Prof Janis Jefferies

Role

Janis Jefferies is is an artist, writer and curator, Professor of Visual Arts in the Department of Computing, Goldsmiths University of London,Director of thte Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in Textiles and Artistic Director of Goldsmiths Digital Studios. GDS is dedicated to collaborations among practicing artists, cultural and media theorists, and innovators in computational media,who together are expanding the boundaries of artistic practice, forging the future of digital technologies and developing new understanding of the interactions between technology and society

Jefferies was trained as a painter and later pioneered the field of contemporary textiles within visual and material culture.

As artistic director of Goldsmiths Digital Studios (0.7 fte), Jefferies convenes:

the MFA in Computational Studio Arts and the PhD in Arts and Computational Technology. Both programmes are concerned with expanding the boundaries of artistic practice, forging the future of digital technologies and developing new understanding of the interactions between technology and society.

The Thursday Club is an open forum for anyone interested in the theories and practices of cross-disciplinarity, interactivity, technologies and philosophies of the state-of-the-art in the current and future cultural landscape(s).

She has also set up and now convenes the Thursday Club was set through Goldsmiths Digital Studios ( GDS) as an informal setting for research discussions and presentations of cross-disciplinary work-in-progress. It has by now grown to include 150 members: artists, technologists, scientists, researchers, students –in fact, a growing diversity of people from different communities in London and worldwide, that are now connected via an online forum and discussion group.

The Club features events at the Ben Pimlott site of Goldsmiths, which are free and open for everyone to attend. These informal events allow for a diverse and open-ended discourse among people who perhaps would not have the opportunity to meet and discuss ideas outside of their chosen discipline. Each Club night attracts from 10 to 40 audience members. Some of the audiences attend regularly and are members of the Club, whereas others are attracted by specific events. Up to now, the Thursday Club has presented 20 events along the period of one year. The Club is co-ordinated by Maria X, Alex McLean, Patrick Tressat (PhD students in Arts and Computational Technology), and several MFA students. The Club is supported by the Graduate School and for special events by Drama, Music, Media and Communications, and English and Comparative Literature.

The Thursday Club has an international advisory board, including Kelli Dipple (Tate Modern).

She sits on Academic Board, the Graduate School Board, OBD (Business Unit), Widening Participation and Chairs the MAKE advisory board

Papers presented

Major conferences attended as a participant.

2008 (June), The Art and Craft of Saving the World, Southbank, London with Marcus du Sautoy/

2007 (June) Autonomy, Signature and Computational Creativity, A Conversation at Computational Creativity 200&, co-chair with Paul Brown

2007 (February) A Pedagogy for Computational Studio Arts Practice: practice and theory, with Craig Smith, at College Arts Association of America, New York. Contributors to Panel: The ‘Cyber’ Space of Hands on Studio Learning; Theory and Praxis’.

2006 (March), Reading in the age of electronic literature: a case study of Shelly Jackson’s Mary Shelley for ‘Imagination’ conference for University of Copenhagen, Department of English and Comparative Literature and June 2008.

2006 (October) Textile Society of America, Toronto, Canada

2006 (May) Computational Models of Creativity, Goldsmiths, co-chair with Paul Brown (University of Sussex)

2005 (October) Electronic Cloth, presented at E-Poetry and beyond, Birkbeck College, London

2005 (June) Inbetween Peripheriality: Maja Bajevic, London/Sarajevo, Women’s Art Foundation.

2005 (April) Blackwell T.M. and Jefferies J. Tech-tiles: Exploring Texture. Demonstration paper, Creativity and Cognition 5, conference, Goldsmiths College.

2005 (April), Blackwell T.M. and Jefferies J, Tech-tiles: Exploring Texture. for EvoMUSART'05.

2004 The Space Between art_design_fashion, Curtain University of Technology, Perth, Australia

2002 (March), Conference, Pixel Raiders, held at the V & A Museum on Digital Applied Arts for the Arts Council. Respondent to the day’s proceedings. Material published on-line via the Pixel raiders web site.

2002 (November), Key note address: Fabric(a)tions of the Postcolonial, University of Wollongong, Australia.

2002 (February), Material Things; Artefacts in the 21st Century, held at the British Museum and funded by Arts and Crafts Councils.

2001 Joint convenor (with Professor Joan Livingstone of the Art School of the Art Institute of Chicago) for College Arts Association in Chicago on Sweated Labour. Paper presented and available from CAA by audio tape.

2000 (Sept), Conference paper: Textiles What is Critical: The Public Arena for Textiles, NW Arts Forum at Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester.

PROFESSIONAL SEMINARS & ARTISTS TALKS

2006 In conversation with Thy Neighbour’s Ox, Space Station Sixty Five Gallery, London

2005 October, Crafting, Pump House Gallery, London

2004 February,Crafts in Conversation, V&A London.

2002 December, Loop, Spin, make: Issues in Contemporary Craft, for University of Queensland and IMA Brisbane.

2000 (May), Do Suh Hoo, Serpentine Art Gallery, London

2000 Mid-Career Development (seminar for Crafts Council and Modus Operandi, held at Crafts Council

2000 (Nov), ICA Homemade, London

2000 (July, Yinka Shonibare, Camden Arts Centre, London

2002, December, Loop, Spin, make: Issues in Contemporary Craft, for University of Queensland and IMA Brisbane. December as above and for South Australia School of Art at University of South Australia.
2000 (May), Do Suh Hoo, Serpentine Art Gallery, London
2000 Mid-Career Development (seminar for Crafts Council and Modus Operandi, held at Crafts Council
2000 (Nov.), ICA Homemade, London
2000 (July, Yinka Shonibare, Camden Arts Centre, London

Professional development

1999 end June – Aug, Visiting Professor: Department of Fiber and Material Studies, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA to work across departments and provide special studio/critical studies Seminar series at MFA level.

Nov.-Dec. 2002 Visiting Scholar, University of South Australia, School of Art, Adelaide
Datum Lecture of Contemporary Art, Queensland University of Technology

Museum of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia, Keynote address at Fabric(a)tions of the Postcolonial, University of Woollongong, NSW, Australia.

In the 1970s, Jefferies established the artist group, Fibre Art and acted as the
organiser/fundraiser for all exhibitions until 1987. She was also a founder member of the Women’s Artist Slide Library in 1982 and organised the first major conference on Women and Textiles for it in the same year at Battersea Arts Centre, London.

Jefferies is a member of several international advisory editorial and review boards including, Transactions new section in Leonardo print journal that publishes short-refereed papers. It provides a fast track to publishing key new results, ideas and developments in practice, Textile: the Journal of Cloth and Culture and Craft (Berg Publishers), n.Paradoxa (feminist art journal, University of the Arts, London) and Kunapipi, published by the department of English Literature, University of Wollongong, Australia.

Jefferies was co-Chair of Creative Works, Reflective Practice and Practice Based Research for the 5th Creativity and Cognition, Goldsmiths, April 2005, a member of the programme committees for Pixel Raiders (2004), Interaction: Systems, Theory and Practice (2004), Generative Art Practice (practice-based and reflective studies of aLife, generative music, 2005) SIGGRAPH 2006 Art Papers committee, ENGAGE, Interaction, Art and Audience Experience (2006), was a member of the 6th Creativity and Cognition Programme committee, USA, 2007, EvoMusArt, Spain 2007 HapTEX, Hanover, 2007.

Jefferies has been on several cultural advisory boards including the Arts Council, Crafts Council and London Arts. She is currently project manager for NESTA for activities that include on-line learning resources and part of an advisory board across the Crafts Council and V&A looking at new ways of curating international crafts. She is a member of the AHRC peer review and research panel for all projects across arts and technology, creative fellowships and resource enhancement schemes.

She was the instigator for the relationship between Goldsmiths and BT and Arts and Business New Partners Scheme.

• Trustee: London Printworks: print textile workshop and gallery (from 1998)
• Advisory Editorial Board: MAKE, Journal of Women's Art, UK (from 1996-2000)
• International Advisory Editorial Board: n.Paradoxa (from 1998)
• Board of Trustees, Third Text (from 2005)
• International Advisory Board, Berg publishers Journal on Craft (from 2007)
• International Advisory Board, Kunapipi, published by Department of English Literatures, University of Wollongong, Australia (from 2006)
• Elected: International Association of Art Critics ( from Jan 1998)

Visiting Lecturer MFA, Fibers

Department of Sculpture, 1993-2008
Fibres and Ceramics, Montreal
Canada

Cranbrook Academy of Art 1993 & 1997
Michigan, USA

Artist in Residence, 1996 (2 months)
Department of Studio Arts
University of Woollongong
New South Wales
Australia

Department of Art History and Theory, 1996 & 1999
University of New South Wales
Sydney, Australia

Visiting Professor
Department of Fiber and Material Studies June-August 1999
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
USA

Visiting Scholar
University of South Australia, Adelaide
School of Art, December 2002

Visiting Scholar (artist in residence)
University of Newcastle, Australia March –April 2004

April 2003
Visiting Professor: Department of Fiber and Material Studies, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA to work across departments and provide special studio/critical studies Seminar series at MFA level.

Visiting Scholar, University of South Australia, School of Art, Adelaide, Datum Lecture of Contemporary Art, Queensland University of Technology

Museum of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia, Keynote address at Fabric(a)tions of the Postcolonial, University of Woollongong, NSW, Australia

Shajai 6th International Art Biennial, Arab Emirates, International Jury member.

Research interests

Fibre and feminist practices and its interpretations post - 1960's. Visual Arts; questions around text and textiles, gender, identity and subjectivity, digital studio and sonic arts and curatorship and audience with a focus on cultural access to museums through haptic technology. Her studio practice is based on digital production in contemporary art based textiles and sound image production in contemporary art based textiles and sound.

Current research

In the last five years she has been working on technological based arts, including Woven Sound (with Dr. Tim Blackwell) and has been a principal investigator on projects involving new haptics technologies and generative software systems for creating and interpreting arts objects. She is an associate researcher with Hexagram (Institute of Media, Arts and Technologies, Montreal, Canada) on two projects, electronic textiles and new forms of media communication in cloth.

Textile Transmissions and Translations is a research project that will take advantage of the ability of fabric to impart meaning through material and electronic languages, by combining a creative approach to the textile arts with technical innovations in circuitry and wireless transmissions; exploring ubiquitous computing, mobility and interactivity through the introduction of electronic devices into fabric structures; creating animated displays on the surface of cloth, in order to extend the dynamic, narrative abilities of cloth and developing a transitional space in which meanings are altered and textiles are invigorated into new patterns of discovery. The research focus of Wearable Absence centres on offering a unique vision of future textile technologies situated in a personal, social and cultural context. Wearable Absence presents a minaframe in which clothing becomes the catalyst and filter within the process of retrieving rich media content according to biological data. The collaborative team at GDS involves the creation of dynamic garments and sensing wallpapers using specific paper technologies (www.m-real.com) and different sensing devices to create a rich database of image and sound. 3 PhD students from Goldsmiths Digital Students are involved and paid for by this project.

She is PI on the AHRC funded E-Static Shadows practice-based research project (2007-2009), with Dr. Zane Berinza) investigating how electrostatic energy can be utilised to play a part in the development of responsive and interactive intelligent systems.

She currently mentors an AHRC Fellow in the Creative and Performing Arts for GDS (2006-2009).

Stanza is a London-based artist, who specialises in net art, multimedia, and electronic sounds. Jefferies mentors one other AHRC project for Sociology (Dr.Nirmal Puwar and the Noise of the Past)and Arts Council, The Loom Project: Approaches to Weaving Narrative Threads,a project by Alinah Azadeh, artist. Textile and system in collaboration with Jon Bird, (University of Sussex) and ASF Weave. www.loomproject.com.

She is a member of AHRC Peer Review College and sits on the AHRC Research panel for Visual and Performing Arts.

Selected publications

Forthcoming:

1. Touch Technologies and Museum Access', Zimmer, R and Jefferies, J, for Touch and the Value of Object Handling in Museums: An Edited Volume, ed.Dr Helen J. Chatterjee, Berg Publishing, September 2008.

2. Loving Attention: An outburst of craft in contemporary art Extra/ordinary: Craft Culture and Contemporary Art, Duke University Press, USA , (editor, Maria Buszek, Kansas City Art Institute, USA ), summer 2008.

3. Artist as researchers in a computer mediated culture, ed. Dr. Charlie Gere for Digital Research in the Arts and Humanities, Ashgate Publishing, winter, 2008

4. Interfaces of Performance, co-editor for Digital Arts Research and the Humanities, winter, 2008.

SINCE 2000

2000 (October) 'Writing and artworks since 1980' and new essay Acts of Opening in selvedges (ed. Victoria Mitchell) for Norwich Gallery, Norwich School of Art & Design, UK. 102 pages. ISBN 1-872482-1

2001 (January) 'Textiles: What can she Know? in Feminist and Visual Culture (Eds. Fiona Carson and Claire Pajaczkowska), Edinburgh University Press, pp. 189-207. ISBN 0-748610464.

2001 (December) Re-Inventing Textiles Vol. 2, Gender and Identity edited by Janis Jefferies with an introduction, Telos Art Publishing, UK, ISBN 1 902 01 510 X

2002 (September) Loop, catalogue essay for Bankfield Museum and Halifax, pp.4-8, ISBN 1 85924 2855

2003(September) Be, Here, Now (on abstraction) catalogue essay for Manchester City Art Gallery, pp 27- 35, ISBN 0-901673-633.

2004 (February) Patterning Attention, catalogue essay for Kathleen Mullinaff, Christchurch Mansions , Ipswich , pp 3-5 ISBN 0- 906688 42 6.

2005 (January) Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture, editor of special issue: Digital Dialogues 1: Textiles and Technology, Vol 2, issue 3, Berg Publishers, ISBN 1-85973 764-11. Introduction by Jefferies, J and Zimmer, R

2005 (March), Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture, editor of special issue: Digital Dialogues 2: Textiles and Technology, Vol 3, issue 1, Berg Publishers, ISBN 1-85973 769-2. Introduction by Jefferies, J and Zimmer, R

2005 (March), Touch, In Touch, Out of Touch: surface materialities and haptic
technologies in contemporary art textiles published in The Space Between textiles_art_design_fashion CD conference proceedings Vol. 2 included, Referred Papers and Visual Presentation, produced by BEAD, Curtin University of Technology Perth, Australia.

2005 (March), Midnights Children: Salman Rushdie and the Translations of Hybridity in the Art works of Zarina Bhimji, Hew Locke and Yinka Shonibare, in Re-Inventing Textiles, Vol. 3, Postcolonialism and Creativity, (Eds. Paul Sharrad and Anne Collett), Telos Art Publishing, UK, pp. 1-15 ISBN 1- 902015 12 6

2005 (April), Blackwell T.M. and Jefferies J, Tech-tiles: Exploring Texture, Applications in Evolutionary Computing. ISSN 0302-9743, pp.468- 477

2005 (April), Blackwell T.M. and Jefferies J. Tech-tiles: Exploring Texture. Creativity and Cognition 5, ISBN 1-59593-025-6, pp248-252

2005 (December), Blackwell T.M. and Jefferies J, A Sound You Can Touch, Generative Arts Practice, (UTS), SBN 0-9751533-1-1, pp. 125-133. Art work shown at Beta space, Powerhouse Museum , Sydney , Australia .

2005 (December),Blackwell T.M. and Jefferies J. A Sound You Can Touch, Technical paper. 3rd Iteration conference, Melbourne , Australia , ISBN 1 921179 007. pp. 75-76.

2006 (December),Blackwell, T.M. and Jefferies, J, 'Collaboration: a personal report',International Journal of Co-Creation in Design and the Arts,Vol. 2, Number 4,ISSN 1571-022(2006)2:4;1-3, pp.259-263.

2006 (December) Guest Editor the Journal of Cloth and Culture, Vol. 4, Number 3,
Shaping Space: Textiles and Architecture, 1SBN 184 520 506-5 with Professor Diana Wood Conroy ( University of Woollongong , Australia ).

2006 (December),'Crafting Ceremonies' in Ceremony, Pump House Gallery, London , ISBN 0-9544674-4-2, pp. 8-28.

2006 (December).'Text&Textiles in The 5th Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, editors, Lynn Seear & Suhanya Raffel, Queensland Art Gallery Publishing (Brisbane, Australia), ISBN 1 876509 38 5 pp.180-184

2007 (January), New Narratives from Spam Tales, CD published proceedings from Textile Society America, October 11-14, 2006, Toronto, Canada, ISBN 0-9645106-6-9.

2007 (May), Special issue of Digital Creativity (Vol. 18, No.1), introduction by Janis Jefferies and Paul Brown based on Computational Models of Creativity in the Arts (CMCA) Workshop held at Goldsmiths in May 2006. This included two days of invited presentations together with an evening event “Creative Cyborgs” curated by BLIP and held at the Dana Centre with support from the Computer Arts Society, (CAS). ISSN 1462-6268

2007 (June),In-between Peripherality, Maja Bajevic: Sarajevo/London, May 2005, Third Text, Vol. 21, Issue 2, no 85, special issue on The Balkans, eds. Avgita, L, and Steyn, J. pp. 163- 175. ISSN 0952-8822.

2007 (June), Accessing Material Art through Technologies of Mediation and
Immediation, in Futures, Zimmer, R and Jefferies, J. ed. Steyn,

2007 (October),Laboured Cloth: Translations of Hybridity in Contemporary Art, in The Object of Labor: Art, Cloth, and Cultural Production, The Art School of the Art Institute of Chicago/MIT Press, USA, (eds. Joan Livingston and John Ploof).

2007 (November), catalogue essay for Kaunas Biennial, wide examination 07, published in English and Lithuanian.

2008 (May), Contemporary Textiles: The Art Fabric, in Contemporary Textiles: The Fabric of Fine Art, London : Black Dog Publishing, (ed. Nadine Monem)
pp.34-62. ISBN13: 9781906155292


Website references:

http://www.doc.gold.ac.uk/~mas01tb/SwarmTechtiles/swarmtechtiles.html

http://www.doc.gold.ac.uk/~mas01tb/WovenSound/wovensound.html

EXHIBITIONS ( from 2000 only)

Exhibitions: Own work
2000 Locating Light, solo show of new work for Engramme gallery, Quebec City, Canada with small brochure in English and French.

2000 selvedges, a solo show of new work for Norwich Gallery , UK and touring 200/2001 throughout UK . and Poland (with published writings, see under publications).

2001 Tallinn Applied Arts Triennial, Applied Arts Museum , Tallinn , Estonia .

2001 FiberArts International, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Pittsburgh , USA ,with catalogue).

2002 Ars Galleria, Academy of Fine Arts , Poznan , Poland : one person show.

2003 Artists at Work: New Technology and Fibre Art, Museo del Tessuto,
Prato , Italy (with catalogue, ISBN 88-7781-531-0)

2004 selvedges 2, University of Newcastle , Australia 28 April – 30th May.

2005 J>A>B> Three person show at Maitland Regional Arts Gallery, NSW, Australia touring. Catalogue available, ISBN 0-9758369-0-0.

2006 Uneasy Spaces (with Tim Blackwell) , curated by Liz Wells, Univeristy of Plymouth, 80 Washington Square, New York, September 12 –November 1, with catalogue

2006 About Jacquard: woven technology, Centre for Contemporary Textiles, Montreal, Canada, October 2-November 2, Catalogue, presented as a CDrom in French and English.

New jacquard work will be featured in The Center
for Craft, Creativity and Design (CCCD) Inspired Design – Creative Entrepreneurial Textiles Hendersonville, North Carolina, USA May 20 - August 22 2008 .

Exhibitions: Curatorial

2008/09 The Numbers Museum, Spark Plug curatorial award, Crafts Council
working with May Cornet on the relationship between math, textiles and geometry.

2007 Curator and Chair of Textile 07, Art Biennial, Lithuania

2006 Process Revealed: An exhibition of generative and digital works,
Artpool artspace and research centre, Budapest , Hungary . Co-curated withTim Blackwell. Catalogue available in English, SBN 1-9-4158-71-4, 25 paages.

2004/-2005 Crafts Council of England: Curatorial project, Boys that Sew National touring exhibition, February 2004 –February 2005.
The show has an educational leaflet and on line catalogue, www.craftscouncil.org.uk/boyswhosew