COMMON PULSE: Artists in Residence

May 19 to June 5

Ken Gregory (Winnipeg), Jessica Field (Oshawa), Karo Szmit (Vienna, Austria), Andrew McPherson (Guelph) and Laura Kikauka (Meaford)
In the weeks leading up to the festival, these five interdisciplinary artists have been invited to work in parallel and in proximity to each other.

During that time the Gallery space will be transformed into an active, accessible production studio. There the guest artists will create new objects, machines, soundscapes and images that all respond to the same synchronizing digital signal (i.e. 'the common pulse').

In agreeing to work in this shared public space, the guest artists will also make themselves available to the Gallery's audience: through hands-on workshops, artists' talks and informal encounters.

Laura Kikauka's work over the past twenty-five years includes site specific installation, mixed media, electronic sculpture, drawing, photography, video, performance, music, text and costume creations. Kikauka's "Funny Farm" live-work spaces in Meaford, Ontario and Berlin, Germany have formed the basis for several exhibitions. Her 'excessive aesthetic' is comparable to urban archeology and addresses issues of consumer culture, and the question of good and bad taste. It also celebrates failure in a humorous and ironic manner.

Jessica Field's artistic practice explores the possibilities for shared behaviour between organic and inorganic objects, focussing for the past eleven years on robots. Field creates immersive environments that address the social issues concerning the creation of Artificial Intelligence and its connection to human behaviours, expectations and desires. Her recent robots have the potential to stage their own theatrical presentations, creating a new level of dramatic performance which she calls Automata Theatre.

Ken Gregory works with DIY interface design, hardware hacking, audio, video, and computer programming to create installations, video, multi-media, interactive works, and audio collage. Primarily self-taught, Gregory's work is an improvisational process with an intuitive application of tools and ideas. Raw materials such as found objects, discarded technology and electronics are manipulated through various processes and reconstituted in a manner which plays upon new meanings and interpretations. Much of his art charts the curious ground between aesthetic pursuit and seemingly impractical invention.

Musical chameleon Andrew McPherson is a record producer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, remixer and DJ. Andrew's musical incarnations are filled with meticulous craftsmanship, fearless experimentalism, inventive ideas and a soulful statement of purpose. As the leader of Eccodek, he draws together inspired singers and gifted instrumentalists from the four corners of the globe and weaves them into a sonic palate of dub, funk, jazz and cinematic electronics.

Karo Szmit's current art practice involves video, Vjing, film animation, as well as site-specific text and drawing installations that use diagrams to examine global networking. Intersections and diagrams also play a role in her video Le Grand Content which examines the omnipresent Powerpoint-culture in a search for its philosophical potential. Her performance projects deal with online communication platforms as well as the analogies between Internet processes and the physical world.

Artist Talks and Dinners

Thursday, May 26

7:00pm Dinner at Rowan Moon Bistro
8:30pm Presentation at the Gallery
$30 per person (presentation only: $5)

Featuring visual and musical presentations by resident artists Karo Szmit and Andrew McPherson.

Thursday, June 2

7:00pm Dinner at Rowan Moon Bistro
8:30pm Presentation at the Gallery
$30 per person (presentation only: $5)

Featuring presentations by Jessica Field, Ken Gregory and Laura Kikauka, and introduced by Norman White, a local pioneer in using electronics and robotics in art.

Please make your dinner reservation by May 24 by calling us at 519-369-3692. Seating at the bistro is limited to 20 people.

Workshops

Scrapyard Guitars

Saturday, May 28, 10am to 3pm
Ages 12 to adult; local artists are encouraged to participate
$35 for members; $45 non-members

Join Common Pulse resident artist, Ken Gregory, for an entertaining demonstration of how to build a stringed instrument out of discarded materials. Learn from Ken's Do-it-Yourself approach and his enthusiasm for utilizing simple 'old world' technologies. From a single string 'guitar' made out of a 2x4, a piece of wire and a tin can to a washtub bass or a one string bass slide guitar made with a hockey stick, the variations of home made musical instruments are endless. Bring your imagination, and expect a great jam session at the end of day!

Autonomous Robot Creatures

Sunday, May 29, 10 am to 3pm
Ages 12 to adult; local artists are encouraged to participate
$40 for members; $50 non-members; materials included

Learn from electro-mechanical experts Jessica Field and Laura Kikauka how to make the most basic self-thinking robot that knows how to avoid obstacles by using whiskers to sense its environment. Learn how to make a small bug-like robot bodies that can either look like an insect, animal or robot using origami techniques to show them how a flat material can be used to create 3D bodies. At the end of the class after the robots are decorated, we will run the robots through an obstacle course to see how a free thinking robot navigates in a complicated space.

Playschool for Adults

Sunday, June 12, 2 to 4pm
Durham Town Hall
Fee: $30

A lecture and creative writing workshop with interdisciplinary artist Alexis O'Hara. Using exercises created by the Surrealists as well as other games, this workshop aims to unleash creativity and free the mind from its habitual neural pathways. The workshop is interactive and will highlight intelligent approaches to absurdity. Participants are asked to bring a notebook, a pen, a short text and an object that represents home for them.

Montreal's boundary pusher Alexis O'Hara works in the realms of cabaret, pop music, spoken-word, stand-up comedy, vocal and electronic music, photography and sound installation. A poetess, a philosopher queen, a freestylin' and speakbeating chameleon, O'Hara draws you into her world and provokes you into marveling at the absurdity of the human condition.