Artist working with 'the space between technologies'

Visual artist James Charlton (far right). Photo / supplied

The CreativeTech conference in September is drawing heavily on the resources and expertise of the Creative Technologies (aka the Interdisciplinary Unit, or 'IU') department of AUT, where students make robots, program, create art - and do a lot more besides.

The Creative Technologies department of AUT is a partner and will be demonstrating robotics workshops open to CreativeTech attendees in the CT Lounge.

The IU is also threatening to have blimps floating around the CT areas controlled by iPhones, among other things.

One of the lecturers at the IU is James Charlton. James gained his BFA from Elam School of Fine Arts in 1982. As a Fulbright recipient he completed his MFA at the State University of New York in 1986, and exhibited extensively throughout the US. He also lectured in sculpture at the University of New Hampshire, Monserrat College of Art and the State University of New York at Albany.

Back in NZ from 1991, Charlton was a founding member of the ASA School of Art Visual Arts Degree, and was subsequently appointed Curriculum Leader of Sculpture in the Visual Art Programme at AUT.

In 2008 he left to take up the position of Programme Leader for the newly established Bachelor of Creative Technologies at AUT where he lectures in sculpture and interactive media.

Since he is presenting at the CreativeTech conference at both 11:15am on Friday and the same time on Saturday, on where art and technology collide, I asked his some questions.

Mac Planet: When did you first start using a computer and why?

In winter of 1984/5 I bought my first Mac - a mighty 128k beige icon of the eighties. I was living in up-state New York at the time and apart from whiling away the cold nights playing Dark Castle (which, by the way, is still the best 2D game ever!), I played around with Speak. I never really got into MacDraw or Mac Paint but found ways to use Speak to generate audio in the interactive sculptures that I was making at the time (as I recall, these were platforms that you stepped onto, triggering audio generated by Speak).

This, as you can appreciate, was pretty limited so I left computers behind for a while until I came back to New Zealand some 10 years later.

The moment of epiphany you're really asking for came when I moved my newly imported Power Macintosh 6100 from my office desk into the studio and plonked it on top of my table saw. I can't really recall what I was doing with it in the studio - probably using Photoshop for some visualisation. But the point was, from that time on it became like any other tool in my workshop/studio.

Naturally the dust and crap (not to mention the heavy objects I dropped onto it) gave this computer a short life, but in very obvious ways it was the start of integrating digital and physical practice.

Subsequent computers came and went until my first laptop, which fully realised this idea and allowed me to explore interactive/performative software in conjunction with mechatronic systems to realise both street and gallery-based projects around the world.

Mac Planet: When and how did the Creative Technologies department, AKA the Interdisciplinary Unit, come about at AUT?

Like all good things the idea of an academic programme that combined aspects of Computer Science, Art and Design, Engineering and Communication Studies had been kicked around at AUT for a long time.

I seem to remember the first meetings to nut-out what it would look like were held in around 2005. But you know what that's like - sticking a bunch of academics in a room is a certain way of not getting any concrete outcomes.

So it really wasn't until 2007 when Dr Charles Walker was appointed to form the IU that it started to take shape.

The logic of the programme lies within the framework of the Creative Technologies Faculty and I guess even deeper in the vision of the University. The faculty was formed in 2004 with the idea that some of the sciences, eg engineering and computer science, had more in common with art and design than languages or business studies did.

Certainly for me this has proved to be true. This notion is also steeped in the vision the University has of itself as an innovator, delivering an education for the future that is not reliant on old, outmoded ways of thinking.

I guess the Creative Technology programme tries to live up to that. Certainly the way we are doing things is far from traditional and expects a lot of our students and staff. Everything we do is contestable - that's the whole point if you want to deliver content in ways that are relevant today.

Mac Planet: What Apple setup would you like to buy if your budget had no limits?

One of our staff spent eight hours driving around Auckland on the 30 July trying to get an iPad. I expect he was in stiff competition with the students as there were quite a few floating around the studio last week.

I'm not going to lie and say I don't want to get my hands on one too - I like to play with new toys as much as the next girl - but that's not really the point, for me.

What I'm more interested in is what happens when you bring gear together in new ways - obviously this means hardware has to have certain capabilities like the iPhone's gyro and GPS. But it's in the space between the technologies that I'm interested in working.

Between my 27-inch iMac, my 17-inch MacBook Pro and my iPhone there's not much I yearn for, but I'm quite keen to try out the Magic Trackpad as an interface for interactive art projects. Imagine a room full of 100 or so of them interfacing with a 3D environment like Unity3D.

I learnt a lesson the hard way last year when my laptop had a fatal head crash. So if you're feeling generous, a solid-state drive for my laptop would avoid another catastrophe. Guess I won't ever be one of those guys who waits for the sleep light to come on before I move my laptop!

At AUT I'd like to see an Xserve put through its paces by the students in our iMac Lab. I think it would make a huge difference to some of software licensing and networking issues.

Mac Planet: Are you happy with the way Apple is developing in 2010?

Let's forget about iPad, iPhone and all the excitement around that at the moment - be it good or bad - Apple is getting it right - again!

But what's happening on the software front that's as revolutionary and friendly as the hardware is? What gives with the Apple development strategy that blocks out Flash-to-iPhone capability or prevents me from importing SD footage into Final Cut Pro? Come on guys, Open Source is real and if you piss people off they will wonder why they don't just use Adobe or buy an Android!

Oops, am I allowed to be critical of Apple?

Mac Planet: What do you think is the most exciting technological development of the last decade?

Right now, everyone is jumping on the 3D wagon but I'm not so convinced about the impact of this. I wonder if it really will be the revolution we are told it will be.

It's hard to go past the internet as a key technological advancement. It's certainly revolutionised teaching and research in the past ten years, but I don't really get off on web stuff too much - I'm into things that are more physical, I guess.

The thing that's exciting me at the moment is some of the advancement and availability in 3D printing technologies and where that's going.

Being able to materialise real 3D objects from digital files is an extraordinary thing to watch - we will have one of our 3D printers running at CreativeTech, if anyone's interested. When this technology drops in price and replaces your inkjet printer at home - then it's going to revolutionise the way we manufacture and distribute goods.

Imagine printing your tooth brush from a download instead of buying it at the supermarket?

Mac Planet: What are you looking forward to at CreativeTech?

You won't keep me out of Marc Pesce's opening presentation on The Future of you and your Tech, but as good as he and many of the other speakers might be I'm more interested in some of the more practical sessions like Roger Shake's - developing for iPad, or Zac and Nik's iPhone app sessions which are always good value.

All the scheduled stuff aside, it's the back door conversations that always make me spin - those moments of synchronicity that you get when you're talking with someone else who is as passionate about geeky shit as you are.

One of the aims of the CreativeTech conference is the networking possibilities presented by the CT Lounge, which will be hosted in the Four Seasons restaurant while the conference runs. This will also host the Wired Dog Help Desk - this area is only available to ticket holders.

Mark Webster - mac-nz.com