[ISEA2000] Poster: Sara Diamond & Susan Kennard – THE BANFF CENTRE FOR THE ARTS: Navigating Intelligence, revelation of power

Poster Statement

The transformation of creative tools resulting from the convergence of digital techniques is defining new codes of representation which are unique to cyber space and which call for analysis and questioning. This program provides a bird’s eye view of The Banff Centre’s New Media Institute and related Media and Visual Arts new media creation, research and residencies, reflecting on recent debates and discussions about artist created technologies.

Sara Diamond and Susan Kennard will present their work at Banff and as artists (Code Zebra; Radio 90) and the work of three other artist/collaborators, with associations with The Banff Centre. These are Joshua Portway, Elizabeth Vander Zaag and Arcangel Constanti.

The tools that artists create are interventions in their own right, sometimes illuminating, sometimes providing irony, sometimes allowing collaboration. These artists create music improvisation, emotional computing, visualization and navigating systems. Tools are playful as well as cogent.

Diamond, Kennard and Portway are collaborating on Code Zebra, an Internet discourse analysis tool, emotional visualization software and musical game that makes use of reaction diffusion patterns, lycanthropy and pattern evolution to create new data meanings.

  • SaraDiamond, BANFF Centre for the Arts, Canada
  • Susan Kennard has developed archiving and programming tools for streamed radio, working with Radio 90, CSIS, Radio Qualia, orang.orang and air.net. Susan Kennard is the Producer of the Banff New Media Institute at The Banff Centre, a founder of Radio 90 and a long-term community and campus media activist.
  • Joshua Portway of stain.org has created data base environments that make use of other forms of data. Data base play can open metaphors or be oblique. Joshua Portway also works with Real World and has created noodle, audio improvisation software.
  • Elizabeth Vander Zaag, creator of Talk Nice, has developed voice tracking software that works with emotion. These soft wares read the feelings of the user and program a path that corrects, responds, connects them based on feeling and the user’s desire to share their feelings with others or change their expression. Elizabeth VanderZaag is a video and computer artist who has created many single channels works as well as installations.
  • Arcangel Constantini is a Mexican new media artist who pulls apart old technologies, creating new forms, develops bacterial and viral agents, creates biographical photo exchanges on the web and net, creates text toys and musical games and has been touring Europe with his new works RuKciON, bakteria.