• Environmental Research Initiative for Art (ERIA)

  The ARC funded Environmental Research Initiative for Art (ERIA) aims to trial renewable energy with analogue and digital media technologies to create innovative models of public art that are environmentally sensitive and self-sustaining. ERIA aims to conceive, construct and install site-specific public art that accommodates 'eco-logical' practices in ways that regenerate physical environments, while also producing new and meaningful exchanges with a community of users.

  The sculptural practices of ERIA researchers extend the physical sites they inhabit, practically and ideologically. By assembling portable energy producing nodes for remote field work, and developing a platform for hosting public events, openings, screenings and online discourse outside the 'white cube,' the projects initiate a dialogue with communities for deeper sustainable interests.

  In the long term, ERIA looks for post-industrial sites to reinvigorate with light, sound, and sensory systems; new, novel and robust technologies for use in public spaces; sustainable energy systems to trial; and opportunities for the development of remote communications technology.

  ERIA collaborates with industry leaders in renewable energy developement, and community-focused groups including:

• Energy Australia 
• BP Solar
• The Key Centre for Photovoltaic Engineering, UNSW
• V Fuels (vanadium battery producers)
• Sydney Olympic Park Authority (SOPA)
• Community Inc. (Broken Hill community group)

    Director 
    Allan Giddy

    Researchers
    Dr. Bonita Ely
    Martin Sims

    Artist Websites
    Allan Giddy
    Bonita Ely
    Martin Sims

    Related Projects
    Earth V Sky
    Thunderbolt
    Sonic Wells
 

• Porosity Studio 

  Each iteration of Porosity Studio immerses students in a foreign city to collaborate with a partner university and create experimental interventions in the urban landscape. By considering the city as a porous construction, where the activities of inhabitants sit against a complex backdrop of architectural forms, infinite systems and responsive ecology, research projects address a brief through public art and design works. 

  Founder and Director Richard Goodwin's initial Porosity research was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant where mapping methodologies and performance artworks exposed the porous potential of Sydney. Drawing on this research, Goodwin initiated the Porosity Studio in 2005 to expose undergraduate students to this style of practice in an intensive elective unit, and has spread to cities as geographically, architecturally and culturally disparate as Rotterdam and Shanghai.

  Porosity Studio engages with Richard Goodwin's practice as an artist, architect and academic, and draws upon decades of research redefining public space in cities and leading to urban propositions of parasitic architecture. Porosity promotes the idea that cities, as built forms, are very plastic and transient, while being strong as social constructions. The studio challenges participants to test ideas and devices at a different scale or through a different lens—to step outside the gallery and to challenge collaboration.

  Students of all disciplines, including fine arts, design, digital media, architecture, urban planning, and engineering, are invited to share intensive international studios over full-time periods of two weeks. Each studio is embedded in a major university within an international city and presents a particular focus as a starting point for students. This can be followed or contradicted through each students' interpretation. Examples of past Porosity outcomes are viewable on the Porosity blog.

  Project outcomes have been included in festivals, exhibitions and publications including Beijing Design Week and the Shanghai Expo 2010, and have received funding from the British Council.

  Previous Porosity Studios and host cities have included:

  • 'Small Spaces with Long Necks,' Hong Kong, Hong Kong (2013) in collaboration with MAP Office and Hong Kong Poltechnic University
  • 'Bamboo City,' Beijing, China (2012) in collaboration with Tsinghua University; exhibited in Beijing Design Week 2012
  • 'Rare Earth,' Shanghai, China (2011) in collaboration with Donghua University
  • 'Expo-Exo Skeleton,' Shanghai, China (2010) in collaboration with Donghua University; satellite to the Shanghai Expo 2010
  • 'e-SCAPE,' Shanghai, China (2009) in collaboration with Donghua University
  • 'Cardiff Chimera,' Cardiff, Wales (2009) supported by the British Council, in collaboration with Cardiff University
  • 'By the Throat,' Edinburgh, Scotland (2008) supported by the British Council, in collaboration with Edinburgh University
  • 'Octopus,' Milan, Italy (2007) in collaboration with Milan Politecnico
  • 'PARA.SITE,' Rotterdam, Holland (2006) in collaboration with The Willem De Kooning Institute
  •  'PARA.SITE Car,' Beijing, China (2005) in collaboration with The Central Academy of Fine Arts 
  • 'PARA.SITE,' Beijing, China (2004) in collaboration with Tsinghua University

  Founder and Director
  Professor Richard Goodwin

  Collaboratorating tutors
  Ian McArthur
  Associate Professor Paul Thomas
  Dr Michael Garbutt
  Associate Professor Mike Esson
  Brad Miller
  Associate Professor Fang Xu
  Emma Price

  Studio Coordinator
  Feying Ren 

     Artist Website
     Richard Goodwin