prototypeD: innovative and collaborative

Soo, I’m way behind on posting this, I wrote it over a month ago, but I figured better late than never. I sat down with the founder of prototypeD, Janak Alford, and talked to him about his project and his vision.

Lasers, printers, rendering machines, microprocessors, Xbox connect, airbrush paints – Janak Alford brings the tech and creative worlds together in a basement workshop where collaboration is king.

Alford, 28, is the founder of prototypeD, a member-run, not-for-profit work space operated through member fees where designers, engineers, architects, artists and innovators have access to high-tech tools.

Alford graduated from Carleton University with a master’s in architecture last spring, but wasn’t keen on going right into an architecture career. He and a few others founded prototypeD at 601 Bank St. in June, and spent most of the summer setting it up.

“Leaving school I knew I didn’t want to go the typical route for an architect; I wanted to be able to work in a multitalented way,” he said. “So, for me this is the beginning to a career; I don’t know where it’s going.”

Alford grew up in a small town south of Belleville, Ont. He came to Ottawa in 2004 to go to Carleton.

He wrote his master’s thesis about how having access to tools is healthy for creativity and innovation.

prototypeD is that idea in practice. The workshop is full of modern technology that is useful for creative, entrepreneurial types to develop their existing ideas and come up with new ones. Not to mention Alford has furnished the workshop with couches, a record player, and several bottles of wine (“Don’t mix with tools,” he said).

“The more resources we build up here, the more potential somebody has to come in and come up with an innovative product,” Alford said.

Having a variety of resources is only half of Alford’s theory. A big part of it is also collaboration.

“I think pottery is a great example. I show them an example of what happens when you laser glass,” he said, “And immediately, they kind of spark onto it, ‘cause they think, ‘oh, I could put my pottery in there and I could start to do really intricate, fancy designs on it.’”

“I can actually set up a machine that can start to transform some of my ideas onto their medium. Because we have the resources here, that kind of collaboration takes only a day or two to plan out,” he said.

The work done at prototypeD also breaks down barriers between professions, Alford said, and used himself as an example.

“If somebody asks me, ‘what are you professionally?’ I actually develop software for the government, but my education is in architecture, but what I’m doing in my pastime is kind of hacking technology, so there isn’t really a title for that.”

He explained a project he was working on for an event called Open Ottawa on Sept. 28 that would monitor Twitter and map tweets in a sort of art project. “So, I’m kind of being an artist and I’m kind of being a high-tech person,” he said. “It gets harder to identify what you are, which I think is a really interesting side effect of this.”

Andrew O’Malley worked with Alford on the Twitter mapping project. O’Malley is a tech-minded artist and president of another artist-run centre that focuses on technological innovation called Artengine. O’Malley visited prototypeD when it was still getting set up and spoke with Alford.

“I admired his gusto and enthusiasm,” said O’Malley. “He seemed to have a different approach.”

Aside from the collaboration he does within the workshop, working out of prototypeD has allowed Alford to take on projects outside of his government job, which is why he felt comfortable funding the workshop.

“A lot of this came out of my pocket. But it’s because this was something I believe in starting,” he said. “It wasn’t that I’m giving the money away . . . I’ve already started to pick up really large contracts that are going to pay me back.”

But Alford isn’t in it just for the contracts he’s picking up. He said he thinks places like prototypeD will bring industrial capabilities to the average joe, paving the way for wealthy and self-sufficient cities.

“I do see this as, not prototypeD, but I do see that this is part of a much larger kind of democratization through technology,” he said. “It’s going to be the seed for an economic model that’s coming for Ottawa, for North America, and I think it’s a really exciting one.”

Digital arts community is healthy, but still faces obstacles

Below is the culmination of interviews, research, and story-writing from the last 7 weeks. It’s been a great learning experience, both about Ottawa’s electronic arts community and journalism.

Don Monet’s electrician thought he was crazy.

“I asked him to put wall plugs five feet off the floor,” Monet said. “And he asked why.”

Monet is the curator and owner of Cube gallery in Westboro, and he says these raised outlets help him show electronic light art. He can plug the pieces in the wall directly behind them so no cords or plugs are visible.

“You have to deal with how [art] interfaces with electrics in your room,” he said in an interview at his gallery. “To me, when you’re showing it you don’t want stuff in the way.”

Raised outlets are just one way gallery owners can solve what Monet calls “curatorial problems” with showing electronic art.

Electronic art is any art that requires power, either from batteries or outlets, to trigger light, sound, moving parts, or web-based technology.

Electronic art differs from other kinds of contemporary art in that it often doesn’t have the same life span, buyers, or options for display. Parts risk needing replacement. The pieces don’t necessarily fit into traditional venues like art galleries and theatres due to the emphasis on innovation and experimentation.

Many curators are hesitant to take on electronic art commissions because of these barriers. The lack of options for commissions and sales has led some digital artists to take on commercial projects like app or video game programming.

Sarah Cook, a UK new media curator, said in an interview with website We Make Money Not Art that this kind of art has the potential to completely redefine what art is. So, how does Ottawa accommodate new media electronic art and its artists?

The local community has been fairly supportive, said Ryan Stec, electronic artist and artistic director of Artengine, a non-profit artist collective that supports technological innovations.

Local and federal governments have supported electronic artists, but Stec seems skeptical of the support. “The government has responded by supporting things that have been traditionally supported … they’re throwing money at things because they’re sexy,” he said in a phone interview.

Stec said he doesn’t think a single place in Ottawa compares to what artists have in Montreal or Toronto.

“The relationship that the city has to media arts is different in Toronto,” Stec said.

Though Stec thinks overall creative output in the city is growing, he said there are no hard statistics.

“It’s a very elusive thing to measure,” he said. “We’ve got our own metrics to determine growth.”

For example, membership at Artengine has increased and more artists are visible within the city. But he said it’s difficult to tell how many of those people were already active before connecting with Artengine.

In Ottawa, art enthusiasts can find forms of electronic art at a few galleries in the city. In addition to Monet’s Cube Gallery, Gallery 101, the Carleton University Art Gallery, Axe Neo 7 in Gatineau, the National Gallery and the Ottawa Art Gallery have shown art involving electronics.

Graham Bird, Ottawa Convention Centre project manager, has requested funding for a large video screen to be installed on the side of the new building. Though there would be advertising on the screen, the Ottawa Citizen reported the “Art Wall” would be primarily about Ottawa embracing the future and new technologies.

“We have some great proponents [in Ottawa], but not enough,” Monet said.

Monet said “curatorial problems” might make gallery owners hesitant about showing the pieces. “The inherent problem is endurance,” he said. Electronic art doesn’t have the same staying power as a painting that can hang on the wall for years to come.

“When you sell a piece, it becomes the owner’s problem. Luckily, most things that could go wrong on a piece of electronics is not on the aesthetic part, so an electrician could fix it,” Monet said.

Cook told We Make Money Not Art new media or interactive art can scare curators because they are trained to show exhibits that are unchanging and static.

James Acres, a professor of media and design at Algonquin College, said in a phone interview that artists sometimes have to turn commissions down due to galleries’ concerns over how to maintain their art.

“There’s always the question of permanence,” said Acres, the co-ordinator of the Bachelor of Information Technology program at Algonquin College.

Andrew O’Malley, a light artist and half of DJ/VJ team the Latest Artists, said in an interview he’s never had to turn down a commission based on the fact his art uses electronics, but he has had concerns from patrons and potential buyers over conservation and maintenance.

“Working in this medium is harder to sell to collectors,” said O’Malley. “A lot of people are intrigued by the work but hesitant to have it in their home.”

“People compare this type of work to little mood lamps in Wal-Mart,” said O’Malley. “They hear the prices and say forget it.”

Stec also said it can be difficult to find buyers.

“For the people [Artengine] works with, it’s a concern in the sense that there are many people engaged in models of how to generate income from it,” he said.

Stec and Acres both said many electronic artists have turned to commercial endeavours like producing and selling apps and video games.

Though artists face the obstacles of finding commissions and selling their work, the infrastructure for the community to grow seems in place.

“People around the world are collaborating … In Ottawa, a lot of people are kind of coming out of the woodwork,” said Acres.

Acres said he thinks things have transformed around the world over the last couple of years and have reached levels previously unavailable thanks to a huge variety of free online resources.

“It used to be hard to get into from an artist level because [the resources] were originally designed for programmers,” he said. But now, the digital art online community has exploded.

Open-source hardware and software such as Arduino, openFrameworks, Cinder and Processing.org function as libraries intended for technological artists. Social media and video hosting websites like Vimeo, Flickr, and Twitter also allow artists to network and self-promote, Acres said.

Even locally, online and in-person networks are forming. Artengine hosts a biweekly Modlab where technologists and artists can come to work on their projects, seek advice and learn what others in the community are working on.

There is also a massive Artengine membership mailing list, which allows artists to send out emails and swap advice with others in the community.

Artists at Modlab work on a lot of interesting projects: LED video screens, an Arduino project that plays musical tones when a hand passes over a sensor, 3D printing with a device called the Cupcake CNC and more.

Despite all of this creativity, there’s still room for growth in the community. Stec said he hopes Ottawa one day has a venue dedicated solely to the efforts of digital artists.

Ryan Stec talks about redefining art’s relationship to technology

There’s no doubt that Ryan Stec is a key figure in Ottawa’s (even Canada’s) electronic arts community. He’s a busy man, but I was lucky enough to catch him for an evening phone call last month to talk about some of his works and his view of the techno-art community.

Ryan Stec makes electronic art.

“I don’t like the term new media art,” he said. “[Electronics] is a whole other area … there are codependent values in the work. It’s about democracy, experimentation and deviation rather than creating art.”

Stec is the creative director at Artengine, a non-profit, artist-run centre located at Ottawa’s downtown Artscourt that supports arts and artists exploring technological innovation.

He came to Ottawa from Winnipeg in 1996 to study communications, and got involved in the arts world in 1998, he said. He has worked mostly with video art, making short films, feature documentaries, as well as experimenting with live video and visual design.

He said it’s easy to talk about his CN Tower project as one of his proudest achievements. For Toronto’s 2009 Nuit Blanche Festival, Stec collaborated with DJs Jokers of the Scene and If Then Do as well as a Toronto radio station to create a sound and light show using the CN Tower as his canvas. Stec lit up the CN Tower from top to bottom with pulsing, colourful lights. At the same time, bystanders could tune in to the radio station to hear synchronized music.

Now, Stec’s time is divided between his job at Artengine, his personal endeavours, and his partner and their new baby.

“There’s a division between my artistic director job and my personal artistic vision. There’s a disconnect, but lots of overlap,” he said in an interview.

Stec said the project taking up a lot of his time these days is a prototype of something called a ‘Light Radio’ that would implement and expand on the materials used in the CN Tower project.

He is collaborating with the band If Then Do to create a light radio installation with a sound component.

Stec said it is in the early development stages. “It’s not really that crazy of an idea,” he said. “Ideas are extremely valuable, but the challenge is to implement them.”

He said it will probably take until the summer to complete the project.

Stec is also involved in the technological arts community in Ottawa.

Stec said he thinks the community is growing, but said “it’s a very elusive thing to measure.”

For Stec, electronic art projects like the CN Tower and Light Radio don’t really fit into the traditional artistic discourse.

“We’re trying to redefine what that category is. We don’t know where we fit in galleries … It can also frustrate us because it doesn’t make it easy,” he said. “We don’t want to talk about whether what we do is art or not.”

He prefers to look at it as a way of breaking down boundaries and pushing things in new directions.

“It’s about redefining our relationship to technology,” he said.

CUBE gallery in Westboro accommodates dynamic light art

Andrew O'Malley's Sky Spectrum in the Phenomena exhibit (Photo courtesy Andrew O'Malley).

Artists who use technology in their work not only have a tough time finding spaces to display their work in Ottawa, they also have a tough time selling it, said artist Andrew O’Malley.

In fact, the CUBE gallery in Westboro is one of the few places in Ottawa with the ability to display works like O’Malley’s, which it did Feb. 1-27 in an exhibit called Phenomena.

O’Malley’s piece, called Sky Spectrum, is made out of acrylic, LEDs, custom electronics and uses a camera and web-based software to analyze the sky’s red, blue, and green colour components every few minutes, said Don Monet, curator of the CUBE gallery.

O’Malley said he had wanted to work with weather for a long time. It took him over a year to put all of the elements of Sky Spectrum together and find a stable web service and camera – the webcam on Parliament Hill.

“I realized we had the [Parliament] Hill camera,” he said. “And the shot is 60 per cent sky.”

The software analyzes the sky portion of the camera so Sky Spectrum can respond and change colours based on the colour components. All of the analysis happens on O’Malley’s web server.

Monet said his gallery is unique in showing electronic and light art like O’Malley’s.

“Not all galleries will show that,” he said. “Every gallery is a signature of the curator.”

Monet said electronic art can pose “curatorial problems,” such as finding ways to power the art, keeping the software up-to-date, stockpiling the materials to replace them when they burn out and selling the art.

“When you sell a piece, it becomes the owner’s problem,” he said. “Luckily, most things that could go wrong on a piece of electronics is not on the aesthetic part so an electrician could probably fix it.”

Monet said he designed his gallery to accommodate light pieces like Sky Spectrum. He said he built the gallery from scratch, with all new walls and electronics. He had the electrician install power outlets five feet off the ground in the middle of the wall.

“You have to deal with how [art] interfaces with the electronics in your room,” he said. “To me, when you’re showing it, you don’t want stuff in the way.”

The raised outlets allow Monet to plug Sky Spectrum in the wall directly behind the piece so no cords or outlets are visible.

O’Malley has shown light art at CUBE Gallery before Phenomena. He said the community for electronic art is growing, and he has never felt booking an exhibit in Ottawa has been overly competitive. His struggle, he said, comes from the buying audience.

“The buying audience is very different,” he said. “A lot of people are intrigued by the work, but hesitant to have it in their home.”

Though he said he hasn’t particularly tried to create pieces for “the home,” O’Malley said working in the electronic medium does make it harder to sell to collectors.

Of his light pieces like Sky Spectrum, he said, “people compare this type of work to little mood lamps in Wal-Mart. They hear the prices and said forget it.”

The pricing issue is bigger because of materials needed to create the art, he said. “With painting, there’s the labour and time, but when you factor in the price of the raw materials and labour, you do have to price it quite a bit higher.”

He added he finds electronic art much more engaging. “It’s dynamic, it changes slowly over time . . . That’s what’s pushing me to do these things,” he said.

(Phenomena was still running when I wrote this article. Now, Monet is showing Trinary. For more information about what O’Malley is working on now, check out his blog.)

New media art in … Ottawa?

Artscourt in downtown Ottawa.

Let me first say how great it feels to finally read and write about and interview people on a topic I’m interested in.

The interface between art and technology has intrigued me through its manifestation in music. I’ve found it to be equally fascinating in the visual arts. How cool it is that art – something so basically human, a mode of expression used for centuries by virtually every society – can intersect with technology – something so futuristic, robotic, even.

This is why I’ve chosen to explore electronic art and the issues facing the scene and its principle players for an analytical feature.

There was an article in the Ottawa Citizen about a year ago, if I recall correctly, that talked about Ottawa’s cultural and artistic coming-of-age. I don’t remember the details and I wasn’t able to find it online, but I remember it said that Ottawa’s art scene has matured a lot, and that there are a lot more opportunities for artists to create and enthusiasts to see great art. But not just art. Food, movies, fashion.

What I’m basically setting out to do is to find out if and how this applies to electronic art. This week, I spoke with curator of CUBE gallery, Don Monet, and one of the artists currently showing there, Andrew O’Malley. I had great discussions with both of them and honestly felt like I could have sat and talked with them about this stuff for hours. A few things they brought to my attention that I hope to explore more as I build up to my analytical feature are:

-how galleries accommodate new media art. Monet told me about how his electrician questioned him when he asked for power outlets installed in the gallery walls, five feet off the ground. But this has allowed him to show pieces, like O’Malley’s, that need to be plugged in without cords showing and disrupting the piece. He also talked about other ‘curatorial problems,’ like maintenance, that can make some gallerists hesitant.

-process versus finished product. O’Malley explained that a lot of what he does is about process. Even after a piece is at a stage where it can be shown in a gallery, he can keep an eye on his logbook and software to make new patterns and updates. To me, this seems in contrast to arts like painting, photography, etc.

-the buyer’s market. Both Monet and O’Malley touched on the struggle of selling electronic art. Not only is it not traditionally something you’d put up on the wall in your home, but it also poses problems of endurance because of the software and materials it relies on.

-the community. O’Malley said he first got into creative technology in the late 90s, and there wasn’t a lot of people doing what he was doing. Now, he says, there are more resources than ever online, as well as more meeting places for artists, such as Artengine’s Modlab.  There are also festivals such as Electric Fields, Candela, and Urbana coming up this spring. I asked Monet if the need to have festivals like these means that the art has yet to be established in the city, and he agreed, but added that part of his business is educating the public about these new kinds of art. He also said festivals act as a hub for people to come together and create a ‘critical mass’ of more appreciation, and new, better, larger things. He said it still has a ways to go but that the arts scene is definitely growing.

So there’s the intro, folks. I hope to update regularly as I find out more, and eventually share my finished product.

Rockcliffe Park Hosers

 

Brian Montgomery founded in the Rockcliffe Park Hosers in 2001.

Click on the photo to watch my audio slideshow about the Rockcliffe Park Hosers.

 

Manor Park alternative students’ fate to be decided

Manor Park Public School currently offers a traditional English learning program, French immersion, and an alternative program.

After voting almost a year ago to close the alternative program at Manor Park Public School, the school board is about to decide what will happen to the students currently in the program.

The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board will make its final decision on Jan. 25 about the options available to students who will be affected by the closure of the alternative program at Manor Park Public School.

Last year, the OCDSB voted to close the alternative program at Manor Park Public School effective fall 2011. That decision is final, but plans still need to be made to accommodate the students currently in the alternative program.

Alternative learning programs in Ottawa focus more on parental involvement than traditional education, expose students to an integrated curriculum which relates the learning of all subjects, and teach students in non-graded, multi-aged groupings, according to the Alternative Schools Advisory Committee’s website. There are currently six alternative learning programs in the district.

The reasons for the closure of the program are fuzzy, but low enrolment and the fact that Manor Park is a triple-tracked school with English, French and alternative programs were factors in the decision.

“The alternative community has expressed concerns with having it co-located,” said Bronwyn Funicello, school board trustee for the zone Manor Park Public School occupies.

“The Board is very supportive of the alternative program in general,” Funicello said, adding that no students will lose access to the program. “The board felt it was a valuable program to have in the school board, but not at Manor Park.”

There are a few options on the table for students currently in the alternative program at Manor Park, said Richard Deadman, the chair of the Alternative Schools Advisory Committee.

“They can switch over to the English program and stay at Manor Park, … transfer into the English program wherever they live, or French immersion that’s in their catchment area … And the third one is to go to one of the two alternative schools that are going to divide up the zone [Riverview or Lady Evelyn],” Deadman said.

He said these are the hints the board staff has given them about what the plan will be, but they still need to go to the trustees for approval later this month.

Some parents are concerned about the prospect of their children having to switch schools or switch programs. Maggie Martel, alternative representative on the parent council at Manor Park and parent of a child that will be affected by the closure, says overall the change is positive.

“I think that if you are strongly inclined to have a child in the alternative program, this is a good thing,” said Martel.

“Some people aren’t happy that they can no longer be at Manor Park, some feel an affinity for the school,” she said. “It’s better that it’s in a school that’s dedicated to it.”

Richard Deadman, chair of the Alternative Schools Advisory Committee