Enter into a robot’s vision
Auckland Live and Colab/AUT University present DJ3D14
Friday 12 September – Tuesday 4 November
A Digital Art Live exhibition
Part of Aotearoa Digital Arts Network (ADA) symposium and Auckland Art Week DJ3D14 is an interactive exhibition created
through the eyes of a robot at the Digital Art Live interactive space. The robot watches participants in real-time and
inserts their images into a 3D mix of real and fictional video scenes. The real images are recognisable public locations
in Auckland and the fictional ones are excerpts of well-known films. Viewers operate arcade buttons to select the visual
narratives that unfold in front of them.
Dan James explores the dated technology of anaglyph 3D video to create a constantly shifting series of moments,
traversing many different times (current and past) and places (real and fictional locations).
DJ3D14 derives from a project that took place at one of the Noir Desir dance parties in Wellington. At Noir Desir 3 (Oct
2013), a hand built robot filmed a real-time feed of the audience, and this footage was mixed into other 3D projections
at the dance party.
The work was commissioned with the Aotearoa Digital Arts Network (ADA) for the Mesh Cities Symposium
Space:Network:Memory, 12-14 September at AUT.
The Artist - Dan James (aka Dan Untitled) is an artist and curator based in Wellington.His art career began at age ten,
when he used to traipse down to the local teachers college and sell pencil drawings of medieval knights to the trainee
teachers there. Around the same time he fared well in a local colouring-in competition and won a year’s supply of fruit
juice. In 2012, he graduated with a doctorate in Fine Arts, specialising in mash-up performance.
Dan’s eclectic work has traversed performance, video, audio, web-based media and robotics. His live remix performances
have been presented in contexts including Goldsmiths College (I Miss You, Great to See You Again, 2008), the Museum of
Modern Art Oxford (Breakfast Party at my Studio, 2011), Open University of Catalonia (A Remixed Story of Stray Cinema,
2011), and the 48 Stunden Neukölln Arts Festival in Berlin (Channel, 2013, in collaboration with Daniela Gast).
Dan was a regular DJ on the popular Messed Up show on Radioactive.fm for three years, and he runs the visual crew for
the legendary Noir Desir series of underground dance parties – known in part for integrating robotics with interactive
video projections. Dan is also known for his curatorial work. He founded and piloted Museum of Modern Activity (a
digital gallery in partnership with RadioActive.fm), curating 11 different exhibitions for the gallery in 2012. He also
co-curated the 080808, 090909 and 101010 UpStage Festivals of cyberformance (in collaboration with Helen Varley Jamieson
and Vicki Smith), with audiences, performers and venues in numerous different locations around the globe, reaching
venues including Norsk Telemuseum (Oslo), ZKMax (Munich), the Museum of Science and Technology (Belgrade) and many more.
He has curated a number of other independent digital art exhibitions in Aotearoa too.
He has an upcoming robotics work accepted for Prague Quadrennial 2015.
Digital Art Live
Exploring the intersection of art and technology, Digital Art Live is a collaboration between Colab/AUT University and
Auckland Live and invites audiences to interact with an interactive screen and become part of a new generation of Art.
Digital Art Live is the only permanent interactive exhibition space of its kind in New Zealand. The screen is situated
on Level 2 of the Aotea Centre - the perfect location to invite people to engage with the performance possibilities of
digital art and help bring art to life. Audience participation is necessary to complete the art work. We invite
audiences to come down and play.
Digital Art Live
Level 2, Aotea Centre / Free
Monday to Friday 7.30am to 6pm*
*Digital Art Live will remain open late and during weekends if there is a show in the Aotea Centre.
ENDS