Living Data
Michael Takeo Magruder
Wednesday 14 January – Sunday 15 March 2015
Exhibition launch event: Wednesday 21 January, 6.30PM – 8.30PM
Watermans, 40 High Street, Brentford, West London, TW8 0DS
Living Data is a new solo exhibition by the visual artist Michael Takeo Magruder that explores the creation of evolving virtual/physical artworks which are generated from the ubiquitous artefacts of the digital domain. Derived from the vast and ever-changing sea of collective data that underpins nearly all aspects of everyday existence, this body of work considers how emerging technologies – ranging from Internet services and real-time communications to social media and user-generated content – concurrently arise from and feed back into the real world, reflecting (while affecting) contexts and situations within our globalised, information-rich society.
Simultaneously beautiful and thought provoking, the pieces in the exhibition creatively blend modern computer systems and networks with traditional forms of visual art. The result is a selection of digitally hybrid paintings, sculptures, videos and installations that give visitors an opportunity to experience new ways of seeing and interacting with the ephemeral realms of ‘living’ data which are now an increasingly fundamental part of contemporary life.
Living Data will include a series of workshops for 17-25yrs in the gallery, where workshops participants will collaborate and work over five weeks with lead artist Michael Takeo Magruder and 3D visualisation technologies researcher Drew Baker (King’s College London) to produce a new series of mixed-reality works for the exhibition that will simultaneous exist within the gallery, surrounding (urban) environment and Internet.
The workshop is free of charge. Please contact irini(at)watermans.org.uk for more info and bookings.
http://www.watermans.org.uk/exhibitions/exhibitions/living-data.aspx
About the artist:
Michael Takeo Magruder (b.1974, US/UK) is an internationally recognised visual artist who works with digital and new media including real-time data, immersive environments, mobile devices and virtual worlds. His practice explores concepts ranging from media criticism and aesthetic journalism to digital formalism and computational aesthetics, deploying Information Age technologies and systems to examine our networked, media-rich world.
In the last 15 years, Michael’s projects have been showcased in over 250 exhibitions in 30 countries, including Circulo de Bellas Artes, Madrid; the Courtauld Institute of Art, London; EAST International, Norwich; Eastside Projects, Birmingham; FACT, Liverpool; Georges Pompidou Center, Paris; Somerset House, London; Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photographyand many more. He has been commissioned by numerous public galleries in the UK and abroad and by the leading Internet Art portal Turbulence.org. In 2010, Michael was selected to represent the UK at Manifesta 8: the European Biennial of Contemporary Art and several of his most well-known digital artworks were added to the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art at Cornell University.
For further information about Michael’s work, visit www.takeo.org