Let’s Get Phygital:

Blended Participation Announcement

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Axis is proud to announce the launch our Let’s Get Phygital commissioning series for hybrid physical/digital participation, which continues the learning of our Social ARTery programme.

These commissions aren’t about epic deliveries and impressive tech, instead we are helping artists to think through radical and innovative ways of how we integrate everyday technology into our lives in a post-pandemic world. Through a combination of support we are encouraging the artists to do some social/digital hacking and address digital inclusive and simultaneity, asking how is creativity expressed and participation made simultaneously online and in person?

This goes beyond basic streaming to think and dream about how we can share and use the basic resources we have at hand for meaningful engagement. We aim for this fund to allow for risks and with risks accepts and embraces all the tech failures we know so well. Our only shared outcome and expectation is the learning along the way which we will share with our members and the wider arts sector.

This Autumn we will be hosting a live digital webinar around hybrid deliveries, stay tuned! Exploring how can you do it, why should you try it, what could you do, who would you work with and what happened in our testing of the phygital space.

Led by project team, R.M Sánchez-Camus (Development Associate), Daniela Liberati (Project Coordinator) and John Whall (Digital Mentor) will be working closely with the Phygital artists to help deliver their innovative work and share that learning through our Axis community.


Patrick Furness (He/Him) and Eddie Parker (He/Him)

Patrick Furness

Stars of Westgate, image courtesy of the artist

Patrick is an artist based in London originally from Gloucestershire. His practice is based around sound, video, performance and interaction, with a history of collaboration with social art practitioners. He has exhibited and performed internationally and currently also teaches at Goldsmiths University in digital media for Theatre & Performance. Uncategorizable composer, performer and educator Eddie Parker has been active on the UK and international music scene for four decades. He was a visible member of the 1980’s UK big band Loose Tubes, performed and recorded with South African Jazz legend Bheki Mseleku, and runs his own bands including the acclaimed classical/jazz/world music Debussy Mirrored Ensemble (with singer James Gilchrist) and his raunchy rock band EscherSteps. He is a writer member of the Will Gregory Moog Ensemble, which performs faithful recreations of Wendy Carlos’s “Switched On Bach” amongst other things.

The installation 'Stars of Westgate' expands on the work created by the local community for the Stars of Westgate project by projecting the images of their stars inside the Cathedral. Accentuated by a soundtrack jointly composed by Eddie Parker and Patrick Furness that mixes electronic sounds and bells with Westgate street sound recordings.

http://patrickfurness.com/

Instagram
@patrickfurness


HARI / Hull Artist Research Initiative (It/ They) 

Sarah Pennington (She/ Her) + Thomas Robinson (He/ Him)

HARI

Credit: Sound Art Performance, Pheobe Riley Law, HARI

HARI is an artist-led project which operates from a 3 storey shopfront space in Hull City Centre. It provides opportunities for artists to engage with each other and publics during the research stages of their practice, both through self-initiated and HARI programmed residencies, exhibitions and events. We aim to upskill regional artists by giving them opportunities to experiment around their practice and to gain experience by participating in artist talks and workshops.

Our proposal to Axisweb is to develop and test the digital space, or repository, during our August-October programme. Under the umbrella theme of Art:Nature:Environment, this period includes an Artist in Residence and several other artist research occupations alongside this whose practices will hold conversation with each other and a range of inter-linked subjects and engagement events. Throughout we will gather evidence of engagement, ideas and information shared, and digital imagery and audio and creative responses. In particular, throughout the programme we will invite both local and remote audiences to upload an image and sound file (field recording) of an aspect of the natural world.

Towards the end of the programme, we would like to produce a phygital opportunity for using the gathered material – particularly the audio – and to host an evening of sound art performance. This could be attended in-venue and online, with invites sent to your Vacant Space users. As well as the opportunity to upload remotely, we anticipate there would be digital equipment available inside HARI’s space to allow audiences to contribute on-site – and get local visitors hooked in. It would be a variously hybrid, broadly engaging and logistically far reaching event encompassing Experimental Sound Art & Nature.

https://hullartistresearch.wixsite.com/hari/upcoming

Instagram
@hari_artsresearch


Bolton Contemporary (Andee Collard and Rebecca Harrington)

Bolton Contemporary

Credit: Bolton Contemporary

We have lots of experience of working in schools; Rebecca as a primary school TA, Andee as a secondary school Advanced Skills Teacher and head of visual arts specialism. Andee has recently undertaken the Making of Us professional development programme with the Turnpike gallery working with young adults with ASD.

We started Bolton Contemporary CIC to utilise both of our skills and experience as artists and teachers to do something that we are passionate about, which is providing art opportunities that are fun and accessible to all. Initially we were developing and delivering workshops specifically with the riso in mind but we are keen to diversify our offer encompassing lots of different art forms and materials.

https://www.boltoncontemporary.com/

Instagram

@andeecollard
@r.h.creates
@boltoncontemporary


Simon Hall

Simon Hall

Credit: Simon Hall

I am a Bristol-based visual artist dual qualified in medicine and dentistry. My arts practice is embedded in the exploration of the portrait in healthcare through fine art, emerging technologies and bio-art. Through multi-faceted experience particularly in facial injuries, disorders and diseases, I transect arts and medical spaces to explore medical ethics and the body in health and disease with a focus upon facial difference and identity. I deliver interdisciplinary art/science collaborations, often including public and patient engagement workshops, which draw together artists, researchers, clinicians and service users to explore participatory arts experiences and curiosity driven research.

The Phygital process will explore how we can utilise contemporary technology to be inclusive, experimental and thoughtful in our access to arts spaces in a way which bridges the divide between online and in-person making. I will explore how technology can be utilised to deepen engagement with a community group of young people with craniofacial differences in collaboration with the Cleft Lip and Palate Association. The project aims to experiment with strategies to collaboratively interact with 3D facial modelling in digital spaces. The project is deeply considered in the context of ethics, stigma and bodily representation, with the environment seeking to enabling safe spaces to recapture, manipulate and consider the body in participants own designs."

https://www.simon-hall.co.uk/

Instagram
@Simonhallarts

Twitter
@DrSimonHall


Pamela Crowe (She/Her)

Pamela Crowe

Credit: Pamela Crowe

Pamela Crowe is an artist and writer based in Leeds. Her practice focuses on words and how we say them, on text, voice and performance. She exhibits, publishes and performs live, online and in print, most recently with The Poetry Society, Leeds Museums and Galleries, Soanyway Magazine, Leeds 2023 and 20-21 VAC. Her poetry collection The Bell Tower is published with The Emma Press.

I'll be working with the Elders Project at the Cardigan Community Centre in Leeds to explore a dialogic model for participatory art making, producing digital photography and text-based art on location and remotely in response to a book of urban walks we co-created earlier this year, SEVEN SHORT CIRCULAR WALKS from the Cardigan Community Centre.

https://pamelacrowe.com

Instagram
@crowe_pamela

Twitter
@pamela__crowe


Jose Garcia Oliva (He/His)

Jose

Credit: Matthew Twaddell

José García Oliva is a Venezuelan artist based in London. His work explores the clash between diasporic identity, migrant labour and cultural heritage. These collisions are mainly analysed through the Latin American legacy and its echo in Europe. Oliva's multidisciplinary practice is research-led and aims to react to hidden socio-political oppression and expose them through participatory performances or public interventions. The result of his work is often the enactment of these social exchanges and provocations shaped by the commons and specificity of a site. Oliva graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2020 and currently teaches at Kingston School of Art and Ravensbourne University.

Globalisation, connectivity, online interactions and invisibility are some of the features to describe Call Centres/Live-chat/Hotline. This service can be helpful within online facilities. Problems arise when they are outsourced – low-cost exported services (sweatshops or, in this online context: dry eyes) in different countries. Even more problematic when these countries were colonised by the country requesting this service (i.e. India/Pakistan). It highlights the parallel between customer/service – coloniser/colonised. This project is a space for open dialogue. It aims to disrupt the corporate customer service system to humanise and reveal the experiences of those individuals hidden behind these digital services.

https://josegarciaoliva.com/

Instagram
@olivajosec


Image descriptions

Image 1. Photo of a interior of a cathedral roof with brightly coloured stars projected onto it

Image 2. Photo of a room full of people watching two people sat at a desk surrounded by musical instruments, microphones and speakers. One person is on a laptop and one has a box with wires in front of them

Image 3. Photo of Andee Collard and Rebecca Harrington facing the camera smiling with a bookcase behind them

Image 4. Photo of Simon Hall sat on a stool in a studio with paintings and an easel in the background

Image 5. Headshot of Pamela Crowe smiling in front of some cupboards

Image 6. Photo of Jose Garcia Oliva stood on the left hand side of the frame with an out of focus artwork behind