Josh Harle (AUS): Tactical Space Lab

Opening: Sat, Feb 07, 16:00
Venue: ARTISTIC BOKEH, Electric Avenue
Admission free

Austria Australia Arts Alliance & Artistic Bokeh present the Tactical Space Lab by Australian media artist and researcher Josh Harle.

The exhibition features a WiFi-enabled “mobile research platform”.
The Lab is the basis for a series of performative mapping experiments which emphasise an embodied 'making sense' in the practice of cartography. Documentation of the experiments is made available through the Lab's built-in open WiFi.
The Tactical Space Lab has been installed in various urban locales in Europe: Paris, Berlin, Vienna.
In mid-2015 it will continue on to Sydney, Perth, Melbourne, and Chongqing.

JOSH HARLE BIO:
Josh Harle is a multidisciplinary researcher and new media artist. His research investigates the virtual spaces generated by emerging technologies, our encounters with the world through them, and their social consequences. He graduated with honours in Computer Science at University of Reading, UK, Philosophy at University of New South Wales and Fine Art at the College of Fine Arts, Sydney.  In 2013 he completed a doctoral thesis investigating virtual and augmented space supported through an Australia Research Council linkage grant with the New South Wales government's Emergency Information Coordination Unit.

Harle’s practice explores the contemporary use of digital technologies to map and make sense of the world. He critiques the often ideological practices of digital capture that result in representations ranging from the schematic and reductive (e.g. GPS navigation and Google maps) to the immersive and evocative (e.g. narrative-based video games). His works take various established and emerging mapping technologies – laser scanning, photogrammetry, geolocation tracking – and re-appropriates them as expressive mediums, altering their outcomes to emphasise an affective element which is normally absent. Through these radical cartographic practices, Harle reveals his own place in a field of competing drives to organise, stake-claims, and dictate boundaries: the map as a performance of exploration, of trying to make sense of the world.

He has exhibited internationally in Berlin, Beijing, London, Vienna, New York, and Sydney. In 2015 he will complete an Australia Council ECAP grant-supported residency at the University of Western Australia's Archaeology department, working with archaeologists and local communities in Pilbara and Kimberly to produce virtual tours of vulnerable rock art sites.

<link http: joshharle.com _blank>Joshharle.com
<link http: www.artisticbokeh.com>www.artisticbokeh.com