ArtCamp Vancouver is a hybrid conference/workshop/etc event in which participants come together to show work, demo artworks, projects, research or technology, learn new hands-on practices, and talk about ideas such as:
- DIY projects that transform discarded materials in something beautiful, cool or useful
- showing people how to cut and paste code to make quick and dirty websites or applications
- strategies for revisioning experiences or environments
- workshops for recycling photographs, cassettes, CDs or other technological or manufacturing detritusconceptual detournement
- discussion or demonstration of interventionist practices relating to performance, psychogeography or street art
- collaborative drawing events
- experimentation with found materials
- realtime mixing of cameraphone pictures, text messages, video, photostreams or something else
- swaps, exchanges or tricked-out marketplace mods for circulating, disseminating or evolving objects, subjects or frameworks
- presentation of cultural objects or artifacts that relate to reuse or recycling
- discussion tracing the circulation and “reuse” of strategies or ideas
- or grand schemes for social or environmental engagements
photography by Jeff Werner
Gauged by the design frenzy love of the posters scattered across the Emily Carr campus, I was surprised to find that instead of sharing manual artistic techniques, kitsch ware or exhibitions of old-media that is so often associated with fine art students.
Instead to my surprise, it was replaced with a studious, mismatched group of individuals that suspiciously resembled a relaxed barcamp atmosphere: electronic media en res and avant programming discussions were being held in various presentations, free black coffee was amply available, and laptops were scattered across the landscape!
photography by Phillip Jeffrey
The entire experience was a little intimidating to a non-artist like myself (I’ve only started utilizing my digital camera, and studying english, math and psychology in the meantime), so the only discussions I attended were the mobile muse discussions featuring geo-tagging and mobility in the near-future with communication devices, the gadgets and electronics recycling venture of free geek vancouver, and an interesting slideshow featuring self-made instruments exploring sounds broadcasted through waves and vibrations.
Afterwards I did a little hop and walk with a photography group experimenting with geo-tagging cache, audible sounds of the environment, and metup again with Phillip Jeffrey! One of the other new strangers I met was a friend’s design objects TA studying at SFU in the SIAT program too!
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