50 collection alongside FLUX artists. The artist's work span a huge breadth of media including; performance, VR and computational painting and sculpture. We will give the audience a sneak preview of what we have in store in the exhibition opening next week, as well as explore some concepts and themes surrounding computational Art today looking back to the Event One exhibition for inspiration.
About the speakers:
APHRA SHEMZA
Aphra Shemza is a London based multimedia artist exploring the impact and legacy of technology on our world. Working with abstraction, interactivity and light, Shemza combines traditional sculpting techniques with the latest technology to create her work. Shemza’s work is multidisciplinary making reference to Modernism with a renewed optimism.
Shemza has created both public and private commissions: Seconds Pass for Save the Children, GlaxoSmithKline and Anagram this year, Post-Truth and Beauty commissioned by Morley College in 2017, and Heart Beats of Cristal for Champagne Louis Roederer, exhibited in the Shard, London in 2016.
She exhibits regularly with recent highlights including V&A Digital Futures, Winter Lights Festival and Xi’an Maker Faire in China with the British Council. She has also participated in public speaking events, notably at Tate Britain, the British Library and The Courtauld Institute.
In 2018 she launched www.art-ology.co.uk, a peer resource for artists who wish to be mindful of their environmental impact with the support of SPACE.
Her research about sustainability in the media arts has been published by the Electronic Visual Arts conference in London, and she now sits on their organising committee. She also contributed an article to Tate Etc magazine in 2016.
In 2016 she co-founded FLUX Events, a peer networking charity for artists working at the intersection of art, technology and science. Shemza co-curates the yearly programme of talks, exhibitions and events and oversees the day to day running of the charity.
Alongside her art practice, she has been the manager of the Estate of Anwar Jalal Shemza since 2012, championing the work of her grandfather and continuing his legacy, through exhibitions, publications and more.
MARIA ALMENA
Maria Almena is a Spanish London-based creative director and a multimedia artist, co-founder of the creative studio, Kimatica Studio. www.kimatica.net, as well as co-founder and art curator of Flux events. http://www.fluxevents.co.uk/
Maria's practice research is exploring concepts of human consciousness and perception, making those transcendental ideas accessible to a modern audience, to inspire reconnection with magical thinking. She is fascinated by the juxtaposition of the physical and spiritual, the virtual and real worlds, playing with perceptions aiming to transport the viewer into new worlds, using experimental technologies as magical tools that helps to dramatise the transition between different states of being and highlighting the importance of the journey in itself.
NICOLA PLANT
Working within art and technology Nicola Plant creates interactive installations and virtual reality artworks, specialising in movement-based interactivity using motion capture, electronic sensors and depth cameras. Nicola’s background is in new media art, computer science and music technology. She holds a PhD in embodied interaction and empathy from Queen Mary University of London. Her work focuses on how expressive movement can cross the boundary to translate the inner world of experience to a human connection. Presenting at venues such as the V&A, the Barbican as well as at conferences and festivals worldwide.
STUART BATCHELOR
Stuart Faromarz Batchelor is a fine artist and digital researcher who combines physical painting with digital programming, fusing new and old, inventing technology to make new kinds of paintings.
Using software he codes himself, he augments paint - creating paintings that move, behave, and simulate. Transforming paint into something beyond just physical and transforming code into something beyond just mechanical
Working between coding and painting in the same session, this process culminates in generative, moving, still and installation pieces evoking ideas of the subconscious, natural phenomena and the unknown.
PAUL FRIEDLANDER
As a small child the first thing on the TV news I truly understood was the launch of sputnik. We saw no flames or fiery launch, just an announcement and the sound of the eerie beep broadcast by the satellite and picked up by Jodrell Bank radio telescope. I was a child of the space age, I became fascinated by space, a dreamer of big dreams, I spent my time building spaceships, I imagined setting off alone to explore the universe. I was lucky, my mother, Yolande, was an artist and my father, F G Friedlander, a mathematician at Cambridge University, they encouraged me to pursue my interests and it was while I was at Sussex University studying physics, I discovered my true calling.
It was a visit to a great exhibition of kinetic art at the Hayward Gallery in London that inspired me to switch direction. I completed my physics degree and went on to take another in Fine Art at Exeter College of Art. After graduating for a second time there was a lull as I came to terms with the realisation the art world was not yet receptive to the idea of scientific artists, I took a long detour into stage lighting and stage design. My main area of interest was avant-garde music and this proved a great training and source of inspiration for much of my later work where the emphasis has often been on the creation of large scale and ephemeral site specific installations.