Digital Media Labs 2015 (proof) by Octopus

Digital Media Labs 2015 All images by Benedict Phillips ÂŠ2015 All artworks depicted are copyright of the participating artists. All Rights Reserved No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by photocopying or mechanical means, including information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the copyright holders and the publisher of this book. ISBN: 978-1-910846-02-5

First printing, July 2016 An edition of 100 copies A PO Production Published by PO Publishing www.popublishing.co.uk

Digital Media Labs 2015

'Comfort Zone’ is a difficult concept. It is also the name of a shoe shop in Barrow-in-Furness. Adam Cooper, participant in Digital Media Labs 2015

After the success of Digital Media Labs 2014, it seemed inevitable that another one would follow and with the support of a new sponsor, the University of Leeds, our 2015 edition ‘Digital Outsiders’ came into being. With the third iteration of the Lab, we created a conceptual structure around the theme of the ‘digital outsider’, providing a starting point or provocation for the participating artists to explore if they wished. The concept of the ‘digital outsider’ first poses the question of ‘are you on the outside or on the inside?’. Thinking about the notion of the digital outsider for us was about taking a distinctly personal perspective from which to examine the digital world and that which is thought of as being ‘outside’ of the digital. Are your ideas digitally inclusive or digitally exclusive? Digital Media Labs is a focused opportunity for professional artists from a variety of career stages to reflect upon how they present their ideas, how they communicate these to others and how they deal with those ideas when challenged. It is an opportunity to forget who you are with many of the day-to-day responsibilities and barriers that impinge on making work removed. We are interested in what happens when artists have these restraints removed and have to battle through the uncertainty of being able to do whatever they want. We have found that the Lab can often generate a lot of questioning and feelings of disorientation within the artists who take part, but from our experience, it is only from this point of view that you can start to find your way out. As we say at the Lab: ‘If you’re not lost, how are you going to find yourself ?’

Participants: RadamĂŠs Ajna Tim Brunsden Toni Buckby Adam Cooper Gina Czarnecki Monika Dutta James Medd Hwa Young Jung Shelly Knotts Gemma May Latham Thursday 24th Sept. to Saturday 30th Sept. 2015

Contents 8-83 Digital Media Labs 2015: Visual Essay 76-96 Digital Outsiders: The More I Know, the Less I Understand A reflection on the Lab by Benedict Phillips and Lab artists 98-101 Inhabiting the Hack by Alex McLean 104-105 Afterword by Dave Lynch 108-111 Credits Digital Media Labs are an ongoing series of residential projects that have taken place in Hull (October 2010) and Cumbria (September 2014 & 15). This publication focuses on the working process of the project that seek to enable those artists that are working with and interested in the creative uses of technology. The Lab is a place where individuals can apply their working processes within a new context, hothouse their ideas and create new collaborations within a specially nominated peer group. It also aims to provide an overview and introduction to the process and thinking behind the wider project, with a focus on the Lab that took place in 2015. The first section of this publication is a photographic diary of that week, followed by a text giving an insider’s view of the process from the perspective of the Lab team and participating artists. This is followed by a written reflection from Lab alumnus and Digital Outsiders partner, Alex McLean, focusing on his experience and interpretation both as a critical observer and as a researcher with an interest in exploring new formats for the hackathon. The book concludes with an afterword from Dave Lynch on the notion of the ‘digital outside’.

Digital Outsiders:

The More I know, the Less I Understand by Benedict Phillips & Lab Artists Digital Outsiders was the third in an ongoing series of week-long Labs, with ten nominated artists given the opportunity to spend a week having their day-today barriers to productivity removed and replaced with a self-imposed creative brief. In other words, you decide what you do, you decide what you deliver. “It doesn’t need to be any more complicated.” Now that the Lab is over, the presentations and talks have been given and the exhibition is on display, we begin to reflect more deeply on what the Lab means to us as its curators, to the participants and to those that have supported the project. It has become very clear that we consider the curation, design and management of the Lab as a piece of technology in its own right, and that we know cultural, political and scientific advances or changes mean that it must continually reflect upon itself and develop. This revolution of the Lab runs in parallel to the changing interests and technological developments that our partners and participating artists engage with and are reacting to. When people think about a Lab, hack space or workshop, they are generally reflecting on it as a space with certain types of equipment and a particular kind of architectural environment. These things would seem to be very fixed and solid with those using the space providing the element of fluidity and creativity. The Lab seeks to approach this differently. We see all things as being in flux and that it is crucial to consider, and reconsider, the creative environment. After all, certain types of equipment and spaces will often start to dictate the scale and form of outcomes produced. “I was musing on the train ride about what I’d like to do during the week. When I changed to the slow train tracing the Cumbrian coastline to Barrow-in- Furness, my mind starting drifting from being productive to daydreaming about salt marsh sheep and wondering if the book store at Grange Over Sands had any openings... “

At the Lab we have an objective of supporting artists in getting to a point where they just don’t know what they are doing any more. This springs from the belief that to invent, to truly re-imagine and create outside of the normal pressures of delivering to a brief, you need to go back to the start. What we hope is that the artists will look at this rare opportunity of not having to deliver and be able to just let go, allowing themselves to play, to shake off long-held ideas and objectives and get back to the simple act of ‘making stuff’. The project has grown from a strong belief that ideas are generated and formed through making and doing. If you sit down with a piece of paper in front of you and a pencil in your hand and say ‘I’m going to draw a house’ or someone says to you ‘do me a drawing of a house’, it doesn’t matter how good that drawing is, it is already finished. It is already decided what it is going to be. The only thing left is to design it and to apply that design to the materials - i.e. draw the house. During Digital Media Labs we say, ‘Try drawing before you think. See what is revealed through your marks, see what emerges from the process of making these marks.’ As a result, the environment that emerges during the week is a jumble of the things that people have brought with them and strange new equipment, mixed up with the conversations and interactions generated by the group. 25/09/15 “Working in grey areas / Ambiguity towards labels / Working from within and with the public sphere / Outside of art institutions / Tim lurking in the background...” On the first day of the Lab we hold a symposium made up of presentations by the participating ten artists. They have all met the night before (many for the first time) and have been introduced to where they will be working and to the history and ideas that brought the Lab into being. “I’ve approached the week so far embracing a sense of play, fired by a keenness to incorporate more game-like elements in my work as I progress. I brought this with me to the Lab by creating a game for us all to play as a part of my introduction to the residents. ‘The Mashing’ is a game for up to ten players, exemplifying what I feel to be quite a pure form of button-mashing.”

We frame this as a day of comparison. You are presenting and being presented to. The day is about discovery, focused on understanding the people around you through their presentations, which almost function as self portraits through their ideas and projects. We get to know each other through our work, and it is through our work that we come together. At the end of this day we are overloaded with information and experiences of different presentation styles, ideas and techniques. “The most encouraging thing I felt was the openness of the residents in sharing their practice, thought processes, methodologies and even struggles. The idea of failure as a positive opportunity to learn was mentioned, which is something I feel isn’t talked about enough.“ 26/09/15 “A great afternoon of making and making it up.” Day two. We change everything in response to day one. We reflect on the ideas and personalities that are presented and from this we pair up all of the artists into five teams. These teams are presented with the opportunity to exploit one of the great resources of the local town, its abundance of charity shops filled with yesterday’s digital technologies often housed in discarded children’s toys. “Put into pairs and given a £10 budget we were invited to purchase materials and encouraged to leave our normal methods behind. We raided the charity shops, picking up items that excited us without any prior conception as to possible outcomes. Armed with a space hopper, a baby’s activity matt, and some kind of contraption that measures your body fat percentage, we returned to the house ready to create the unknown...” The creation of a new work between brand-new partnerships forces a variety of collaborations into existence. This is not what people are used to. This is not the person they work with normally and this is not the way that they make work normally… But it is fun, it is engaging, it is challenging and it comes with the pressure to entertain and engage with your peers through pure invention.

“We had an intense few minutes staring at a One Direction board game aimed at 8 year olds in the centre of town, thinking ‘What does it mean?’” Through this exercise, we are starting a process of not knowing what we are doing, how we are going to do it, who we’re doing it with and what we are going to end up with. All of these things will be discovered and developed and realised in less than a single day. This is an opportunity to disconnect yourself from your normal way of doing things, to start a dialogue, to play and perform. “Back at Piel View, we created a seedy disco room in the basement, offering a different direction to the darker side of the internet, unobtainable membership, exploitation with alternative club ideas. Our centre piece was a glowing balloon rising above the sinister sounds collected from the Charity shop.” 27/09/15 “To myself I say, ‘spend more time in boats’.” Day three. That’s it now - what are you going to do? This is the question. Do you examine the archive of your work that you carry with you in your head? Do you apply some of the ideas and processes that had been thrown up over the previous couple of days into a practice that you already have? Do you follow a hunch which seems to have come into being? Do you pick up some materials (whether this is a length of wood or remote viewing camera and goggles) and go and have a play! “The main thing I got out of today was FUN! A day spent engineering something and making reminded me how much I enjoy this kind of problem solving.” By this point in the week we generally find that artists have started to accept the idea that they do not have to deliver anything. What we ask of them is just to tell us about their experience at the end of the week. We do not ask for that experience be focused on one particular element such as the production of a new piece of work, experimentation with new technology or deep critique of their own practice and works. We don’t need to, because it is not our job to be the artist. If you can be nominated for the Lab and present your practice simply

and clearly to us, then we trust that you will use the opportunity to go to places in your imagination which are normally hard to access when you have the day-to-day pressures of life and work demanding your attention. “That boulder was heavy. I am hoping he reappears before the week is out.” We are here to generate an experience which we hope supports the creative resources of those who take part and engage with the dynamic of the Lab. This is something which is hard to explain or to communicate, but purely through the structure of the week, we have found that new networks of artists and an extraordinary cross pollination of ideas and expertise can manifest itself. “I arrived at Digital Media Labs with an open mind, which it turns out, was probably a wise approach. Only two days in to the lab and it is refreshing to have stepped both physically and mentally away from my day to day practice. This feels like the intermediate grey area between escaping my practice whilst rediscovering it.” In the afternoon of day three is the expedition. It feels like everything from previous days expresses itself at this point by drawing everybody’s focus inwards. So this seems as good a time as any to go outside! This year we chose to go to Piel Island. Part of what this experience does is help the artists who have travelled from across the North of England to locate themselves in the Cumbrian landscape. This is also a way of bringing the group back together as a whole but, unlike the first day, everybody now knows each other. This is an opportunity for a collaborative adventure. “A trip to Piel Island via ferry in the afternoon was a good bit of time to reflect. I took some footage on the way over, which by chance is kind of relevant to how I was feeling - a little lost at sea.” Part of what creates a good network are commonalities, shared experiences and a way of describing things between each other that come from a unique experience. Travelling through the landscape, arriving at a long slippery jetty and standing on the edge waiting for a wooden boat with an outboard engine to arrive.

For us to step into the boat, with its swaying up and down with our cameras over our shoulders and the island peeking up at us from across the bay feels, like something very different from the day-to-day experience of the studio. We know that new pathways and new memories are being made unique and imprinted. We hope that the experience, the context and the material this creates in the mind, in our cameras and sketchbooks will help us get to conclusions or questions that would have otherwise never been asked. Digital Media Labs is an interruption, and imposition to the day-to-day. It strives for this goal with the intention of changing the course of your thinking. We are not trying to take you off target, just to pull you away from it so that you can get the time to look back and reflect on your journey. The kind of stimulus that that looks like a Tintin illustration and feels like a Famous Five adventure… 28/09/15 “I physically make things all the time in my day-to-day practice but it’s normally on fairly long projects using a well practised set of skills – it’s a process that’s engaging but not particularly challenging.” Fruit is collected. The process is broadcast live as an experience from the perspective of a hand moving in to pick. Fruit is boiled down and strained. People sit around staring into laptops, writing narratives, constructing journeys. People lend their minds (literally) to see what their brains can do when hooked up to sensors. Music is made or programmed outside in the sun and upstairs in the dark. Day four is quite simply the hardest day to get through during the Lab. It is also the easiest if you know what it is you want to do. By this point, people just desperately need to make things and focus whether this be taking themselves away, reconnecting to familiar processes or submerging themselves into the new ones they have come into contact with. There is a sense of purpose and focus even in those who find themselves without a physical prototype to produce. Hard questions are being asked and possibly not being answered.

This is also the day when people’s sense of themselves as makers and communicators of ideas takes hold. There is a strong realisation that there are more plans, possibilities and processes in their imagination than there is time to act upon them. “Up until now I haven’t said anything about the week. Along the way there have been so many thoughts, so many different ideas and propositions to engage with, it has been difficult to shape all the thought-material into language that one can write in sentences. It has perhaps been a short time of knowing so much but not knowing what it is I know.” In the main meeting room, analogue and digital technologies are being stripped down and put back together again, and finally the visors with radio pickup are being put into use. Part of our approach was to bring in technology which is not whole, that needs putting together and experimenting with before it can be used. The remote broadcast goggles are a perfect example of this (and trickier to get working than most people had expected). It’s hard to reflect on this day from an outside perspective as so much of it is internalised and inwardly focused. “That’s the magic of the Lab – the ability to share ideas and desires with others who all have different skill levels and come at problems from different perspectives. There is an altruistic current flowing through everyone here.” In spite of this, there is always a lot of collaboration and engagement between the artists and a sense that negotiations can happen very quickly now that everybody knows who everybody else is. When people leave, it is dark and the conversation moves through the streets to the hotel where it stays up late. “Conversations about exclusions and disability and attitudes, Jim Reeves, Cliff Richard and cellars, what to do with hundreds of porcelain thimbles, creating soundscapes in a salad bowl, how all men love the Scalextric and the new madely vehicles creating sparks made from abandoned plastic toys that do nothing apart from support a bar code sticker for the web, heart rate monitors and space-hoppers, bouncing in the park, abdominal muscle exercise devices and walking sticks…”

29/09/15 This is everybody’s last day to make, reflect and do at this year’s Digital Media Lab. There has been a conversation between the artists who have decided on an improvised group crit to get the day going. So before the coffee grounds have dropped to the bottom of the cafetiere, chairs, cups and people have transported themselves out into the public domain of the park. In some ways it seems like a hard process, this self-imposed stopping for a session of reflective discussion. “Gina made the great, generous suggestion of having a group therapy session this morning before cracking on.” The artists who have left their comfort zone and their familiar practice and kept going are now deep into a new landscape; seeing how they can literally stitch, stick, glue and dovetail their ideas of making and working with the digital. Other artists have worked out how they can utilise the resources to generate a new work or new draft. Other artists have perhaps found themselves using this time to reflect on their practice as a whole, the impact of not delivering to brief and being outside of your comfort zone with no need to make breakfast lunch or dinner can leave you with very few places to escape! “Maybe I could use some sort of tweezers to guide the needles into places I can’t get my fingers because adding an extra level of manual difficulty is always a fun game…. oh and I’ve got to pull apart a CD player when I get home to get the lense out to stick to the camera module to make it super macro… and I must get online and find a decent MUD emulator…and start playing with pattern compression... wonder if I could add more cameras to the glove… and while I think about it...” So we find ourselves back at the start, thinking about artists and the concept of the ‘Digital Outsider’ and about the idea of making art. The Lab itself is a collaborative artwork, put in motion, managed and activated by the team and built with the participating artists.

In a way, reflecting on the idea of being an artist in this situation and on this notion of the ‘Digital Outsider’, this is my chance to make some art, including a fashion shoot with the artists as they perform an emulation of the process of being in a separate reality. The obvious presence of the goggles obscuring their faces combines with the implication of the antenna in their hand picking up unknown signals. Accessing their experience of remote vision is guessed at through the expressions on their faces, the demeanour of their bodies. They are inside the digital and we are outside, looking at them looking back… “I’ve tried to think about my work as perpetually in the experimentation phase. Something that doesn’t have an end – and therefore can’t fail – yet/ever. It’s comforting to delude myself into this state – something that’s not really grounded in reality. But that’s what this week is. Suspended and cut off from the day to day real world of consequences, criticisms and repercussions.” 30/09/15 “For some, it was clear to my mind, that the time and context had given them a tangible creative path or tool that they would not have encountered without meeting and working alongside the others of us there; for others, and I include myself here, the week seemed to have given us breathing space.” Presentation day is an opportunity to reveal the experience of being on the Lab to the other artists and guests who attend this final activity. As I stressed to the artists over the course of the week, there is no pressure and no need to apply the process of being on the Lab to a product or an outcome. “I want to capture some of the curiosity again. That drive to explore and experiment. This DML’s been so good for that. I’m curious about things – and want to start sowing seeds.” The end of Lab presentations are not a pitch, they are an opportunity for personal perspectives, an opportunity to open up and share your experience.

This does not mean that artists don’t give presentations for work made or in development, but it does mean there will be a variety of outcomes. If there is to be work beyond the this rare opportunity to reflect on their practice and debate it with people with a fresh perspective, then it is most likely to be a product or project that grows out of the experience and the new networks which have been set up through the Lab. As is our way, we would always suggest that if you want to know what the artists did during the week and perhaps what they thought, then there is a blog for that… “What the Lab has done for me is made it clear to me what I have to do next, from now on. The experience has added a clarity to my own thinking about my practice, which I now see has been lacking during recent years.” Main text by Benedict Phillips with quotes from participating artists taken from online Lab diary entries. Read more at: digitalmedialabs.org

Reflections from Both Sides of the Lab by Alex McLean Alex McLean reflects on his different roles and experiences, both as an artist who took part in Digital Media Labs 2014 and then as a supporter and sponsor for the 2015 Lab, through his role as a researcher at the University of Leeds and guest member of the Lab team. It was an extended busy time for me, so I think it was a strange mixture of relief - that I would be able to escape overload and finally have some time to contemplate and perhaps develop new ideas â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and concern that it would be difficult to make time for it, that there was no room in my schedule for it. The fact that I somehow managed to get away, and the experience turned out to be so valuable, taught me a lot about the importance of including defending space for unplanned activities in my schedule. I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t anticipate how important it was to meet the other artists, and that the residency would be so well thought through in terms of creating opportunities to get to know each other through collaboration. I focussed on cyclic structures, and in particular the patterns of everyday life - especially in washing machines, inspired by co-resident Emily BriseldenWaters. This was in collaboration with another resident Ben Dalton and we ended up spending a lot of time this working with a salad spinner. This focus on cycles continued through individual work in extracting patterns from youtube videos of washing machine cycles (which are surprisingly numerous) and developing a circular visualisation for my live coding environment. These are ideas Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve yet to properly return to but I am now starting a sound art residency with the Open Data Institute, and plan to take them forward as part of this. I think everyone was very curious and supportive of what each other was doing. Basing the residency in the Octopus Collective house was interesting as we were separated into several rooms, where differently focused

collaboration and individual work could take place, but people were always circulating round to see what was going on. Then Sam Meech set up his knitting machine in the hallway in the middle which provided an interesting gathering point. I organised some alternative hackathons myself (http://inhabitingthehack. github.io) in large part inspired by DML. Co-residents Lalya Gaye, Victoria Bradbury and Sam Meech took part in some of them as well as the original Lab organisers. We’ve also kept in touch via a facebook group and shared events and calls with each other - it’s felt really good to have this informal network across the North. I didn’t learn anything particularly tangible, for me it was really about the experience of making time to explore ideas... Feeling a little frustrated that things were moving so slowly, then looking back and realised I’d achieved loads and had a whole range of new threads to follow. My colleague Helen Thornham has been researching traditional hackathons, and knew that I have a long history of organising strange events around electronic and digital arts. Following my experience at DML, Helen and I teamed up to create a research project around “alternative hackathons”, working with DML and other arts organisations including the Crafts Council, Open Data Institute Data as Culture, LoveBytes, Access Space and others. Our aim was to expose aspects of creative working which might be hidden or suppressed in hackathons as we have become to know them in the creative industries, for example the importance of working with material, collaboration without a clear goal, of work over several days that includes extended periods of relaxation (such as a picnic with lake swimming). Digital Media Labs allowed me to really see the difference between a goal-directed hackathon and a creative arts residency. Despite the intensity of a hackathon, such a residency seems so much more productive, in part because the aim isn’t actually to be productive, but to reflect. It sounds a bit cheesy, but that level of productivity I experienced at DML was really a by-product of insights and self-change.

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The 2015 Lab did feel very different, which I think demonstrates the importance of individuals in such a group. It clearly went very well too, with a different dynamic and set of interests. I particularly enjoyed a spontaneous sessions outside, which was very contemplative, with a great deal of sharing about insecurities and difficulties. It felt that creative dead-ends were almost celebrated, and reflection was perhaps valued more than production to an even greater extent than the previous year. That said there was also a great deal of commonality with the previous year, lots of collaboration, fresh ideas and new friendships. Read more about the Inhabiting the Hack project at: Inhabitingthehack.github.io

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Afterword by Dave Lynch The high-pressure sodium lamp has been the most ubiquitous street lighting on the planet, since their introduction in the 1960s, their yellow hue has baked our urban spaces for generations, forging our recognisable view of the distant nighttime conurbation. LEDs came to life in 1962, yet it wasn’t until the 90’s that we managed to make white light with the invention of the Nobel Prize winning blue LED. And only now the cool tint of this ‘super white’ supercedes our amber pathways, do they exist as one of the last visual markers of a society in transition from the analogue to the digital, from concrete pillars to an ever connected, ‘smart’ Kubrickian monolith, which will permanently transform our night time landscapes, memories and how our cities interact. Artists typically bring attention to the rub of these cultural transitions, yet under (Digital Media) Lab conditions, artists exist in a state where deadlines, project management and the familiar drone of a connected culture is removed from their everyday experience. They often enter new states of thinking, reflecting and artistic fission, usually during ‘meltdown Mondays’. Everyone on this year’s Lab was a digital outsider, experiencing pre-internet times, in a world before the dramas associated with the ‘always connected’ of contemporary society. Their results echo the thought processes of a personal and cultural rebellion to how we interact with technology and somewhat more importantly, how technology interacts with us. From personal histories came methodologies which forced us all to slow down though reconnecting with physical interaction. The methods and prototypes developed during the Lab ask how we interact with the invisible digital, where a 30 second wait for a website, feels like forever. Their pursuit to use archaic (often 90’s) technology to slow themselves down to enable a genuine reflection and ask us why, how and what digital means for culture in a world where interaction mediated by technology is changing as quickly, blatantly and permanently as the insurgence of RGB smart, street lamps, yet remains somewhat unimportant and invisible to our connected consciousness. 105

About the Digital Media Labs Team Benedict Phillips Creative Director Benedict Phillips is an artist, activist, writer and curator. Benedict’s practice encompasses a broad range of methodologies, often responding to his profound dyslexia as well as researching and reacting to the people and places in which he finds himself. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, working with numerous organisations including the V&A, Arts Council England and Arts Catalyst. Dave Lynch Technology Director Dave Lynch is an artist, director and inventor working internationally at the intersection of moving image, interactive installation, performance and projection. His practice combines elements of art, science, military, maker and media cultures as part of it’s tactics, technologies and production. Lynch’s research investigates models of cross disciplinary collaborative practice through play and doing. His work has been featured on BBC 2, Wired.co.uk and in The New York Times and VICE. Glenn Boulter Project Director Glenn Boulter is an artist/curator based in Cumbria. He has produced audio-visual works for sites including the Royal Opera House 2 and the Sao Paulo Biennial and is a founder member of sound art collective Octopus, with the role of organiser/co-curator of the Full of Noises Festival. Starting life in the former canteen building of a Trident submarine plant, Octopus has presented four biennial festivals showcasing new work by over two hundred sound artists, composers and musicians.

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About the Contributors Alex McLean Alex McLean is an interdisciplinary researcher working across live coding, pattern in textiles and music, live interfaces for performance, software art, performance art, creative education and digital culture. Alex is active across the digital arts, including chairing the International Conference on Live Interfaces in 2012, organising over 80 “dorkbot” electronic art events, co-founding the TOPLAP live coding organisation, the Algorave movement, and Chordpunch algorithmic recordlabel. Alex has performed widely at major venues over the past 14years and currently holds a Composer-Curatorship with the Sound and Music new music agency, and is working on the Oxford Handbook on Algorithmic Music with Prof Roger Dean. Ben Dalton - guest Lab team member Ben Dalton is currently investigating the theme of ‘design for digital pseudonymity’ at the Royal College of Art, London. He holds a permanent position as Principal Lecturer in the Faculty of Arts, Environment & Technology at Leeds Beckett University. He is currently a research member of The Creative Exchange hub and an AHRC funded doctoral researcher into Digital Public Space at the RCA. Ben has recently shown work, given talks and run workshops on themes of digital identity performance and control, including at 31c3 Hamburg, ICA London, FACT Liverpool, FutureEverything, Berghs Stockholm, WWW2013 Rio de Janeiro, Sensuous Knowledge Bergen, and DIS Newcastle.

Visit the archive Visit our website to read essays and further information about the history and the ideas behind Digital Media Labs. You can also hear about the artists’ experience in their own words from across the three editions of the Lab, view previous publications and a selection of short films of artists’ presentations.

Digitalmedialabs.org

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Index of Images: Cover - Toni Buckby, Piel View, Day 5 Page 4/5 - Adam Cooper’s case, Piel View, Day 1 Page 8/9 - Artists arrive in the Park, Day 1 Page 10/11 - Unpacking, Piel View, Day 0 Page 12/13 - Presentations, Pel View, Day 1 Page 14 - James Medd, ‘the Mashing’, Piel View, Day 1 Page 15 - Presentations, Pel View, Day 1 Page 16/17 - Toni Buckby presentation, Piel View, Day 1 Page 18/19 - Toni Buckby presentation, Piel View, Day 1 Page 20 - Monika Dutta presentation, Piel View, Day 1 Page 21 - Shelly Knotts, Barrow Park, Day 1 Page 22/23 - Ben Dalton, Barrow Docks, Day 2 Page 24 - Adam Cooper & Monika Dutta, Age Concern, Day 2 Page 25 - Charity Shop Challenge, Piel View, Day 2 Page 26/27 - Ben Dalton, Piel View, Day 2 Page 28/29 - Charity Shop Challenge, Piel View, Day 2 Page 30/31 - Piel View House exterior, Day 2 Page 32 - Radamés Ajna & Gemma Latham, Piel View, Day 2 Page 33 - James Medd & Toni Buckby, Piel View, Day 2 Page 34/35 - Monika Dutta, Piel View, Day 2 Page 36 - Hwa Young Jung & Gina Czarnecki, Piel View, Day 2 Page 37 - Shelly Knotts & Tim Brunsden, Piel View, Day 2 Page 38/39 - Field Trip, Roa Island, Day 3 Page 40 - Field Trip, Roa Island, Day 3 Page 41 - Boat trip to Piel Island, Day 3 Page 42/43 - Field trip to Piel Island, Day 3 Page 44/45 - Field trip to Piel Island, Day 3 Page 46/47 - Hwa Young Jung, Piel Island, Day 3 Page 48/49 - Gina Czarnecki, Roa Island, Day 3 Page 50/51 - Majestic Hotel, Barrow-in-Furness, Day 1 Page 52 - Lunch, Piel View, Day 4 Page 53 - Salad Spinner Camera, Piel View, Day 4 Page 54/55 - Monika Dutta, Piel View, Day 5 Page 56/57 - Hwa Young Jung, Piel View, Day 4 Page 58 - Shelly Knotts, Piel View, Day 4 Page 59 - Apples / Thimbles, Piel View, Day 4 Page 60 - Shelly Knotts & Gemma Latham, Piel View, Day 4

Page 61 - Adam Cooper & Tim Brunsden, Piel View, Day 3 Page 62- Tim Brunsden, Piel View, Day 5 Page 63 - Monika Dutta, Piel View, Day 5 Page 64/65 - Group crit, Barrow Park, Day 5 Page 66 - Toni Buckby, Piel View, Day 5 Page 67 - James Medd, Piel View, Day 5 Page 68/69 - Hwa Young Jung & Gemma Latham, Day 5 Page 70/71 - Shelly Knotts, Piel View, Day 5 Page 72 - Presentations, Cookes Studios, Day 6 Page 73 - Presentation, Adam Cooper, Cookes Studios, Day 6 Page 74/75 - Hwa Young Jung, Toni Buckby & Gemma May Latham, Barrow Park, Day 0 Page 76 - Portrait, Radamés Ajna, Piel View, Day 5 Page 79 - Portrait, Tim Brunsden, Piel View, Day 5 Page 80 - Portrait, Shelly Knotts, Piel View, Day 5 Page 83 - Portrait, Hwa Young Jung, Piel View, Day 5 Page 84 - Portrait, Adam Cooper, Piel View, Day 5 Page 87 - Portrait, Gemma May Latham, Piel View, Day 5 Page 88 - Portrait, Gina Czarnecki, Piel View, Day 5 Page 91 - Portrait, Monika Dutta, Piel View, Day 5 Page 92 - Portrait, James Medd, Piel View, Day 5 Page 95 - Portrait, Toni Buckby, Piel View, Day 5 Page 96/97 - Monika Dutta, Piel View, Day 5 Page 98 - Alex McLean, Piel View, Day 4 Page 102/103 - Tea Room, Piel View, Day 1 Page 104 - LED street lamp shadows, Day 2 Page 106/107 -James Medd, Piel View, Day 5

Book design by Glenn Boulter and Benedict Phillips. All images by Benedict Phillips copyright 2016. All works depicted are copyright of the participating artists. To read the artists’ accounts of the week and see the works they developed in more detail, please visit the blog section of the project website: digitalmedialabs.org

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Follow the QR code above to download this book in pdf format from our website digitalmedialabs.org Interested in hosting or co-producing a lab with us? Contact: ben@digitalmedialabs.org With thanks to: Alan Pergusey, Lumen, Oomlout, Barrow Park Dept, Ross Dalziel, Suzy Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Hara, Signal Films,, Joanna Craddock, Jake Harries, Access Space.

Nominators 2015: Crumb, FACT, Sound Network, the Superposition, Access Space, Re:Dock and Thinking Digital Arts.

Funders & supporters: Digital Media Labs is supported by Arts Council England, the Communities and Culture Network+ and Octopus Collective.

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Digital Media Labs 2015