Jessica Thompson’s Borderline is a research-creation project that uses sound, data and algorithms to create new understandings of place. As a roving investigation of the invisible boundaries of imposed and emergent social containers of a city, the project is designed to facilitate new forms of citizen engagement through critical cartographies expressed via collaborative sound walks which both map borders of a city, and simultaneously question the conditions that produce them. This keynote lecture at University of Waterloo will highlight the updates that have been made to this project with a focus on Kitchener/Waterloo region.
Jessica Thompson is an Associate Professor of Hybrid Media at the University of Waterloo and Director of the Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business. Her artistic research investigates the ways that sound reveals spatial and social conditions within cities, and how the creative use of urban data can generate new modes of citizen engagement. She has been making interactive artworks since 2003.
Her projects have shown in exhibitions and festivals such as the International Symposium of Electronic Art (San Jose, Dubai, Vancouver), the Conflux Festival (New York), Thinking Metropolis (Copenhagen), Beyond/In Western New York (Buffalo), New Interfaces in Musical Expression (Oslo), Artists’ Walks (New York), Locus Sonus (Aix-en-Provence), the Art Gallery of Windsor Triennial (Windsor), InterACTION (Kitchener), HASTAC (Vancouver), Re:Sound (Aalborg), Entorno Encuentro Exploración (Pamplona) and The Politics of Sound (Lethbridge). She has received grants from the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and the Government of Ontario.
Presented in Partnership with the International Conference on Computational Creativity
