March 23, 2018, by Matt Davies

The Scaling the Sublime Artcodes project

One of this year’s most exciting DHC projects has been to produce digital content for the ‘Scaling the Sublime: Art at the Limits of Landscape’ exhibition which opens this week at Lakeside Arts’ Djanogly Gallery. The exhibition, co-curated by History of Art’s Nicholas Alfrey and artist Rebecca Partridge, features the works of seven contemporary artists, and explores ideas of wonder and anxiety in our relationship with nature. It includes work in a wide range of media, from installation and video to photography and painting.

The student team, including DHC volunteers and members of the Crop Up Gallery team, have combined the analytical skills learnt as Faculty of Arts students, digital skills learnt in DHC, and their own creative skills to produce videos featuring students from various academic backgrounds, including: an environmental scientist, an astronomer, geographers, and engineers. These students were encouraged to respond to the individual works and consider how the works related to their areas of expertise. The aim of this was to hear different perspectives on the artworks featured in the exhibition.

They used a visual recognition technology called Artcodes that was developed at the University by the Mixed Reality Lab and Horizon. Artcodes works in the same way as QR or barcodes, the difference being that the user is able to design her own code, rather than rely on the usual computer generated and unattractive pattern of blobs or lines that we are all used to seeing.

The team came up with a design that reflects the ship depicted in Mariele Neudecker’s work, After Life which features in the exhibition. Visitors to the Djanogly will be able to upload the app onto their smartphones simply and free of charge when they arrive, then as they move around the space and see the design recurring, they simply open the app and hold their phones to it. They will automatically be taken directly to the content filmed by the team which addresses the work associated.

The team: Chloe Austin, Cecily Rainey, Jennifer Cattermole, Molly Evans, Poppy Wickenden.

With support from: Neil Walker (Lakeside Arts), Nicholas Alfrey (History of Art), Ben Bedwell (Horizon Digital Economy), Matt Davies (DHC)

The ‘Scaling the Sublime: Art at the Limits of Landscape’ open at the Djanogly Galley, Lakeside Arts, University Park, Friday 23 March – Sunday 17 June)

Find out more about Artcodes here.

Find out more about History of Art’s Crop-up Gallery here.

 

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