Max Dean and Nichola Feldman Kiss
Artist Talks by Max Dean and Nichola Feldman Kiss, two of Canada's leading interactive and new media artists were presented on 23 November 04 at the Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers, Newcastle.
Max Dean is a Toronto based artist who is best known for his interactive works, starting in the 70's with his performance works and moving on to his recent critically acclaimed robotic works. Dean's work pushes the viewer to answer some question, to resolve some situation or to come to terms with some proposition. The works challenge the viewer, the situation and the institution.
Dean has exhibited extensively in Europe, most recently the Venice Biennale in 1999 and 2001 and ZKM's Iconoclash and Future Cinema exhibitions. His acclaimed work 'The Table' with Raffaello D'Andrea has been acquired by the National Gallery of Canada.
Nichola Feldman-Kiss is an Ottawa based artist working with 3D body databases, and 3D prototyping processes and materials. Her research about human subjectivity examines the increasingly blurry boundary between skin, garments and technologies of the body and is expressed in old and new media.
Nichola is a guest artist with the Canadian National Research Council's Institute for Information Technology where she is developing mean body (as in standard). mean body is a database of body shape studies. The mean body research expresses both artistic and scientific considerations of human shape variability, seeking ways to understand body geometry and body identity independent of performative vocabularies of posture, pose and gesture, and independent of schema based systems such as linguistic signifiers. mean body critically examines the technological (re)production, (re)presentation and categorization of the human body and body language.
Mawuli Afatsiawo
12 April 2005 at ISIS Arts
Mawuli Afatsiawo is a Ghanian born New Media Artist who was invited to give an informal presentation about his work, specifically his current project Made in Ghana.
Mawuli Afatsiawo was artist in residence at Cornerhouse, Manchester during The Idea of Africa exhibition (Mar - May 05). He was working with pupils from the Manchester Academy in Moss Side and young people on British Council Ghana education programmes in Accra. Mawuli worked with the young people, aged 12-14, from Manchester to produce new work based on the economy of Ghana and the development of trade. They will share ideas with the young people in Accra via a specially created website www.madeinghana.org.
