New UK Digital Arts Venue

JAWICK MARTELLO TOWER, IS OPENING ON SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17TH 2005.
Press Release

Jaywick
Martello Tower is the latest Digital Arts venue to open in the UK and
one of the most unusual. The Napoleonic Tower will feature a gallery
space where the photographer John Kippin has produced a site-specific
art installation and a first floor multi-media space for exhibitions,
events and workshops using the latest technology including interactive,
3D and VR projection facilities, and where international digital artist
Masaki Fujihata will present his work ‘Mersea Circles’ for the
inaugural opening. The Tower will also retain its important function as
a look out post for the National Coastwatch through a beautiful new
architect designed watchtower, and providing an impressive viewing area
for the local coast.

Situated in Jaywick, just south of Clacton-on-Sea in Essex, the Tower,
with floor to ceiling curved projection screen for immersive
three-dimensional video projections and Wi-Fi connections, will provide
a venue for a range of interesting, innovative and enjoyable projects
to be developed. Managed by the local secondary school, Bishops Park
College, it is planned that the Jaywick Martello Tower will be a
catalyst for change, providing inspiration for the local community and
attracting interest and visitors from around the country and abroad to
this part of Essex.

Partners including Essex County Council, the Heritage Lottery Fund,
European Intereg IIB, English Heritage, the Essex Rural Renaissance
Fund, Essex Environment Trust, GB Holiday Parks, EEDA and National
Coastwatch Institute.



EXHIBITION ONE: COAST Artist John Kippin’s Photographic Installation at the Jaywick Martello Tower

John Kippin is currently compiling work for a photographic installation on the ground floor of the tower.

The exhibition will bring together an appreciation of the Essex coastal
landscape as a natural boundary and to place it within the historical
context of the Napoleonic Martello defence structure.  John Kippin
is one of nine artists who have produced artworks for ‘COAST’, Essex
County County’s ambitious art project celebrating the Essex coast.

John states ‘Using images of historic military coastal defences as a
starting point, my intentions are that the combination of the newly-
restored tower, together with the installation of images and sound
specifically made to be installed in the tower, will synthesise a sense
of history and place which can explore current anxieties with regard to
the ‘defence of the realm’, and to consider the appropriate
understanding of the nation’s boundaries and borders both in terms of
the physical appreciation of the landscape and as an ideological 
and mythical construction.’

To find out more about the COAST project go to www.coastart.org

EXHIBITION TWO: Masaki Fujihata- Mersea Circles

Mersea Circles is a 3D interactive installation that emerged from an
innovative public-led documentation process in August 2003 on Mersea
Island. Some 150 people participated in this special reflection of the
Essex Coast walking around the island with DV cameras and GPS. As they
walked they captured, with position data, the route of their walk and
they recorded on video their activities, talks, interviews, and images
of the landscapes around them.

Internationally renowned, artist Masaki Fujihata, commissioned by
Future Physical, created this 3D installation from the data gathered on
video and GPS, The installation will be installed on the first floor of
the Martello Tower. Mersea Circles is also housed permanently at the
Ars Electronica Museum in Linz.

Masaki Fujihata is one of nine artists who have produced artworks for
‘COAST’, Essex County County’s ambitious art project celebrating the
Essex coast. To find out more about the COAST project go to www.coastart.org

Mersea Circles was produced by Future Physical for the Coast project
(Essex County Council Visual Arts Department in partnership with
Commissions East, firstsite and Future Physical / shinkansen)

BACKGROUND: INSTALLATION AND CONCEPT BY BODYDATASPACE

Using innovative restoration techniques and installation design, the
Tower is being transformed to enable digital artistic works especially
those created with Three Dimensional digital technology from local and
international artists to be presented in the Martello Tower.

bodydataspace is working on installing high level quality audio and
visual equipment and software for the Tower to become a fully
functioning satellite multimedia studio for Bishops Park College, and
the local Jaywick community.

This new 3D exhibition space will be a national resource for
commissioning and presenting digital art from regional, national and
well-known international artists.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: KEITH WATSON,

DIGITAL ARTS DEVELOPMENT OFFICER

(07802 748484)

or email: Keith@deluxe-arts.org.uk

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