Beyond The Picture

Most of the group were open to this new way of working and absorbed themselves fully in each workshop. Others responded more to the technology rather than the immersive performance but each artist’s ideas fed off the collective energy that was created within each workshop. This new approach helped our artists better understand the opportunities the technological world can offer. The majority of the apps were easy for the artists to use and helped the artists communicate their thoughts and ideas within a new medium.

– Lisa Brown, Artist Facilitator

Beyond The Picture was a three month collaboration between ActionSpace artists Miriam Jane Ramsey, Ophir Yaron, Andrew Omoding, Julien Soret, Evan Bond, Bert Heaney McKinnell, Ian Wornast, Thomas Owen, Sharon Adokorach, Aled Williams and artist Elena Bushueva.

Elena created a series of workshops to introduce the artists to ways of working with digital media to develop and expand their creative horizons and inspire imaginative thinking.

The workshops, which took place at The Horse Hospital Gallery in Holborn and ActionSpace’s North London studio, were energetic and experimental, evolving into collaborative performance experiences in a party atmosphere where there was dancing, immersive music, poetry performances, drawings and creative projection augmentations.

Apps on the iPad and iPhones were used to enhance real time images and involve the artists in creating their own 3D projected environment. Face masks were created by the artists drawing in apps to develop ideas of identity and explore the nature of digital avatars which are often used on social media. A variety of projections were used to build the environment in which the artists performed, with the backdrop ever evolving as the artists introduced new aspects into the projections by uploading their own artworks and using augmented mapping technology to create virtual drawings and lighting which projected into the space whilst they were creating their intuitive performances together.

The outcome was an immersive ‘happening’ of ideas and interwoven experiences where the artists gained an understanding of altering their environments and becoming a part of their own collective art forms.

Elena Bushueva’s film gives a flavour of the workshops:

Elena Bushueva describes her experience of the workshops:

“I wanted to create a set up of digital tools for ActionSpace artists to surpass technological complexity and see what will happen. It’s interesting how often these technologies considered inaccessible for people with learning disabilities, where in fact carry so much transformative potential for them. I felt this potential had not been explored before. For me, It felt like it triggered new forms of expression, sort of a digital multi-channelled stream of consciousness and feelings, where creation was based on communication so alike our generational tools and habits, — it was shared and like exquisite corpse made and connected with others. But it took a different form, it was like a model of it, like an early, rough prototype. Shifting creation and this way shared authorship, apps used in a “wrong” way…making it all a different condition, like another evolutional branch of the current model.”

holytech is a non-for-profit platform run by Elena Bushueva exploring contemporary technology
within the society.

Beyond The Picture is funded by a grant from The Arts Society