Studio XX is pleased to welcome multimedia artist audrey samson as its third resident in its 2009-2010 Residency Program. audrey’s artistic practice focuses on promoting the exchange of technical skills between women and exploring the dramaturgical possibilities of remote realtime storytelling, concepts central to Studio XX’s core. Through her reactive installations which incorporate audio and various material devices, audrey interfaces community storytelling, creating new lines of communication.
As an installation/tool/instrument which houses a growing archive of women’s stories, discussing their feelings toward and the ways in which they use computers, threads/ is audrey’s current artistic creation. The installation combines an antiquated sewing machine table and its original pedal with a computer keyboard that is positioned in place of the sewing machine. The sewing machine pedal acts as a crossfader between two layers of sound: weaving and sewing machines as well as voices of women. These audio samples are interwoven and mapped to the letters of the keyboard.
During her residency at Studio XX, audrey will redesign threads/’ programming using FLOSS and enhance its functionality in order to incorporate a recording station. threads/ participants will then be able to listen to the voices of women and add their own. The installation will therefore record women in each location that it is displayed, collecting and telling stories via the interface. A web interface will also be developed in order for the stories to be listened to online.
threads/ probes the question of a community’s outlook on gender roles in relation to technology. Participants contribute to a growing collection of travelling stories, building a relationship with the local community in which the artwork finds itself.
audrey samson
With a M.A. in Media Design from the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam (2007), audrey samson is a media designer and artist working and living between Montreal and Rotterdam. As a member of the genderchangers collective since 2006, she led FLOSS and electronic workshops, co-organized the annual /etc festival (2008) and participated in winter camp, organized by the Institute of Network Cultures (2009).
With interests in education and research, she was a Media Design minor teacher at the Willem de Kooning Academie in Rotterdam (2007-09) and a Media Theory and Communications teacher at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam (2008-09). Audrey also conducted numerous workshops at institutions such as Mediamatic in Amsterdam (2007), miss despoinas hacklab in Hobart, Australia (2009), OKNO in Brussels (2009), the SKVR (Stichting Kunstzinnige Vorming Rotterdam) in Rotterdam (2009), and the Netherlands Media Art Institute in Amsterdam (2009).
audrey completed artist residencies at _____ – micro research in Berlin (2009) and perte de signal’s rustines | lab in Montreal (2008). She exhibited her installation spectres? as part of Soundscape #1 with Peter Venus and Reni Hofmüller at ESC im labor during Galerientage in Graz (2008).
audrey presented Haunted Profiles; Social Networking Sites and the Crisis of Death at the Re : live Media Art Histories conference in Melbourne (2009), which was subsequently published in the conference proceedings (ed. Sean Cubitt and Paul Thomas). She also presented Praise the Media! Mediated Mourning Rituals and the Acceptance of Death at the Specters, Hauntings and Archives conference organised by ASCA (Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis) (2009).
http://ideacritik.com/