Jen Southern, Cosmob
Jen Southern
Jen Southern is currently based in Huddersfield. Her practice sits between art and social research, she is currently working on an interdisciplinary PhD at Lancaster University, based in the Sociology department. Jen is interested in how networked and locative technologies produce hybrid places in which we are both absent and present, in which we pay attention to both local and distant people and places.
Following a satellite map on a mobile phone is a good example, we are present both imaginatively in the map and physically in our surroundings, is a sense we are inhabiting both the technology and the landscape. Through installations and walking projects, Jen engages with the physical presence of local environments that are also entangled with distant communications. These works are explorations of the idea of virtual presence through mobile technologies. Through commissions, exhibitions and residencies, Jen produce installations, performances and websites to explore how new technologies influence the way we inhabit an environment. Jen has also collaborated with industry and academia on the development of new tools for collaborative mapping.
Jen Southern explores art practice as a social process, often working collaboratively with audiences to explore location, technology and sense of place. During her residency Jen will be working on Diving into Data and learning to swim with it, a project that will explore unique methods of dealing with data produced through her locative media application 'comob'.
"Since 2009 I have been developing a new piece of locative media software, working with programmers, running workshops and going on walks. A database of information has been growing and multiplying quietly in the background. What to do with all this data? How is it part of my art practice? How can it be liberated from the dark shell of a hard drive and spill out onto the page, the floor or the street as art works?"
- Jen Southern
Following a satellite map on a mobile phone is a good example, we are present both imaginatively in the map and physically in our surroundings, is a sense we are inhabiting both the technology and the landscape. Through installations and walking projects, Jen engages with the physical presence of local environments that are also entangled with distant communications. These works are explorations of the idea of virtual presence through mobile technologies. Through commissions, exhibitions and residencies, Jen produce installations, performances and websites to explore how new technologies influence the way we inhabit an environment. Jen has also collaborated with industry and academia on the development of new tools for collaborative mapping.
Jen Southern explores art practice as a social process, often working collaboratively with audiences to explore location, technology and sense of place. During her residency Jen will be working on Diving into Data and learning to swim with it, a project that will explore unique methods of dealing with data produced through her locative media application 'comob'.
"Since 2009 I have been developing a new piece of locative media software, working with programmers, running workshops and going on walks. A database of information has been growing and multiplying quietly in the background. What to do with all this data? How is it part of my art practice? How can it be liberated from the dark shell of a hard drive and spill out onto the page, the floor or the street as art works?"
- Jen Southern