Matthew Kenyon - Residency

Matthew Kenyon, Associate Professor at Pennsylvania State University, USA will be hosted by CoLab from June 22 to July 21. Matt teaches physical computing, video and 3D animation. He is one half of the S.W.A.M.P group  (Studies of Work, Atmospheres and Mass Production) with Douglas Easterly. Douglas is currently based at Victoria University in Wellington where he is teaching programming and multimedia in the Department of Architecture and Design. S.W.A.M.P work is critical, technological and often very funny. For more info see www.swamp.nu.

During his visit Matt will be offering student workshops on Max Jitter to Digital Design students, as well as running 'Bio – Fi', a hands-on public workshop that combines data mining and data realization expressely for the creating of works of art/design. This workshop is most recent in a series of physical computing workshops by Doug Easterly and Matt Kenyon they presented several one-day workshops on this theme at the Guerilla Studio Siggraph in 2005 and ISEA 2008.

Matt will be the keynote speaker at a CoLab Symposium that will take place on Friday 17 July. Scholars and artists from widely different disciplines will explore notions of social activism, new technologies and the modern surveillance state – details will be posted soon.

Matt will also create an Urban project in association with an exhibition at MIC Toi Rerehiko.

Swamp Bio:

Douglas Easterly was born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska, United
States. Earning a B.A. and M.F.A in painting, he is self-taught in
terms of new media skills. His work stems from interests and research
regarding genetics, information theory, cybernetics, evolution,
procedural art, emergence theory and popular culture. This work ranges
from performance art, video, installation, multimedia, web art and
programming. Currently he is an Assistant Professor at Victoria
University of Wellington where he teaches programming and multimedia
in the department of Architecture and Design.

Matthew Kenyon was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States and
has a M.F.A in painting from Virginia Commonwealth University. He is
interested in the convergence of art, emerging technologies and
popular culture. Many of his recent works feature wearable computing
technologies and robotics as a means for making cultural critique.
Matt currently is an Assistant Professor of New Media at Penn State
University where he teaches physical computing, video and 3D
animation.

Doug Easterly and Matthew Kenyon collaborated on there first S.W.A.M.P
project in 1999 in Louisiana. Some of the projects are performance
art, some are computing. What they all share in common is a certain
scope of inspection of popular/culture/mass media/social survey.

SWAMP description:

SWAMP is an organization whose primary goal is to find creative
expression within elements of culture that are inherently
counter-creative.

Clusters of fast food chains are proportioned around residential
subdivisions like feedbags strapped to the demographical heads of the
middle class. Shopping malls tesselate around the structures of the
automobile, leaving our phantom limbs to sleepwalk strapped in our
seatbelts. At home, social spaces are replaced with control spaces:
chairs and sofas rotate to obsequiously receive the glowing radiation
from hundreds of channels whose collective voice weaves "BUY-NOW"
messages into every facet of the meme-machine mislabeled 'creative
programming'.