Artists Jackie Calderwood (UK) and Lynne Heller (CA) collaborated to create a playful art experience in the streets and shops of Dubai, as well as in the virtual world of Second Life. Entitled Engines of Difference (2014), the work was exhibited in A4 Space, Al Quoz, Dubai and The Salisbury Arts Centre, UK.
Creating art with our audience, we invited participants to tour local landscapes through the adventure of geocaching to help us develop content and create narrative, principally through the production of giant comic books. The audience experience of their geocaching is translated through a virtual lens and then into the visual form of serialized, sequential art.
Treasure hunting in the landscape through GPS directions and website hints.
translating the treasure hunt into the virtual world of Second Life
creating a new narrative through the production of a comic book
Treasure hunting in the landscape through GPS directions and website hints.
The project started with participants engaging in geocaching, the experience of seeking out hidden caches and ‘treasures’ in urban and rural landscapes. The geocache rituals and finds were captured using technology—smartphones, GPS and the internet. Participants were asked to look anew at the local landscape as they translated their feelings and impressions via photos taken, text descriptions and audio/video recordings.
translating the treasure hunt into the virtual world of Second Life
The geocaching participation developed content and cross-pollinated the gallery experience as we used the collected images and sounds as a guide in a treasure hunt through the virtual world of Second Life. Those experiences were captured as well, through screen captures and machinima.
creating a new narrative through the production of a comic book
The third iteration of the practice translated the virtual content back into the material and physical environment by using the adventures and images accumulated to create a serialized comic book.
Out of our process come different artifacts reflecting the richness and diversity of the Engines of Difference project. The following sections document our engagement with the physical / virtual through the caches we place and other people's contributions to them; a slideshow of photography and video of our explorations; and then the translation of those activities through the lens of the virtual online world of Second Life, narrated through the giant comic book panels we create.
N25˚ 11.786', E55˚ 16.612'. This 2010 earth cache, by geocacher 'Carbon Hunter' was Jackie's first cache find in Dubai, near the world's tallest building: Burj Khalifa.
Read more →N25˚ 11.803', E55˚ 16.602'. A virtual cache for all the senses. Best visited at lunchtime or in the evening. No logbook to sign; savour the tastes of this exotic location.
Read more →N25˚ 11.749', E55˚ 16.795'. Enter the world of skydiving with a flock of silver divers descending this interior waterfall, purple projections changing the scene...
Read more →N25˚ 11.718', E55˚ 16.625'. Whilst talking to a restaurant manager about Engines of Difference caches, he told me excitedly of another treasure hunt already in place...
Read more →N25˚ 13.467, E55˚ 20.980. Sited by geocacher stw767 in 2012 at this 2.4km waterside development, the cache had been found by 232 others before us on our geocaching tour.
N25˚ 8.534', E55˚ 13.583'. This Engines of Difference geocache site was chosen to celebrate the open-studio atmosphere of A4Space by Alserkal Avenue.
Read more →N25˚ 15.908', E55˚ 17.704'. The yellow bride is a yellow waterproof microcache that we placed during our ISEA geocaching bus tour of Dubai.
Read more →N25˚ 13.439', E55˚ 21.355'. An illusive nanocache at an unusual location - IKEA! - hidden by geocacher TrueGeo in 2012 and last found a week before our visit.
Read more →N51˚ 4.337', W1˚ 47.501'. Our permanent geocache sited to mark the launch of Engines of Difference at Virtual Worlds, Salisbury Arts Centre.
Read more →Slideshow of images by artists Lynne Heller (CA) and Jackie Calderwood (UK), created during the geocaching bus tours and urban exploration of Engines of Difference: Dubai, and presented by ISEA 2014…
The comic book component of the project chronicles interactions in the virtual world of Second Life in a 'comix' style treatment, by capturing screen shots of our avatars, Nar Duell and Geo Sea, as they attempt to translate their physical world experiences within this new context. The translation of virtual adventures into 'comix' style documentation is a natural expression of the experience of spending time in Second Life, as the superficial and arbitrary nature of virtual life is mirrored in the 'pow, bam, zap' aesthetic of the printed page.
Engines of Difference: Dubai (2104).
Presented by ISEA2014.
Artists in Residence, A4 Space, Alserkal Avenue: 30th October - 8th November 2014
Quoz Arts Festival: 8th November
Exhibition A4 Space Gallery: 10am-10pm
ISEA 2014 Artist Talk: 5-6pm
Exhibition Reception: 8-10pm
Exhibits: Engines of Difference website (url: enginesofdifference.com, HD monitor), Engines of Difference: Dubai Geocaches (assorted sizes of plastic cache boxes, print, paper, crayons, sharpeners, geotag), series of six Gallery Comic Books: Adventures of Nar Duell by Heller 2009-14 (hardback bound artists books) 19"x13"x0.25", Artist Slideshow (183 digital images, HD monitor), Giant Comic Page: "GPS Coordinating" page 1 printed/artist's proof 08 November 2014 (giclée print on mixed papers, archival tape) 40"x26.5".
Engines of Difference: Dubai (2014).
Presented by Salisbury Arts Centre as Virtual Worlds.
Exhibition: 13th November - 21st December 2014.
Virtual Worlds launch: 13th November 6-8pm.
Exhibits: Engines of Difference website (url: enginesofdifference.com, HD monitor), Engines of Difference: Dubai Geocaches (assorted sizes of plastic cache boxes, print, paper, crayons, sharpeners, geotag), series of installed Engines of Difference: Salisbury Geocaches (assorted sizes of plastic cache boxes, print, paper, crayons, sharpeners, geotag, magnetic nanocache, plastic daisy nanocache), series of six Gallery Comic Books: Adventures of Nar Duell by Heller 2009-14 (hardback bound artists books) 19"x13"x0.25", Two Trees installation by Calderwood 2014 (Colour Chord animation loops with sound, two monitors, multiple 6x4" photographic prints, scissors, string), Engines of Difference: Dubai geocaching map (collage: paper, ink, photographic print, tape, string, nanocache), Artist Video (digital video, stills, machinima, HD monitor), Giant Comic Page: "GPS Coordinating" page 1 printed/artist's proof 12 November 2014 (giclée print on mixed papers, archival tape) 40"x26.5".
Engines of Difference: Dubai, 2014, is a site-responsive project utilizing tourist transportation, the geographies of Dubai, sites of consumer consumption and virtual worlds, to investigate difference and glocalization. The project title references Elizabeth Grosz who, in a keynote address for the 2007 Feminist Theory Workshop, quotes Charles Darwin speaking about nature as “the most beautiful machinery for the endless proliferation of difference”. Grosz follows this with “…difference is now the very force that vibrates the world itself into becoming”.
Artists Jackie Calderwood (UK) and Lynne Heller (CA) collaborate in a hybrid reality experience of becoming within the urban settings of Dubai, in the virtual world of Second Life, and in traditional gallery space. Their collaboration builds on the possibility and inclusivity of Calderwood’s Hunter Gatherer, a geo-art-cache participatory encounter in the physical landscape; and Heller’s performative work in Second Life with her avatar, Nar Duell.
Calderwood will invite participation from ISEA delegates and interested public to board the Dubai tourist bus. The group will be given the option to download an iPhone app to augment the treasure hunt through the shopping malls of Dubai and the fringes of the desert on the edge of the city. The audience will disembark from the bus in search of specific GPS locations en route, in both natural and man-made sites that have been previously prepared by the artists. The group’s experiences and perceptions will be relayed back to the gallery space where Heller will attempt to follow the hunt through the geography and shopping malls of Second Life.
Viewers in the gallery will witness the unique ‘DNA of moments’ sent from the geocache locations as they become the engines for difference. Audience and online participants will be encouraged to join in; each quest and discovery will generate visual and text content. Heller will interpret the ‘DNA of moments’ which will guide her avatar in a series of real-time adventures through Second Life. In between performances, machinima and documentation will be screened in the gallery along with the unique responses sent by participants. The length of time of each session will be a couple of hours and the performance repeated at various times throughout the conference. Along with the local participants, people viewing the project through Second Life will have the ability to interact with real time audience at a distance and will be guided in that virtual experience in unexpected and creative ways.
Material collected from the performative work will be exported from the virtual world and made into assemblage art in gallery comic book form. Subsequently the comic book will become a concrete artefact to complement the online documentation of the project.
This collaborative project explores the idea of art as an engine of difference and possibility between constituencies and sites involved: ISEA delegates, the general interested public, Second Life participants, geo-caching communities, and local businesses. The artists intend the project to create a dialogue with the local community such as tour bus companies, store owners, mall managers. Calderwood and Heller hope that the delight in making, as a group or as an individual in a larger collaborative effort, will lead to enhanced sharing and understanding. Artistic stimulus elicits expressions of noticing which act as “the most beautiful machinery for the endless proliferation of difference” in this glocalized hybrid reality performance.
Salisbury Arts Centre, Publicity:
New Exhibition Connects Real and Virtual Worlds
Salisbury Arts Centre is launching a new digital exhibition uniting three artists who connect real and virtual worlds on Thursday 13 November. Virtual Worlds features artworks that create bridges from online activities in Second Life and geocaching into the gallery and wider community, with interactive elements.
Olu Taiwo's 'Moving Gravity' installation is the culmination of his recent research into performance and has been created specifically for Salisbury Arts Centre. A Senior Lecturer at the University of Winchester, Olu teaches dance and performance in a combination of real and virtual formats and has a background in Fine Art. ‘Moving Gravity’ features performances in response to twelve individual trees in the Arts Centre grounds, which can be accessed as films via QR codes.
Artists and researchers Jackie Calderwood and Lynne Heller present 'Engines of Difference', a re-working of a new project created for Dubai's 2014 International Symposium of Electronic Art, an annual gathering of the international art, science and technology community. Wiltshire-based Jackie will showcase work featuring interactive geocaching sites in the local area. She will also show an existing work called Two Trees, a series of digital colour grids created in response to two trees found in Fosse Park Recreation Ground, Leicester. Canadian artist Lynne Heller will contribute a series of oversize comic books which illustrate the experiences of her Second Life character Nar Duell.
Virtual Worlds launches on Thursday 13 November at 6pm. All are welcome to get a first look at the new exhibition and meet the artists. The exhibition runs until Sunday 21 December. Salisbury Arts Centre’s exhibition space is open Tuesday – Sunday 10am – 3pm. For more information visit www.salisburyartscentre.co.uk or you can contact Salisbury Arts Centre’s Box Office on 01722 321744.
Published by Sophie Wilkinson, 28/10/14, http://www.salisburyartscentre.co.uk/feeds/news/new-exhibition-connects-real-and-virtual-worlds.aspx
Salisbury Arts Centre, Exhibition Catalogue:
Jackie Calderwood is a media artist from the South West of England, currently completing her PhD with the Institute of Creative Technologies, De Montfort in Leicester, and is often found elsewhere playing with sound, image and interaction, in the environment. She is fascinated by the ways in which we become aware of our surroundings, and the creative choices of living in the moment. Calderwood draws on her longstanding work in public and community arts, and a professional practice in holistic bodywork, to question the propensity of pervasive media to pollenate relationship between people and places of difference. Calderwood’s work derives from and is experienced across the personal, local, national, international and online, as event, installation, artefact, workshop, conference presentation and through collaborative residency. See her website for more details.
Lynne Heller is a post-disciplinary artist / educator. Her interests encompass material culture, new media performative interaction, graphic novels and sculptural installation. Heller completed her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004 and is currently undertaking a doctoral program at University College Dublin, Ireland. She is a cross-appointed Lecturer at OCAD University in the Faculties of Design, Liberal Arts & Sciences and School of Interdisciplinary Studies, as well as being an adjunct researcher in the Data Materialization Lab. Heller has exhibited nationally and internationally and is the recipient of grants from the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Department of Foreign Affairs, Canada. Recent exhibitions include Slippage at the Robert Langen Art Gallery, University at Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Chelsea Girls, Gallery 44, Toronto, ON, Homeostasis Lab, The Wrong – New Digital Art Biennale, made and exhibited worldwide, Another Season: An International Exchange Project, Gallery 44, Toronto, ON (the exhibition travelled to the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, Beijing, the Detroit Centre for Contemporary Photography, and the Hippolyte Photographic Gallery, Helsinki) and Hysteria: Past, Present, Future curated by Anonda Bell, Paul Robeson Galleries, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey, USA. See her website for more details.
E: enginesofdifference@gmail.com
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© 2014 Jackie Calderwood and Lynne Heller
Special thanks to Janet Bellotto and Atteqa Ali, ISEA2014; all at A4 Space;
Fiona Cassidy and Tom Sneddon, Salisbury Arts Centre.
