Kate Armstrong (artist)

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For the Canadian memoirist, see Kate Armstrong (memoirist).

Kate Armstrong is a Canadian artist, writer and curator with a history of projects focusing on experimental literary practices, networks and public space.[1]

Biography[edit]

Armstrong is a Canadian artist, writer, and curator.[1] She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. She received a master of philosophy in humanities degree from Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland. After gaining her master's degree from Memorial University in her early twenties, she began her current career path in the arts.[2] The main focus of her work is to explore the relationship between art and technology.[3]

Armstrong was born in Calgary and lived in New York, Glasgow and Japan, later moving to Vancouver, British Columbia. She resides in Vancouver. She is married to Michael Tippett and has 2 children. [2]

Career[edit]

Kate Armstrong is a pioneer in generative art and generative literature, her work spans generative text and image systems, speculative fiction, blockchain text-poetry, video, dynamic graphic novels, and location-aware fiction, among other conceptually driven hybrid forms. Her speculative provocation Report from Future Times, which takes the form of a video report by an unnamed source from the future who outlines the contours of a world transformed by artists and designers, was presented to the European League of Institutes of the Arts in 2021. Report from Future Times was originally commissioned in 2020 by Oliver Hockenhull for a special edition of subTerrain titled A House Made of Dawn: The Sublime Horizon of the Digital Arts as the Concluding Formation of the Information Civilization.

Her poem I, Sinkhole, which is written on products in a Zazzle store - including a ping pong paddle, a trucker hat, and a shot glass – was part of Poeme Objkt Subjkt curated by the Verseverse for Librarie Metamorphose and L’Avant Gallerie Vossen in Paris and was shortlisted for the 2023 Lumen Prize in Crypto Art. The poem was presented at Art Basel Miami Beach at Tezos @ South Beach, presented by Trilitech and Refraction DAO. The venue became the subject of Tezpole, a controversy and collective artistic response from the Tezos community.

Other works focus on creating narrative through recombinant text and image systems, such as Grafik Dynamo[4] (2005), Space Video (2012) that addresses ideas of inner and outer space exploration through a generative system that mixes an original non-linear narrative with YouTube videos uploaded in real time, and Why Some Dolls Are Bad (2007), a dynamically generated graphic novel built on the now-defunct public Facebook API that engages themes of ethics, fashion, and artifice in order to re-examine systems and materials such as mohair, contagion, and environmental decay. Other projects focus on generating narrative through dynamic inputs in physical space, such as PATH (2008), a 12-volume bookwork with text generated by the movement of an anonymous individual living in the city of Montreal between 2005-2007, which was exhibited at Unit/Pitt in 2012, and PING (2003),[5] which distributed psychogeographic commands to participants calling in to a custom software platform from their cell phones and was part of PsyGeoConflux curated by Dave Mandl and Christina Ray with arts organization Glowlab in New York in 2005.

Armstrong publishes on issues in contemporary art and has written for P.S.1/MoMa, Blackflash, Fillip, SubTerrain, and the Kootenay School of Writing, contributed to DAMP: Contemporary Vancouver Media Arts (Anvil Press, 2008), and is the editor of Ten Different Things (2018), Art and Disruption (2015), and Electric Speed (2013). She is the author of Crisis and Repetition: Essays on Art and Culture (Michigan State University Press, 2002).[6] in addition to numerous essays. She contributed to For Machine Use Only: Contemplations on algorithmic epistemology (&&& c/o The New Centre for Research and Practice, 2016) and #WomenTechLit (West Virginia University Press, 2017). Other books include Medium (2011) and Source Material Everywhere (2011).

As a curator she has produced exhibitions, events and publications in contemporary art and technology internationally. She founded Upgrade Vancouver[7] in 2003 and has produced over 100 events in the field of art and technology in Vancouver, as well as many international events and exhibitions in connection with Upgrade International,[8] a network operating in 30 cities worldwide. Upgrade Vancouver was the first node in Upgrade International outside New York City.

In 2006, 2007 and 2008 Armstrong convened ArtCamp, an unconference devoted to art, design and media.

In 2008 Armstrong commissioned and curated Tributaries and Text-Fed Streams,[9] a work by J.R. Carpenter, which investigated the formal properties of RSS syndication as a literary form.

With Malcolm Levy she founded the Goethe Satellite, an initiative of the Goethe Institut that produced ten exhibitions between 2011-2013 including works by Instant Coffee and Wallpapers. Armstrong and Levy were Artistic Directors of the 21st International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA2015), which presented the work of over 150 artists in Vancouver in 2015 including exhibitions at the Vancouver Art Gallery, the New Media Gallery, and the Museum of Vancouver.

She curated Ten Different Things, a series of 10 public art commissions funded by the City of Vancouver and CityStudio, which featured Colleen Brown (Assemble/Reassemble/Dissemble, Repeat), Instant Coffee (Slow Dance), Laiwan (Mobile Barnacle Live/Work Studio), Khan Lee (Composition for Seven Pianos), Holly Schmidt (Accretion), Henry Tsang (RIOT FOOD HERE), Janet Wang (in/visible), Casey Wei (Art Rock No. 31 FINALE), Jen Weih (Admin Meets the Guts), and Denise Holland and Pongsakorn Yananissorn (Open Season).

Armstrong served on the board of influential artist run centre Western Front for several years, including 2 years as Chair and an additional year as Interim Executive Director. She was on the External Advisory Council for the City of Vancouver’s Creative City Strategy, a culture plan for 2020-2029.

In 2015 she founded Startland in response to the migration of Syrian refugees to Canada. The initiative partnered with the ISS of BC, Microsoft, Version One Ventures, and technology companies Lighthouse Labs, Brain Station, RED Academy, and CodeCore, and raised over 500K to support free training for immigrants and refugees wishing to enter the technology sector.

She is a founding board member of BC Artscape, originally an affiliate of Toronto-based Artscape, though the two organizations separated after 2 years of partnership and BC Artscape became BCA. In 2018 BC Artscape opened a $5M 55,000 square foot studio supporting over 70 artists and organizations at the Sun Wah Centre in Vancouver’s Chinatown. In 2021 BCA merged with Vancouver-based artist run centre 221A.

Her exhibitions include the Contemporary Art Centre (Vilnius, Lithuania), Yerba Buena Centre (San Francisco) and Akbank Sanat (Istanbul), and her work was included in Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art 1905–2016 at the Whitney Museum in New York as part of Lorna Mills’ Ways of Something (2017). Ways of Something has been exhibited at the Carnegie Museum, Haus der elektronischen Künste, Centro Cultural São Paulo, Museum of the Moving Image, and Taipei Contemporary Art Center.

Armstrong’s artworks are held in collections including Rhizome, Turbulence, the Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections at York University, the Rose Goldsen Archive at Cornell University, the Library of the Printed Web, and by collectors on Objkt.

From 2005 to 2008 she taught at Simon Fraser University in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology in Surrey, British Columbia. She lectured at Tate Britain in mid 2009.[10] In 2013 she joined Emily Carr University of Art + Design in the role of Director of Living Labs.

In 2018 Armstrong founded the Shumka Centre for Creative Entrepreneurship, which supports emerging artists and designers who want to launch, fund, or organize ambitious projects across the spectrum of contemporary art and design activities including products, projects, curatorial initiatives, platforms, companies, and organizations. Armstrong stepped down as Director of the Shumka Centre for Creative Entrepreneurship in 2022.

Through Living Labs she develops and produces art, design, research and technology projects. Armstrong developed and ran the program Design for Startups, which by 2023 had engaged over 125 early stage technology companies in partnered research, placing 125 emerging designers on company teams. Design for Startups has been supported by Canada’s Digital Supercluster, Innovate BC, and the National Research Council (NRC-IRAP). Armstrong developed the Artist Apprenticeship Network in 2019, supported by the Royal Bank Foundation. By 2021 that program had paired over 50 emerging artists with galleries, curators, and established artists where they gain hands-on studio and production experience.

Armstrong joined the Vancouver Art Gallery as a Trustee in 2019 and became Chair of the Acquisitions Committee in 2022.

In 2022 Armstrong launched the research initiative AI Futures for Art and Design in partnership with the Centre for Transdisciplinary Studies led by Dr. Ron Burnett. Armstrong leads the initiative and publishes regularly on this subject.

Projects[edit]

  • Space Video (2012) – Project that addresses ideas of exploration in inner and outer space. Commissioned by Turbulence.org
  • Medium (2011) – Book compiling the results of an internet project of the same name[2]
  • Source Material Everywhere: A Remix (2011) – Book consisting of compiled Wikipedia entries for the terms "source", "material", and "everywhere"
  • Path (2008) – 12 volume text generated book based on the physical movements of an anonymous individual in Montreal. An updated edition was released in 2012[11]
  • Why Some Dolls are Bad (2007) – Graphic novel generator that mixes images and original text to create a narrative
  • Grafik Dynamo (2005–2008) – Net artwork that converted images from the internet into live-action comic strips from 2005 to 2008. Commissioned by Turbulence.org. Reviewed in Digital Humanities. Quarterly[12] and Leonardo.[13]
  • Pattern Language (2005–2007) – Online system that attaches patterns of narrative to participants as they travel through Montreal
  • The Problem of Other Minds (2006) – Voice-activated robotic sculpture that unspools a roll of paper when it recognizes keywords
  • IN[]EX (2006) – Project in which thousands of wooden blocks with embedded technology are released in the city for public engagement
  • PING (2003) – Telephone menu system that directs participants through the city. Reviewed in Beyond the Screen, 2010[14]

Publications and essays[edit]

  • Chapter 28. A Collective Imaginary: A Published Conversation, with Kate Armstrong Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities: Contexts, Forms, and Practices[15]
  • A Manual for the Discrete and the Continuous, Fillip, Issue 11 (2010)
  • Visual Geographies, Blackflash Magazine (2010)
  • Yo Dawg, I Hear You Like Culture So I Put Some Culture in Your Culture, Granville Magazine (2009)
  • Robots in the Garden, Catalogue essay, Second Site Collective (2009)
  • Data and Narrative: Location Aware Fiction, trAce Online Writing Centre, (2003)
  • Crisis & Repetition: Essays on Art and Culture,(2002)

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b "Kate Armstrong". Banff Centre.
  2. ^ a b c "Kate Armstrong, Writer, Artist and Independent Curator". Canadian Art.
  3. ^ "Kate Armstrong". KateArmstrong.com.
  4. ^ "Grafik Dynamo!". turbulence.org.
  5. ^ O'Rourke, Karen (2013). Walking and Mapping. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. pp. 85–87. ISBN 978-0-262-01850-0.
  6. ^ Crisis and Repetition. Michigan State University. 30 July 2007. ISBN 978-0-870135965. Archived from the original on 31 July 2007. Retrieved 30 July 2007.
  7. ^ "Upgrade Vancouver". Upgrade Vancouver. 30 July 2007. Archived from the original on 8 March 2009. Retrieved 30 July 2007.
  8. ^ "The Upgrade International". The Upgrade. 30 July 2007. Retrieved 30 July 2007.
  9. ^ "Tributaries and text fed streams". The Capilano Review. 30 July 2007. Retrieved 30 July 2007.
  10. ^ Armstrong, Kate (9 April 2009). "City Narratives Triennial Workshop". National Archives. Archived from the original on 2 August 2011. Retrieved 2 August 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  11. ^ "Path". KateArmstrong.com.
  12. ^ Tabbi, Joseph (2012). "Graphic Sublime: On the Art and Designwriting of Kate Armstrong and Michael Tippett" (PDF). Digital Humanities Quarterly. 6 (2) – via ProQuest.
  13. ^ Grigar, Dene (2012). "Grafik Dynamo by Kate Armstrong and Michael Tippett, with essay by Joseph Tabbi. The Prairie Gallery, Alberta, Canada, 2010. 48 pp., illus. ISBN 978-0-9780646-2-4". Leonardo. 45 (2): 177–178. doi:10.1162/leon_r_00294. ISSN 0024-094X.
  14. ^ Raley, Rita (2010). Schafer, Jorgen; Gendolla, Peter (eds.). Beyond the Screen: Transformations of Literary Structures, Interfaces and Genres (Media Upheavals). UK: Media Upheavals. pp. 299–310. ISBN 978-3837612585.
  15. ^ O'Sullivan, James (2021). Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities Contexts, Forms, & Practices. Open access: Bloomsbury Academic Press. pp. 315–323. ISBN 978-1-5013-6350-4.
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