Ongoing projects include the Institute Robert Walser, The FabLab Newcastle Initiative,  the production of Alice in Bed by Tender Buttons and the Intersections of Spaces publication project (“The Project Space Manual”).

The average event duration was 53.21 hours (max 192, min 4), the average number of project collaborators was 4.3  (max 14, min 2), the average number of visitors 42.5 (max 80, min 5)

The average PHR (Participant Happiness Rate) is 99.9%

With the end of November, our time on Forth Street is over. Join us to celebrate our last night in our current space! With a special appearance by Neil Davidson aka. DJ Alektronic on the decks. BYOB!

Saturday, November 26th, 6pm
Culture Lab OnSite
5 Forth Street, NE1 3PJ Newcastle upon Tyne

“With the evolution of internet shopping, the high street is beginning to change. The act of purchasing goods is being removed from the physical environment, but what else does the high street provide? Autonomous agents are being developed to aid the shopping experience, primarily focused on making it easier for us to consume. Although consumption is not the only function that the high street provides us. The high street creates a platform for us to perform, a place for us to aspire to be better, a place where we feel envy and jealousy and among many more, a place where we have to confront realities. If shopping is removed completely, is there a way an autonomous agent could be created that provoked these emotions that the high street does so well?

This research is where ‘Mercedes’ Shop Front’ came from, looking into what the high street maybe in the future. The character Mercedes try’s to challenge a shopper in the same way as the high street. I created an animation and took it onto OnSite where I projected it on the shop window, where later it addressed personally my unsuspecting shopper. ”

Window farm take 2 by SparkCBC, on Flickr

Saturday, 19 November: 1pm – 6pm
Vertical Garden Workshop

It seems we live in a time where great crises and inspiring change are happening at the same time, every day, even if we don’t always hear about the inspiring stuff in the mainstream media. The Sentient Cities project takes a radical approach to animating, inspiring and involving urban populations in the shift to a more satisfying and sustainable future. In this workshop we’ll explore one thread of this preposterously ambitious project by taking a look at how vertical gardening and innovative food production relate to the challenges and possibilities which exist today. We’ll make a no-soil vertical garden (a “WindowFarm”) and have a look at how anyone in Newcastle could make one using locally sourced materials. Cheap, creative solutions is our focus.

Limited spaces available, please register with Ben Holden at ben.p.holden@googlemail.com. The registration fee is £10, which includes most materials necessary to build a simple window garden system for you to take home.

Tuesday, 22 November: 5pm – 6pm
Introduction to Aquaponics

Aquaponics is perhaps one of the most effect and inspiring ways of producing food. Not only are they flexible, low cost, and relatively easy to make, they are also learning environments which provide living examples of some Nature’s basic operating principles. Set within the Vertical Garden built on Saturday, this presentation will explain how it works and why it is so inspiring, free of charge. The session is also an invitation for community groups and individuals to consider setting up an Aquaponics greenhouse with the help of Aquaponics UK – one of the leading organisations in this field and supporters of the Sentient Cities project.

For more information about the Sentient Cities project, check out www.sentientcities.org, follow their Facebook Page or contact Ben Holden at ben.p.holden@googlemail.com

Saturday November 19th and Monday November 22nd
at Culture Lab OnSite
5 Forth Street
NE13PJ Newcastle upon Tyne

Ben Holden is a Digital Media Master of Research student at Culture Lab. Seeding the City is supported by Brightblue Studio, a hybrid architecture studio and glass workshop in North Shields specialising in sustainable design.

Book Apothecary
A Travelling Exhibition of Artist Books

Following on from the huge success of the launch of Book Apothecary at Durham Book Festival, we are thrilled to announce a new date for our current exhibition ‘Category’.  Join us for interactive drop in workshops and exhibition of our evolving artist book museum at Culture Lab Onsite.

Book Apothecary is a travelling museum of artist books showcasing work by visual artists Theresa Easton, Yvette Hawkins, Hannah Keville, Simran Lajmi, Aidan Moesby and Stevie Ronnie who have made work responding to the theme of Category. Works have been presented inside a series of travelling modified trunks and suitcases designed by Furniture Maker Nick James.

The travelling museum is inspired by the idea of book and botanical category systems, proving that books can be visual as well as informative.

AUDIO WORKSHOP WITH HANNAH KEVILLE & STEVIE RONNIE
SUNDAY 13th NOVEMBER 12 – 5pm

Artists Hannah Keville and Stevie Ronnie will lead a collaborative audio workshop inviting the public to get involved. Come along at any time between 12-5pm if you’d like to collaborate with the artists in the production of a new artist’s book. Suitable for all ages.

COLLECTING CATEGORIES WITH YVETTE HAWKINS
SUNDAY 13th & MONDAY 14th NOVEMBER 12 – 5pm

Sorting socks, ignoring bills, separating whites, recycling newspapers. Collecting, sifting and categorising are processes we do every day within our lives. Book Artist Yvette Hawkins invites you to submit your own ways of categorising your world to be embroidered into a new artist book to be toured in 2012. Follow the progress of this year long project on twitter @bookapothecary

Drop in any time between 12-5pm throughout the exhibition to submit your lifestyle categories.

13th & 14th November
Open Daily 12pm -5pm

Reception Event Sunday
13th November 5-7pm

Culture Lab OnSite
5 Forth Street
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 3PJ

www.bookapothecary.co.uk

We’re broadcasting a special day of performances, streamcasts, exhibitions, interviews, and network events as part of the Celeste Prize days in NYC will take place at The Invisible Dog Art Center on Nov. 11, 2011. Visit The Celeste Prize website to learn more and to access the Celeste Lab streamcasts beginning at at 2pm (NY Time) on Friday. The Celeste Lab project, hosted by Roberto Paci Dalò and David Weinstein, can be heard on ARTonAIR.org streaming live from 7pm – 11pm. The streams from sites around the world will continue to be available throghout the day on Saturday.

11.11.2011, 7pm
Culture Lab on Campus
NE17RU Newcastle upon Tyne

Image: Sophie Michael - 99 clerkenwell road, 2010

A series of films and a live performance that examine the physical effects time has on an environment. Six artists have made work by looking at a familiar space and presenting it from a new perspective.

Thursday 10 November 5pm – 10pm
Sophie Michael
Edwin Mingard
Sam Thorpe
Liam Witten & Johnny Lloyd (Live Performance)
Toby Lloyd

Friday 11 November 4pm – 7pm
Toby Lloyd

Culture Lab OnSite
5 Forth Street
NE13PJ Newcastle upon Tyne

These spaces come in different names and outfits: Art Spaces, Project Spaces, Collaboration Spaces, Off Spaces, Research Residencies, Archives.

We have invited a number of significant researchers and practitioners involved in such initiatives to a discursive meeting, and you’re invited to join the conversation on Monday 21st of November, 5pm at Culture Lab, Space 7.

Participants (TBC)
Mike Ruiz, Berlin – http://thefuturegallery.org
Lise Autogena, London – http://www.crir.net
Brian Condon, London – http://www.creativecollaboration.org.uk
Jim Prevett, London - http://www.spacestudios.org.uk/
Will Schrimshaw, Newcastle –  http://subliminalcity.co.uk
Elisa Lozano, New York City – http://invisiblevenue.typepad.com/project_space_survey
Jamie Allen, Newcastle – http://heavyside.net
Bernhard Garnicnig, Newcastle/Vienna – http://onsite.ncl.ac.uk
Albert Allgaier, Vienna - http://materialmattersvienna.tumblr.com
Harriet Plewis, Newcastle - http://www.starandshadow.org.uk
David Butler, Newcastle - http://www.intersectionspublicart.org.uk
Elaine Campbell, Newcastle - http://www.ncl.ac.uk/gps/staff/profile/elaine.campbell

The projects and practices all participants are involved in have one thing in common: Instead of relying on existing infrastructures to catch on or waiting for established contexts to catch up, they have created places and environment that fit your vision of a contemporary and sometimes collaborative art/research practice. Those places exist in very different contexts – Universities, Freetowns, The Art World, The Internet or The Urban Environment, and different sites: Living Rooms, Entire Buildings, Little Sheds, The Browser or nowhere specific.

Feel free to let us know you’re coming! cl.onsite@ncl.ac.uk

Metis was founded by Mark Dorrian and Adrian Hawker as a research design atelier. Metis’ work focuses on the city and the complex ways in which it is imagined, inhabited, and representationally encoded. The aim is to produce rich, multi- layered works that resist immediate consumption and that are instead gradually unfurled over time through interaction with them. Their research is concerned with establishing a poetic but critical approach to the city that is sensitive to its cultural memory but is also articulated in relation to its possible futures.

Scriptorium is Metis’ first venture into Newcastle Upon Tyne, an installation that makes the OnSite gallery a register of unseen conditions in the city around. The installation, playing upon the precedent of the ‘writing cell’, inscribes and makes visible the oscillations of the railway viaduct within the space, through an interplay of light, camera and projection.

Thursday October 27th, 5pm
Culture Lab OnSite
5 Forth Street
NE13PJ Newcastle upon Tyne
Open daily 4-7 pm until Tuesday November 1st.

Photography by Ko-Le Chen

"Heart Gears" by Emmett Lalish on Thingiverse.com

Places are subject to limited availability, so please register soon. Just Send an email to cl.onsite@ncl.ac.uk stating your name, information about your company and practice, and a brief statement about your interest in rapid protoyping or ideas for a project you would like to work on. Participation fee: £15 to be paid on the first day. Different material samples will be available in low quantity for all participants to experiment with. For larger projects or very specific interests, participants are required to buy their own materials.

Some context: Digital Fabrication and Rapid Prototyping increasingly important method in the a range of design disciplines. It has already become the industry standard in model making among architects and product designers. Companies providing rapid prototyping services are popping up on the market, but for small design studios and artists the costs are often too high for initial experiments and research. Through our workshop we want to provide an opportunity to local design studios and artists to get to know the technology and its possibilities for their individual practice.

Click here for more information