ARTISTS




Tiff Norchick

writes beautiful songs and plays harp in the Royal Hobart Hospital. She writes fantasy novels and and makes animations.




Gianna Lucia (aka Nicole Brimmer)

is an artist whom is currently based in Melbourne, Australia. She is interested in the hybridization and juxtaposition of remixing contrasting elements together. Her artwork reflects the visual representation of urban and man made concepts and constructs that are in and around our everyday life in the city and urban landscape with nature and the natural environment. To take these objects and devices out of context and recreate this imagery by juxtaposing and contrasting machinised ideas to the natural environment, objects and human lifeforms according to the processes of life in plants, animals and the essences of humanity in ancient societies in order to create a narrative of new language which draws comparisons to two opposing forces, industrialism and mother nature.




Nancy Mauro-Flude

 is a Tasmanian artist and theorist. Driven by the demystification of technology, and the 'mystification' that lie in and through the performance of the machinic assemblage. ... She engages bespoke technologies to open up systems in order to execute in unusual ways.




Tom Penny

is a lecturer and Industry Fellow in Digital Media and Games at RMIT University. His practice involves 3D imaging, games technology, digital design and performance as well as traditional art media. He has shown work and published through exhibitions, journals and conferences internationally and in Australia. His current research project “Critical Affection” investigates an expanded notion of "critical play" through digital contemporary art practice. Much of this draws on a series of artworks that critically represent online dating apps. Narcissism, affection-images, intimacy and the consumption of bodies-as-objects through such apps are critiqued through Tom’s use of subversive caricature and presentation of virtual, manipulable bodies in interactive works. This practice comes to constitute a critical and playful engagement with the contemporary digital world. Tom previously worked as a project manager and artist at Metaverse Makeovers, an augmented reality fashion company, as well as teaching art and design at Curtin and Monash Universities.




Kate Geck

 is an installation artist working with digital and sensory space. Her work explores connectivity and experience - what she terms 'mediated vs unmediated immediacy'. ... Based in Melbourne, Australia she is a CCD artist at Artful Dodgers Studios and lectures in Illustration at Melbourne Polytechnic.




Nick Smithies

is an artist and musician interested in computer/real world interfacing, responsive installation, aleatoric music constructed from found data sets, electronic performance tools and machine interaction.




lauren abineri (aka jemisahologram)

is an emerging artist/musician based in Naarm via Kaurna Land. obsessed with alter­-egos being siphoned through cyborg feminist tubes, exploring the consequence of digital constraints to navigate absolute imposter syndrome and an access path an impossible authentic self. complete narcissist. She has exhibited at The Contemporary Art Centre of SA, Paper Mountain (WA) and Trocadero ARI (VIC) and pretty much nowhere else.









CREDITS



This gallery node was created, serviced and curated by

Nick Smithies

as part of Miss Despoinas.




Home-brewed in Hobart in 2008 by Nancy Mauro-Flude,

Miss Despoinas

was formed as a research salon, a curatorial premise, a autonomous web server to host projects, a mail list for discussion and a hackspace aimed at removing the strict barriers between software users and developers to enable the ‘uninitiated’ artist into using free software. Based in Hobart, the salon is joined by satellite practitioners: artists, programmers, critical engineers, writers, designers, dancers, comrades, curators and thinkers from around the globe for events, skills sharing and prototyping; to make, to exchange skills, stories, strategies and constructively critique - to keep moving with the manifold of time.

Miss Despoinas is a feminist salon described as a 'technological coven disguised as an art project’ (WARP Magazine 2013), it engages in critical making, experimental research, radical aesthetics, media design, production and exchange underlined by modes of hacker culture.

It cultivates artists who want to open up both standard devices and situations and the way they are approached. Miss Despoinas hosts digital literacy circles, and stretches networks for the production and dissemination of experiential events, in public and private spaces - garages, galleries, online, in publications, on radio and anywhere else that suits their purpose. Against the current of disposable technology and estranged digital devices, critical making brings together individuals working at the intersection of critical thinking and hands-on practice.

Projects events and discussions range from the political implications of critical making to feminist reflections on the place of technology in culture and society. Miss Despoinas taps into the principle of ‘knowledge sharing’ passionately emphasised by the Free Software Foundation. The Free Software Foundation campaigns for computer users’ freedom to cooperate and control their own computing conduct. The dilemma is not that it is proprietary software (closed to the source) being used to program the computer (some proprietary applications are open source and cost money) it is rather an ethical issue. When the source code is both copyrighted and closed a problematic situation arises; the user may be unable to modify the software to his or her idiosycratic needs or acknowledge the source. So when an artist works with software there creativity is *limited - stunted - paralysed* if they are unable to extend the medium beyond a particular limit.