My Residency in Banff, Alberta, Canada

Apologies, I’ve got really behind with this. I’ll have to update this in a few posts if I don’t want to leave anything out. (will add pics later). Now we have our studios, things have started to get busy.
Wednesday started with presentations from the peer advisors, Nina Czegledy, Willy LeMaître and Kate Rich. All very impressive. Nina and Willy’s work is very technology dependent and oriented – Nina works alot collaboratively with scientists and other artists on global digital projects that are very much on the ‘New Media’ circuit; Willy’s concerns are particularly vision and process oriented with modernist tendencies focussed on the question of appearance, so his work relies heavily on the processes of technology and its effects.
Kate’s work is less driven by technology itself and more conceptually oriented. Her work is socially and politically motivated and uses the tools of technology in the world around us to infiltrate social and cultural infrastructures and networks. I found her work the most interesting, particularly her love of sports as a ‘mechanism for survival in the cultural realm’ (her words). It was refreshing after seeing so much work that is heavily dependent on technology, to see her involvement in outside tree-climbing activities- where there is no use of technology at all! I’m with her there.
Following the presentations I made an appointment to see Robert, the technical line producer for the programme and the main point of contact for anything technical. I think he has a lot on his plate, trying to sort out everyone’s needs. Although there are other staff to liaise with for more specialist concerns, Robert seems to be the person who initially coordinates everything and tries to solve things in the first instance. I made an appointment to see him at 4pm, but because of having to answer to everyone’s needs, he didn’t get to me until after 5.
I am still no nearer to solving the live thing for my project and Robert admitted he also need to do more work/research on this. He asked if I could do a search on live Mac/streaming software (although I don’t really know what I’m looking for), and I also mentioned my concerns in relation to getting data from my GPS device so I can print out routes that I am running and track my progress in real time live.
Nina came by beforehand for a chat. Because she arrived late, she had not seen the artist presentations and wanted a sense of what people are doing. She was very encouraging about the live development of my project and was concerned about how it might be shown. I am quite clear that it should be made into some sort of event that is known about and that begins and ends at the centre (the New Media Institute), possibly outside. I am also clear that I will be working on some recorded runs in addition to the live output.