Intro

Hello, I am …kruse, welcome to my studio. 

Let me introduce myself; I am a neurodivergent (non-typically brained) being. I consider myself to be a multitude rather than a singular entity. The three dots before my name stand in for the beings who help form ‘me,’ but whom I do not know – the microbes, fungi and yeasts, all living beings, who make up my physical self. When you read my name the three dots invite you to take a small inward pause, a minute moment of silence. It is my gift to you in this busy, noisy world.

I will use this Vital Capacities residency to explore my interest in paths and walking. I will be using video, photography, drawing and writing to try and understand a bit more about my love for tracks and trails. 

Three years ago, I was on a day walk through the Warwickshire countryside when I had a sudden vision of a female being, a cyborg, walking the same path but in the far future. That vision has never left me and has become a huge, multidisciplinary project, called The AuTCRONE Chronicle.

The AuTCRONE walks. She walks endlessly, for hundreds of years. What is it about walking, and particularly walking a given track or path, that fascinates me so? That is the research question I will be exploring here. 

Have you ever played the game Myst? In that game you ‘walk’ along twisting paths, in beautiful, deserted landscapes to strange buildings where you solve puzzles. To me, walking along in that game is the best bit! The landscapes and visuals in Myst are really beautiful and slightly otherworldly. I hope to create some Myst inspired visuals during this residency, maybe even play with a bit of animation.

I hope you enjoy hanging out in my studio here. Do you have any other walking games you think I should check out? Do you love to walk yourself? Is there some special path in the UK I should try and walk during my residency? I’d love to hear from you so please do leave comments, or get in touch with me via social media.

I will say goodbye with a blessing; Not all those who wander are lost, but if you are, may you be on a beautiful path and find a warm welcome at day’s end.          …kruse

Intro

Hi there,

My name is Rebekah Ubuntu. I am a multidisciplinary artist, musician and university lecturer. My practice explores speculative fiction through a range of disciplines, particularly, sound art, performance, the moving image and mixed reality.

PROJECTS YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN

My work ‘Despair Hope and Healing: Three Movements for Climate Justice’ is available to experience in augmented reality app Unfolding Shrines which you can find here. 

My audio art project ‘Autism and the City: a Sonic Diary’ is due to launch on the BBC next month so I’ll post that here once it’s ready.

You are warmly welcomed to my studio. 

HOW I HOPE TO USE MY RESIDENCY

I’m hoping to use my residency to REFLECT.

I’ll be reflecting on my:

  1. work to date
  2. practice before and during the pandemic

WHY REFLECTION?

My life and creative practice have undergone some major pivots since 2020. My last in-person commission before the pandemic was at Tate Modern in December 2019. I performed my work ‘Despair, Hope and Healing: Three Movements for Climate Justice’ and gave a talk about this work, which featured an excerpt from an interview in the 90s with Black science fiction writer Octavia Butler discussing the speculative impacts of climate change in the 2020s. Now nearly two years into this decade, I am feeling a need to process.

Looking back, I can see that 2020 and the years preceding didn’t leave much room for respite. This residency provides an opportunity for me to reorient my time and energy towards self-reflection, self-nurturance and self-celebration.

I’ll be pausing to be with the themes in my work, particularly belonging, healing and queering as well as disability and climate justice. I’ll be sitting with the scores, texts, and projects that have been on my heart and giving them the time I’ve not had until now.

It feels good to be here, sharing space and reflecting for a month. Please feel welcome to look around my studio and get in touch using comments if you’d like.

Hope you enjoy your visit,

Rebekah

Intro

Greetings everyone!

My name is Siphenathi Mayekiso, welcome to my studio. I am a trained physical theatre performer/actor and an integrated dancer/choreographer. 

I regard myself as a storyteller and poetic mover. I draw my creative inspiration from different aspects of life, abstract images, philosophy, ideologies and history at large. I am fascinated by objects in space in relation to the body and the inclusivity of what is not part of the body to move as one while telling a story. As an artist I am at a place where I use my body as a catalyst in negotiating dialogues around inclusivity and body politics which circles the notion of being differently-able.

Being part of Vital Capacities residency is an extremely good opportunity for me to expand my knowledge in creating a virtual performance that seeks to be inclusive and accessible. There are a number of concepts/research that I wish to interrogate during the residency while weaving together the narrative using body in relation to objects. For instance, what does the phrase “being-in-the-closet” mean?

Please feel welcomed to look around my studio and the work I will be posting. Spoiler alert: It will be a collage of different images, audios and videos. 

Please leave a comment or questions for me in the comments section (below) for us to engage. 

I hope that you’ll enjoy your visit.

Siphenathi Mayrkiso

[2]

Black screen with white font subtitle at the bottom [sound of subtitles]
Screen capture of [sound of subtitles]
Black screen with white font subtitle at the bottom [music and sound fades]
Screen capture of [sound of subtitles]

These two images are the beginning and the end of the video work titled [sound of subtitles].

[1]

Screen capture of video with white font subtitle with black background. All 3 stills of video from videos are identical and are placed side by side. They are black and white images of clay covered hands shaping a round shaped pottery on wheel. The person is wearing long sleeved shirt that is rolled up at lower arms. The images have different subtitles. On the left image it reads [turning], middle image reads [sound of remembering fondly], the right image reads [soaring orchestra music].
Screen capture of 3 video with white font subtitle with black background
Screen capture of video with white font subtitle with black background. All 3 stills of video from videos are identical and are placed side by side. They are coloured images of clay covered hands shaping pottery on a wheel. These images have different subtitles. On the left video it reads [holding], middle video reads [sound of listening inward], the right video reads [♪♪♪].
Screen capture of 3 video with white font subtitle with black background
Screen capture of video with white font subtitle with black background. All 3 stills of video from videos are identical and are placed side by side. They are coloured images of clay covered hands shaping brown pottery on wheel. The images have different subtitles. On the left it reads [shaping], the middle video reads [sound of emptiness in the room], and the right reads [mysterious string music].
Screen capture of 3 video with white font subtitle with black background

[turning] [sound of remembering fondly] [soaring orchestra music] [holding] [sound of listening inward] [♪♪♪] [shaping] [sound of emptiness in the room] [mysterious string music]

Audio will be silent in my piece for the final outcome of this residency- I aim for the subtitles to show the endless possibilities of what the words would sound like for the viewers.

Video Testing

Video Projection Testing on wall

I have been experimenting with multiple videos using Premiere Pro and After Effects. It has been a daunting task to figure out the dimensions and creating subtitles! This is a snippet of what I’ve been working on today in the impromptu ‘studio’ space- a quickly emptied out space in a small living room wall where I pushed the sofa to the side to create enough space for the video projection. There are three videos playing at once, all are the same videos of hand throwing the wheel, shaping round-shaped pottery. On individual screens, there are different subtitles, on left there is an ‘action’ based subtitle ([turning] & [creating shape]) and in the middle, there’s the abstract subtitle ([sound of shifting relationship] & [sound of remembering]) and on right there’s a ‘music’ based subtitle([Dramatic theme playing] & [♪♪♪]). This video is originally from Craft / Potting / Bookbinding Practice Film from Bexley Local Studies & Archive Centre located in London’s Screen Archives. I am going in the direction where I would like to experiment with the same video but with different subtitles to ‘alter’ the experience for the viewer – changing the perception of the event with the poetic language of the subtitle.

Screen capture of 3 videos playing side by side, each individual video shows a pair of hands shaping brown clay pottery on wheel. Each individual video has white subtitles on a black background- the video on the left reads [throwing],  the middle video reads [sound of emptiness in the room], the video on the right reads[dramatic theme playing]. All three videos are on black box.
Screen capture of 3 videos playing at once
Screen capture of 3 videos playing side by side, each video shows a pair of hands shaping brown clay pottery on the wheel. The individual videos have white subtitles on a black background. The subtitle on the left reads [gently holding], the middle subtitle reads [sound of listening inward], the right subtitle reads [soaring orchestra music]. All three videos are on black box.
Screen capture of 3 videos playing at once

This week, I am planning to experiment with multiple different videos and show these simultaneously at a more playful pace. Please leave a reply to this post to comment or ask any questions if you have any! 🙂

Studio intro

A photograph of a monitor between two curtains. The monitor is positioned in the centre of the image on a brown block in front of a window with bars on it. On the monitor’s screen is a close-up of a blonde woman. Two white curtains are positioned either side of the monitor. The wall behind the two curtains is pink. In the centre top of the image are silver balloons which spell out the words ‘STAY SICK’.
Laura Lulika, An Ode to Marge (or how i taught myself to speak again by watching the real housewives), 2018 (installation photo) Image courtesy of the artist. Credit: Judy Landkammer

Hi, I’m Laura Lulika, thanks for stopping by at my virtual studio. I’m an artist, researcher and community cultural worker with a focus on unconventional care methods and community support networks. I am interested in how we experience our bodies and how we care for ourselves and each other.

I have spent most of my time recently delivering workshops and talks on care and accessibility, working with the collective and peer support group, Sickness Affinity Group, and being a new parent.

This residency has given me the timely opportunity to return to my own personal practice and reflect on interests and curiosities that I have yet to explore. In my own experience of being housebound, which started long before the pandemic, I became interested in the culture we

consume in isolation and how that impacts our sense of self. During this residency I am going to dissect the cultural fascination with ‘hyper-able’ bodies, in sports, cartoons and popular culture. The obsession with body limits is simultaneously jarring and relatable to my personal experiences of having an unreliable body. Sick and disabled bodies are commonly perceived as ‘unhealthy’, something to be cured rather than cared for.

And at the same time, we are often pushed to perform feats of ability to be deemed worthy by capitalism. I have gently titled this project, ‘Body Builder’, in reference to my deceased Dad who was a body builder and where I think I can mark the beginning of my own awareness of hyper-able bodies.

This research will inform some playful explorations into how I have consumed, digested, absorbed, adopted or rejected these performative tropes and characteristics.

Please feel free to look around the studio and leave comments and questions in the comments section if you want to.

Hope you find something that speaks to you,

Laura Lulika

Studio intro

A collage of green leaves, white daisies with yellow centres, and stripes of yellow and red streak across the image.
Linda Stupart, Watershed, 2020 (video still) – image courtesy of the artist

Two Summers ago, I went on a boat to the Arctic Circle and swam in the sea and crawled through the ice as a virus and an alien and myself. It was very cold and intense, but I finally felt close, really close, to the melting polar Ice Caps.

2020 Summer and the virus was suddenly something really tangible and terrifying for everyone in the world. We were stuck inside, but were allowed to take a daily walk. I wanted to carry on thinking about ecologies and nature and bodies and intimacy, so I decided to get into the River Cole – a river in Birmingham that runs really near my house. Because it’s in Birmingham, the river is dirty and full of the run-off of people’s lives and this felt/feels important. So, I started the process of walking down it.

In the last year I have done five walks down the river, moving further towards the mouth each time.  In this residency I hope to do a lot more walks, getting further away from my home and deeper into the river. I want to also spend time editing, writing, and collaging with the footage of walks I have shot since I made this film in 2020. In the Arctic we didn’t have any access to the internet. Now, cyberspace has become one of the only places we can be together and it’s been both horrible and warm – the way that everything is connected online – like root systems or rivers, even though a lot of the internet (like root systems or rivers) is rotten.

It’s good to reside here for a month and work inside this ecology, too. Look around and get in touch using comments if you’d like.

Studio intro

A black rectangular lightbox with a white screen has the word what with a question mark written 3 times on it, black pipes leave the box on the left and right sides.
Seo Hye Lee, What Did You Say?, 2017 (audio-visual installation)

Hi, my name is Seo Hye Lee (pronoun: She/Her). Welcome to my studio! 

I am a Somerset-based South Korean artist. I consider myself to be an artist that works with mediums of sound, illustration, and installation. I like to explore the nature of sound as a deaf individual in different ways.

As someone who has frequently worked with audio-visual installation, I would like to push my practice toward creating works within the video installation and moving image format. Due to my deafness, I grew up relying on subtitles in film and media. I have since become interested in subtitles as a nuanced form of communication. This residency will provide a fantastic opportunity for me to explore this in greater depth and allow me to experiment with the context of subtitles more boldly, particularly engaging with other artists and researching in depth. For this residency, I will be experimenting with the language of subtitle, and the inaccuracy of auto-generated captions and transcriptions through the medium of video projection.

I hope you will enjoy the documentation of my process and research in my virtual studio and please feel free to ask me any questions or leave comments! 

00 Intro

Three digitised figures appear from a digital background. The background waves of digital data, in pink and green, all on a black background. The figures are also waves of data, two are in electric blue and green, the other an off white colour.
Vishal Kumaraswamy, Swaayattate, 2020 (video still)

Hi, my name is Vishal Kumaraswamy and welcome to my Virtual Studio.

I’m a Bangalore based Artist & Filmmaker. Within my practice, I work across AI, text, video, sound and performance and I look for points of convergence between Caste, Race & Technology. My works weave speculative narratives & counter-mythologies in multiple Indian languages around themes of Artificial Intelligence, Gender & Labour.

Continue reading “00 Intro”

00 INTRO

What’s Happening Artist? Vital Capacities artist studio preface 線上駐村藝術家做什麼?

Hello, my name is Tzu-Huan Lin. Welcome to my studio!

I am a Taiwanese artist living and working in Brooklyn so please bear with my English. In my studio you will find my research, work in progress and my Vtuber. Many times during artist talk people ask me about how I create video work? Does the narrative(story) come first or the image itself? It’s like a chicken and egg question for me, I like to see things Janus faced. Standing in the cross road makes me able to see the destination so I can make some detours on the way.

Continue reading “00 INTRO”

So, what’s this risograph thing?

Outline image of risograph printed in pink.
An outline image of a risograph machine

As the work I’m developing moves towards the print stage, it’s time to explain a little more about the risograph process.

My print and printmaking experience started with etching (particularly photo-etching), letterpress, and developed to include screenprinting, and various relief processes, before the transition to digital. Last year, I got the opportunity to develop some work with my friend and collaborator Ruth Jones, who suggested we learn to use the risograph process. This post uses images from developing that work.

Continue reading “So, what’s this risograph thing?”

“Hello work”

This morning I came across the following article related to problems with machine translation (which I’ve been referring to as AI transcription). This has been flagged by language professionals in Japan; it was interesting to see them dealing with the same perceptions of mistranslation as just amusing – they raise the problem of the dangers with miscommunication.

“…the group is most concerned about the negative impact that official miscommunications could have on tourism and Japan’s growing foreign community in the case of an earthquake or a medical emergency.”

Living = Dark Matter

“The official website of Meguro ward in Tokyo, for example, renders kurashi – or “living” – as “dark matter”, while the Kobe municipal government, turns sumai (home) as “I’m sorry”, the machine translation having apparently misread the original word as sumanai, a casual form of apology.”

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/18/hello-work-or-job-centre-language-experts-japan-english

Access Statement:

Photo of the artist holding smiling behind an industry film camera.
Onset as Cinematographer with LIFT Filmmentor program (2014) Photo by Rolla Tahir.

My name is Jaene F. Castrillon and I am a professional artist residing in Tkaronto, more commonly known as Toronto, Canada. I am an artist that lives with physical, cognitive and psychiatric disabilities. This is my access statement.






First I would like to acknowledge the land that I am on….. Treaty 13 Territory of Tkaronto:

The sacred land on which [I live] has been a site of human activity for 15,000 years. This land is the territory of the Huron-Wendat and Petun First Nations, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. The territory was the subject of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Iroquois Confederacy and the Ojibwe and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes.

Today, the meeting place of Toronto is still the home to many indigenous people from across Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work in the community, on this territory.

**This statement was developed by the Elders Circle (Council of Aboriginal Initiatives). It was last revised November 6, 2014.**



A note about Land Acknowledgements. Acknowledging the stewardship of Indigenous people of the land is not enough. We much learn their ways and care for the land as well as they have. As part of that contract, it is understood that we must also work on our respect of Indigenous people’s and ways of life. We must also learn to be humble enough to understand that nature has it’s own natural law.
Until we learn to live in collaboration with the people, the land and everything in creation as equals and relations, only then, will the land acknowledgement have any honor in the words. The land is the blood of it’s people. Walk softly on it knowing that as we walk on this land, we walk on the blood and bones of the ancestors of the Indigenous peoples who have resided here far longer and lived with the land far better then us.

I would like to say that, for me, being anti poverty, anti oppressive and anti racist is an accessibility issue. As a person who is 2Spirit (gender non conforming) and Indigenous, it is important for my work environments to be as anti oppressive as possible. This includes removing ablest, homophobic, Trans-phobic, sexist, colonial and oppressive mechanisms and languages in the work we do and the environments we work in.

In addition here are some other infographs from Home Office Digital, to help us understand how to accommodate people living with disabilities that may be different needs from ours. For more information, contact: access@digital.homeoffice.gov.uk

Welcome to my studio

My name is Jaene F. Castrillon and I am an interdisciplinary Film based artist residing in Toronto, Canada. By story-telling through art I express what is an internal journey of exploring the spiritual, social, political and cultural issues concerning social justice, advocacy, poverty, marginalization and equality.

I examine the relationship I have to these different structures organically and present it to the audience through an experiential journey. My goal is to shift the paradigm from “marginalization” to acceptance and understanding that people like me are part of the fabric of humanity.

My work, Mourning Song, explores my relationship to the world through my blood memory as an Indigenous person of Chinese descent.

Please feel welcome to look around my studio, at the work I’ve posted up – there are images, videos and text. You are welcome to leave a comment or questions for me in the comments section.

Hope you enjoy your visit,

Jaene

Welcome to my studio

Hi, my name’s Clifford Sage, welcome to my studio. I’m a CGI artist working in animation and world building.  Although I often find technology entrancing, I’ve always appreciated the power and vastness of nature and wilderness- which fuels my interest and curiosity in the potential of virtual worlds. 

Audio and visuals have always gone hand in hand for me, I started my visual practice in 2001 alongside my audio project “Recsund.” I’ve used the medium of sound as a diary throughout my adolescence but later discovered the intertwined nature of audio in my visual work.  I am curious to use sound in interactive and generative ways through game-play and puzzle solving, exploring new ways of storytelling and immersion. 

I am looking forward to taking part in this residency to develop some ideas that I have started to form throughout the last few years, but never had the chance to indulge. I find this opportunity very inspiring but am also overwhelmed with the potential of what can be done within the relatively new area of interactive game design I’m going to be exploring.  I hope that I’m able to create an immersive piece throughout the next few weeks, while exploring and experimenting with ever-changing narratives.  

Please feel welcome to look around my studio, and feel free to leave a comment or questions for me in the comments section, hope you enjoy!

Welcome to my studio

Hand holding a white card up to the camera. Text on the card is superimposed over an orange helix. It reads "Collaboration over competition".
From “A Snapshot of Southend as a Cultural Environment for Womxn”. Damien Robinson/Ruth Kathryn Jones, 2019. Image credit: Anna Lukala

My name is Damien Robinson. I’m a visual artist who works with a range of digital and ‘actual’ media, frequently mixing things up to see what happens. As a deaf person, I’ve had limited access to learning and training, and what began as experiments to figure out how to do something has become a strategy I use in my work. Repurposing and misusing processes can be a way of discovering new processes and outcomes. Or sometimes just having fun with an idea. I’ll be experimenting with AI transcription, looking at subtitling of ambient sound, and maybe even some print-making. 

Please enjoy looking around my studio, at the work I’ve posted up – there are images, videos and text. You are welcome to leave a comment or questions for me in the comments section.

INTRO

This is a video still of my work 'The Afterlife of Rosy Leavers', in which my animated self with red hair and red glasses falls into the spiral of a virtual space.
Video still of ‘The Afterlife of Rosy Leavers’, 14 min 35 sec, 2017

Hi, I’m Angela Su, welcome to my studio.

As an artist from Hong Kong, having an artist studio is a luxury. The virtual studio space is really exciting as I have a chance to showcase not only the finished work but also the research process.

For this residency I will explore the sandbox video game Minecraft as a creative tool that blurs the boundary between the digital and physical worlds. In the Research tab, you will find posts about how the protests in Hong Kong and gaming interact, influence and shape each other — on one hand, street protests borrowed strategies from video games, and on the other hand, banners and slogans appeared on games such as Minecraft and Animal Crossing. I will explore the different ways to engage in digital activism by posting a series of case studies.

Angela