Cyprus has been referred to as an ‘Island of Space’ in a US congress bill.1 Both visible and invisible technologies permeate the territorial island. Layers of historic colonisation accrete with layers of technological colonisation. Whilst the ‘green line’, stretching from anything between 17 miles and 3 metres in distance, has opened up in places, this island-dividing corridor remains a contested space, a space of stasis symptomatic of political limbo.Â
Artists Rose Butler, Kypros Kyprianou and Jeremy Lee will take this dynamic as a starting point to collaborate on a multimedia project for the NeMe Arts Centre. Research will include local organisations, archival materials, Cypriot literature and current affairs.Â
Using techniques such as LiDAR scanning, they will use technology to theoretically underpin the subject of its documentation. LiDAR uses lasers to generate a point cloud to create high resolution 3D mapping of the exterior surface of objects for machine understanding (Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence). This both limits and extends visual representation through spatial data and will comment on the emptiness and inaccessibility of spaces occupied, contested or abandoned through force as well as the knowledge that is transmitted through them.Â
CYENS in collaboration with Neme will be co-hosting the “Island of Space” and within the scope of the project, there will be an exhibition and an educational workshop.Â
Stay tuned for more.Â
Biographies
Rose Butler UK
Rose is an artist, researcher and senior lecturer of Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. She uses adapted technology and custom built software alongside early cameras and analogue technique to make interactive installations, single and multi-screen videos or large-scale photographs. Rose is currently writing up doctoral research that considers the ethics and politics of looking through surveillance and arts practice. By bringing together photographic and filmic documentation, archival material, political commentary and fiction in her
research, she examines the narratives that surround and shape us.
Rose exhibits her new work in a solo show at Decad, Berlin October 2019 – January 2020. In 2017 she exhibited Come & Go an interactive dance installation at the Museums of Sheffield. She received an award for this work, a part of the Surveillance Studies Art Prize 2018, and presented research at the Surveillance Beyond Borders and Boundaries Conference 2018 in Aarhus. She exhibited work with Abandon Normal Devices in Castleton, September 2017, and exhibited work at Kabinet Muz; Brno, Czech Republic November 2017. She continues to screen works internationally over the year in venues such as the Filmwinter Festival, Stuttgart; Home Artists Film Weekender, Manchester, The London Art Fair, Golden Cinema; Sydney, Hull City of Culture, Visual Container TV,; International Video Art Channel, France; The Swedenburg Society, London; The Nunnery Gallery, London; and BOX; Video Art Project Space, Milan.
Butler was shortlisted for the Jerwood Prize for Moving Image for the six screen animation One Lime Street, made in collaboration with Kypros Kyprianou. This was exhibited as part of Trade City; Contemporary Art Manchester, Novi Sad; Serbia, G39 Gallery; Cardiff and Site Gallery; Sheffield. It was commissioned by the Arts Council of England and Site Gallery Sheffield.
This year she presented her research at NAFAE Living Research: The Urgency of the Arts, Royal College of Art, March 2019; Free and Open Source Technologies, Arts and Gammoning Practices: An Unconference about Art, Design, Technology, Making, Cities and their Communities, University of Nicosia Research Foundation, Cyprus, May 2019; Uncertainty, Turbulence and Moving Image Archives, University College London, June 2019; and Creative Interruptions: A Festival of Arts and Activism, British Film Institute, June 2019. New writing will be published in Surveillance and Society December 2019.
Rose Butler UK
Rose is an artist, researcher and senior lecturer of Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. She uses adapted technology and custom built software alongside early cameras and analogue technique to make interactive installations, single and multi-screen videos or large-scale photographs. Rose is currently writing up doctoral research that considers the ethics and politics of looking through surveillance and arts practice. By bringing together photographic and filmic documentation, archival material, political commentary and fiction in her
research, she examines the narratives that surround and shape us.
Rose exhibits her new work in a solo show at Decad, Berlin October 2019 – January 2020. In 2017 she exhibited Come & Go an interactive dance installation at the Museums of Sheffield. She received an award for this work, a part of the Surveillance Studies Art Prize 2018, and presented research at the Surveillance Beyond Borders and Boundaries Conference 2018 in Aarhus. She exhibited work with Abandon Normal Devices in Castleton, September 2017, and exhibited work at Kabinet Muz; Brno, Czech Republic November 2017. She continues to screen works internationally over the year in venues such as the Filmwinter Festival, Stuttgart; Home Artists Film Weekender, Manchester, The London Art Fair, Golden Cinema; Sydney, Hull City of Culture, Visual Container TV,; International Video Art Channel, France; The Swedenburg Society, London; The Nunnery Gallery, London; and BOX; Video Art Project Space, Milan.
Butler was shortlisted for the Jerwood Prize for Moving Image for the six screen animation One Lime Street, made in collaboration with Kypros Kyprianou. This was exhibited as part of Trade City; Contemporary Art Manchester, Novi Sad; Serbia, G39 Gallery; Cardiff and Site Gallery; Sheffield. It was commissioned by the Arts Council of England and Site Gallery Sheffield.
This year she presented her research at NAFAE Living Research: The Urgency of the Arts, Royal College of Art, March 2019; Free and Open Source Technologies, Arts and Gammoning Practices: An Unconference about Art, Design, Technology, Making, Cities and their Communities, University of Nicosia Research Foundation, Cyprus, May 2019; Uncertainty, Turbulence and Moving Image Archives, University College London, June 2019; and Creative Interruptions: A Festival of Arts and Activism, British Film Institute, June 2019. New writing will be published in Surveillance and Society December 2019.
Jeremy Lee UK
Jeremy is an artist researcher and principal lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University. He originally trained in Fine Art painting at Cardiff University and then went on to complete a masters in Animation and Visual Effects at the National Centre for Computer Animation (NCCA) Bournemouth. As a digital artist he integrates Fine Art practice with freelance and industrial work alongside teaching and lecturing in digital media.
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Current work collaborates with the local museum Creswell Crags, Derbyshire, UK. Using new technique through LiDAR scanning, Jeremy created a virtual 30 replica of an inaccessible cave with recently discovered apotropaic (witch marks) inside. This cave was previously inaccessible to visitors and enabled an exploration of the interior for remote visitors alongside the potential of a detailed examination of the marks for researchers. Jeremy’s earlier LiDAR scans and photogrammetry work were exhibited in the Northern Lights exhibition and conference at SHU 2018 /2019.
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Jeremy developed the walking arts research group within the Media Arts and Communications department at Sheffield Hallam University. In 2017 Jeremy was part of Solar as part of the research group for the creative arts festival Catalyst. Solar consisted of an interactive walk through a relative solar system mapped using GPS onto the physical landscape. Digital works of art unlocked on mobile devices at each mapped planet visited. This project was presented at Documenta, Kassel, 2017.
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Last year Jeremy collaborated with filmmaker Annie Watson on her British Council commission film La Couleur de la Temperature which has been exhibited in six countries: NGC Bocas Literature Festival;Trinidad and Tobago, Open Book Festival, South Africa, Dhaka Literature Festival, Bangladesh, Festival of the European Short Story, Croatia, Mile Ends Poets Festival, Montreal and Off the Shelf Festival, Sheffield.