Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT)

Alchemy : International Masterclass for New Media Artists and Curators

(Adelaide, Australia)

For six weeks in May and June 2000, ANAT held an international master class for new-media art curation and theory titled Alchemy. This project provided artists and cultural practitioners with space to work on their own projects, either together or individually, within an intensive learning environment. Until this edition, the class was limited to local participants, but with the Daniel Langlois Foundation's support, it was opened to people around the globe. Highly experienced curators and artists provided training and workshops for participants who came from all over the world to exchange ideas and expand their network. Founded in 1985, ANAT has become Australia's most important network for artists working with new technologies. Its role is to represent, support and promote, both nationally and internationally, artists and art created through the merging of art, new technologies and science.

The following tutors were invited to share their knowledge of new-media art curation and theory during the 2000 edition of ANAT's master class:

Alexei Shulgin is a Net artist, performer and curator from Moscow.

Blast Theory is a London-based group of four artists (two of whom attended Alchemy) work on live events, installations and new-media projects. Their most recent project, in collaboration with the University of Nottingham in England, is titled Desert Rain.

Nina Czegledy is an independent media artist, curator and writer. She divides her time between Canada and Europe.

Sara Diamond is the executive producer for Television and New Media and the artistic director of Media and Visual Arts at The Banff Centre, Canada.

Mongrel is a mixed group of people and machines who celebrates the methods of an "ignorant" and "filthy" London street culture. Mongrel makes socially engaged cultural product employing any technological advantage its members can lay their hands on. Recently, Tate Britain commissioned the group to create an Internet artwork. Their mirror site of the Tate Britain site, pops up every time someone consults the original. Although Mongrel rarely operates as a core group, core members did participate in the master class. These members are Matsuko Yokokoji, Richard Pierre-Davis, Mervin Jarman and Harwood.

Geert Lovink is a lecturer and activist who has participated in many conferences on independent media, the arts and new technologies internationally. He is a former editor of Mediamatic, a new-media art journal based in the Netherlands, and teaches media-art theory throughout Eastern and Central Europe.

Mike Stubbs is an artist and curator who works with sculptural installation, performance, film, video and installations.

John Tonkin is an animator and Web artist who develops his own software in low-level programming languages such as C++ and Java.

REA is an internationally recognized artist who specializes in developing digital media.

Marko Peljhan is a performance and communication artist and writer based in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He founded the arts organization Projekt Atol and serves as program coordinator of Ljudmila (Ljubljana digital media lab). His most recent work, Makrolab, was part of Documenta X.

Tess De Quincy and Laura Jordan, who are respectively a performance artist and a new media artist, have collaborated on performance and research events including Triple Alice, an ongoing three-year project that seeks to provide a space for cross-disciplinary research and development.

Shuddhabrata Sengupta, from Delhi, India, is working to establish the Sarai New Media Initiative, a proposal to create a space for exploring media practices, theoretical interventions, research, education and activism throughout Asia. Sengupta also works with the RAQS Media Collective in New Delhi on video and other media-based projects.