Julie Andreyev
New media artist, Associate Professor, Emily Carr Institute, Vancouver (CA)
Drifting the City
The development of the contemporary urban metropolis, the city as we know it today, has largely been determined and defined through the historical and spatial accommodation of vehicular transport. The car, in particular, has increasingly become the city's defining mobile feature, significantly contributing to the city's physical and social forms, and utilitarian and spatial functions. The complex and symbiotic relationship of the car and the space of the city, and its (not unproblematic) terms of coexistence, has seldom been the direct subject of art. Separately, the car as object and the city as space have been the subject of artistic practices, such as sculpture, film, and painting. Uniting the city and the car, bringing them together through new forms of mediations and activities of circulatory experience has become accessible and brought into a focus of contemporary new media, through the development of new technologies for city-life, such as wireless connectivity and small communication devices. Such "tools" have created opportunities for mobile content creation.
This paper presents a short history of the automobile depicted in visual and media art practices and proposes a critical inquiry into the contemporary city with the use of the car itself is an instrument for content creation.
Julie Andreyev is a Vancouver-based new media artist whose work is influenced by popular entertainment, car cultures, and interactive, mobile technologies. Her artistic practice explores the social and spatial character of the city through the mobility of the car. The most recent projects, produced under the title "Four Wheel Drift" combine multi-media interactive cars and urban performance. Her work has been shown across Canada, in the US, Europe and Japan. Venues that have shown her work include SIGGRAPH 2006; Digital Art Weeks, Zurich; Elektra Montreal; Pace Digital Gallery New York; Viper Basel 2004; Japan Media Arts Festival; and numerous gallery exhibitions. Her work is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, The British Columbia Arts Council, Foreign Affairs Canada, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Andreyev has a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Simon Fraser University, Vancouver. She is an Associate Professor at Emily Carr Institute, Vancouver and co-curator of Interactive Futures Conference, Victoria, Canada.