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![](https://mail.artweek.com/sites/default/files/styles/1000/public/exhibition-image/925/Citizen%20Sci-Fi%20UFO%20and%20Text.jpeg?itok=xr-x39ji)
Park as Platform for Participatory Digital Arts
We are an arts organisation based in the heart of Finsbury Park, which is used by roughly 55,000 people weekly in a neighbourhood described as ‘superdiverse’ for the nearly 200 languages spoken locally.
Working with park users and stakeholders, artists, techies, researchers, policy-makers, and other local arts organisations we have developed a brand new approach to cultural co-creation in this much loved shared public space. And we are calling it Citizen Sci-Fi.
Citizen Sci-Fi
From 2019 - 2021 we are turning Finsbury Park into a platform for participatory digital arts through Citizen Sci-Fi activities that creatively crowdsource everyone’s ideas for the future of this urban green space, the world, and beyond!
2019 Citizen Sci-Fi Programme: Time Portals
We are celebrating the 150th anniversary of Finsbury Park through a year of programming called Time Portals.
As one of London’s first ‘People’s Parks’, designed for free movement and thought, it is the perfect location to create a mass investigation of radical pasts and futures through creative activities for all...
Exhibition open:
9 May - 20 Oct 2019
Sat – Sun, 11:00 – 17:00 or by apt
Artworks:
What We Can Do, Antonio Roberts, Studio Hyte (2019)
An interactive wall depicting the urban green space of Finsbury Park as a machine for radical re-assemblage. The external billboard can be scanned with an Augmented Reality app to reveal the secret of realising progressive visions for the future. Scan the message in the Gallery to see the billboard image animated.
Antonio Roberts is a new media artist and curator based in Birmingham, UK who uses technology-driven processes to explore issues surrounding open source software, free culture and collaborative practices. https://www.hellocatfood.com/
Studio Hyte is a London based multidisciplinary design studio working between graphic design, interaction and emergent forms of visual communication. http://studiohyte.com
Future Machine, Rachel Jacobs (2019)
An interactive machine designed and built to respond to environmental change and inspire new rites for our troubled times. A slideshow of the machine as it is imagined and built will be presented alongside a ritualised unveiling in the Autumn.
Rachel Jacobs is an artist, researcher and games designer who co-founded the artist-led collective Active Ingredient in 1996 and the commercial games company Mudlark Production Company in 2007. www.whenthefuturecomes.net
ArchaeaBot: A Post Singularity and Post Climate Change Life-form, Anna Dumitriu, Alex May (2018)
In collaboration with Amanda Wilson (MARA Project/Imperial College) and Professor Daniel Polani (University of Hertfordshire). Supported by EMAP and Arts Council England
An underwater robotic installation which explores what ‘life’ might mean in a future transformed by climate change and artificial intelligence. The work is based on new research into archaea, which are single-celled, ancient microbes that can survive in hot, polluted environments, combined with the latest innovations in machine learning. Now living at Furtherfield Gallery the “ArchaeaBot” is the ‘ultimate’ species for the end of the world as we know it.
Anna Dumitriu is a British artist who works with BioArt, sculpture, installation, and digital media to explore our relationship to infectious diseases, synthetic biology and robotics. http://www.annadumitriu.co.uk
Alex May is a British artist creating digital technologies to challenge and augment physical and emotional human boundaries on a personal and societal level in a hyper-connected, software mediated, politically and environmentally unstable world. https://www.alexmayarts.co.uk
Circle of Blackness Hologram, Elsa James (2019)
With technical team: Carl Smith, James E. Marks, Marius Matesan, Chris Szkoda
Through in-depth research James revisits a historical black woman who lived in the Finsbury Park area 150 years ago, embodies and reimagines her then and 150 years into the future. Produced by hybrid reality technologist Carl Smith and broadcast as a hologram inside the Furtherfield Gallery throughout the summer.
Elsa James is a visual artist, activist and producer based in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, with a practice that encompasses lens-based performance, language and text. www.elsajames.com
James E. Marks, PsychFi - a natural born new media pioneer, award winning social video, and dimensional computing arts for good maker, curator and speaker.
Marius Matesan is creating narratives using real and virtual installation art, noted mostly for his work on theatre stages across Europe and more recently for his Mixed Reality experiences.
Carl H Smith is Director of the Learning Technology Research Centre (LTRC) and Principal Research Fellow at Ravensbourne University London. http://ltrcravensbourne.com
Chris Szkoda, Kaws Infinity - Games Designer/ VFX Artist, he works on designing mixed/virtual reality apps for a social mixed reality experience playground at Ravensbourne University London.
The Time Machine in Alphabetical Order, Thomson and Craighead (2010)
This video work is a complete rendition of the 1960s film version of HG Wells Novella re-edited by Thomson & Craighead into alphabetical order from beginning to end. In doing this, the artists attempt to perform a kind of time travel on the movie’s original timeline through the use of a system of classification.
Jon Thomson and Alison Craighead are artists living and working in London who make artworks and installations for galleries and specific sites including online spaces. http://www.thomson-craighead.net/
Activities:
Future Machine Artwork Workshops:
26 Mar, 20 Apr, 11 May, 18 Jun, 13 Jul, Furtherfield Commons
Book Launch Event for Jugaad Time by Amit S. Rai:
27 Apr 14.00-16.00, Furtherfield Commons
Find a Line to Follow and Face The Future! ‘Walkshops’:
5 May 18 May, 10 Aug, Furtherfield Commons
Free, Fair, and Alive! A People’s Park Play Day:
10 Aug 10.00-17.00, Furtherfield Commons
Future of Money Workshops:
10 Aug, 10.00-17.00, Furtherfield Commons, other dates TBC,
Citizen Sci-Fi 3-Day Artworkers Lab Event:
14-15 Sept, time TBC, Furtherfield Commons
Future Machine Artwork Opening Event:
Date and time TBC, Furtherfield Commons
Circle of Blackness Special Event:
28 Sept, time TBC, Furtherfield Gallery and Commons
The McKenzie Pavilion, Finsbury Park, London N4 2NQ