[spectre] **NEW CLUB NIGHT** 22 JUNE 6-8PM: LIZZIE MULLER

[maria x]

**NEW CLUB NIGHT** on 22 JUNE with **LIZZIE MULLER**


Thursday June 22nd, 2006 at 6pm until 8pm in the Seminar Rooms (ground 
floor right), Ben Pimlott Building, Goldsmiths, University of London, 
New Corss, SE14 6NW

FREE, ALL ARE WELCOME


GALLERY AS LABORATORY:
Working with Audiences in the Creation and Curation of Interactive Art


Alfred H Barr, founding director of the Museum of Modern Art, New York 
declared his revolutionary museum to be “a laboratory; in its 
experiments, the public is invited to participate”. This concept of the 
exhibition as an active site for experimentation and collaboration 
between curators, artists and audiences prefigures a general cultural 
movement towards the centrality of experience and away from the 
reification of the object. By describing his vision in scientific terms 
Barr suggests that curatorial practice must become increasingly 
transversal and engage with the practices and products of many disciplines.

The evolution of curatorial practice towards a more interdisciplinary 
and participative model has been hampered by a continued emphasis, in 
most galleries and museums, on distinctions between art, science and 
technology, object and experience, creation and consumption. However in 
the field of digital and new media arts new kinds of art experience 
demand new approaches to curation. Interactive computer based art is a 
provocative cultural form which breaks down disciplinary boundaries and 
has led to the emergence of hybrid spaces for production, 
experimentation and exhibition.

This talk describes my practice-based research on the integration of 
audience experience into a curatorial approach to interactive art. The 
research focuses on Beta_space, an experimental exhibition area within 
the Powerhouse Museum (in Sydney, Australia) which extends the 
interactive art research of the Creativity and Cognition Studios at the 
University of Technology into the public context. My aim is to find ways 
to work with audience experience as a material, drawing on tools and 
techniques from Human-Centred Design, to create an iterative process 
which merges the contexts of production and presentation.


LIZZIE MULLER is a curator and writer working at the intersection of 
art, technology and science. She is currently researching a PhD on the 
audience experience of interactive art with the Creativity and Cognition 
Studios at the University of Technology, Sydney. She is the curator of 
Beta_space (www.betaspace.net.au), an experimental exhibition area for 
interactive art at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. She writes widely on 
computer based and interdisciplinary art, particularly for RealTime 
Magazine (www.realtimearts.net) and lectures in digital art and 
human-centred design at undergraduate and post-graduate level. Between 
1999 and 2004 she was Digital Arts Producer for the Junction Art Centre, 
Cambridge, UK. Previous projects include the digital arts festival 
Respond in 2002 produced in partnership with Future Physical and CUMIS 
and the New Technology Arts Fellowships, a series of interdisciplinary 
research residencies with Crucible and Kettles Yard Gallery in 2002/3. 
In the field of funding and policy development Lizzie has worked for the 
National Endowment of Science Technology and the Arts and for Arts 
Council England. Selected committee positions include Chair of the panel 
for the BAFTA Interactive Art Award in 2003, New Vision Group for Trans 
Europe Halles (European network of multidisciplinary art centres) in 
2002/03 and steering group of the conference New Constellations: Art, 
Science and Society, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney March 2006.


Come along! Any questions, email me.

-- 
? Maria Chatzichristodoulou [aka maria x] PhD Art & Computational 
Technologies 15 Rodmell Regent Square London WC1H 8HX 
http://www.cybertheater.org