Firstly my apologies for not entering into the spirit of introductions earlier. I am only a part-time lurker since I have a folders on two separate computers with ambit responses in them that I havent even opened yet, but will.
My name is Malcolm Dickson and I work for Street Level Photoworks that some of you know. We put on around 12 ehibitions year, all of it photo and digital based and some of it new media-ish. The large majority of these are staged by the gallery in that they are new, have been invited by Street Level, or the artist has approached the gallery. We also do a lot of education projects with schools in Glasgow and with community groups. The range of this is multi-facetted and a lot takes place behind closed doors (ie it is nor that visible some of the time). Training courses are also undertaken in both traditional photography and in digital imaging/web design. You can find out more on the website, but most work in progress isnt on there yet - www.sl-photoworks.demon.co.uk What the gallery does is key to my interests - the convergence of new media with innovative education projects within an integrated venue, but working with a range of partners. I have been at Street Level since late �95, coming from New Visions which I initiated and then coordinated a couple of the festivals and events between 92 + 94, which was then carried on by colleagues. I founded, edited and produced Variant magazine, starting in earnest in the late eighties and getting some core funding from the arts council so that we could produce quite a high quality magazine devoted to the visual,aural and live arts, before personal policitics took it away again two years later in 1993. Although the glossy mag ended in 94, the title, subscribers/advertsiers list was passed on to different editors with the same administrator who continue to publish in newspaper and free format. In 94 I edited a wee book called �Art with People� which traced the history of community arts to contemporary hybrids, and in 97 (if I remember rightly) I helped out on devising the New Media Scotland commissions, both digital and moving image ones. I also curated the show Infinitude at the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow, which a couple of ambitists were in. My credentials BC - member of EventSpace, an art agency which organised a number of artists site-specific events in Glasgow 87-91 which grew out of Transmission Gallery events of the same name with other artists. Started out as an artist doing video and installation work, including work at Third Eye Centre and some media festival abroad. Continued to do a lot of documentation work with a view to producing a video mag (a couple of pilots done in late 80�s on video art and another on workers city) but did not develop. Also significant I should say was working on the committee at Transmission Gallery from 85 to 87 where a lot of things were esablished that were to develop in the �work� that I do. The drive to organise things however, meant also the ability to produce what might be called individual artworks was suppressed. Unfortunately. All of this is relevant to the discussion topics for October and November which I�ll post shortly. I�m glad to say that my initial apathy towards Ambit has been surpassed and I look forward to exchanging notes in the margins of things. Malcolm ------------------------------------------------- a m b i t : networking media arts in scotland post: [EMAIL PROTECTED] info: send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and write "info ambit" in the message body -------------------------------------------------
