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| PANDORA'S BOX An interactive encounter with art using remotely controlled robots. InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre Christian Bock is a composer of electronic music and also works in the area of video installation. Interested in art and technology since the mid-1960s, he studied electronic music with the composer Lars-Gunnar Bodin, and then continued his studies at the Foundation “Elektronmusikstudion” and the Royal College of Music in Stockholm until 1982. His works have been performed at national and international festivals and aired by radio stations. His piece The Washington Trials was performed at the Music Gallery in Toronto in June 1997. Joe Davis is an artist who has done extensive research in molecular biology and bioinformatics for the production of genetic databases and new biological art forms. He has also constructed sculptural installation pieces, working with laser fabrication in plastics, steel, and stone; laser teleoperator systems; and structural welding in mild steel. His teaching experience in the MIT graduate architecture program (Master of Science in Visual Studies) and in undergraduate painting and mixed media at the Rhode Island School of Design has informed his artistic practice. He has exhibited in the United States, Canada, and Europe at Ars Electronica. Francis LeBouthillier is a Toronto-based visual artist who produces provocative, interactive installations involving sculpture, technology, and performance. He locates installations in non-conventional public sites, designing them in a way that reflects existing architectural elements and structures and simultaneously calls into question conventional associations with the particular site. LeBouthillier took part in Naked State, a selected view of Toronto art curated by Louise Dompierre and presented at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto (1994). He has participated in numerous exhibitions nationally and internationally, including Dialogue at the Kunstforeningen in Copenhagen, Denmark (1998) and The Cite? International des Arts, in Paris, France (1996). He currently teaches at the Ontario College of Art and Design in the Faculty of Arts Sculpture Installation and Integrated Media programs. Thomas Liljenberg is the co-founder (with Lief Elggren) of Fireworks, an artists’ group that organizes exhibitions and performances and supports a small publishing company. In 1996, Liljenberg and Elggren published their book Experiment With Dreams, which resulted in exhibitions at several museums and galleries in Sweden and abroad. The book consists of over 200 letters written by the artists and addressed to powerful and famous persons and institutions all over the world. The recipients were accused of stealing the artists’ dreams and asked to provide compensation. Almost every letter ends with: “Send money to our Swedish postal account!” The Experiment is a horrifying, darkly amusing meditation on money, power, and the people who live out our dreams. Dinka Pignon has shown her work throughout Europe and in the United States, Canada, and Asia, and has participated in international art festivals and symposia dealing with science, technology, and art. Working at the Ericsson Media Lab, she developed a prototype media-on-demand interface and tools to describe affective dimensions of music by visual means. Her involvement with the “Group for the Investigation of Mental Territories” in Belgrade laid the theoretical foundation for her artistic approach, which is dilettante and formalist, being dictated by the contextual demands of a piece rather than media-specific conventions. She has been active in the Fylkingen Society for New Music and Intermedia Art<www.fylkingen.se/fylkeng.html> since 1988 and involved in organizing and curating cultural events, including the Stockholm Electronic Arts festival. Amanda Ramos <www.interlog.com/~ramosa>is an installation artist and exhibition designer. She creates immersive environments, experimenting with a variety of formats that integrate architecture and media. Inside her stylized constructions, individuals are publicly invited to explore new methods of social interaction. Her recent projects included the exhibition design of the Game Girls show at InterAccess, and Idoru, an online performance by Michelle Teran and Amanda Steggell. Victoria Scott is a Toronto-based sculptor who works primarily in metal and creates large-scale mechanical installations. Since graduating from the New Media Department at the Ontario College of Art and Design in 1991, she has exhibited in Sweden, Mexico, Toronto, Venice, and California. Scott is primarily interested in the transformation of the personal through the technological and the creation of simple mechatronic allegories. She uses motion, vibration, and repeating cycles as a means of illustrating personal stories. Construction and technical and emotional processes are very important in the creation of her mechanically driven sculptures and kinetic installations. Graham Smith is an experienced artist, inventor, and entrepreneur who has shown his artwork internationally for 15 years. He founded three high tech companies, and has four patents issued in his name. Graham worked for three years at the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto, researching the effects of new technology on culture. In his current position as Chief Technology Officer at Telbotics Inc., Graham is working with U of T and Ryerson to commercialize the PEBBLES videoconferencing system, which links children from hospitals to their classrooms via a two-way videoconferencing robot. Kent Tankred studied painting in the early 1970s before taking up electro-acoustic music at the Institute for Electro-Acoustic Music in Stockholm under the composers Rolf Enström and Jan W. Morthenson. Tankred’s work explores the fusion of music with other forms of art, particularly the visual and time-based media, creating installations that bring together sounds, images, movement, and objects within the ambient environment. He often uses the Concresizer, an instrument he built for controlling sound sculptures from a keyboard. His works have been shown in various places in Sweden and Europe. Tankred served as chairman of the Fylkingen Society for New Music and Intermedia Art between 1993 and 1998. |
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