Technics & Touch: Body-Matter-Machine

Image courtesy of Charles Anderson, Jondi Keane and Matthew Kneale. Graphic treatment by Sean Hogan.

It’s our third lap of the Consortium track! We’re once again teaming up with Gertrude Contemporary, West Space, RMIT Design Hub and Next Wave to present an intriguing and honest conversation about the issues within (and surrounding) emerging and experimental art and design.

For this discussion, our panellists will delve into the idea of galleries as ‘testing spaces’ for risk, experiment, play and speculation. Following an introduction from RMIT Design Hub curator Fleur Watson, artist and landscape architect Charles Anderson and arts academic Jondi Keane will exchange ideas about their new RMIT Design Hub exhibition slash laboratory space: Technics & Touch: Body-Matter-Machine. The experimental project explores methods of producing feedback systems through perception and action cycles—and by working alongside a robot. Using their temporary lab as a springboard, Charles and Jondi will explore how gallery spaces can present exciting opportunities for autonomous intelligence systems to interact with performers and the public—meaning further interactions between arts organisations and new technology. Will this change the function of gallery spaces as we know them? And how will the artist’s role change with these developments?