Treasure Seekers 1
2 – 9 October 2006
The first Treasure Seekers display was by Dr Gregory Sporton, Director of the Visualisation Research Unit (VRU) based in Margaret Street. The Visualisation Research Unit (VRU) is an applied research unit here in the Department of Art that is developing the use of digital media in creative practice.
Dr Sporton selected an early twentieth century poster advertising the exercise regime of Sanford Bennett from the BIAD School of Art Archive. Working with composer Jonathan Green, he produced a video piece based on the poster called Thirty Exercises in Six Movements.
Dr Sporton says of the video: ”Performer Gregory Sporton and composer Jonathan Green present the work of Sanford Bennett, a late 19th Century crank, or unsung visionary depending on who you believe, who developed an exercise system to ward off ageing and fatigue. Bennett's determination that the process of aging was far from natural echoes Descartes idea three centuries earlier that we die because we think we will...Giving Bennetts work the digital treatment tests his claims that an objective truth about the body was being obscured by our dependence on culture.”
As well as exhibiting the video piece as part of Treasure Seekers, they exhibited it as part of the Nature Inspired Design Network exhibition and conference in September 2006.