Ian Gouldstone

Artist-in-residence at The Cass.

Ian Gouldstone

Dates: 5 November until 6 December 2018

Introduction: Thursday 8 November, 4pm to 5pm. Lecture Studio, Ground floor, Calcutta Small Annexe. Open to all.

Workshop #1: Thursday 15 November, 4pm to 5pm. Second floor, Calcutta Small Annexe. Open to L5 BA Fine Art students only.

Workshop #2: Thursday 22 November, 4pm to 5pm. Second floor, Calcutta Small Annexe. Open to L5 BA Fine Art students only.

Workshop #3: Thursday 29 November, 4pm to 5pm. Second floor, Calcutta Small Annexe. Open to L5 BA Fine Art students only.

Finissage: Thursday 6 December, 4pm to 7pm. Open Field Studio, Second floor, Calcutta Small Annexe. Open to all. Book now!

Artist statement

My practice explores our collective and individual relationship with technology. Who is technology to us? And who are we to technology? To approach these questions, I make structures where I write custom computer code and combine it with sculpture. By putting software ‘in the round’ I subject it to modes of looking more temporal and spatial than conventional screen-based consumption. Conversely, by augmenting sculpture with software, my work opens up the idea that sculpture itself is a machine performance.

In the studio, I draw heavily on my professional background in videogames and artificial intelligence as well as an academic background in theoretical mathematics and animation. Code and mathematics operate beside artist materials such as plaster, wood and found objects. At the heart of my structures are endless computer simulations left to run in physical playgrounds, physical prisons.

Critically, I am interested in infinity and how it functions across mathematics, technology and art. In the 1930s Alan Turing proved that some problems cannot be solved computationally in finite time. My work imagines what happens when we forget that limit and pursue them anyway.

Biography

Ian Gouldstone is a BAFTA winning artist and filmmaker whose work incorporates games, animation and new media. He has shown work and held events internationally at venues including the Institute of Contemporary Art, London, The Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Ars Electronica Linz, The National Videogame Arcade, Nottingham, The Jozef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana and in 2018 had his debut American solo show at SLEEPCENTER, New York.

Ian is a founder of the Australian games collective Pachinko Pictures (2010-2013), a former member of the Computational Creativity Group at Goldsmiths (2013-2015) and also the Gesture and Narrative Language Group at the MIT Media Lab (1999-2003). He graduated from Harvard University (2001) with a degree in mathematics before studying animation at the Royal College of Art (2005), and has recently completed his MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths (2017). Based in southeast London, Ian Gouldstone is also a trustee of Deptford X, London’s longest-running contemporary art festival.

Image credit: Wanton Boys by Ian Gouldstone