DATA Event 32.0

Location:
Imoca (Irish Museum of Contemporary Art)

Presenters:
Eamonn Crudden
Eamonn Crudden is a media lecturer, researcher and documentary filmmaker. His third feature length documentary – ‘Route Irish’ (2007) – was recently screened at the Stranger Than Fiction documentary festival in the IFI. The film was also distributed widely in early 2008 using bittorrent networks.
Eamonn will discuss and screen excerpts from a series of short found footage films he made in 2006 and distributed through the film festival circuit in 2006 and 2007. These include
‘Skizohacker’, ‘Mob Film Manifesto’ and ‘I am the Pilot. The Pilot is in my Sights’. The series of rapidly produced pieces were a departure from his usual concern with forms of politically engaged observational documentary.
They attempt to ask questions of how ‘documentary’ might contribute to an understanding of the types of subjects and subjectivities produced by an ongoing inhabitation of virtual spaces.

Tim Redfern and Ralph Borland
SmSage is a security camera housing containing a speaker system, mini-computer and cellphone. It uses a text-to-speech converter to speak out text messages sent to it. It reorders messages it receives, cutting them up and combining them with previous messages. It moves between sense and nonsense, ‘straight’ readings and automatic poetry. The device is contained in a security camera housing to disguise it as a piece of ubiquitous urban architecture. It takes the function of a security camera and turns it around – rather than capturing information from the environment, it projects onto it, voicing and remixing participants comments and observations.
The project mimics the speaking security cameras recently installed in Britain, which allow camera operators to admonish people for ‘anti-social behaviour’. Instead of the voice of officialdom, this device transmits the voice of the public. Anyone can speak through it. But whatever their message, it is quickly mutated by a camera that, unlike it’s normal cousins, is no mere conduit for information.

Saoirse Higgins
Is a digital media artist from Dublin. She works as a lecturer fine art at IADT. Her
main research area is ‘Art in Contested spaces’. She is looking at various types of contested spaces for example: man versus nature, human versus machine, public/private, local/glocal. Through her projects, I explore the links between technology and our vision of the world. I am looking at the control mechanisms that are used to keep us feeling safe and the ones that do not. Usually my work incorporates physical interfaces with a mixture of sound, video, 3D and electronics. My work has been shown at the Montreal Film and New Media festival, Transmediale, Exit Art and Location One Gallery, New York

Push Move Click
4 piece dublin based live electro-acoustic group. Deadbeat is a collection of producers and music lovers which have come together to provide quality events and artist bookings. Our aim is to help put Dublin on the map as regards electronic music bookings and events. Deadbeat have all ready provided Dublin city with Boris Divider, Dexorcist, Larry mc Cormick/Exzakt Aux88 and Ed Chamberlain.