The World is My Imagination
Media – Model – Miniature
International Media Art Exhibition
Curated by Andrea Zapp
7th September to 3rd November 2007
at CUBE - Centre for the Urban Built Environment
Manchester, UK
www.cube.org.uk
The exhibition explores striking and picturesque model worlds which
replicate physical and imaginary spaces, while reflecting existences and
habitats, personal memories and longing.
The shift in scale ultimately comments on our surroundings within social,
cultural and technological changes.
Nine artists and collectives investigate the miniscule as an artist interface
in video, networked and interactive installations, digital sound sculptures
and photography, found objects and custom built environments.
Not just in Gulliver’s Travels, have shifting sizes and miniature shapes been
a creative feature in literature and contemporary art practice. ‘The World is
My Imagination’ explores this fascination for artists and audiences alike.
Nine international projects display miniscule scenery with particular and
ingenious methods within the field of media arts and environment.
Film, photography, digital imagery, sounds, model objects and even tiny
plants are embedded into custom-built rooms and miniature interfaces, to
establish a story; opposing a playful, dreamlike or virtual world against the
real, in relation to Schopenhauer’s view that ‘the world is my imagination’.
Participating Artists
Nick Hardy, UK
Tonight We’re Not Afraid of Anything (2006)
Interactive Installation
This playful installation built specifically to fit the architecture of
the CUBE invites the public to interact in a model subway, with sculptured
lighting and sound elements, by small apertures and hidden miniature
microphones at each end of the structure. This illusory microcosm attempts
to transport the viewer to a virtual, other world, challenging issues of
time, absence and movement. By using viewing interfaces within the
contradictions of scale it poses the question whether or not the space is a
real or representational one.
Nick Hardy graduated in June 2006 from Manchester Metropolitan
University with a BA (Hons) Degree in Interactive Art. Having exhibited his
work at the Sydney College of Art, Australia and at the Liverpool Biennial
2006, Nick’s work was selected for the Celebration of Talent exhibition held
earlier this year at Urbis, Manchester. Nick has also been nominated for the
Jerwood Artists Platform taking place in London, 2007.

h.o Media Group, Japan
Perfect Time (2004)
Mixed Media Installation
Perfect Time explores the concept of time as a non-spatial phenomenon
that we cannot visualise nor materialise. An hourglass motivated device
displays a curtain of running quartz sand to be refilled. Visitors to the
exhibition are invited to interact with the installation by continuously keeping
the sand curtain running. Miniature worlds and motion graphics are floating
on the interactive sand screen. The images can only be seen while the sand is
falling, thus indicating a fragile and ambiguous construct of time, ephemeral
scenery, and space.
h.o is a media art collective creating conceptual art works by using a
mixture of media combined with digital technology. Its 14 members’ diverse
specialities uniquely collaborate on each work. ‘h.o’ derives from the
chemical symbol for water, H2O, implying h.o’s interest in various forms of
communication between people.
Members: Hideaki Ogawa, Kaori Honda, Tomonori Kondo, Emiko Enkawa,
Yoko Minagawa, Taizo Zushi, Satoshi Onodera, Shota Ishimura, Sakura
Toyabe, Yukiko Okamura, Yuichi Tamagawa, Mizuya Sato, Yuichiro Haraguchi,
Junichi Yura

Hilary Jack, UK
Tap (2007)
Mixed Media Installation
Jack’s site-specific installation plays with the galleries’ infrastructure
and repairs that need to be mended. On a recent visit to CUBE Jack noticed
an existing dripping tap, the resulting work now harvests clean drinking water
from this tap on the top floor of the gallery. The drip is redirected into a
reservoir and used to nourish an indoor plant. The plant in turn acts as a host;
feeding a myriad of miniature self propagated baby plants to which it is
umbilically connected. The installation acts as a model and metaphor for
domestic mains water systems and their satellite networks - while creating a
miniature self-sustaining system of its own.
Hilary Jack works across media in socially interactive research based
projects, which often involve themes of collection, repair, transformation
and redistribution. A significant part of Hilary’s practice involves channelling
energy into potentially misguided areas in order to highlight certain aspects
of everyday life. The activity she generates often takes on the role of
volunteer for various hopeless domestic and civic tasks, such as gardening,
tidying, repairing, championing unsung causes, and making general
unsolicited ‘improvements’ to particular objects or areas deemed to be
in need.

Markus Kison, Germany
Roermond-Ecke-Schoenhauser (2005)
Networked Installation
A model structure illustrates a faraway location as something seemingly
closer, real and tangible. Four live web cam streams (Denmark, junction;
Amsterdam, laundromat; Berlin, inner courtyard; Holland, marketplace) are
projected onto their physical replicas. Consequently, the image is displayed
in the same geometrical shape as it is being filmed, turning the models into a
canvas or film set. The remote scenery is brought almost magically to life
in the gallery, recalling uncanny transformative effects of the 19th century’s
magic lanterns.
Markus Kison worked as a graphic designer and editor in film productions
and 3D animation. He studied Physics and IT at the University of Ulm in
Germany. Since September 2003 he studies Visual Communication at the
University of the Arts in Berlin. He received several international awards for
his work Roermond-Ecke-Schoenhauser.

Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, USA
Traffic 2: At Home (2004)
Video Installation
The miniature environment tells the story of the artists at home, watching
a scene from the film Sugarland Express on TV in their living room - which is
shot in real time right next to them by using self-controlled mini cameras and
a customized computer editing programme. The work is situated between
popular culture, new media formats and analysis of cinema language. It
ironically re-stages and deconstructs the production of Hollywood movies.
Mass media clichés are combined with personal experiences and memory.
Jennifer and Kevin McCoy are based in New York and have worked
together since 1996. They have exhibited extensively internationally, in many
group and solo exhibitions, their work being in many museum and private
collections.


Amanda Oliphant, UK
Birdhouse (2007)
Mixed Media Sculpture
Exposing elements of our daily surroundings that would otherwise go
unnoticed, this series of sculptures explores a material’s ability to be
‘re’-represented. The physically encapsulated narratives and metaphors
inside the small houses allow for further engagement with space and objects
while the shift in scale from the original ‘habitat’ reflects upon the everchanging
environment and the transience of man.
Amanda Oliphant was born in the UK and has located to five other
countries since. This has formed a passion for her desire to respond to
different environments, expressed through material manipulation. She is an
active member of two North West arts collectives. Exhibitions include Urban
Splash, Liverpool 04; Liverpool Biennial 04; Parkgate, UK 06; Collaborative
project, London 06; Museumman, Berlin 06; Transmute, Albert Dock, Liverpool
Biennial 06; Fellowship, Wirral 06; Source, Liverpool 07. Her current research
incorporates Art as Environment at MIRIAD (MMU).

Mark Pilkington, UK
Synth-City (2007)
Interactive Sound Sculpture
Viewers are invited to alter certain parameters within the model city
by changing and controlling the shape of music in this interactive
installation. The work presents a constructed model of an ever-changing
cityscape underscored by electronic music. The model’s outline, texture,
colour, and movement directly influence the type of sounds used in the
music. They are mixed with sounds of the city of Manchester. The model
interface plays with the idea of how a landscape and sound are
directly related.
Mark Pilkington is a performer and composer of electronic and electroacoustic
music. He graduated with an MA in electro-acoustic composition
from the University of Huddersfield in 2004.His main interest lies in
fusing digital audio-visual structures that can be manipulated from a score
or improvised in real-time thus presenting performances that question
traditional concepts of art, music and technology. He also runs his own
audio-visual label and studio called ‘Thought Universe’.


Joel Porter, UK
Welcome to the Countryside (2007)
Photographs
This playful investigation questions our perception of real and fictitious
worlds. Porter explores the countryside by merging the real with the
imaginary. The large-scale images comment on these issues by interweaving
the natural photographic scenery with model objects and figures to
ultimately not only recreate but also alter the conventional landscape view.
Nevertheless, the works are produced in a traditional way, with the models
being shot in the actual given location.
Joel Porter is currently a postgraduate student within the MA Media Arts
route at Manchester Metropolitan University. He graduated from West
Surrey College of Art and Design, with a BA (Hons) in Photography in 1994,
and has since continued to pursue exhibiting whilst working in the field of
web design.





Andrea Zapp, UK/Germany
Eye 2 Eye (2006)
Interactive Networked Installation
Two black boxes are connected with each other in the gallery: Visitors are
invited to glimpse inside, a camera captures their eye and transfers it to the
other box. Views are exchanged in real-time above a miniature set of the
universe. The installation recalls a satellite perspective, underlined by the
surveillance interface. The joint observation of this small cosmos glowing in
the dark, reminiscent of toys even, implicates ironic commentaries in itself –
resulting in thoughts about who controls and who observes whom, in a more
globally networked sense.
Andrea Zapp was born in Germany and is currently Senior Lecturer for
Media Arts at MMU. She has edited two books, Networked Narrative
Environments as imaginary spaces of being, MMU/FACT Liverpool, 2004;
and New Screen Media, Cinema/Art/Narrative, BFI, London/ ZKM, Karlsruhe,
2002, (with Martin Rieser). She curated StoryRooms, International Exhibition
on Networking and Media Art, shown at The Museum of Science and Industry
Manchester, from October 05 to January 06. Her art works have been shown
widely at international exhibitions and venues.


Special Thanks to:
Alastair King (Technical Production Manager)