Artist Statement 

June 14, MACBA – Convent dels Àngels. Session: Art, Interactivity and Participation

Keywords: Community platform, citizen science, critical making, ecomedia, intergenerational art

This doctoral work in progress centres around facilitating intergenerational Critical Making programs and designing a participatory platform for engaging in DIY citizenship and connecting environmental concerns. Through hybrid online and in-person workshops, meetups, and community art projects, the research investigates the prospects and problems of participation in exchanging ideas, skills, and upcycling. This presentation reviews independent maker spaces, eco-art, citizen-science and grassroots participatory platforms where alternate modes of media-making are possible. The culmination of the doctoral work is a participatory project for senior citizens, youth, artists, activists, and citizen scientists to contribute art, data (mostly on water quality), documentation of restoration efforts, and local stories in rural Colorado, U.S. The media submitted to the platform will be used in public large-scale interactive projection experiences. This will be the first arts-driven project with the citizen science platform CitSci.org.

• Kimberley Bianca is an Australian media artist and community events organizer based in the United States. She is a Ph.D. candidate in Critical Media Practices at the University of Colorado, Boulder where she is developing participatory media projects with communities in Colorado. In 2019, Bianca completed her master’s thesis “Innovating Electrofringe: A Distributed Curatorial Platform for Electronic Art”, at UNSW in Australia while directing the festival, Electrofringe. She has a B.S in art and technology from Saxion University in the Netherlands, where she co-developed the software-based public art project “KaleidOk: Visually Communicating Emotions from Spoken Word”. Bianca continues to perform as a VJ and develop interactive art experiences outside of academia. https://kimberleybianca.com