21 April - 26 May

Difference Engine: Accumulator

Difference Engine: Accumulator is a collaboration between artists Mark Cullen, Jessica Foley, Wendy Judge, Gillian Lawler, Paul Green and featuring Gordon Cheung.

Difference Engine is based upon a kind of ‘jamming’, between the artists. At each manifestation, the artists, through their works, must rearticulate themselves or risk stasis. Difference Engine, then, is a mutable and shifting entity of moving and fluctuating parts; the artists and their works will riff off each other and the space of exhibition, evolving a language of contingency, yet maintaining a fidelity to the individual perspectives and expressions of each artist.

West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen, Co. Cork

DIFFERENCE ENGINE

“JAMMING IS A FORM OF ERROR DETECTION” CHARLES BABBAGE

Difference Engine* is an evolving touring exhibition, a model of autonomous artist curation, by artists Mark Cullen, Wendy Judge Gillian Lawler & Jessica Foley, and featuring Gordon Cheung.

The intention of this project is to elaborate upon the dual meaning of the term jamming – in one sense ‘jamming’ signifies stasis, shock, or rupture, and in another, opposite sense, it signifies a kind of fluid and changing improvisation between players. With this in mind, the artists and their works attempt to riff off each other and the site/space of exhibition, evolving an expression of contingency, hopefully developing a meaningful correspondence and communication with each other and the visitor. The challenge today is to be concernful of our place in nature, our space, our time, our neighbour – sustaining a cognizance of the ever-presentness of the past, and the illusory image of the future.

The project of Difference Engine and its artists is one that acknowledges the challenges of our times and folds these into imaginative representations and gestures. The project concerns itself with science and the unparalleled marvels which human curiosity, perseverance and bloody-mindedness have brought into reality.  The project concerns itself also with structures, systems and architecture – all of those frequently rigid phenomena that succumb only to the trickery of time itself – and the mood, affect and influence which these human-devised meta-forms have upon human experience and behavior.

The visitor steps through Difference Engine and off into their own imaginative time and space, folding the experience into their personal stories of the world.

*Charles Babbage is attributed with having graced the world with what has become generically known as ‘the computer’. The motivation behind his early 19th century efforts, it seems, lay in his desire to bring into being ‘the first successful automatic calculating device to embody mathematical rule in mechanism’, thereby eliminating ‘human error’ in the tablature of numerical calculations.

The Machine would produce a uniform numerical certainty that the human could not, thereby ensuring precision & automation within the major fields of the day dependant upon the tabling of data: Astronomy, engineering, banking & insurance, navigation, construction & finance. Babbage did not live to see his Difference Engine exact it’s existence leaving the legacy of his designs in his wake he declared ‘Another age must be the Judge’*

VISITOR INFORMATION: Exhibition continues until December 3. The Gallery is open Thursday – Saturday, 12:30 pm – 5:00 pm and also by appointment. Admission is free. The Gallery is located at 6 Lombard Street, Waterford city. Contact: SOMAwaterford@gmail.com. Visit:www.SOMAcontemporary.com

The Hammer - a short story narrated by Maura Foley & Michael Thomas Hough (two green chairs, headphones, 22mins duration)

Mis-Orientation - a homemade electromagnet suspended above a nautical compass.

Projectionist - evolving video piece, filmed on location at CSV, NYC (2011) and at the ESB substation Cork (2010).

A Play for Organon (First Draft, Act I) - accordion paper book, carbon prints, pencil, guache.

GILLIAN LAWLER/ WENDY JUDGE/ JESSICA FOLEY/ MARK CULLEN/ GORDON CHEUNG

DIFFERENCE ENGINE

JAMMING IS A FORM OF ERROR DETECTION

Difference Engine is an evolving serial exhibition, and a model of autonomous artist curation, by artists Gillian Lalwer, Wendy Judge, Jessica Foley, Mark Cullen & Gordon Cheung. Each MANIFESTATION of Difference Engine is based upon an ongoing collaboration, a kind of ‘Jamming’, between the artists. The result yields engaging experimental exhibitions combining installation, video, painting, sculpture and writing.

Difference Engine is modeled on the understanding that the exhibition is a site where meaning can be generated, ideas tested through experiments in form and display. Shared expertise, knowledge, learning & mutability makes up the DNA of the model: whilst the exhibition travels it is never repeated, it is responsive to its context and location, and to temporal and ontological frames.

EXHIBITION AT CLEMENTE SOTO VELEZ JUNE 2011

Difference Engine: MANIFESTATION III exhibits a tendency to fictionalize, seemingly squinting at reality through a half-cocked eye. Difference Engine seeks to leak into the visitors’ imagination through the senses. The art works establish a gravitational force of sorts between them, drawing the visitor in to their stories and forms…

MANIFESTATION III will also see the first articulation of D.E. Chronicles, a serialized publication to accompany (but not represent) the Difference Engine exhibitions. D.E. Chronicles: Episode One will involve a fair bit of jamming between Difference Engine, BLOODYENDS and curators Jessamyn Fiore & Victoria Keddie.

In addition, MANIFESTATION III will include a program of live performance, featuring BLOODYENDS, and workshops by the artists will run concurrently, promoting audience engagement and creative response to the ideas & forms presented.

This exhibition is part of Thisisnotashop: The Lighthouse Project, a series that presents contemporary Irish art in New York City and promotes cross cultural creative exchange and collaboration organized by Jessamyn Fiore and Victoria Keddie.

Links for Further Information:

thisisnotashop: The Lighthouse Project

Difference Engine

CSV Cultural & Educational Centre

Imagine Ireland

March 23rd - 28th 2011 at the joinery

Alchemical Reserve began as an experiment in sharing & developing art-making, between artists Jessica Foley and Siobhán McDonald. Our practices are both very different, but we share common interests thematically and philosophically in many ways. We decided to exhibit together to explore these similarities further and to see where the process might lead. To focus this journey we have used geography as our formal constraint, namely the Bogland Reserve at Killaun.

This exhibition has become a focal point for us to extend our own work, and to share the offshoots of that process with a wider public.

EXHIBITION SCHEDULE

WED 23^rd

THE WRITING WORKSHOP 5.30 – 7pm

This workshop will be facilitated by Jessica Foley, and will draw its subject matter from the exhibition Alchemical Reserve – there will be experiments with thaumotropes (simple homemade 19th century animation devices) and wisdom from the i-ching, and mostly there will be chat, writing and tea drinking. No experience required, all welcome.

Please contact jessica.dylan.foley@gmail.com to reserve a spot or inquire for more information.

EXHIBITION OPENS FULLY FROM 7pm – 8pm
We hope you will join us, we don’t have a budget for wine or beer, so bring along your own if you fancy a tipple!

THURSDAY 24^th

Open all day 12-6pm

In conversation… 6pm – 7pm

A relaxed, informal conversation between the artists, writer/artist Fiona Fullam, and the public.

All welcome (There will be tea & biscuits, dress warmly)

FRIDAY 25^th
Open all day 12-6pm

SATURDAY 26^th
Open all day 12-6pm

Both Jessica and Siobhán will be in the gallery all day. Siobhán will be running demonstrations of her seismogram apparatus throughout the day and Jessica will be making thaumotropes with any one interested.

SUNDAY 27^th
Open all day 12-6pm

LOCATION

The Joinery
6 Rosemount Terrace
Arbour Hill
Stoneybatter
Dublin 7

http://www.thejoinery.org/events/alchemical-reserve

Contact Miranda or Feargal on 086 9815370, 086 3313690, thejoinery@gmail.com or drop in for more info.

Two Science Gallery staff take a break on the Eames' Rockers.

On Thursday last CTVR hosted a talk/screening at the Science Gallery, inviting Hugh Campbell of the UCD School of Architecture to speak about the design thinking of Charles & Ray Eames. We showed the Eames’ film A Communications Primer, which is the subject of ‘Outreach’ research instigated by Linda Doyle, director of CTVR. I’m helping with this research. We’re planning to run practical learning workshops, of the ilk of Charles Eames idea of ‘Found Education’, that will communicate and foster a critical understanding of telecommunications research, both for telecom’s people & for a wider society.

It’s very often only in the explaining of an action that we discover the essence of it, the close meaning of it. I find that when I teach I learn best, and that teaching for me is really a kind of hyper-learning… and I think it is the effort of communication, in it’s most alive & meaningful sense, in the sense that empathy is involved, that forms a large part of this hyper-learning.

When I was teaching in MIC last year, I came upon the term ‘3rd site Pedagogy’ - I forget exactly whose term this is, but I’ll try to remember & add the reference later. The term refers to a space of learning that is not ‘formal’ or ‘informal’ exactly, but the kind that happens sort of spontaneously yet gently. The kind of learning that emerges, as though a demonstration of an essential quality of the learner. I really like the feeling that this kind of learning space evokes, the kind that is appropriate to the figures involved. It is a site that is conditional upon those involved. It is a chemistry of time, and place, and person - and in most ways it cannot be planned for.

For the talk/screening at the Science Gallery I was trying to figure out a way that I could engage the audience in conversation, or feedback, that would enhance the whole evening. The space of the Paccar Theatre is a very traditional one, the speaker speaks, the audience watches & listens. The space decides that. I was trying to think of ways that I could facilitate a breaking of that space - not a 3rd site pedagogy exactly, but something a little bit more… democratic perhaps (though I have trouble with that word). I think if I had managed to get to grips with ‘telecommunications’ a little bit more I could have approached the problem… a twitter feed on the screen during the Q & A perhaps… (the not-so-democratic Q & A…) I had thoughts of asking the audience to bring a question with them, or to write out a question during the film screening and at the end of the talk they would be selected from a box & read aloud… but the time & space constraints proved too much for me this time - and I made do with setting the stage, and hopefully the atmosphere.

The image above was taken by Darragh O’Rian, a TY student that I managed to collect on my search for Eames’ furniture for the stage at the Science Gallery. (Darragh’s folks run the furniture shop Retrospect, and they generously donated some furniture & subsequently their son, for the week of the Eames talk!) I digress…

I like the image above because it demonstrates how quickly simple objects like chairs can promote action that is not perhaps very typical: two workers take a seat because of the novelty, and the novelty of the situation, the reconfiguration of elements in a space, prompts a conversation or an experience that is perhaps a little bit different to the norm, and that perhaps allows for some qualities of the actors to emerge in a more significant way…