Showcase celebrates Goldsmiths Computing community
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Manifold 3.0, held in the St James Hatcham Building on campus, brought together creative art, research and performance from the School of Computing, including contributions from lecturers, technicians, alumni, PhD students and collaborators.
Photographs from the opening night of the Manifold 3.0 showcase
Across a four-day programme last week, including a showcase and a symposium, there were talks, performances, tours and opportunities to chat with the practitioners themselves. The event was curated by Owen Planchart, technician and lab assistant, and Jesse Wolpert, Senior Lecturer, from the School of Computing.
The School of Computing here at Goldsmiths is truly a hive of creative activity. With many members of staff also being artists themselves, we wanted to share this with our wider Goldsmiths community both on campus and in the local area.
Jesse Wolpert, Senior Lecturer in the School of Computing
"This is the fourth time we've presented a staff showcase, and we hope to keep doing so, opening our doors to share the cutting-edge research and innovative art practice that happens here in our School," said Jesse Wolpert, Senior Lecturer in the School of Computing and one of the event's curators.
Exhibition showcases innovative art from School of Computing
Atau Tanaka, Professor of Media Computing, presented "Burning Meditation" where he performed, singing with an AI model trained on his own recordings, using bodily movement to shape his synthetic voice. MFA Computational Arts graduate, artist and educator Huichuan Wang presented "Asymptote". The artist painted with traditional mineral pigments in a live feedback loop with AI trained on her own paintings and sketches.
Clemence Debaig, Lecturer in the School of Computing, and Unwired Dance Theatre presented a participatory virtual reality dance work exploring queerness, migration, multilingual identity and belonging using motion capture technology, titled "SLASH/". This piece explored how immersive technology can communicate experiences of fragmented identity. Owen Planchart presented “Don’t Blink!” The piece uses personal 9/11 footage at Ground Zero which becomes an installation controlled by viewers’ blinking and kinetic office blinds. The work connects technological interaction with historical witnessing, 25 years after the attacks.
Lecturer in Computational Arts, Linda Hilfling Ritasdatter / lnd4 showed her work "Sit-In!" Developed with Nairobi tech workers protesting conditions at a Meta subcontractor, a browser extension and installation expose the human labour behind social media, raising questions about labour exploitation and the accountability of Big Tech. Erin Robinson, Lecturer in Creative AI, presented "468×60 (cave-in)" which recontextualises pornographic banner ads from the early web, examining how images of women persist after their original commercial networks disappear.
Many other members of the Goldsmiths Computing community also shared their projects, and visitors – including alumni, curators, gallery representatives, current students and prospective students, and employers – were able to explore the wealth of knowledge and creativity that thrives in our School of Computing. Art by late colleague Rahul Raj Debnath was also displayed as part of the exhibition, and he was remembered during the event with a memorial.
Behind the scenes before the doors opened, the exhibition also provided a unique teaching moment, as students were able to observe the process of installing the exhibition and were encouraged to ask questions about exhibition set-up.
"We all look forward to the summer season of degree shows when our talented students finally get to launch the projects they've been working so hard on into the wider world. As a technician, I work closely with the students and it's great to see their journeys. This exhibition gave our staff the opportunity to have a similar kind of showcase moment. Manifold 3.0 allowed us to celebrate and gather our community, and create an opportunity for the artists among us," said Owen Planchart, one of the event's curators.
Professional artists with decades-long careers showed work alongside teaching assistants and recent graduates at the very early stages of their careers, which was really special. The event was bursting with creativity and innovation and I was thrilled to present my work as part of it.
Owen Planchart, technician and lab assistant in the School of Computing
Symposium tackles major themes in computing and art
A symposium also ran, with four sessions throughout the day at locations on campus, with a range of contributors discussing their research and practice. The sessions covered: Creative AI and Robotics (chaired by Professor William Latham and Professor Frederic Fol Leymarie), Sound, Tech and Culture (chaired by Dr Eleonora Oreggia), and Arts and Critical Tech (chaired by Dr Mattia Paganelli). There was also an Alumni session, chaired by Professor Marco Gillies, where alumni shared the projects they are working on now in their lives after Goldsmiths.
A visitor to the exhibition engages with art by late colleague Rahul Raj Debnath, who was remembered with a memorial before the event
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