iKAST 2012

Artists: Ronald Fraser-Munroe, Michael Barnes-Wynters and Naomi Kashiwagi

Close your eyes, drop your iThing and imagine a future where the terrestrial broadcaster is dead and a group of artist provocateurs are the new content creators and distributors on the now omni pervasive global media network! Accidents happen, and things, perhaps best left unsaid, are cast bodily through the very virtual airways and into slumbering skulls. What a to do! The group lands in Manchester. Castlefield to be precise, and set up shop at Castlefield Gallery. They are there even as we speak. Wear stout boots and take a packed lunch with you when you leave home in the morning. Its going to be a long fun ride.

iKAST is comprised of two parts – the Kunst Fabriek art factory, a time-based creative process of multi-format artworks responding to three predetermined themes and the iKAST Event on Thursday 5 April, 7-10pm. The evening will compromise of a live multi-media performance to be filmed by and distributed on the new artplayer.tv platform.

Throughout March Castlefield Gallery has become a studio, lab and creative centre point for three cross-platform performances by Ronald Fraser-Munroe, Michael Barnes-Wynters and Naomi Kashiwagi framed by the iKAST project. The creative process is the artists response to the project themes and these responses manifest themselves as the iKAST performance artworks that will be performed live, and accompanied by screen-based or physical 3d (physical object-based).

The three themes for the artworks and performances are:
Digital Switchover (Broadcasting in the 21st Century)
Me, Myself and I (The Mediated Individual)
Babel-Song (Pleasuring The Technology Muse)
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Artists Biographies:

Michael Barnes-Wynters (aka Barney Doodlebug) is a creative renegade and catalyst with ‘a permanent light-bulb above his head’ and founder of the influential doodlebug arts platform. He is a significant arts producer and graphic artist who continues to breathe life into creative thinking whilst delivering something inspirationally new. Described as a renaissance man and a maverick, Michael continues to ignite exciting collaborations by any medium necessary with art at its heart.  www.youtube/

Ronald Fraser-Munroe’s creative practice includes visual art, photography, video, literature, theatre, audio, and digital art. Since 1985 his unique work has been distributed throughout the UK and internationally. Current work explores the use of digital technology in the production and distribution of contemporary, convergent media and content.

K3 Media is a leading innovator in digital arts and media production and a creative consultant devising and producing new models for contemporary arts development, production and distribution. K3 Media has fifteen years plus experience of working with individuals, artists and organisations to produce contemporary multi-media art through fusions of music, visual art, photography, literature, film-video and performance with digital technology. K3 Media has delivered professional design and creative production solutions from project visualisation and planning through to commissions, multi media events, salons and exhibitions. The K3 Media vision is to develop creativity whilst revitalising the creative industries through innovative practice. Encouraging creativity and the arts as tools for individual, group and organisational development are key motives.

Naomi Kashiwagi is a maker of experimental actions. Her art practice playfully looks into the intersections and impacts of visual art, music and language upon one another and the cyclical nature of obsolescence and technological innovation. She looks for connections between objects, ideas and functions and explores the potential of things beyond their prescribed uses. Kashiwagi works through reinvention recycling the redundant, the everyday and that of the established order: reusing obsolete technologies and everyday objects to reveal the curiosities and enchantments of the everyday. The way she works is also a reflection of her identity, an intrinsic fusion of two cultures, British and Japanese.

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Background
Castlefield Gallery, Manchester’s premier gallery for promoting emerging creative practice and FACT, the UKs leading centre for the commission and exhibition of film and new media are supporting Ronald Fraser-Munroe to develop a new project iKAST 2012, a creative commission for contemporary, independent arts creation, manipulation and distribution.

Led by artist and creative producer, Ronald Fraser-Munroe (K3 Media) in partnership with Castlefield Gallery and FACT, iKAST is a creative intervention and provocation that merges live action, performance, and music across digital platforms. iKAST is also about equality of access and aims to pursue a more pluralistic engagement between independent creative producers and the public to produce revolutionary digitalism that explores a diversity of voices.

iKast was co-commissioned by FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), Liverpool and Castlefield Gallery, Manchester