The Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) has announced artists Niki Sperou and Dr Deirdre Feeney as the recipients of the 2020 ANAT Synapse Residencies. Established in 2004, the ANAT Synapse Residency facilitates research partnerships for artists and scientists to generate new knowledge, ideas and processes beneficial to both fields. Since the program’s inception, ANAT has generated creative research collaborations between more than 100 artists and scientists, with the support of the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund, building a sustainable support base for interdisciplinary creative collaboration in Australia.
Deirdre Feeney, Hollow Lens, 2019, steel, LCD screens, water, glass, aluminium, stepper motor, pump, rasberri pi, arduino, LED, dimensions variable. © Deirdre Feeney. Photograph: Andrew Sikorski
Sperou is a bio-artist, whose practice explores the nexus between art and science by working with traditional media arts, wet biology and scientific tools to create artworks that ‘evoke the ethical, cultural and economic implications of manipulating live media.’ Addressing issues of waste management and cultural change, her residency research will focus on experimental biomaterials and the utility of aquatic bio-polymers in the development of biodegradable bioplastics.
Feeney will use the residency to build on her previous work with Dr Geoff Campbell, at the ANU Research School of Physics, centred on the innovative applications of optics and the feasibility of physically generating projected images. She will investigate the ability to affect the transfer of light, by changing focal lengths on a variety of optically polished mirrored planes, embedded into an optical image system and how this can materially generate a projected moving image.
ANAT Director, Vicki Sowry, states that the Synapse residencies ‘work to match and seed new collaboration that will create outcomes and reveal new research leanings within the various industries.’
