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Jen Southern
Thesis Working Title
Making Liquid Spaces: Art and Technology as a Social Practice
Research Interests
I am interested in the role that physical movement plays in the development of locative, pervasive and mobile media. It seems obvious that mobile media involves movement and yet it is sometimes so obvious as to become invisible.I came to Lancaster University after 15 years as a practicing artist and lecturer.
As an artist I've collaborated with Canadian artists Jen Hamilton and Chris St Amand for the past 6 years, working primarily with gps and physical installations. We have also worked with industry developing collaborative mobile mapping and drawing applications. This is our website www.satellitebureau.net. I also collaborate with Chris Speed at Edinburgh College of Art on the new spatial and social mapping application 'comob'.
I'm interested in the intersection of the social and artistic uses of locative and mobile media, and how the practices of art and sociology can inform one another, both conceptually and methodologically. I am focusing on the practices of walking and flying looking specifically at how making artworks contributes to our understanding of movement, embodiment, space and social interaction. Do location-aware technologies change the way artists, collaborators and analysts perceive, construct and reflect upon the places they inhabit and move through? What are the relationships between qualitative research methodologies and participatory art strategies?
My PhD research is interdisciplinary and practice based, exploring ideas through both sociology and art practice.
Current Teaching
I was a senior lecturer in the School of Art, Design and Architecture at the University of Huddersfield for 8 years. For 3 years I taught Installation Art at undergraduate level, and then was final year tutor and joint course leader for BA(hons) Multimedia Design and BA(hons)Virtual Reality Design with animation. This is the website for the last final year exhibition I organised in 2008. http://www.studio309.org/
I am not currently teaching.
Would like to meet
anyone interested in
Locative and Pervasive Media, Mobilities, Participatory Art, Digital Art, Walking, Flight.
Other Interests and Hobbies
As part of my art practice I learnt to fly a light aircraft and have my pilots license. I set out to learn to fly to compare the experiences of learning something new in a videogame and IRL. But it quickly became more about the view of the ground from the sky, and a fascination with techniques of navigation pre-gps.
I also walk and hike and took part in the 2007 Walking & Art residency at The Banff Centre, Canada.
As part of my collaboration with Jen Hamilton & Chris St Amand we use power kiting to make gps drawings that are conditioned by our control (or lack of) a kite harnessing the wind.
Associated research centres: Mobilities.Lab
Publications
Read the latest edition of The Sociologist - a postgraduate newsletter published by the Department.
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