Liverpool Art & Design Academy (ADA)

Archive for the ‘Creativity’ Category

LJMU and Shanghai University are pleased to announce the launch of the John Moores Critics Award in the UK, which recognises emerging new talent in critical writing about contemporary art.

The Awards in Shanghai and Liverpool will provide an international platform for budding critics in both countries to connect with their audiences and arts communities.

The UK John Moores Critics Award runs parallel to the John Moores Painting Prize as part of this year’s Liverpool Biennial at the Walker Art Gallery (National Museums Liverpool). Judging has already started on the Award in China as the panel is set the task of whittling down the entries of critical writing, focusing on the John Moores Painting Prize China held earlier this year in Shanghai.

In the UK, entrants will have to focus their critical eye on this year’s John Moores Painting Prize shortlist.

The UK Award closes on 28 October and winners will be announced publicly at the Walker Art Gallery (Liverpool) on Friday 16 November 2012.
Professor Juan Cruz, artist and Director of the LJMU School of Art and Design commented: “Critical writing about art, and art itself – like all forms of independent thinking – are constantly under threat from the pressure to conform exerted by social, political and consumer forces, whether in China or the UK. This new award is an important way to bring those pressures to mind and to resist
them, as well as to share experience between two significant art schools in the two countries.”

Professor Wang Dawei, Dean of the College of Fine Arts at Shanghai University said: “Our responsibility as scholarly and socially engaged organisations is to develop critical thinking about art and the importance of international cultural exchanges. This is particularly important as Liverpool and Shanghai are twinned cities and have a breadth of shared history and contemporary alliances.”

Two winners, one from the UK and one from China, will be selected by an esteemed panel of judges.

• Marjorie Allthorpe-Guyton, UK President of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA)
• David Batchelor, artist and writer
• Sam Thorne, Associate Editor, Frieze Magazine.

Each will receive £2,000, plus the opportunity to complete a three week exchange visit to either the UK or Shanghai, as guests of either LJMU or Shanghai University. The winner from this year’s Award in China will be visiting Liverpool during the Biennial.

Four further awards of £1,000 will be presented to two highly commended entrants to the competition in each country.

Winning entries will also be published on a new dual language John Moores Critics Award website and published in a bilingual publication, alongside the winners of the John Moores Painting Prize. This will be jointly edited by LJMU’s School of Art and Design and the University of Shanghai.

How to enter

Critics of all ages and abilities are welcome to enter. Although the Painting Prize exhibition is open till 6 January, the Critics Award is open until Sunday 28 October. Entries received after this date will not be considered so please bear this in mind if you would like to enter.

Once you have visited the show at the Walker Art Gallery, consider what you have seen and think about how it has inspired you or otherwise. We encourage you to read the details in the official Painting Prize catalogue and online, then write your response piece, aiming for between 750-1000 words or equivalent in Chinese characters. Each piece will be judged anonymously and the winners’ names will only be revealed to the judging panel once a unanimous decision is arrived at.

All works should be electronic rather than paper-based, and emailed to: jmca@ljmu.ac.uk before the closing date.

Light Night
Friday 13 May 2011
5pm – Late
Venues across Liverpool city centre

Light Night is Liverpool’s one-night festival of arts and culture, when venues across the city throw open their doors and stage over 90 special events. From 5pm visitors of all ages can follow their own vibrant trail of exhibitions, performance, talks, walks, dance and much more. It’s the perfect chance to meet friends and family to enjoy the relaxed after-hours atmosphere and rediscover Liverpool city centre – it’s a Friday night out with a difference.

Visit www.lightnightliverpool.co.uk and request your free programme or download it here.

This year the ADA has a wealth of activities including…

Shangpool Blossom – Blossom Time is the latest event within the ongoing shang-pool project. www.shang-pool.com. Canoes meet on the lakes of our virtual Stanley Park paddled by friends in Shanghai and Liverpool. Blossom is dropped from bridges and the park becomes a sound-scape of poems, music and meeting celebrating spring in Shanghai and Liverpool.

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Draw the Line – Following the success of their Long Night evening, Draw the Line return to provide visitors with paper and pens allowing any inspriation to be sketched out across the tables, creating an open public live draw mural as the evening progresses. Drop in an leave your mark.

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Look11 Photography Exhibition – The ADA Gallery hosts a photography exhibition curated by Stephen Snoddy. Conflicting Accounts – Paul Seawright’s document of the ‘troubles’ of Northern Ireland and Inside Out – Jill Jennings documentation of the Maze prison.

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Sparkle VFX – Liverpool’s SparkleVFX are showcasing their software skills in 3D Sculpting (ZBrush) and post production techniques. Come along and learn tips and tricks or pick their brains on a particular issue.

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VJ & Poetry Event – New poetry performances, with sound and image, from students and staff at Liverpool Screen School

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Candle-Lit Labyrinth Walk – Take a walk under the stars on LJMU’s candle-lit spiral labyrinth path, supported by musicians. Installed by staff and students, this labyrinth; an ancient symbol of creativity, is testament to the creative nature of Liverpool and its community.

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Violet City – Liverpool Screen School invites all to find out more about ‘Violet City’ a twisted mash-up movie of Victorian, post-modern and comic book weird.

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Follow Light Night via these social media links:

Facebook Fan Page: http://www.facebook.com/LightNightLiverpool
Facebook Event page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=196020347094934 (accessible if logged in)
Twitter: http://twitter.com/LightNightLpool

Gypsy Modular is interesting ‘tool-less’ self assembly furniture…

Gypsy is a furniture line made of interchangeable modular components. Joints that use pressure and friction to stay together make assembly fast and easy, with no tools and no hardware to lose.

The project is new and is aimed at being funded via the Kickstarter website.

Accessory maker Janine Basil has created a fun range of comic book sound effect headbands. See the full range at her Etsy Store.

Great fun was had at last nights Maker Night in the ADA. This months pitches included an ambitious journey into space, an inflatable blimp and using DIY electronics kit Arduino for anything and everything. This month we had some visitors from FACT, who were working on some personal projects, using a traditional telephone to record peoples thoughts and memories for an upcoming exhibition as well as Martin from Uniform who came to do some mingling. Maker Night pioneer, Adrian, who had just returned from Maker Faire, was on hand for any new attendees, showing them the wonders of Arduino creations.

The Cupcake Makerbot made some great advances, with hopes to get this guerrilla 3D printer up and running before too long! We had our first visitor from Cambridge; software whizz, Alistair who helped assemble the Makerbot and offered some advice on creating a laser cutting file screening software for the ADA.

We are keen to attract more designers and artists to the event, so spread the word!

Next Maker night will be in April. Watch this space!

Let’s get together and play some music!

If you love music, and if you would like to socialize on Saturday afternoon, come and join us in Metal at the Edge Hill Station on Saturday, 12th March. Starts at 12.
We will play and exchange our favourite music.
We will try to find out if the sound can be seen.
We will discover new and experimental ways of making music.
No musical experience required.
Places are limited
For more information and booking please contact Justyna Czasnowicz : justyna.czasnowicz@gmail.com

Art and Design Suppliers Fred Aldous are celebrating the 125th Anniversary by offering up a 3 month residency in their Manchester Store.

The residency is aimed at creatives that wish to create market ready products. From Illustration, 3D design, photography, and crafts they can help you take your ideas from paper or pixel to reality giving you first hand experience of the marketplace.

During the residency you will have the opportunity to get your bright ideas off the ground. You will have free access to our in house facilities, including the A1 laser cutter and photo studio. You will receive training sessions to get your skills up to scratch. And you’ll get your own working space and a bit of pocket money to spend in store too.

Details on how to apply can be found via the Design Initiative here.

Closing date for applications is Friday 29th April 2011.

Friday 4 March
12pm – Johnson Auditorium

Cross-school Graphic Arts Visiting Lecture
Paul Pensom, Art Director of Creative Review

Paul graduated from Liverpool Art School in 1994. Since then he has worked in editorial design for a variety of publishing houses in London. He became art director of Creative Review two years ago and is responsible for the latest redesign of the magazine.

All welcome

Last minute valentines gift idea from corezone

corezone is a closed ceramic space, where one can place their thoughts, feelings, emotions. An attempt to fulfill emotional needs by the means of an object, a try to withhold immaterial being in a material space.

Graphic Designer, Typographer and Album Artwork master, Vaughan Oliver will be giving a lecture at the ADA on Monday 14th Feb – 12 oclock – Johnson Auditorium.

His lecture will give an overview of 30 years of designing for the music industry including his iconic designs for 4AD records including the likes of the Pixies, This Mortal Coil, Lush, GusGus etc, etc.

Not to be Missed!

The digital revolution of the last decade has unleashed creativity and talent of people in an unprecedented way, unleashing unlimited creative opportunites.

But does democratized culture mean better art, film, music and literature or is true talent instead flooded and drowned in the vast digital ocean of mass culture? Is it cultural democracy or mediocrity?

This is the question addressed by PressPausePlay, a documentary film containing interviews with some of the world’s most influential creators of the digital era.

Find out more at http://www.presspauseplay.com/

reform furniture require your assistance!

reform furniture is a collaborative project set up by two third year history of art and museum studies students – alice young and victoria hellewell

Our aim is to revive and recycle pieces of old furniture into works of art.

Please donate your old and unloved furniture so reform can give them the love and attention they deserve. We are currently in desperate need of unwanted chairs – please contact reformfurniture@live.co.uk

Visit our blog at www.reformfurniture.tumblr.com for further information.
Thanks!

Image via vecteezy

Last weekend saw the ADA host Fab Camp Liverpool – a weekend of digital fabrication talks and activities for local industry and creatives.

Around 50 delegates attended the two day event where they engaged with learning workshops about laser cutting and 3D printing (delivered by the POD team), attended talks by fabricators Soner Ozenc (RazorLab), Hayden Insley (Fab Lab Manchester), Ilsa Parry (reThink Things) and Jason Nelson (Dundee University) and created ideas and assets as part of a competition and open working strand.See for yourselves via the Flickr and Twitter streams and download the freebie laser cut box here at thingiverse!

The weekend highlighted the growing culture of rapid prototyping and manufacture via a number of digital routes and the opportunities it can provide for the small business and creative individual. It links into the maker communities of the region and hopes to support them through future opportunities and events. The next happening is ‘Maker Night’ , a monthly Hack Space occurrence for makers at the ADA, which takes place on the 16th Feb 6.30pm – just turn up!

If you’re interested in anything regarding making and the technical facilities at the ADA then please contact the POD team.

The event was co-ordinated by LJMU’s Open Labs in conjunction with the ADA.

Typography and design product developers House Industries have created a short film to highlight the range of hand crafted techniques they utilise in producing their fantastic range. The film can only be view on their site – see it here.

Interesting video timeline of buildings that display media on the outside in dynamic ways.

The timeline depicts international media facades with their different artistic, social or brand messages up to interfaces like iPhone Apps or brain sensors for public participation. The movie is a shortened version of the lecture, „The semiotics of media facades – When buildings start to twitter” that was presented at the Parsons The New School for Design in New York in 2010.

By Arclighting.

Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.

Arduino The Documentary (2010) English HD from gnd on Vimeo.

In December, the Art and Design Pod collaborated with Open Labs to host preFAB; an informal evening of creative collaboration with a group of creative enthusiasts, designers, makers from the Merseyside area, who were interested in gaining exposure to the ADA fabrication equipment with potential opportunities arising throughout the evening to use laser cutters and 3D printers.

During the course of the evening, three teams had access to both the fabrication equipment at the ADA and assistance from the Design Pod staff to help them flesh out their ideas. The event was also a great opportunity for participants to meet, work and mingle with like-minded creative people.

The evening’s activity was centered around a brief provided by the Design Pod team to reinvent the Christmas Cracker for the 21st century.

A range of imaginative and insightful ideas were developed over the course of the evening, ranging from a gingerbread tree structure created from laser cut ginger snap biscuits to a Russian Roulette table centerpiece.

The winning project, Crack.r foresaw a virtual based cracker which allowed users to share personal information and items from smartphones with each other by slotting them into a cracker device

IIsa Parry of Rethinkthings commented,

“preFAB offered me the opportunity to meet new contacts, as well as participate in an unusual creative evening. It was also great to understand what ADA@LJMU offer in terms of facilities and services. I’m now really looking forward to FAB Camp in January.”

Jason Taylor (Operations Manager at Open Labs) said,

“preFAB is one of a series of activities focused on making local companies aware of emerging technology and market opportunities. Events such as this are an ideal platform to raise awareness and encourage collaborations between the University and the Creative Industries. A further more in depth event, FAB Camp Liverpool, is planned for January of next year.”

A weekend long Fab Camp Liverpool event is planned for the ADA on the 29th-30th January. Watch this space for more details!

Bed Peace at the Bluecoat – The making and screening from Dorothy on Vimeo.

Liverpool collective Dorothy created a digital installation at the Bluecoat Gallery Liverpool to mark the anniversary of what would have been John Lennon’s 70th birthday and the 30th anniversary of his death in 1980. The project, formed part of the city’s season of events paying tribute to Lennon. Members of the public were invited to get on a bed and show their support for peace. We collected 300 images in 2 hours and over 500 people took part.

A film of the installation was screened on 9th December on Ocean’s media screen (Europe’s largest commercial LED screen), opposite Liverpool Lime Street to coincide with the UK anniversary of Lennon’s death.

View the final installation here:

Bed Peace at the Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool from Dorothy on Vimeo.

LJMU’s recently launched Shang-Pool Arcadia, in collaboration with the University of Shanghai and involving academics, students and the public has been nominated for a Learning Without Frontiers Award for innovations in Further and Higher Education alongside Oxford University and Emantras, USA.
It is now up to the public to decide the overall award winner, leaving an opportunity to vote for this LJMU project.

The voting page here and the deadline is 4th January 2011.

Peter Appleton, LJMU Reader in Creative Technology Artist and Director of the project explained:

“As the impact of academic research on the public is high on the education agenda at present, this brings out an unexpected collaboration between arts and science academics, students and the public which is effectively using ‘Second Life’ live to share academic knowledge with the community and to impact on regeneration and rebuilding of destroyed cultures.”

Read More at LJMU

Following on from the success of the professional Liverpool Hacks meet Hackers event in July, local company ScraperWiki, in partnership with Open Labs & Liverpool School of Art & Design, held a ‘Student Edition’ of the Hacks meet Hackers Hack Day for both LJMU’s School of Journalism and the School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences.

This practical event demonstrated how to utilise programming and design techniques to create online news stories and features based on ‘datasets’ from publicly available data.
The ultimate aim of this event was to demonstrate to student journalists how to use programming and design techniques to create online news stories and features; and vice versa, to show student coders/developers/programmers how to find, develop, and polish stories and features.

Attracting a mix of students from both schools was essential to create the balance of hacks (journalists) and hackers (coders/programmers) who were introduced to the concept of data driven journalism. The event was sponsored by Trinity Mirror which meant we had the added bonus of some professional journalists on hands to assist the students with fleshing out their ideas for projects.

Armed with laptops and Wifi, students fell into teams of around four to five based on topics which were of interest to them to develop project ideas.
The range of subjects which emerged included:
‘Football League Attendance’: which related attendance at matches with performance on the pitch;
‘Police Helicopters’: an interesting investigation into the cost effectiveness of Helicopters in Merseyside policing;
‘The Class Divide’: a topical and interesting set of data reflecting the type of education current MPs enjoyed and whether some of them may have faired otherwise if they had to pay for their university education;
and finally ‘Scraping the Barrel’: which was an unusual look into school applications in relation to Health statistics of a number of wards in the Liverpool region.

Towards the end of a feverish day of activity and excitement, each team where given the opportunity to present their project to the group.
The day culminated in a judging session, where all projects were assessed on a guidance criteria which included categories such as ‘concept development’ ‘execution of idea’, ‘project potential’ and ‘presentation format’, with a final prize giving session for the Judges’ winning project, which was ‘Scraping the Barrel’.

Hacks meet Hackers Student Edition : a collaboration between ScraperWiki & Open Labs & the Liverpool School of Art & Design at Liverpool John Moores University and sponsored by Trinity Mirror.

For further information about Open Labs contact Director, Lindsay Sharples: l.h.sharples@ljmu.ac.uk or 0151 231 4747.