UTS ART Live brings together contemporary artists and UTS students through collaboratively produced public performances, events and interventions across campus. ART Live enables students to explore their coursework or extracurricular interests through the lens of creative practice.
Make or Break: UTS Media and Journalism students
UTS Art Live Make or Break 2022. Credit: Jacquie Manning
Project
Citizen J, 2022
Collaborators
Make or Break with UTS students who are interested in understanding media subjectivity and the tools being developed and used by media empires, corporations and nation states to influence our understanding of truth.
Summary
This project enables students to play with a series of critical and creative tools – including media analysis, language shaping, news scraping, futuring, speculative writing and machine learning – to generate a series of future newsfeeds.
A continuous stream of speculative headlines and stories is displayed live on LED news tickers at UTS Central and via a digital intervention here on the UTS Gallery & Art Collection website. This speculative news from 2062 has been generated by UTS students Abbie, Amy, Annie, Diego, Eleanor, Helen, Jack, James, Jay, Jessie, Joseph, Julien, Kent, Kimberley, Lucy, Rahul, Sean, Seja, Solei, Sophie, Rodger and Timi, in collaboration with anonymous AIs and Make or Break.
These headlines and stories are updated as the project unfolds, and are generated through a range of processes: “personalised” headlines devised using collaborators’ social media and search histories; current headlines scraped from news sites and re-imagined through machine learning; headlines and stories from imagined futures developed in collaboration with AI.
Citizen J is an offshoot of Make or Break’s ongoing project Influence Operation (2019-) which to date has invited citizens to join a series of focused workshops to adopt strategies of power in pursuit of questions around truth, influence and subjectivity.
View Make or Break images
UTS Art Live Make or Break 2022. Credit: Jacquie Manning
UTS Art Live Make or Break 2022. Credit: Jacquie Manning
This project is supported by Create NSW’s Audience Development Fund, a devolved funding program administered by Museums & Galleries of NSW on behalf of the NSW Government.
Deborah Kelly: UTS STEMM
UTS Art Live 2020 Deborah Kelly. Credit Jacquie Manning
Project
Workshop and exhibition of collages to mark the launch of a new visual identity for the Equal Futures Athena SWAN gender equity program at UTS.
Collaborators
Deborah Kelly with UTS STEMM staff and students.
Presented by UTS Gallery & Art Collection in partnership with the Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion Equal Futures Program, UTS.
Summary
An exhibition of collages produced in workshops led by artist Deborah Kelly with UTS STEMM staff and students to mark the launch of a new visual identity for the Equal Futures Athena SWAN gender equity program at UTS.
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UTS Art Live 2020 Deborah Kelly. Credit Jacquie Manning
UTS Art Live 2020 Deborah Kelly. Credit Jacquie Manning
Sarah Rodigari: UTS Queer Collective
UTS ART Live 2019 Queer Tour. Credit: Jacquie Manning
Project
Queer Tour
Collaborators
Sarah Rodigari and the UTS Queer Collective.
Summary
Queer Tour was a collaborative event series between artist Sarah Rodigari and the UTS Queer Collective. Research was undertaken with UTS academics in the fields of science, architecture, UX design, and gender studies. The tours drew a portrait of the university, intimately illustrated by its staff and students, their knowledge and lived experience.
A poster series was designed using ideas that arose during the creative process around queer spaces, architectures, voices and the queering of public space and what this might look and feel like within an institution. The typographic treatment developed for the posters queers the font used by UTS. This further considers the paradoxical relationship of a queer tour in an institutional context. The tours drew a queer portrait of the university, intimately illustrated by its staff and students, their knowledge and lived experience.
Postcards, posters & a tote bag were produced to mark the series with graphic design by Ella Cutler.
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UTS Live 2019 Queer Tour. Credit: Jacquie Manning
UTS Live 2019 Queer Tour. Credit: Jacquie Manning
UTS Live 2019 Queer Tour. Credit: Jacquie Manning
Jess Olivieri and Malcolm Whittaker: UTS Chess Club
Project
A Game of Chess
Collaborators
Jess Olivieri and Malcolm Whittaker with UTS Chess Club.
Summary
Artists Jess Olivieri and Malcolm Whittaker have teamed up with the UTS Chess Club to explore gameplay, academia and contemporary art over two months of chess games and conversation.
What themes are at play in a game of chess? In what ways does chess operate as a metaphor for life beyond the game? Is a game of chess ever just a game of chess?
Artists Jess Olivieri and Malcolm Whittaker have teamed up with the UTS Chess Club to explore gameplay, academia and contemporary art over two months of chess games and conversation. The outcome of their collaboration is A Game of Chess, a UTS ART Live performance in which four Chess Club members and four UTS academics – Kristine Aquino and Jennifer Newman, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences; Frank Zeichner, Faculty of Engineering and IT; Jacqueline Gothe, Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building – expose the theatre of chess through a series of competitive matches in the public foyer of the UTS Tower. During each game, the academics have been challenged to convey their research to each student through the framework of chess.
The discussions and meta-discussions that take place – ranging in theme from business strategy, to racism and the legacy of colonisation in Australia – will be broadcast live through speakers and projected on screens.
Julian Day: UTS School of Architecture
Project
Acoustic workshops and performance, Chau Chak Wing Building.
Collaborators
Julian Day with UTS Bachelor of Architecture students.
Summary
Over a two year development period, Julian Day of Super Critical Mass led Architectural Design: Performance, UTS Bachelor of Architecture students through a series of workshops exploring the acoustic potential of the iconic Chau Chak Wing Building, UTS Business School, designed by Frank Gehry.
This has evolved into new UTS ART Live performances involving over 200 students moving through the public spaces and stairwell of the Chau Chak Wing Building as they follow a set of simple performance instructions.
Using everyday instruments – including chopsticks and metal cups – the student performers will create sound fields that resonate with the building’s porous material and acoustic design.
The final performance, which took place on Wednesday 8th August 2018, saw 100 students move through the public spaces and the stairwell of the Gehry building following simple social instructions. They used everyday materials, chopsticks and metal cups, to create sound fields that resonated within the building’s diverse materials and porous design.
The performance will be followed by a panel discussion with artist Julian Day, Super Critical Mass, in conversation with lecturer Joanne Kinniburgh, UTS School of Architecture, and musician Claire Cooper, Director, NOW now Festival. Facilitated by ABC broadcaster Stephen Adams.
Kate Scardifield: UTS School of Design
Kate Scardifield, Soft Topology, 2018. Adaptable sculpture in one variation. Accordion pleated spinnaker cloth, eyelets. 110 x 300cm (full expansion). Photo: Robin Hearfield
Project
Workshop and performances to accompany Soft Topologies.
Collaborators
Kate Scardifield with students from the UTS Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Fashion and Textiles.
Summary
To accompany Kate Scardifield’s UTS ART exhibition Soft Topologies, the artist worked with students from the UTS Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Fashion and Textiles over a six-week period to develop four performances exploring the relationship between textiles, the body and architecture. As part of this process, students also participated in a movement workshop led by dancer and choreographer Brooke Stamp.
Informed by Scardifield’s practice, students utilised their personal textile research and interests to develop site-specific responses and performances to The Goods Line, a pedestrian pathway connecting UTS, Ultimo, Haymarket and the Powerhouse Museum.
