Damian Stewart
Damian Stewart (NZ/AT) is an artist working with sound, code, light, and electronics.
Damian Stewart
Damian Stewart is interesting in creating senses of space that
transcend the immediate physical environment of the viewer. His ideas
come from a diverse background that includes musicianship as an
improvising electroacoustic performer, time spent as a professional
software programmer, and an education including elements of
architecture and spatial design.
Using custom electronics and
sensors combined with computers, Damian build installations using light
and sound. Drawing on ideas of performance, Damian pursues the creation
of beautiful work that engages with the audience at an intuitive level
and invites a deep sense of freedom and of play. In building
interactive pieces he is interested in blurring the lines between
artist and audience, dissolving implicit hierarchies of artistic
experience and elevating the audience to the level of artistic
collaborator, even as he releases his grip as an artist on the
specifics of audience experiences of his work.
Drawing on ten
years of classical training and an additional five years of personal
musical development, Damian composes and performs using a MIDI
controller keyboard and software instruments developed in PureData: On
stage the laptop usually lives behind me, out of the way; my entire
performance is built up live using just the MIDI controller, which
frees me to move my body expressively, and in so doing, forge a strong
bond between myself as a performer and my audience.
Damian
works closely with other artists to develop custom software, usually
for interactive pieces. An expert C/C++ programmer with professional
experience both in the Culture/Heritage sector, he is developing
computer-vision based interactive installations for museums, and game
titles for the Sony PlayStation2. Being an artist, he prefers to work
in collaborative arrangements, where he can become engaged in the
conceptual development of the piece.
Damian Stewart demonstrated the project Artvertiser in Test_Lab: Tools for Propaganda on March 11, 2010. Together with Julian Oliver, Damian will lead the Artvertiser Walks, in the context of the Beeldfestival Rotterdam on October 29 and 30, 2010.
