Paisley Digital Art Project fuses creativity and science

The town of Paisley has announced its inaugural Digital Art Commission, a £25,000 grant to create a piece of artwork for the town which explores the relationship between art and technology, to boredomresearch.

Article by Michael Shea | 01 Sep 2015

The town of Paisley has announced its inaugural Digital Art Commission, a £25,000 grant to create a piece of artwork for the town which explores the relationship between art and technology. The award was offered by the University of the West of Scotland in collaboration with New Media Scotland’s Alt-w Fund and Renfrewshire Council. The stated aim of the commission is “to engage reinvent and re-imagine aspects of the town’s heritage for the digital age” and is expected to be the first of several such projects arranged by the Creative Media Academy at UWS.

The winning bid came from boredomresearch, a collaboration between Southampton based artists Vicky Isley and Paul Smith. The pair have previously created several artworks that explore the relationship between technology and the natural world. For example, Real Snail Mail explored the contemporary obsession with speed in communication by creating an online mail service that used live snails to deliver its messages. The Paisley artwork set to be completed by June 2016.

The Digital Art Commission comes as part of Paisley’s bid to become UK City of Culture in 2021. Stuart McMillan, Policy and Regeneration Manager at Renfrewshire Council, describes the bid as “a bold statement of intent and a unifying opportunity for the whole town.” As a result, Paisley is currently experiencing something of a renaissance, with various local arts and heritage projects receiving support. The council estimates that the expansion of the town’s cultural offering and the increased tourism it may bring could be worth £45 million a year to the local economy.

The Digital Art Commission, with its emphasis on the interplay between art and technology, could be described as Paisley’s first attempt to create device art. The term device art originates in Japan, having been coined by media art curator Machiko Kusahara. The main purpose of device art is challenge the distinction between art, technology and design. Device art objects are typically interactive and have both engineering and aesthetic elements.

One of the earliest examples of device art being exhibited in Scotland was the Left to My Own Devices exhibition, which took place in Edinburgh’s Art Festival in the summer of 2011. The curators described the purpose of device art: “The key here is that technology should not be feared. These works may have entertainment value, but they can still be read positively with the same value systems applied to traditional Western art practice. In Japan these boundaries between forms of practice and appreciation do not exist.”

The inaugural Paisley Digital Art Commission is welcome news for art and technology enthusiasts in the region, who hope that local government in Scotland continues to invest in public art and to lead the way in technology-driven contemporary art in the coming years.

http://www.mediascot.org/alt-w/uws/paisley