Prof Susan Collins
Professor of Fine Art
Slade School of Fine Art University College London
Gower Street London WC1E 6BT
susan.collins@ucl.ac.uk +44 (0)20 7679 2313 www.susan-collins.net
Biography
Born in London I received my BA (hons) Fine Art from the Slade School in 1987 and studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as a Fulbright Scholar in the early 1990's. I was appointed to set up Electronic Media at the Slade in 1995, founding the UCL Slade Centre for Electronic Media in Fine Art in the same year becoming Head of Electronic Media (until 2010).
I served as Head of the Undergraduate Fine Art Media area from 2005-10 and Director of Undergraduate Studies from 2009-10. I became Head of Department and Director of the School in 2010 (until 2018) and Slade Professor from 2013 (until 2018). I am currently Head of Research at the Slade.
Research Summary

still from Glenlandia 2005-7
The work since 2001 has developed the 'remote' aspects first explored in In Conversation through a series of works exploring transmission, networking and time as primary materials including Transporting Skies which transported sky (and other phenomena) live between Newlyn Art Gallery, Penzance in Cornwall and Site Gallery Sheffield in Yorkshire; Fenlandia and Glenlandia - live year long pixel by pixel internet transmissions from remote landscapes; The Spectrascope, an ongoing live pixel by pixel transmission from a haunted house; Seascape a solo show for the De La Warr Pavilion which simultaneously recorded a panoramic series of Seascapes pixel by pixel over the course of a year from the South East Coast of England and Wembury & Woolacombe, commissioned by Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter (RAMM) with the support of the National Trust.

Other work since 2001 includes the BAFTA nominated Tate in Space commissioned for Tate Online and Love Brid, an animated short film commissioned by Animate Projects. The work is exhibited nationally and internationally with group exhibitions in the UK, Canada, Denmark, The Netherlands, Germany, Israel, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Tasmania, U.S.A, Mexico, Peru, Turkey and Thailand. Public commissions include a wildlife surveillance system for Sarah Wigglesworth Architects’s RIBA award winning Classroom of the Future, Underglow, a network of illuminated drains for the Corporation of London, and Brighter Later a light installation driven by live weather data at the Radcliffe Observatory, commissioned by Tracing Venus, the University of Oxford's Public Art Programme.
The most recent pixel based works are LAND 2017 (still below) a view across the Palestinian West Bank towards the Jordanian Mountains from Jerusalem, and Five Hours Later 2019 a pixel based transmission between Sheffield, UK and Boston, USA commissioned by Site Gallery Sheffield in collaboration with ICA Boston and MWX (Museums on the Web) Boston.
Exhibitions
Beyond Boundaries
2019Somerset House, London
"An exhibition of work by 24 artists of international renown with close working associations to two of the most important art institutions in the world; the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (CAFA) and the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, London." Curated by Andrew Stahl and Guo Xiaohui.
Borders
2018Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, 2320 West Chicago Avenue, Chicago, IL, 60622, United State
Borders are complicated and multi-layered issues. They define relationships of all kinds: political, economic, national, personal, emotional, spiritual. They delineate neighborhoods, countries, continents as well as marriages, friendships, and contracts. Domchenko writes, "as a child of immigrants, borders have always been important to me. Where we live, where we work, where we play, all define us as individuals and communities. Over the years, borders have and are important markers." This exhibit presents images of landscapes that unite and define individuals. Whether they are specific in time and place or general in elements and geography, the landscape functions as both home and future, distance and past. The borders presented in these images help create and define the worlds presented. The four artists in this exhibit--Suzette Bross, Susan Collins, Yvette Kaiser Smith, and Lincoln Schatz--all use the visual language of landscapes to present their own visions. Curated by Natalie Domchenko
Collaborators 5: The Hand of The Artist
2018Roaming Room, The Old Telephone Exchange, BT Building, Kennings Way, Kennington, London SE11 4EF
A large format print from LAND (2017) was included in Roaming Room’s Collaborators 5: The Hand of the Artist, a group exhibition with work by 35 artists opening on 8th September and continuing until 23rd. LAND reveals an image constructed pixel by pixel over 12 hours continuously from a camera sited in East Jerusalem looking out across the Palestinian West Bank towards Jordan. It is the first time the work will have been seen in the UK.
Turning Point
2017Sayle Gallery, Isle of Man
12 Hour Duration Digital Slideshow (run Direct From Computer To Flatscreen)
The new exhibition at the Sayle Gallery in Douglas, marks an important stage in the Gallery’s development. It will not only bring in the work of significant artists from the contemporary art world beyond our Island's shores but it will also mark a turning point for the gallery as it embarks on a journey in a new direction. The exhibition showcases the work of five artists with international recognition including Turner Prize winner, Mark Wallinger. This will be the first time a Turner Prize winner has shown work on the Isle of Man. The exhibition brings together works that question what it is to live on an Island; issues of home; rites of passage; isolation; aspiration; boundaries … It explores different relationships that we have with the sea, coastline and Island Culture. Besides Mark Wallinger: Manxman and artist, Kevin Atherton; Keith McIntyre, Head of Art at the University of Northumbria; Susan Collins, Professor of Art at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, and artist Shona Illingworth have contributed artwork to the show. The exhibition has been curated by Helen Fox, Programme Manager for Art, Design and Media at the University College, Isle of Man, in collaboration with the Sayle Gallery. Helen’s curation of the show forms part of her research project which looks at what kind of frameworks we need for the visibility of contemporary art practice in an Island context? How are artists affected by the communities they make work in and how that community responds to that work? All the exhibiting artists use ‘new media’ in the production of their work and as a result the show is almost entirely digital.
LAND
2017Tel Aviv Artists' Studio Gallery
In October 2016 a network camera was installed on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem looking east across the West Bank towards the Jordanian Mountains. The camera constructed images pixel by pixel, line by line from the top left to the bottom right hand corner of the frame so that each completed image represents just over twelve hours of time. The camera remained in situ until April 2017, recording the the seasons, and the weather, over a six month period. LAND is the latest in a series of works which construct images from remote landscapes over time, and the first in the series to be located outside the UK. Located in Israel, the camera looks East from Jerusalem towards the Jordanian Mountains across a deeply historic, biblical and complicated landscape that has been written about and referenced over millennia. The twelve hour timeframe for each image is intended to loosely refer to Halachic time, which divides the daylight portion of the day into twelve equal hours’. Images from LAND were saved at regular intervals, which form a stills based archive of the work. The work was presented as a live updating image at Tel Aviv Artists Studio Gallery from 14 January – 18 February 2017 along with a series of prints from the work.
Essex Road III
2016Tintype Gallery
I was commissioned to make a short animated film, Wild Life, for this group screening exhibition. Now in its third year, Tintype’s Essex Road invites eight artists to each make a short film connected to the mile-long north London street. The gallery window, on a busy corner in Essex Road, becomes a public screen for six weeks over Christmas and New Year. The films are back-projected into the window on a loop from dusk until late.
Technology is not Neutral
2016Watermans
Prints from Fenlandia (2004-5) and moving images from Wembury & Woolacombe (2015-6) are included in this group exhibition, curated by Gordana Novakovic, Anna Dumitriu and Irini Papadimitriou/Watermans. The exhibition features existing and newly commissioned work by leading pioneering and contemporary female digital artists, such as Ghislaine Boddington, Susan Collins, Laura Dekker, Anna Dumitriu, Bhavani Esapathi, Julie Freeman, Kate Genevieve, Sue Gollifer, Luciana Haill, Nina Kov, and Gordana Novakovic. More information at http://www.phoenixbrighton.org/events/digital-women-2/; https://www.watermans.org.uk/events/technology-is-not-neutral/ and http://technologyisnotneutral.com/ Supported using public funding by Arts Council England. In partnership with The Computer Arts Society, UCL Department of Computer Science, Women Shift Digital and Phoenix Brighton.
Technology is not Neutral
2016Phoenix, Brighton
6 Prints And One Screen Based Digital Work
Prints from Fenlandia (2004-5) and moving images from Wembury & Woolacombe (2015-6) are included in this group exhibition, curated by Gordana Novakovic, Anna Dumitriu and Irini Papadimitriou/Watermans. The exhibition features existing and newly commissioned work by leading pioneering and contemporary female digital artists, such as Ghislaine Boddington, Susan Collins, Laura Dekker, Anna Dumitriu, Bhavani Esapathi, Julie Freeman, Kate Genevieve, Sue Gollifer, Luciana Haill, Nina Kov, and Gordana Novakovic. More information at http://www.phoenixbrighton.org/events/digital-women-2/; https://www.watermans.org.uk/events/technology-is-not-neutral/ and http://technologyisnotneutral.com/ Supported using public funding by Arts Council England. In partnership with The Computer Arts Society, UCL Department of Computer Science, Women Shift Digital and Phoenix Brighton.
Whatever the Weather
2015Ramm Museum, Exeter, UK
"RAMM’s major winter exhibition explores a theme which affects all our lives: the weather. Or more accurately, how weather seems to be constantly changeable, occasionally extreme and always unpredictable. Through a lively mix of historical paintings and prints, artefacts, archives and the work of contemporary artists, the exhibition exposes humanity’s relationship to the elements. It draws on the collections of the Met Office, National Trust, Arts Council Collection and Royal Meteorological Society and RAMM’s own collections."
Time Landscapes
2015Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter UK; ICA, Boston and Site Gallery Sheffield UK; Tel Aviv Artists’ Studio Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel; Primarolia Festival, Aigio Greece
Whatever The Weather
2015RAMM, Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, Devon, UK
Exhibited Wembury & Woolacombe, a new pixel landscape piece, which was specially commissioned for the exhibition. Whatever The Weather was RAMM’s major winter exhibition exploring how weather seems to be constantly changeable, occasionally extreme and always unpredictable. Through a mix of historical paintings and prints, artefacts, archives and the work of contemporary artists, the exhibition exposed humanity’s relationship to the elements. It drew on the collections of the Met Office, National Trust, Arts Council Collection and Royal Meteorological Society and RAMM’s own collections. The show included rain gods from the Americas, paintings by William Blake and Samuel Palmer, stormy seascapes and ships in distress, private weather diaries, weathervanes, barometers, thermometers and a wide range of recording instruments. Also Admiral Fitzroy’s first ever weather forecast issued by the Met Office in 1861 and Beaufort’s original table of wind strength (the Beaufort Scale) dating to 1810. In response to the historical material, RAMM commissioned Wembury & Woolacombe as a centrepiece for the exhibition alongside existing works by other contemporary artists including Simon Faithfull and Julian Grater. In developing the exhibition and events programme, RAMM worked closely with the Met Office and the National Trust.
The Small Infinite
2014John Hansard Gallery
Mark Amerika, Elif Ayter, Bill Balaskas, Bronwen Buckeridge, Sophie Clements, Susan Collins, Max Eastley, Tim Head, Henriette Heise, Chris Henschke, John Latham, Mark Lewis, Karl Lemieux, Patrick Pound, Charlie Sofo and Paul Thomas The world of today functions at the most extreme of scales, from big data and the endless expanse of the digital realm to global capital and consumption. In stark contrast, The Small Infinite celebrates the strength and endurance of the minuscule. Rejecting the current trend for grandiose gestures, the show reflects upon a world where worth and value are often represented through the most disproportionate of terms. The Small Infinite unites a diverse collection of international artists whose work focuses on more intimate perceptions of reality, ranging from photography and works on paper to sculpture, video installation and digital interventions. The exhibition explores the theme of the infinitesimally small through a range of fine art practices as diverse as particle physics, the economic crisis, utopianism, hacking, virtual worlds and the materiality of film. A key feature is the inclusion of works from the series One Second Drawings by British artist John Latham (1921-2006), which act as the exhibition’s gravitational centre. The Small Infinite returns us to a sense of humanity through discrete perceptual experiences that reject the spectacular, revealing profundity within the unseen, the intimate and the fragile. The exhibition serves to remind us that, under the hammer-blows of life and time, what endures is the small. The Small Infinite is a John Hansard Gallery exhibition curated by Lanfranco Aceti with Vince Dziekan, in partnership with Winchester School of Art.
Bodies of Water
2014Royal West of England Academy, Bristol
Programme of artists’ moving image for The Power of the Sea exhibition at the Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, UK from 5 April to 6 July 2014. It was subsequently also presented at a research event at Plymouth University, on Wednesday 11 February 2015, presented jointly by the Land/Water and the Visual Arts and Moving Image Arts (MIA) research groups. The screening was followed by a discussion led by Nick Higgs, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Marine Institute, Plymouth University.
The Negligent Eye
2014The Bluecoat
Cory Arcangel, Christiane Baumgartner, Thomas Bewick, Jyll Bradley, Maurice Carlin, Helen Chadwick, Susan Collins, Conroy/Sanderson, Nicky Coutts, Elizabeth Gossling, Beatrice Haines, Juneau Projects, Laura Maloney, Bob Matthews, London Fieldworks (with the participation of Gustav Metzger), Marilène Oliver, Flora Parrott, South Atlantic Souvenirs, Imogen Stidworthy, Jo Stockham, Wolfgang Tillmans, Alessa Tinne, Michael Wegerer, Rachel Whiteread, Jane and Louise Wilson. While printmaking has long embraced the digital, there has been a recent acceleration of interest by a younger generation of artists in approaching technology more critically. The Negligent Eye reflects this increasing experimentation with computers, rapid-form and 3D scanning and digital multiplication, through printed, sculptural, video and mixed media work, as well as earlier artworks using reprographic processes, and archival material. Curated by Jo Stockham, who has researched how over-immersion in the space of the computer creates a sense of estrangement from the world, the exhibition engages with wider questions around the impact of digital technology on our lives. How, for instance, are scanning technologies changing how we picture and experience the world? The barcode, airport body scanners, medical scans and document scanners are all fraught with notions of both revelation and theft, while the extension of digital multiplication into cloning remains contentious.
Selected Animated Photography Films
2014The Photographers Gallery, London
A programme of short animated films from the Animate Collection that use or reference photography and the hyperreal. Curated and introduced by Gary Thomas, Associate Director of Animate Projects from the Animate Collection.
Brighter Later
2013Radcliffe Observatory, Green Templeton College, Oxford
Temporary Light Installation
The historic Radcliffe Observatory, Green Templeton College, was transformed into a beacon, lit up from the inside, a temporary light installation as part of Oxford's Christmas Light Festival 2013. The interior of the Observatory Tower Room was lit from dusk until midnight each night, becoming a lantern visible across Oxford. Collins took her cue from the origins of the Observatory and its architecture, which is based on the Tower of the Winds in Athens. The installation was informed by the Observatory's prominent role in the history of astronomy and meteorological recording. Although the Observatory is no longer a working astronomical observatory, The Radcliffe weather station in the College gardens is still monitored daily by colleagues in the Department of Geography. The light show responded in real time to nature, the wind and the elements, with the weather measuring system currently in use driving the light show, linking it very specifically with the north Oxford location. Weather variables - such as temperature, pressure, rainfall and wind - drove the colour and brightness fluctuations of the light, transmitting and revealing changes through rapid and smooth transitions. The title of the Radcliffe Observatory light installation is taken from the Nick Drake track and album Bryter Layter and is an oblique reference both to weather forecasting, and the Light festival itself. The installation is part of the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter Public Art Programme commissioned by the University of Oxford and curated by Modus Operandi. It has been funded by the University of Oxford and supported using Culture funding from Oxford City Council.
It's About Time
2013ASC Gallery, Erlang House, 128 Blackfriars Road, London, SE1 8EQ
A group show in ASC Gallery, London curated by Christina Niederberger and Paul Carey-Kent.
Arte y Óptica
2013Espacio Fundación Telefónica, Lima, Peru
Glenlandia was included in “Art and optics: The Speed of Communication” an international group exhibition curated by Sean Cubitt.
Possession
2013Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, Bangkok, Thailand
“7 Days in June” a 10.5m long, floor based print work from my Seascape Series is included in this international group exhibition curated by Brian Curtin and Steve Dutton.
Inter Sections: Science in Contemporary Art
2012David Lopatie Conference Centre, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel
Digital Print
This exhibition at the David Lopatie Conference Centre at the Weizmann Institute of Science explores the meeting points between science and art. Curated by Cathy Wills 60 works by 34 artists from around the world have been included; each investigates various aspects of science, theory and technology: genetics, alternative energy, research into the nature of the universe and more. The artists: Roger Ackling, Maya Attoun, Edward Burtynsky, Daniel Canogar, Susan Collins, Mat Collishaw, Susan Derges, Jacqueline Donachie, Garry Fabian Millar, Spencer Finch, Jem Finer, Peter Fraser, Ori Gersht, Scarlett Hooft-Graafland, Barnaby Hosking, Walter Hugo, Luke Jerram, Eduardo Kac, Lilliane Lijn, Alastair Mackie, Edgar Martins, Anne-Mie Melis, Vincent Mock, David Rickard, Michal Rovner, Karen Russo, Tomer Sapir, Tomas Saraceno, Conrad Shawcross, Suzanne Treister, Troika, Alison Turnbull, Clara Ursitti, Jorinde Voigt and Douglas White.
Seascape
2012Osterwalder's Art Office
Archival Digital Prints
A solo show of prints from the Seascape archive are showing in Hamburg at Osterwalder’s Art Office
Welcome to the Treasuredome
2012ICCI 360, Weymouth, UK
Digital Animation
Love Brid has been included in ‘Welcome to the Treasuredome’, an Artists’ moving image festival at ICCI 360 curated by Stuart Moore and Kayla Parker on behalf of ICCI (Innovation for the Creative and Cultural Industries) with Plymouth University; part of Maritime Mix – London 2012 Cultural Olympiad by the Sea programme, Weymouth.
Medieval Harewood
2012All Saints Church, Harewood Estate, Leeds
Video Projection Installation
Excavation (part I), installed in All Saints Church, is a film sequence, projected on to the floor, showing an archaeologist’s hand gouging earth with a trowel during the excavation of Gawthorpe Hall the original Medieval manor house at Harewood. This work was commissioned by Harewood House and made in response to the Medieval Harewood season and exhibition. A second work also called Excavation (part 2) is a short moving image photographic ‘portrait’ exploring Medieval Harewood through its landscape.
Move on Up
2012Canary Wharf Station, London
Digital Animation
Love Brid has been included in an Animate Projects programme of films, Move on Up, screening at Canary Wharf Station from June to August 2012. The Move on Up programme is a selection from the Animate Collection of dynamic, exciting, uplifting, provocative and beautiful films made by animation artists in the UK over last 20 years. Artists include Run Wrake, Stuart Hilton, Susan Collins, Andrew Kötting and Semiconductor.
Born in 1987: The Animated GIF
2012The Photographers Gallery
Digital Animated Gif
An Animated GIF from the opening sequence of Love Brid was screened on ‘The Wall’ as part of its inaugural programme at The Photographers’ Gallery. ‘The Wall’ is a flat screen video wall hosting the Gallery’s digital programme. ‘Born in 1987: The Animated GIF’, is its first exhibition. The gallery invited contributions from a range of practitioners resulting in over 40 animated GIFs which were joined later in the exhibition by contributions from members of the public.
Found Footage: Whitechapel
2011Idea Store Whitechapel, 321 Whitechapel Road, London E1 1BU
‘Found Footage: Whitechapel’ is the latest in a series of animated works constructed entirely from still digital photographs, which play on the relationship between the still and moving image. The others in the series include ‘Love Brid’ (2009), a short film commissioned by Animate Projects, and ‘Found Footage: Bangkok’ for an exhibition at BU Gallery, Bangkok, Thailand (2010). For ‘Found Footage: Whitechapel’, Susan Collins photographed over 10,000 images around Shoreditch, Whitechapel and Stepney over a few days in July 2011. The title refers to the ‘found’ subjects which Collins came across, framed and captured with her camera.
Transitio_MX 04: Collateral Affections
2011Los Estudios Churubusco, Centro Nacional de las Artes,Av. Río Churubusco No. 79, Col. Country Club, Coyoacán, México D.F.
Collateral Affections is the theme for the 4th edition of this International New Media Art and Video Festival which included this large scale exhibition.
Uncontainable: Broken Stillness
2011Sirket-i Hayriye Sanat Galerisi Karakoy ve Eminonu Iskelesi Ust Kati Caferağa Mh. 34710 Kadıköy/Istanbul, Turkey
The subtle, beautiful and hypnotic works in Broken Stillness use digital practices to examine the border where well-established forms of image-making, especially painting and photography, meet the possibilities offered by new technologies. Through animation, motion capture, modelling software and other processes the artists generate unexpected interpretations of landscape and portraiture traditions. Slowly moving and shifting, their works reveal the constructed nature of images, highlighting our expectations about both static pictures and the hyper-speed of the digital environment. The exhibited works display the materiality of the digital or photographic image while challenging images that are frequently regarded as ‘true’ representations. Uncontainable: Broken Stillness is an exhibition supported as part of ISEA 2011 Istanbul and is also part of the Official Parallel Program of the 12th Istanbul Biennial.
Songs of The Sea
2011National Glass Centre, Liberty Way, Sunderland, SR6 0GL
Through artists’ work, archive ships’ logs and sound recordings, the exhibition explores the sea as a metaphor for storytelling. Other artists include Laura Belem and Richard Marquis.
Time Landscapes
2011Electronic Village Galleries - various venues
Time Landscapes is an exhibition of online work curated by Beryl Graham for Electronic Village Galleries: New media is often assumed to be the antithesis of all that is rural or natural – a quick and shallow ‘virtual reality’ for city slickers, which doesn’t even approach feeling the sea spray on your face, or just ‘being there’. Yet, there many layers of artificiality and man-made intervention lurking in the landscape – is that coastline restricted by the military? Is that woodland ancient semi-natural, or carefully sculpted for clients owning a country estate? Are those seaside watercolours and those photographs of farmhouse Bed and Breakfasts carefully editing out any sign of modern functionality, such as the electricity pylons? When it comes to art, new media artists still have a strong interest in landscape, and are able to use the characteristics of new media to reveal different layers of reality. This includes those layers which are not visible to the naked eye, and might be expressed as data – for example layers of numbers concerning invisible pollution, appearing as the glitches in landscape images. The connected nature and global reach of the internet also enables the artists here to play with time and space: Pollution is monitored live in real time; from a village in Cornwall, you can see the temperatures in all corners of the globe, right at that moment. Being ‘live on the internet’ does not of course always mean huge speed: these Harewood landscapes are drawn more slowly than a watercolour, and the contemplation of Pico Mirador national park unfolds to the leisurely pace of webcam refresh rates. Take a seat at a screen, and contemplate the sublime mass of data that is the internet … Electronic Village Galleries is a pilot project developed by Kate Southworth for distributed local and village sites in rural Cornwall.
Broken Stillness
2011Salisbury Arts Centre, Bedwin Street, Salisbury, SP1 3UT
The subtle, beautiful and hypnotic works in Broken Stillness use digital practices to examine the border where well-established forms of image-making, especially painting and photography, meet the possibilities offered by new technologies. Through animation, motion capture, modelling software and other processes the artists generate unexpected interpretations of landscape and portraiture traditions. Slowly moving and shifting, their works reveal the constructed nature of images, highlighting our expectations about both static pictures and the hyper-speed of the digital environment. The exhibited works display the materiality of the digital or photographic image while challenging images that are frequently regarded as ‘true’ representations.
Several Interruptions: 15 Years of the Slade Centre for Electronic Media in Fine Art
2011North Lodge, Gower Street, UCL
Seven, sequential solo presentations to celebrate 15 years of the Slade Centre for Electronic Media in Fine Art in 2011. One work exhibited: 'Each Long Second' 2006, (880 x 850 cms, A0 photocopies, tape) a double-sided paper representation of the imagined flow of internet information, made to be endlessly manipulated and re-configured to produce different three dimensional maps/representations of virtual space.
Under The Same Sky
2010Bangkok University Gallery, Rangsit Campus
Digital Prints, Video, Photography
A two person exhibition of work coming out of Tuksina Piptkul’s residency in the UK and Susan Collins’s residency in Thailand as ASEM DUO Thailand 2010 exchange fellows. Both artists work with similar subjects: landscape, sky, sea from very different perspectives. ‘Under the Same Sky’ takes its inspiration from the landscape, cityscape, sky and sea of Thailand and England and creatively explores these two different approaches, processes, artists and places.
Twenty One
2010Harewood House, Leeds, LS17 9LG
In 1989 the Terrace Gallery was established at Harewood House, the first dedicated contemporary art space in the setting of a country house. To celebrate its 21st anniversary Harewood have invited 21 artists who have exhibited there to respond to the collections, throwing new light on objects, themes and locations selected by them across the House and Gardens. Artists are: Norman Ackroyd, Sutapa Biswas, Sonia Boyce, Jason Brooks, Thomas A. Clark, Maurice Cockrill, Susan Collins, Kate Davis, Mark Fairnington, Leo Fitzmaurice, Laura Ford, David Hockney, Sophie Lascelles, Sea Hyun Lee, Neeta Madahar, Ian McKeever, Peter Mitchell, Eleanor Moreton, Paul Rooney, Mark Wallinger, Simon Warner
Common Links
2010New Greenham Arts, 113 Lindenmuth Way, New Greenham Park, Newbury Berks RG19 6HN
Common Links, an exhibition organised as part of the 10th Anniversary of the re-opening of Greenham Common since its military occupation during the cold war period. The exhibition includes work that spans a ten year period from 2000 to 2010 and contains work by artists who have been inspired by Greenham Common and/or its history. It includes a print from the version of Fenlandia where a webcam was placed on Venture West, the former Greenham Common Command Centre sited at New Greenham Park.
Printmaking: A Contemporary Perspective
2010Black Dog Space, 10a Acton Street, London WC1X 9NG
An exhibition to celebrate the release of Printmaking: A Contemporary Perspective, by Paul Coldwell and published by Black Dog Publishing. The work exhibited represnted some of the diverse and complex techniques explored in the book, from linocut, to screenprinting, etching and the latest digital printmaking technologies. Artists: Norman Ackroyd, Christiane Baumgartner, Paul Coldwell, Susan Collins, Michael Craig-Martin, Robin Duttson, Richard Hamilton, Andrzej Jackowski, Julian Opie, Antoni Tapies, Joe Tilson, Rachel Whiteread and Katsutoshi Yuasa.
Animate TV
2009Tate Modern
An eclectic selection of films commissioned and produced by Animate Projects over the past year presented in a 60 minute screening in the Starr Auditorium at Tate Modern.
Channel
2009Millais Gallery Offsite Projects
SHIFT 2009, Electronic Arts Festival
2009SHIFT Festival, Exhibition Hall, Dreispitzhalle Basel/Münchenstein
The Exhibition at Shift 09 presents artistic projects that address in various ways the nexus and interface of magic and technology: the ghosts that manifest as flaws in technical equipment and other facets of the spectrum of extrasensory perception; modern-day magic wands, tricks and tricksters; programme codes as incantation and centuries-old rituals in the media age.
Multiplicity – From Faim de siècle to Polymorchive
2009Osterwalder´s Art Office
Landscape 2.0
2009Edith Russ House for Media Art, Oldenberg and Kunstverein Springhornhof, Neuenkirchen
KURS:SØEN
2009Vestsjællands Kunstmuseum
Town and Country
2009Project Space Leeds
Town and Country is a collaboration between Project Space Leeds and Harewood House Trust exploring issues around the urban and the rural based on the relationship between the two sites and notions of migration. A group show of 6 artists, Susan Collins’ contribution, Harewood, shows images of Harewood’s ‘Capability’ Brown landscape filmed on a webcam over the course of a year. The live footage shown at PSL plays on parallels between the mechanically composed digital image and the formally constructed landscape.
Komm, wir gehen in den Wald!
2009Westwerk
Seascape
2009De La Warr Pavilion, Marina, Bexhill on Sea, East Sussex TN40 1DP
Susan Collins and Tim Head: Slow Fields
2008Osterwalders Art Office, Isestrasse 37, D-20144 Hamburg Germany
Through their parallel working practices Tim Head and Susan Collins explore the properties of digital media in distinct and inventive ways. Susan Collins' recent work employs transmission, networking and time as primary materials creating digital representations of landscape where each pixel represents a unit of time. Tim Head bypasses image as representation by using solely the prime physical elements of the medium to form the work. For Tim Head, the elusive and contrary nature of the digital medium and its unsettled relationship with both ourselves and with the physical world forms the basis for recent work. Computer programs are written to generate unique events in ‘real time’ on screens, projections and inkjet prints that focus on the intrinsic properties of these digital media. The programs operate at the primary scale of the medium’s smallest visual element (the pixel or inkjet dot) by treating each element as a separate individual entity. The medium is no longer transparent but opaque. Susan Collins' gradually unfolding, classically romantic landscape images are harvested and archived over the course of the year. They encode the landscape over time, with different tonal horizontal bands recording fluctuations in light and movement throughout the day and with broad bands of black depicting night-time. Stray pixels appear in the image where the moon passes through or a bird, person, car or other unidentifiable object passes in front of the webcam as the pixel is captured. The work is intended to be slow, a reflection on the ever increasing speeds we demand from the internet. Poised between the still and the moving image, the lens and the pixel, the prints explore how images can be coded and decoded using both light and time as building blocks for the work. Slow Fields is the first time these two bodies of work will be shown together.
Travelogue
2008One in The Other
artists include Anna Barham, Susan Collins, Nadine Feinson, Joan Key, Charlotte Moth Curated by Sotiris Kyriacou
Work and Play
2008Terrace Gallery, Harewood House, Leeds
The exhibition Work & Play explores Harewood House and its estate in the wider landscape. Prints from Susan Collins' new Harewood series will be on display alongside other images of Harewood including watercolours, architectural plans, historic maps and photographs from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
Bow Quarter Art Annual
2008261 Manhattan Buildings, Bow Quarter, Fairfield Road, London, E3 2UQ
Multiplicities
2007ARC Projects
Chaser
2007Tyne Bridge Tower, Gateshead
Public Commission
One of a series of contemporary artworks and illuminations commissioned for the GLOW ‘07 festival Newcastle Gateshead. Chaser transforms the top windows of the Tyne Bridge Tower in Gateshead into a rapidly moving light circuit of intense colour. Visible across the river Tyne in Newcastle, Gateshead and beyond, the animation will continually ‘chase’ around the building as the colours gradually shift over time. Tuesday 4 – Monday 17 December 2007
The Nature of Systems (screening)
2007BFI Southbank
Technological systems create, fragment and transform landscapes: a long video monitor stream, digitally mutated coastlines and strange urban microclimates introduce fascinating artificial worlds, blurring the boundaries between natural and constructed landscapes. Starting with documentation of Chris Meigh-Andrews’ video installation Stream Line and passing through a variety of spellbinding single-screen film and video environments, the programme finishes with a presentation of Susan Collins’ internet transmitted, real-time reconstruction of Loch Faskally in Perthshire, Glenlandia.
Video Vortex
2007Montevideo/The Netherlands Media Art Institute
WEBSCAPE - Art in The Virtual Landscape
2007VESTSJÆLLANDS KUNSTMUSEUM, SORØ, Denmark
Outlook Express(ed)
2007Oakville Galleries
Place Memory (screening), Site 07 festival
2007Stroud Valleys Artspace
Committed To Print
2007Royal West of England Academy, Bristol
Exhibition of Contemporary Printmaking showcasing recent innovative developments and international collaborations. Presented by the Centre for Fine Print Research at the University of the West of England at the Royal West of England Academy, Bristol. The Centre for Fine Print Research (CFPR) at UWE is a fine art based facility dedicated to the research of a broad range of print issues that emerged with the invention of photography in the nineteenth century, and continue to the present. This exhibition features prints and print-related artefacts resulting from some of the Centre’s many research projects. It includes artworks that explore the possibilities of several almost forgotten high quality nineteenth century printing processes through to the latest cutting- edge digital printing techniques. One of the over-arching themes of much of its research involves the integration of the best of the old with the advances of the present to facilitate new and increasingly comprehensive means of expression for artists. As well as work exploring the possibilities of combining digital imaging techniques with rare old processes such as collotype, printed enamels and an obscure photo ceramic printing technique, the exhibition aims to reveal the potential of some of the newer imaging technologies that have recently emerged. Through its research activities, the Centre has attracted collaborative ventures with a number of internationally important artists. One such artist, Richard Hamilton (the founding father of the British Pop art movement), produced a major work ‘The Typo Topography of Marcel Duchamp’s Large Glass' in collaboration with the Centre in 2003. Besides work from its diverse projects and collaborations, this exhibition features prints commissioned by the CFPR from five artists especially for this show. Working in conjunction with researchers from the Centre, the five artists: Susan Collins, Charlotte Hodes, Paul Hodgson and Neeta Madahar and Jo Lansley - selected for their innovative work with new forms of digital imaging - all produced a series of ambitious prints that, along with the other pieces in the exhibition, reveal some of the exciting new horizons in print currently being explored by contemporary artists.
Digital Aesthetic 2
2007Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston and PR1 Gallery, Preston
The Digital Aesthetic 2 exhibition highlighted work by a number of regional, national and international artists that use different approaches to working with the digital. Artwork on display varied from specially commissioned site specific light boxes by Bill Seaman, web based interactives by Thomson and Craighead and boredomresearch, installations by Vince Briffa and Stefan Gec, projections by Gary Hill and Robert Cahen and prints by eBoy, Susan Collins and Jane Prophet. The Digital Aesthetic 2 was a joint initiative between the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston and the Electronic & Digital Art Unit at the University of Central Lancashire
Snowdomia
2006Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens, Sunderland
Digital Animation
A fast paced looping animation of snowdome images downloaded from the internet. The work was made to be shown on a 50 metre square LED screen which was commissioned by sLab as part of "SHINE" Winter Festival. Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens, Sunderland from Thursday 7 December - 31 December 2006
Extraordinary Experiences: A Retrospective of British Media Art
2006Kunsthaus, Dresden
First commissioned for Haunted Media at Site Gallery Sheffield (2004) this work features a live transmission from a haunted house. In this version a webcam at South Hill Park, Berkshire (a haunted manor house) is harvesting images a pixel a second and transmitting these live to the internet and to a large projection which is updated live and continuously throughout the exhibition. The projection is accompanied by an audio 'fear frequency’. This is a frequency of 19hz just below the range of hearing (infrasound), which has been found to be present at sites of apparently haunted locations and linked to distorted vision (including spectral images), discomfort, and 'irrational' fear. The work is also available online with images saved at two hour intervals and displayed as an ongoing archive (continuing until March 2007).
Fenlandia
2006Babylon Gallery, Waterside, Ely, Cambridgeshire
Solo show featuring prints from the Fenlandia archive For 12 months from May 2004, a webcam was placed on the roof of the Anchor Inn, a 17th century coaching inn in the heart of rural Cambridgeshire, overlooking the Great Ouse and the New Bedford River at nearby Sutton Gault, part of the area known as ‘silicon fen’ where technology is literally embedded in the flat horizons of the reclaimed landscape of canals, sluices, dykes and ditches. The webcam was programmed to record images a pixel a second, so that a whole image would be made up of individual pixels collected over 21.33 hours. Each image was collected from top to bottom and left to right in horizontal bands continuously. The result is a series of gradually unfolding, classically romantic landscape images harvested and archived over the course of the year. This exhibition marks the first showing of a selection of large and small format archival digital inkjet prints from the original Fenlandia archive. The work is intended to be slow; a reflection on the ever-increasing speeds we demand from the Internet. It encodes the landscape over time, with different tonal horizontal bands recording fluctuations in light and movement throughout the day and with broad bands of black depicting night-times. Stray pixels appear in the image where a bird, person, car or other unidentifiable object may have passed in front of the webcam as the pixel was captured. Time becomes intrinsic to the work as the previous 76800 seconds or 21.33 hours - just under a day - is displayed pixel by pixel within a continuously updating time-lapse film caught in a single frame. Poised between the still and the moving image, the lens and the pixel, the work explores how images can be coded and decoded using both light and time as building blocks for the work. For this exhibition, two webcams have been located at Babylon Gallery looking out across the riverside and recording images a pixel a second. One set of images harvested in Ely will build a website archive, while another set will be fed live to a large screen in the gallery offering visitors a different perspective on this apparently familiar scene.
REMOTE
2006Plimsoll Gallery Centre for the Arts, Hunter Street, Hobart, Tasmania
From September 2005, a webcam has been transmitting images of Loch Faskally, Perthshire, Scotland from the FRS Research laboratory, Faskally. This webcam is harvesting images pixel by pixel, second by second and day by day over the course of the year. Each image is collected from top to bottom and left to right in horizontal bands continuously, marking visible fluctuations in light and movement throughout the day and being archived at two hour intervals. A selection of these images are displayed and updated regularly in the archive section of this website and a live realtime version of the work can be viewed full screen and projected for gallery installation. glenlandia is a companion work to Susan Collins' Fenlandia, a series of ‘pixel landscapes’ exploring the relationship between landscape and technology over time
Timeless: time, landscape and new media
2006Harbourfront Centre, Toronto
From September 2005, a webcam has been transmitting images of Loch Faskally, Perthshire, Scotland from the FRS Research laboratory, Faskally. This webcam is harvesting images pixel by pixel, second by second and day by day over the course of the year. Each image is collected from top to bottom and left to right in horizontal bands continuously, marking visible fluctuations in light and movement throughout the day and being archived at two hour intervals. A selection of these images are displayed and updated regularly in the archive section of this website and a live realtime version of the work can be viewed full screen and projected for gallery installation. glenlandia is a companion work to Susan Collins' Fenlandia, a series of ‘pixel landscapes’ exploring the relationship between landscape and technology over time
FRAMED
2006Slade Research Centre, Woburn Square
Framed was a performance event/showcase which took place in the new Slade Research Centre space in Woburn Square at the end of March 2006 to coincide with the NODE.London season for media arts and also to mark the 10th anniversary of the Slade Centre for Electronic Media. From works exploring transmission, networking and time to palm pilot drawings, sound performances as well as experimental works developed in collaboration with UCL's Immersive VR Laboratory exploring physiological input devices, this event was intended to provide a snapshot of the broad range of interests, exploration and investigations in this area. Artists included: Lanfranco Aceti; Tom Badley; Alex Baker; Dale Berning; Ben Barwise; Ramona Behravan; Rebecca Birch; Martin John Callanan; Ana Cavic; Georgia Chatzivasileaiadi; Susan Collins; Phil Coy; Amy Cunningham; Dream Products Co; Simon Elliston; Anita Wernstrom and Jennie Fagerstrom; Simon Faithfull; Brett Foreman; Judith Goddard; Florencia Guillen; Tim Head; Louisa Clarke and Jaye Ho; Nick Hornby; Will Hurt; Alex Impey; Janice Kerbel; Richard Lockett; Brighid Lowe; Sunee Markosov; Viveka Marksjo; Vaishali Pathak and Katie Miller; Suzi Webster and Katie Paterson; Salomon Rogberg; Jack Southern; Naoko Takahashi; Thomson and Craighead; Timo Vaittinen; Jon Velardi; William West; Patrick White; Eli Zafran
Christmas
2005con|temporary gallery, Berlin
Underglow
2005Queen Street, London
Public Site Specific Installation
One of 4 works commissioned by the Corporation as part of their new 'Light Up Queen Street" annual programme of winter commissions. Underglow has illuminated a number of the network of drains and gullies which service the streets. Lights have been installed within 16 separate gullies (drains) in the vicinity of Guildhall Yard, King Street and Queen Street. The lights are hidden within the drains and some are programmed to very slowly change colour. This work was produced in cooperation with the Corporation of London's electrical contractors and drain engineers and is set to come on with the street lights.
Blur of The Otherworldly: Contemporary Art, Technology, and the Paranormal
2005Center for Art and Visual Culture, University of Maryland, Baltimore, USA
StoryRooms
2005Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester
Glenlandia
2005Threshold Artspace, Horsecross, Perth, Scotland
A companion work to Fenlandia (see previous), this is the exhibition version of Glenlandia (as per Glenlandia artwork entry). A webcam has been sited at the FRS (Fisheries Research Services) Freshwater laboratory which is situated on the bank of Loch Faskally, Pitlochry, Perthshire, Scotland. The webcam harvests images pixel by pixel over the course of 12 months. Each image collected from top to bottom and left to right in horizontal bands continuously, recording fluctuations in light and movement throughout the day. It is set to record at a range of rates over the course of the year. For instance when set to record a pixel every second, the whole image is made up of individual pixels collected over approximately 21 hours and 20 minutes. In thsi exhibition version Glenlandia was displayed as a full screen live updating landscape on a screen in the Threshold artspace at Horsecross for 12 months as well as being available online.
Rhizome Artbase 101
2005New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York
Data Agency
2005http gallery, London
Haunted Media
2004Site Gallery, Sheffield
Microwave International Media Art Festival 2004
2004City Hall, Hong Kong
Festival @rt outsiders 2003 Space Art
2003Maison Europ‚ene de la Photographie, Paris, France
Transporting Skies
2002Site Gallery, Sheffield
Transporting skies, people, and landscape between Penzance and Sheffield, the work drew from both landscape and trompe l'oeil traditions in painting to create works which unfolded in real time, concertinaing space, time and location through a sequence of networked installations. One of the works used cameras and projections to draw visitors into the work, transmitting them via the internet in real time to the remote gallery space. Visitors to Site Gallery, Sheffield found themselves beamed to Newlyn Art Gallery, Penzance, and vice versa. The work made it possible for visitors to both galleries to become active participants in the realisation of the work, embodied as live performers within it, effectively existing in two places at once. A second work exchanged an urban Sheffield landscape with a Penzance seascape, each pixel recording a different moment in time throughout the duration of the show.
Transporting Skies
2002Newyln Art Gallery, Penzance
Transporting skies, people, and landscape between Penzance and Sheffield, the work drew from both landscape and trompe l'oeil traditions in painting to create works which unfolded in real time, concertinaing space, time and location through a sequence of networked installations. One of the works used cameras and projections to draw visitors into the work, transmitting them via the internet in real time to the remote gallery space. Visitors to Site Gallery, Sheffield found themselves beamed to Newlyn Art Gallery, Penzance, and vice versa. The work made it possible for visitors to both galleries to become active participants in the realisation of the work, embodied as live performers within it, effectively existing in two places at once. A second work exchanged an urban Sheffield landscape with a Penzance seascape, each pixel recording a different moment in time throughout the duration of the show.
The Digital Aesthetic
2001Harris Museum and Art Gallery and The University of Central Lanc
In Conversation
2001British Council, Berlin, Germany and www.inconversation.com
In Conversation
2000Chapter Arts, Cardiff
Home 1
19981A Flodden Road, London.
Encoded Identities
1998Gallery Otso, Espoo, Finland and Internet
Travelogue
1998The Travelling Gallery, Scotland.
Suspect Devices
1998London Electronic Arts Gallery.
Avatar
1998De Oude Kerk, Amsterdam and Internet
eBC1
1998Institute of Contemporary Art, London
Screening Of Videowork At Institute Of Contemporary Art, London And On WWW.
single screen video included as part of 'TV' webcast, Institute of Contemporary Art, London
Awash
1998Canary Wharf, London
Commission. Temporary Projection For Launch At Canary Wharf, London.
Awash was a temporary site specific installation at Mackenzie Walk, Canary Wharf London commissioned as part of a programme of works called Launch curated by Richard Milner. It took the form of an intervention, incorporating a series of sounds and a video projection onto water.
In Conversation
1997Fabrica Gallery Brighton and WWW
Suspect Devices
1997Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle
Imaginary Places
1997Ikon Gallery Touring Show, Midlands.
Ex Machina
1996Zone Gallery
An exhibition of Japanese and British Digital Interactive Art. Artists: Susan Collins; Digital Therapy Institute; Teiji Furuhashi; Jane Propher; Paul Sermon; Yoshinori Tsuda
Triplicate
1996Tate St Ives
Exhibition across three venues on the South coast. Artists: Katherine Clarke, Susan Collins, Anne Eggebert, John Kippin, Ed Stewart, Jo Stockham
Triplicate
1996Southampton City Art Gallery
Exhibition across three venues on the South coast. Artists: Katherine Clarke, Susan Collins, Anne Eggebert, John Kippin, Ed Stewart, Jo Stockham
Objekt:Video
1996Landesmuseum, Linz, Austria
Large international survey show of artists working with video 'objects' and installations.
Triplicate
1996Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne
Exhibition across three venues on the South coast. Artists: Katherine Clarke, Susan Collins, Anne Eggebert, John Kippin, Ed Stewart, Jo Stockham
Command, Shift, CTRL: Sexuality, Fear and Desire in the Digitized World
1996NAME Gallery, Chicago
Artists included: Susan Collins, Nigel Jamieson, Monique Genton and Andrea Polli.
Every Dog Has Its Day
1995Warrington Museum and Art Gallery
Solo exhibition as part of Videopositive 1995, commissioned by the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, Liverpool
V-topia: visions of a virtual world
1994Tramway, Glasgow
An international show of works using electronic media. Artists including: Susan Collins, Clive Gillman, Grahame Weinbren, Lynne Hershman Leeson, Graham Ellard and Stephen Johnstone
On Location
1994Wood Street Liverpool, Commissioned by Bluecoat Gallery
'Litter', a site specific animated video projection was installed in Wood Street Liverpool, commissioned by the Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool as part of this exhibition of site specific works
Handle With Care
1993Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester
Large scale solo interative installation commissioned for the opening of the 1830 Warehouse, Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester
Introductory Exchanges
1993Woolwich Foot Tunnel, London
A site specific interactive audio and video public installation for the Woolwich Foot Tunnel, commissioned by Camerawork Gallery for the River Crossings Festival
Publications
The Sixth: Susan Collins in conversation with Sarah Pickering London, Summer 2019
Five Hours Later
From the end of March 2019, until the end of 2019, the view of Boston Harbour and a view across Sheffield towards Park Hill and the Cholera Monument were transmitted live via network cameras simultaneously. Each image is constructed pixel by pixel from the top left to the bottom right hand corner of the screen (like writing on a page) continuously over a five hour timespan – so that a complete image is depicting five hours of time – embedding quite literally the time difference between the two locations. The Sheffield image was displayed live in Boston and the Boston image in Sheffield for the duration of the Museums on the Web (MWX) conference being hosted in 2019 in Boston to coincide with Site’s 40th anniversary year. The live transmission will continue to be displayed online until the end of 2019. Five Hours Later is the latest in my series of pixel by pixel transmissions which began life in 2002 as part of Transporting Skies a simultaneous solo show at Site Gallery, Sheffield, Yorkshire and Newlyn Gallery, Penzance, Cornwall. In Site’s 40th anniversary year, Sheffield was revisited, this time in collaboration with the ICA Boston, MWX (Boston), Site Gallery and The Showroom (Sheffield). Images from the work will be posted regularly for the duration of the live transmission on Instagram at @susanalexislandscapes and on twitter @susancollins
Digital Humanities as Catalyst for Digital Art History: The Slade Archive Project
The Slade School of Fine Art, 1 an internationally leading art school based at University College London, has an intriguing but underused archive relating to students and staff, and their teaching, artworks, and experiences. The Slade Archive Project, jointly undertaken by the Slade and UCL Centre for Digital Humanities, 2 is an interdisciplinary, highly iterative, exploratory research collaboration, investigating how digital tools and techniques can open up the archive to the public and increase engagement with its contents. We demonstrate that collaborative work with a centre for digital humanities informs and enhances the use and understanding of digital methods available to art historians—a field that has not, to date, made much use of computational research methods—and encourages and supports new archival research methods. The Slade and Its Archive Since 1871 the Slade School of Fine Art has educated and trained generations of world-renowned artists. 3 The Slade has an extensive archive, including papers, photographs, class lists, student records, audio recordings, films, prospectuses, death masks, and other artefacts, providing rich evidence of the culture and activities of the college. However, this archive is difficult to access, and no attempt has been made to present it to a wider audience. Over time, the archive has been consolidated and dispersed across the university, with records now held by UCL Art Museum, 4 UCL Records Office, 5 UCL Library Special Collections, 6 and within the art school itself. Cataloguing is incomplete, and the documentation systems are not interoperable. The art school is both the context and the subject of the archive: any project derived from this archive will be, at least in part, art historical in nature. However, the archive is also of great interest to alumni, family historians, filmmakers, and authors who request access and want to contribute because of an interest in the personal histories beyond their conventional scholarly value. In this complex web of priorities, interdependencies, and responsibilities, digital technologies can provide the means to engage with archival content in unprecedented ways. Digital Humanities and Art History There has been curiously little research that applies digital methods within an art historical context (beyond simple digitisation of collections). Although scholars are starting to question the relationship of digital methods to art history (Rodriguez Ortega, 2013) and are exploring new tools (Rodriguez et al., 2012), these are not yet embedded into art historical methods. The John Paul Getty Trust has been urging art historians to utilize more digital technologies (Dobrzynski, 2014), but it has been suggested that the digital needs of art historians can be successfully met only through the work of many support organizations (Long and Schonfeld, 2014): we have undertaken to do this in the Slade Archive Project, which is inherently collaborative. The Slade Archive Project as Digital Humanities Collaboration The Slade Archive Project was launched in summer 2012 as a joint initiative driven by a shared curiosity of what could be done with the unique archive materials within the digital space. At the outset, our small team 7 working from different areas of specialization had yet to learn what the archive even held. The project was conceived as a flexible and collaborative frame under which various sub-projects could be developed, driven by the specific re
The digital curatorial landscape of the Slade Archive Project
Green Teeth
London 2013
a new pixelscape work, London 2013, for this group show in ASC Gallery, London curated by Christina Niederberger and Paul Carey-Kent. A new pixel cityscape work, London 2013 reveals the view from a studio on the 8th floor of ASC Studios’ Erlang House looking north over London’s newly emerging skyline. The image is constructed a pixel a second from top left to the bottom right of the image over 21.33 hours.
Excavation
Excavation is a moving image photographic portrait of Medieval Harewood. Made in response to the ongoing archaeological excavation of Harewood's original Medieval Manor House, Gawthorpe Hall, the work records imagery from the present with roots in the Medieval - from the herds of deer still gracing the land to the landscape of rolling hillocks formed centuries ago through medieval farming techniques. This work is the latest in a series of animated works constructed entirely through still photographs.
Moby Dick Big Read
One of my Seascape images will be accompanying a chapter of Moby Dick as part of the Moby Dick Big Read A cast of 270 people including Tilda Swinton, Simon Callow, Sir David Attenborough, Stephen Fry, Benedict Cumberbatch, as well as community leaders and young people, have created an incredible digital version of Herman Melville’s prophetic masterpiece, which was first published in 1851. Accompanying each chapter are artworks from artists including Anish Kapoor, Gary Hill, Susan Hiller, Matthew Barney, Mark Wallinger, Gavin Turk et al The project is being co-curated by Dr Philip Hoare, artist in residence at Plymouth University’s Marine Institute, and Angela Cockayne from Bath Spa University, and is hosted by Peninsula Arts at Plymouth University.
Unfolding Time: Landscapes, Seascapes and the Aesthetics of Transmission
From spring 2008 until summer 2009 network cameras were installed at five locations along the South East Coast of England from Margate to Gosport. Each camera looked out over the English Channel, framing the horizon and forming part of a panoramic series. Transmitting and archiving in real time, each Seascape image was constructed pixel by pixel in horizontal bands continuously from top to bottom and left to right of the image. Each complete image was collected over just under seven hours, recording the fluctuations in light and movement, time and tide throughout day and night. Seascape (2008-9) built upon previous works Fenlandia (2004-5) and Glenlandia (2005-7) which explored the relationship between landscape and technological innovation in the areas known as Silicon Fen and Silicon Glen through a series of gradually unfolding, classically romantic landscape images which were harvested and archived over a number of years. Seascape extended the investigation to a less obviously picturesque, more abstracted depiction of time and tide. This essay reflects on all three works, Fenlandia, Glenlandia and Seascape. It explores issues raised by the works including the relationship between landscape and time; abstraction and representation; the aesthetics of transmission, and the moment of ‘right now’ in the work.
Love Brid
Love Brid is an animated postcard, a loving tribute to the timeless charms of the seaside, and a colourful rollercoaster ride through the coastal town of Bridlington (Brid) in North Yorkshire and its many unique attractions recorded on location over a few days in August 2009. Love Brid is 3 mins 20 seconds long and has been made with a view to an online context and is intended to be browsed interactively as a series of stills, or digital flipbook, as well as be seen as a linear animated film. It can be view it on the Animate Projects website or downloaded from itunes Love Brid is one of three short films commissioned by Animate Projects as part of CABE's Sea Change initiative.
Pixel Landscapes and Grey Ecologies: In Conversation - Susan Collins and Sean Cubitt
With her webcam series Glenlandia and Fenlandia, artist Susan Collins could be ascribed with creating the beginnings of a pixelated landscape tradition. Collins talks with new media theorist Sean Cubitt about the digital domain's relation with the natural world through the remote frame of these works.
Seascape, Susan Collins
Charting the span of Susan Collins' Seascape from its earliest online manifestations to its gallery exhibition at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, this publication offers an overview of this innovative project which uses digital technology to bring a new element to a longstanding pictorial tradition reflecting man's enduring relationship to the sea. Featuring essays by art historian Nicholas Alfrey and new media theorist Sean Cubitt, alongside a wealth of images and other background information, the book sets out to capture the many different facets of this extensive investigation, highlighting the sheer volume of material that has been generated over the course of its development.
Espaces Néomédiatiques: Interview with Susan Collins
Interview between Susan Collins and curator/writer Sarah Cook discussing the background to and issues emerging from Susan Collins' Seascape series
Keynote Lecture: “Framing the digital: Materialising New Media", Critical Perspective - British Art Production
The Sergio Motta Institute hosted the International Art and Technology Forum-Critical Perspectives on Art and Technology on November 3rd and 4th 2009 at the Brazilian British Center, in São Paulo, Brazil. Keynote speakers were: Gerfried Stocker (Ars Electronica, Austria), Giselle Beiguelman (Sergio Motta Award, Brasil), Jorge La Ferla (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina), Susan Collins (Slade School, University College London, Great-Britain) and Yukiko Shikata (NTT InterCommunication Center, Japan). Critical Perspective - British Art Production Framing the digital: Materialising New Media Susan Collins – Abstract August 2009 This presentation will introduce a range of works from artists working in Britain today who are specifically translating or materialising digital works for a gallery or physical situation. Framed against the backdrop of the current gallery, institutional and funding context in the UK, it will look at both emerging and established artists as well as some who do not consider themselves to be working primarily within the digital domain. The presentation will include documentation of Thomson & Craighead’s “Beacon”, a work which translates google searches in real time onto a mechanical railway flap sign; Phil Coy’s 1:1 manifestation of pixels from satellite photographs of Central Park in New York; Simon Faithfull’s palm pilot drawings transposed onto paving stones; Katie Paterson’s live transmission of the sound of a glacier melting; Jack Strange’s motorized paper “Spinning Beach Ball of Death”; Jane Prophet’s works transforming fractal plant and tree forms into sculpture; Tim Head’s work with screen, print and projection exploring the elusive material substance of the digital medium, and a week of pixel-by-pixel Seascape webcam footage revealed through a 10.5 metre long print (Susan Collins). Collins will also discuss her Slade Centre for Electronic Media curatorial project “Framed” (2006) which included work by 40 emerging and established artists and set out a philosophy for bringing a wide range of new media practices out of the screen and into material space to be considered critically alongside more mainstream visual art production.
Harewood
From June 2008 until November 2009 a webcam was installed overlooking Harewood House’s classical ‘Capability’ Brown landscape. It transmitted and recorded images at the rate of a pixel a second so that a whole image represented the previous 21.33 hours. Each image was collected from top to bottom and left to right in horizontal bands continuously. As well as creating a perpetually updating 'live' image onscreen, Harewood saved an image every few minutes, translating into an accumulating archive, with each image - or still - forming a complete work in itself. Harewood forms part of an ongoing and innovative series of constructed landscapes employing transmission, networking and time as primary materials. Two earlier works, Fenlandia (2004-5) and Glenlandia (2005-7) addressed the relationship between man made landscape and technological innovation in the areas known as Silicon Fen and Silicon Glen respectively. Harewood looked more explicitly at the notion of a constructed landscape in relation to the picturesque. The gardens at Harewood House were designed by Capability Brown to achieve a specific aesthetic goal in relation to landscape painting. Harewood was commissioned by Harewood House, Leeds. It exists online as a website; as a live screen based installation, and as a series of archival digital inkjet prints.
Music for The Williamson Tunnels
A 2 CD collection of the sounds of dripping water in a numbered edition of 1000. The colelction includes sounds form a wide range of artists working with audio including Scanner, Jem Finer and Kaffe Mathews. My contribution was based on the audio I made for my publicly sited interactive installation Introductory Exchanges which was installed in the Woolwich Foot Tunnel in 1993.
From Fenlandia to Glenlandia: pixel landscapes and remote transmission
For 12 months from May 2004, a webcam was placed on the roof of the Anchor Inn, a 17th century coaching inn in the heart of rural England, part of an area known as Silicon Fen overlooking the Great Ouse and the New Bedford River at Sutton Gault in Cambridgeshire, an area where technology is literally embedded in the flat horizons of a reclaimed landscape of canals, sluices, dykes and ditches. The webcam was programmed to record images a pixel a second, so that a whole image would be made up of individual pixels collected over 21.33 hours. Each image was collected from top to bottom and left to right in horizontal bands continuously. The result is a series of gradually unfolding, classically romantic landscape images harvested and archived over the course of the year. The work is intended to be slow, a reflection on the ever increasing speeds we demand from the internet. It encodes the landscape over time, with different tonal horizontal bands recording fluctuations in light and movement throughout the day and with broad bands of black depicting nighttime. Stray pixels appear in the image where a bird, person, car or other unidentifiable object may have passed in front of the webcam as the pixel was captured. Time becomes intrinsic to the work as the previous 76800 seconds or 21.33 hours - just under a day - is displayed pixel by pixel within a continuously updating time lapse film caught in a single frame Poised between the still and the moving image, the lens and the pixel, the work explores how images can be coded and decoded using both light and time as building blocks for the work. This presentation will centre on two works, Fenlandia (as described above) and Glenlandia, a work made for its Scottish equivalent, ‘Silicon Glen’. It will explore issues raised by the works including the relationship between landscape, technology and time; remote transmission and distribution; the balance of abstraction to representation; and the moment of ‘right now’.
Fabrica
A book celebrating the first 10 years of Fabrica Gallery in Brighton.
Keynote Speaker
6th & 7th of September, 2007
Keynote Speaker: Pixel Landscapes and the Aesthetics of Transmission
June 20–22, 2007 Abstract: Poised between the still and the moving image, the lens and the pixel, recent networked projects including Fenlandia, Glenlandia and The Spectrascope explore how images can be coded and decoded using both light and time. This presentation will explore issues raised by the work including the relationship between landscape, technology and time; abstraction in relation to representation, and reflects on what it means materially to record a digital image and transmit it across space and time.
Investigating aspects of presence through responsive 3d audio environments
This chapter consists of a project report and diary documenting a collaborative (susan Collins with Paul Gillieron Acoustics) 3d audio research project into responsive systems and 3d audio streaming media. The research was funded by both ITEM and the AHRC.
StoryRooms
Created for the exhibition StoryRooms that took place in the historical setting of the 1830 Warehouse at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, England (11 October, 2005 – 15 January, 2006), the DVD includes an illustrated essay booklet, an installation soundtrack by Vini Reilly, and a 35 minute film that captures the unique atmosphere of the event and its audience involvement while reflecting the installations through interviews with their creators. The DVD features documentation of the exhibition as well as separate chapters for each artist including the interviews. Artists included were: Susan Collins UK; Paul DeMarinis USA; Ken Goldberg USA; Paul Sermon UK; Alexei Shulgin/Electroboutique, Russia; Cornelia Sollfrank, Germany; Tan Weck Weng, Malaysia/Australia; Andrea Zapp, Germany/UK.
Case Study "In Conversation' - public participation:Susan Collins
The chapter is a case study of the artwork 'In Conversation' exploring the role of the public in the enactment of the work. The chapter is mainly an interview between Susan Collins (the artist/author of the work) and Peter Ride (co-author of the book)
"Conversation with Susan Collins". Interview with Carlo Zanni
The Actual and the Imagined
The Spectrascope
This is a new version of a work first commissioned in 2004 for the Haunted Media exhibition in Site Gallery Sheffield. This version has been commissioned by Andrea Zapp for the StoryRooms exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester (see separate exhibition entry). A webcam has been sited at South Hill Park, Bracknell, Berkshire (an apparently haunted venue). The webcam harvests images pixel by pixel over the course of the year. Each image collected from top to bottom and left to right in vertical bands continuously, recording fluctuations in light and movement throughout the day. It is set to record a pixel every second, so that the whole image is made up of individual pixels collected over approximately 21 hours and 20 minutes. The Spectrascope is being displayed as a full screen live updating projection on a 2.5m screen in the Museum of Science and Industry Manchester and in an exhibition in Baltimore (see exhibitions entries) and is also available online as a distributable (live) artwork. The gallery version of the work also incoporates the Fear Frequency, a 19 hz frequency present in the space. Images are saved at two hour intervals with a selection displayed in an archive on the website, which is added to as the year progresses.
Glenlandia
A companion work to Fenlandia (see previous), a webcam has been sited at the FRS (Fisheries Research Services) Freshwater laboratory which is situated on the bank of Loch Faskally. The webcam harvests images pixel by pixel over the course of the year. Each image collected from top to bottom and left to right in horizontal bands continuously, recording fluctuations in light and movement throughout the day. It is set to record at a range of rates over the course of the year. For instance when set to record a pixel every second, the whole image is made up of individual pixels collected over approximately 21 hours and 20 minutes. Glenlandia is being displayed as a full screen live updating landscape on a screen in the Threshold artspace at Horsecross (see separate exhibition entry) and is also available online as a distributable (live) artwork. Images are saved at two hour intervals with a selection displayed in an archive on the website, which is added to as the year progresses.
The Actual and The Imagined
25th May 2005
Classroom of The Future
The commission was to create an interactive visual arts element into the Classroom of the Future - a new science classroom for Mossbrook Special Primary School in Sheffield - in collaboration with the architect of the new school building, Sarah Wigglesworth and in consultation with the school. There are three main elements, each of which are integrated into the infrastructure of the classroom. 1. wildlife surveillance system: a range of cameras allowing the children to observe the wildlife surrounding the new building from inside the classroom. Two large (40") LCD screens - one built into the floor and one embedded in the wall - can play back images live from a range of cameras placed in various locations around (and under) the classroom and wildlife lake. Part of the classroom floor is made of glass so that the children can also see what is happening directly under the classroom at any time and there is also a remote control boat with two wireless cameras onboard (one above and one below water) which can capture images from the lake and send them back wirelessly in realtime to the classroom. 2. A camera obscura was built into the classroom 3. An interactive sound installation was embedded into the ballpool (recreational) area providing a library of audio responses that can be built up as a changing library over time. (this included workshops with school pupils to create the first sounds for the piece).
Tate in Space
17th February 2005 at Centre Pompidou, Paris
Electronic Media at the Slade
6 May 2005
Fenlandia
The Future of it All
Pixelscape for Glastonbury Tor
The Actual and the Imagined
The Spectrascope
Artists Perspective on the Preservation of Born Digital Artworks
Inhabited Text
Pixelscape
Tate in Space
Tate in Space is an online commission for Tate. It was active from July 2002 until September 2003 and remains online in archive form on the Tate website. It is an artwork which proposes a 'development programme' for a Tate in Space and takes the form of an intervention on the main Tate Website. The site explores ways in which Tate in Space might extend visitor experience and engage new audiences. It is an arena for debate and reflection on the nature of art in space, raising questions about cultural and institutional ambition and the very human desires to observe and communicate.
Holy Mackerel
Smoked Salmon (short story)
Inhabited Content: An exploration into the role of the viewer through the realisation of In Conversation and other works.
A series of site and situation specific artworks made since 1993 which use electronic media are examined with particular reference to the role of the viewer in the choreography, realisation and interpretation of the work. The artworks are examined both in terms of their relative progression and in particular in relation to a series of research questions. The artworks discussed include works made for a range of locations, all of which have specific viewer expectations attached to them. This includes work located entirely in public spaces (Woolwich Foot Tunnel 1993 and Pedestrian Gestures 1994); works made for the Gallery context (AudioZone 1994, Touched 1996); In Conversation 1997/8 which existed both in public (physical) and public (online) space, and Cruisin' 1999 which exists entirely online. In the first part of the thesis each artwork becomes a case study in pursuit of these questions, with both documentary and anecdotal observation and evidence. The second part of the thesis consists of an excerpt of writing from a self generating (programmed) dialogue, which I have called Inhabited Text, a writing structure developed in order to contextualise and write about the work in a form intended to reflect the nature of the work itself, Inhabited Text seeks to examine and question the recording of encounters with interactive works, through its own dialogic structure, and also through an online version to encourage its own encounters.
Viewfinder
An interface based on the original popular 3d Viewmaster, two 'Viewfinders' were located in Minehead, West Somerset. One was placed inside an arcade machine in the Queens Amusement Arcade; the second on the platform of the West Somerset Railway Station. 'Visitors to Minehead who looked through the Viewfinders' eyepieces were able to view a range of time based alternative tourist attractions in 3d video (stereo) - 'scenic views' - filmed in and around Minehead and West Somerset.
Cruisin'
Watermark
Tumblong
In Conversation
Catalogue/Monograph published to coincide with the exhibition In Conversation that took place at Fabrica Gallery,Brighton 14 November to 13 December 1997
Singers
Performance/event sponsored by London Borough of Camden at Chapmans Sewing Machine Repair Shop, Camden Parkway, London as part of Camden Remix
Kissing
Overnight broadcast of 3d audio (binaural) experience. Listeners were required to tune in and wear headsets in order to get a virtual 3d audio experience (of being kissed) on Valentines night 2005. The work was prerecorded to CD using binaural audio techniques and the broadcast randomplayed the CD throughout the night both on the fm (london wide) radio frequency and simultaneously streamed online.
Lunch Break for Field Broadcast
Lunch Break was transmitted as a 3d Audio live performance as part of Field Broadcast. Field Broadcast was a platform that enabled artists to stream new work live from a remote location- a broadcast that was literally from a field to your computer via a desktop application, live. All works, whether video, animation, performance, sculpture or live data were created in the field with no editing or post-production. Each broadcast was viewed by a dispersed international audience, at office desks, in cafes, on trains and at kitchen tables. www.fieldbroadcast.org
Out of Darkness, Light as Public Art
“Out of Darkness, Light as Public Art” was a panel discussion which explored the use of light based art projects as a sustainable approach to permanent and ephemeral urban artworks. Session Chair: Vivien Lovell, Founder, Modus Operandi Art Consultants Panelists: Susan Collins, Artist/ Reader in Fine Art, Slade School of Fine Art, University College London Peter Fink, Artist Bill FitzGibbons, Artist/ Executive Director, Blue Star Contemporary Art Center
Pedestrian Gestures
Paragon Station, Hull & tour, commissioned by Hull Time Based Arts/Arts Council Film and Video. A series of three computer animated, interactive videoprojection and sound installations in various locations within Hull’s Paragon Station. Pedestrian Gestures is based on interpersonal communications in public spaces (and the lack of it), with installed responsive images and sounds seeking to question and explore aspects of our often unconscious daily exchanges with both strangers and our surroundings. This piece has also been shown at The Junction, Cambridge; Victoria Station, Manchester; Nottingham Train Station and various sites in Linz, Austria as part of Objekt:Video. Pedestrian Gestures was originally commissioned by Hull Time Based Arts/Arts Council Film and Video for the Root ‘94 Festival in Hull.