Presentation: Interactive Art Workshop for Women Artists

Stefanie Wuschitz & Lesley Flanigan
Sep 25 – 27, 2010 – Final Presentation Monday, Sep 27 at 5:30pm.

In this art-technology workshop, technologist Stefanie Wuschitz (Vienna) teams up with Harvestwork’s 2010 Artist In Residence Lesley Flanigan (New York) to playfully demystify technology and open up an atmosphere where learning new technological tools is fearless, interesting and clear for women artists.
Using a grab bag of materials that include graphite, plexiglass, conductive thread, recycled electronics, microcontrollers and various sensors, participants learn to create simple systems for interactive art by merging both digital and analog materials in fluid, poetic ways. The workshop begins with several simple circuits that can be quickly built and realized with little knowledge of the technology at work. As students begin to understand how these circuits operate, they can then comfortably move forward, learning at their own pace to introduce microcontrollers to build complex interactive systems that link together materials such as fabric, speakers, lights and video.

While participants are free to explore the tools and technologies at their own pace, we encourage them to ask many questions and share their knowledge with other workshop participants. This approach fosters the kind of collaborative environment necessary for continued learning beyond our limited workshop time.

By introducing an intuitive approach to learning technological tools, we encourage participants to touch upon more artistic ideas, moving past the tech of the tools to enjoy the creative results of their effort. We expect our participant’s energy to be equally spent on exploring new outlets for self expression as well as learning the basic technical skills used in making interactive technology.

Stefanie Wuschitz is a technologist, teacher and artist working on her doctorate in the Visual Cultures Unit of Vienna’s Technical University. Researching interactive public art produced by women artists, she uses mobile technologies to create installations and invite users to playfully experiment with the construction of unique social and collaborative spaces. After graduating with honors from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna (2006) and completing her masters at New York University’s ITP program (2008) in the United States, Wuschitz spent a year at HUMlab in Sweden working as a digital art fellow and organizing the Eclectic Tech Carnival 2009, a conference for women working with open source technology. In order to build a more established network of women artists working with electronics and digital media, she founded Miss Baltazar’s Laboratory, a series of weekly workshop sessions where guests share their knowledge of open source software and design techniques with other artists. She continues to host Miss Baltazar’s Laboratory sessions on a weekly basis at Metalab in Vienna, and it will be presented at the Ars Electronica 2010.Stefanie Wuschitz’s art has been exhibited at Worm (Rotterdam), Brienner (Munich), OKNO (Brüssel), Galleri Verkligheten, Bildmuseet and HUMlab (Umeå, Sweden), Northern Center of Photography in Oulu, Galeria Hippolyte Helsinki, Austrian Cultural Forum NYC, Videonale Kunstmuseum (Bonn), Kunsthaus Graz (Austria), Goethe Institute Damaskus (Syria), Gallery The Parlour (London), Arthall Mücanok (Budapest). She has taught at universities and art institutions internationally including the University of Applied Arts (Vienna), University of Technology (Vienna), Academy of Fine Arts (Vienna), University of Salzburg, Hyperisland (Stockholm), Umeå Institute of Design (Sweden), Campus Party (Madrid), Tactical Media Conference (Brooklyn), Metalab (Vienna), Čistírna (Prague), and HUMlab (Sweden). www.grenzartikel.com www.mzbaltazarslaboratory.org

Lesley Flanigan is a New York-based sound sculptor, composer, vocalist, and performer. Inspired by the physical materiality of sound, she focuses on amplification itself as the subject of her work, which weaves sounds from voice with hand-built electronics. Her current project Amplifications features six of her custom speaker feedback instruments and her own singing voice. As a sculptural installation, performance and album of musical compositions, she has toured Amplifications internationally with over 30 solo performances in both the United States and Europe, sharing bills with such eclectic artists as Tristan Perich, Lucky Dragons, Blevin Blectum, Phil Niblock, Connie Beckley and NOW Ensemble. In addition to her solo work, she also collaborates with R. Luke DuBois in Bioluminescence, an improvised music performance that explores the modality of human voice through projected, live interactive video. She has also wielded a soldering iron as both a guest performer and workshop instructor for the circuit constructing noise group, the Loud Objects.

Her work has been presented in numerous venues, festivals, and art spaces internationally including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), Sonar (‘10 Barcelona), Transitio_MX (‘09, Mexico City), NIME (‘08 Genoa; ‘09 Pittsburgh), ICMC (‘07, Copenhagen), Bent (‘08 Los Angeles; ‘09 New York), Issue Project Room (Brooklyn), Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (San Francisco), Monster Truck Gallery (Dublin) and NBI (Berlin). Her art has been exhibited at the ISEA conference in Singapore, Busan International Design Festival in South Korea, RCAD’s Selby Gallery and MCLA’s Gallery 51. She has spoken about her work and hosted numerous workshops internationally at universities, art foundations and hacker spaces including Harvestworks (New York), Dorkbot NYC (New York), the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago), Wellesley College, the Copenhagen School of Architecture (Copenhagen) and Metalab (Vienna), and has been a resident artist at arts/electronics organizations LEMUR (Brooklyn, NY) and WORM (Rotterdam). She studied sculpture at the Ringling College of Art and Design and received her masters in media technology from the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University. www.lesleyflanigan.com