CONTEXT

The Institute blog. A collection of information, essays and polemics relating to industry, culture and technology.

Business cannot exist in a vacuum. We examine the nature of ideas, communications and change within our contemporary cultural and technological landscape. We highlight potentially harmful actions and advocate for the freedom, meaning and agency required for human industry to thrive in a complicated and uncertain world.

Institute Admin 1/24/23 Institute Admin 1/24/23

Archive Fever

Five venues across the town kick off a new series of cultural events aimed at the local community.

Loughborough Lates is a new event hosted by five art and culture venues spread across the town centre and campus. Loughborough comes to life with visual art exhibitions, creative workshops and interactive events - all free to attend and participate in.

ARCHIVE FEVER

Archive Fever by Josie and Joshua Jones was shown at the Institute Research Lab at Loughborough Lates and will now be premiering on YouTube on Thursday 15th of December. In response to our 2022 Archive Fever exhibitions, this multi-screen installation shows interviews with six artists and contributors about the Leicestershire Museums Collection. Their conversations cover an array of topics, from nostalgia, conspiracy theories, preservation, and the personal responses they had to the objects within the archives. About Archive Fever The films shown in this installation are commissioned by Modern Painters, New Decorators as part of their exhibition programme, also titled Archive Fever.

The project centred around four solo exhibitions by visual artists; Joanne Masding, Jagjit Kaur, Daniel Cowlam and Katie Schwab. These projects began with a series of research trips to the Leicestershire Museums Collection, facilitated by Alison Clague, Senior Curator of the collection. The collection features a range of items relating to the county's history, including; rare butterflies, old farm tools, Victorian costumes, 1970s' Action Man', Neolithic stone axes and 19th-century engravings.

The artists used this research to produce new work inspired by the collection, and a selection of items from the collection were displayed alongside the newly created artwork. About Homespun Joshua and Josie Jones live and work together in Loughborough. They are also known as Homespun. Since graduating from the University, they've been developing as storytellers – mainly through photography and filmmaking, but more recently, this has opened out into all sorts of other creative practices. They spend much time with artists, charities and small businesses, working together on projects. They are part of the Modern Painters, New Decorators team and have documented their art programme for several years.

Make it stand out

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Participating venues: Charnwood Arts, the Institute Research Lab, LU Arts, Modern Painters, New Decorators and Sock Gallery.

THE FUTURE

A big thank you to @mpndprojects @sockgallery @lborouniarts @charnwood_arts and all those that turned up and took part. It always tricky to get this kind of thing organised and to get people together but it really is worth it. We met some great people and look forward to more Lates in the future!

#LoughboroughLates Contact mpndprojects@gmail.com for inquiries

Instagram @charnwood_arts @institute_lab @LUArts @mpndprojects @sockgallery

Institute Admin 1/17/23 Institute Admin 1/17/23

An Evening of Art, Design and Technology

Institute was one of the participating venues in the Loughborough Lates launch. The night included visual arts exhibitions, creative workshops and interactive events.

Institute was one of the participating venues in the Loughborough Lates launch. Loughborough Lates is a new event hosted by five art and culture venues spread across the town centre and campus. The night included visual arts exhibitions, creative workshops and interactive events.

Loughborough Lates is a new event hosted by five art and culture venues spread across our town centre and campus. From 5:30pm on Friday, 16 September, Loughborough will come to life with visual art exhibitions, creative workshops and interactive events - all free to attend and participate in. Maps are available at participating venues on the day. Charnwood Arts, Institute, LU Arts, Modern Painters, New Decorators and Sock Gallery, are the venues involved.

THE VENUES AND THEIR EVENTS

Charnwood Arts: 27 Rectory Place, LE11 1UW
Breathe, Create: Exhibition and Activity
The Charnwood Arts ‘Breathe, Create’ sessions are about engaging in mindful creativity. See our ‘Breathe, Create’ exhibition and try one of the activities with artist Khyati Koria Green, 6-7pm. We will also be showcasing the story of Songster, Loughborough's own War Horse, with author Alison Mott and artist Liz Waddell. Visitors can access us via our wheel-chair accessible front door.

Institute: Upper Rooms, 11 Baxter Gate, LE11 1TG
Ambient Visions: Martyn Blundell
A video installation that subverts the conditions in which we usually experience patterns, made up of shifting colour fields and ‘weaves'.

Crystal System: Leonie DuBarry-Gurr, Andy Harper and Todd Finnamore
An immersive and accessible sculptural installation with an interactive, contemplative soundscape.

LU Arts: Martin Hall, Epinal Way, LE11 3TS
The Domestic Academics: Finding the time to write and care
This project brings together twenty-three women academics with caring responsibilities, each responding to a call to create a quilt panel reflecting their experience working during the COVID-19 lockdowns. The gallery is located on Pearce Square, in Martin Hall. It is advised to park in the Cope Auditorium car park and walk across Epinal Way. It is directly opposite Cope Auditorium, which is next to Loughborough College.

Modern Painters, New Decorators: Carillon Court Shopping Centre, LE11 3XA
Hosiery Abstracts: Katie Schwab
Katie Schwab is a maker who works with installation, textiles, print and video to explore histories of craft, design and education. For this project, Katie immersed herself in local histories of machine knitting and attended a machine knitting course, learning techniques that have inspired new knitted artworks and a wall-based work. Visitors can enter our gallery via the Swan Street entrance of Carillon Court Shopping Centre.

Sock Gallery: Town Hall, Market Place, LE11 3EB
Our Charnwood and Beyond: Russel Taylor
Russell has an intense desire to capture the joy of the landscape. Working exclusively with acrylics, a completed painting is often a journey of chance! The gallery will be running a competition in the evening with a chance to win an exclusive Sock Gallery prize. Visitors enter the space through the front doors; everything is on one level.

AT INSTITUTE

We exhibited two exhibitions. In Studio 02, a screen based series of five video works by Martyn Blundell and an interactive installation by Leonie Dubarry-Gurr and Andy Harper in Studio 04.

CRYSTAL SYSTEM

There were curious looks on the faces of members of the lab as Leonie and Andy spent the week prior to the launch working on the technicalities of the installation in Studio 04.

An immersive and accessible sculptural installation, Crystal System offers new vantage points from which to come to terms with one's existence, in relationship to the world and others around us. Inspired by crystallised rock formations in the natural realm, Crystal System proposes an opportunity for contemplation via the meditative qualities of refracted and reflected light.In addition to the sculptural elements, the public can interact with a ruminative soundscape which supports contemplation.

Crystal SystemAcrylic, Wood, Light fixtures, Found objects.

Conceived by Leicester-based artists Leonie DuBarry-Gurr and Andy Harper in collaboration with Todd Finnamore.
www.andyharper.co.uk // @isandyharper // www.leoniedg.com // @beautiful__remainswww.monoworks.shop // @mono.works

AMBIENT VISIONS

Martyn Blundell is joining Institute as an associate. He kicks this off with a series of screen based works on display in Studio 02. If you ever wondered what would happen if you were to weave together the view a passenger might have during a series of global road trips, this might be it. They are beautiful, hypnotic and a little trippy! You can view Martyn’s video based art below.

These works belong to a series that has evolved, in part, from the idea of weaving space and time. Ambient Visions is a video installation that subverts the conditions in which we normally experience pattern. Shifting colour fields and ‘weaves' become a kind of metaphor for that feeling you get when travelling; an attempt to convey something of the porous state we fall in to when staring through the window of a moving vehicle. A dream-like travel metaphor.

THE FUTURE

#LoughboroughLates Contact mpndprojects@gmail.com for inquiries

Instagram @charnwood_arts @institute_lab @LUArts @mpndprojects @sockgallery

Graffio Arts 1/23/22 Graffio Arts 1/23/22

An Exhibition about Technology and Worthless Art

More and more of our experience of the world is going to be mediated and that includes our experience of the arts.

We were asked by LCB if we had anything for an exhibition for their Lightroom Gallery. AREXTRA Street had just launched as posters aimed at the general public. Those posters were printed onto durable, self-adhesive vinyl, designed to be plastered across empty shop windows. How would we take that into a gallery situation? Would it be appropriate?

FROM THE STREET TO THE GALLERY

AREXTRA [Street version] was a vehicle that used augmented reality to increase exposure to the arts for the general public. This was a system where people walking through the streets of the city could experience the arts without having to visit a gallery. The audience had now changed and now expected to be confronted by the arts.

This was an opportunity to engage with some of the big questions that arise from augmenting art. In this situation a 2D representation of the work is recognised by the technology and used as the platform for augmentation. Traditionally a piece of work within a gallery is considered to be an object. That object is assumed to be loaded with cultural worth. A set of factors are used to agree a monetary worth.

Augmented reality doesn’t play by these rules.

A painting, traditionally using a canvas as the place where paint is applied is now read as an image. Our understanding, development and agreed rules of engagement with painting have changed over time. It could be argued that painting was used in illustrative terms, as imagery at certain points in history but through the 20th century we have developed a sophistication and engagement that recognises the application of paint to a surface as a the battleground where an artists fights through their practice.

The results of this are hung on a wall where this creative fight, the development of their practice is evidenced and forms part of a larger conversation.

AR ignores the physicality of the work and uses a snapshot as the basis for something else. The viewers experience is largely of this something else.

To draw attention to these issues we stripped the art of traditional cultural and monetary value- we called each piece a marker (the thing that AR technology recognises). We printed these onto sheets of paper of a unified size and pinned them to the wall. After the exhibition these sheets of paper had performed their job and were destroyed. Viewers could view the exhibition with our AR app and explore the augmented reality layers- the new focus for this work in this context.

We used Lewis Carroll’s excerpt from Alice in Wonderland to highlight the idea that the genie is out of the bottle. New media technology continues to change the way we interact with the world around us. More and more of our experience of the world is going to be mediated and that includes our experience of the arts.

How would we like to proceed?

THE MARKERS

Graffio Arts 12/12/21 Graffio Arts 12/12/21

SIX EMPTY SHOPS, SIX CREATIVES, SIX NEW GALLERIES...

A ground-breaking augmented reality exhibition within the streets of the city. You’ll never look at shop windows in quite the same way again…

A ground-breaking augmented reality exhibition within the streets of the city. You’ll never look at shop windows in quite the same way again…

A WINDOW TO REALITY

A Window to Reality is a public art project that is turning town centre shop windows into a walk-by augmented reality (AR) gallery.

The project demonstrates how new technologies, collaboration and fresh thinking can unlock public spaces as hybrid commercial and creative locations for the betterment of all.

Engaging directly with the decline of town centre shopping the project repurposes the windows of disused shops. The windows are turned into portals for viewing art. Through this project the streets of the city become an alternative, curated venue for broader, unexpected exposure to the arts.

HOW THE TECHNOLOGY WORKS

The viewer is presented with an artwork, the portrait and information about the artist. When they point their mobile device at the artwork, an AR layer allows them to see the creation of the work with an audio commentary by the artist.

By pointing a digital device with the Graffio Arts app at the art on the windows and extra layer of reality appears.

Viewers are shown the artist creating the work with an audio description by the artist. Viewers are offered a glimpse of creativity often reserved for a gallery space as they go about their daily lives. The combination of convenience and the exposure to the creative practice of artists seeks to flatten the learning curve often associated with engagement and the understanding of the arts.

“The project demonstrates how new technologies, collaboration and fresh thinking can unlock public spaces as hybrid commercial and creative locations for the betterment of all.”

UNUSUAL SUSPECTS MEET THE SELECTED CREATIVES

Six creatives across the arts spectrum have been selected for the project. The selection was based on the quality of their work as well as taking into consideration the potential help that extra exposure could add to their developing careers and creative practice.

Each of the six creatives were given the opportunity to label themselves, to create a persona for their performance, a way that they felt they should be identified to the public. On the following pages are a glimpse of the window banners of three of the six creatives.

We have chosen a selection of creatives at different points within their career and worked with them to deliver a piece of work that fits within the scope of the project but is also flexible enough to fit their developing practice. We aim to showcase them in a way that engages viewers and offers an insight into the creative process.

**TAYLER FISHER**
THE MIXED MEDIA ARTIST

VIEWING THE EXHIBITIONS

The city window installations will only be available for a limited time (Winter 2019- Spring 2020). The details for the location of each is listed below accompanied by a video mock-up that simulates the high street viewers experience.

THE EXHIBITIONS

Installation 001

Kris Trigg recently completed his piece and his work is now viewable for a limited period ( Winter 2019 /early 2020 only ) The old Burtons 19-21 Market Place, Loughborough, LE11 3EB

Installation 002

A Window to Reality #002 was from @Mistabreakfast AKA Mono, also known as Leigh Drummond. You can view Mono's work at: The old Poundland, Loughborough for Winter 2019/20 only.

Installation 004

Installation 003

A Window to Reality #003 was from Taylor Fisher from Modern Painters, New Decorators. Tayler Fisher's piece is live for a limited period, for 2019/early 2020 only get down to Modern Painters, New Decorators - Unit 33, Carillon Court, Loughborough LE11 3XA.

A Window to Reality #004 was completed with Jay Clarke on the 21st January 2020. If you're in Loughborough, you can view Jay's work in Carillon Court- it's only up until the end of Feb 2020.

Installation 006

Installation 005

A Window to Reality #005 was from Liam Proudman. You can view Liam's work at: The Old Hospital Ct, Loughborough LE11 1TH for Winter 2019/20 only.

A Window to Reality #006 In-situ - Agata Tomaszek Agata's installation, at the old Poundland, Loughborough. We are executing six in total from a local artists. We record the performance, it can then be re-watched again in Augmented reality, and using the Graff.io Arts AR app. Find out more - https://graff.io/ar-city

THE PERFORMANCES

For the performance each artist wore a distinct white working wardrobe or a white version of their clothes. This was to highlight the alternative reality version of their overlaid selves and to allow focus on their work as they moved in front of it during the creation process. We were pleasantly surprised by how little persuasion it took to get six artists to dress up.

COLLABORATION PARTNERS

Graffio Arts collaborates with partners to bring the right expertise and skills to make projects happen. We have been lucky to work with some outstanding people on this project...