Dr Maggie Buxton & Kim Newall
Traces_COVID19 is an online work emerging out of a 2020 interarts research project. From May to September 2020 the artists journeyed on more than 150 walks along one 10km stretch of beachfront in Whangarei, Te Tai Tokerau | Northland. Each journey was documented via poetry, printmaking, sketching, painting, photography, sound sampling and found-object collection. Analogue documentation was digitised (through various processes), then all digital material was hacked and manipulated with data sourced from prominent COVID-19 analytics sites. In this way the global pandemic inserted itself into the local experience.
Traces COVID-19 was the result of a research and development grant by Creative New Zealand and Creative Northland and was originally launched as an interactive physical work as part of the 2020 Fringe Festival. It was then exhibited online. The research and development blog posts should be seen as an integral part of the work. The online journey you experience as audience is really just an artefact of the artistic journey and physical journeys that took place in that location. The next stage of the work is currently in development.
The artwork can be viewed here. Further details are available here
Artist Bios
Dr Maggie Buxton
Dr Maggie Buxton has an extensive track record in place-based interarts practice and special expertise (including a PhD) in emerging technologies.
Maggie has nearly 30 years of working in NZ and globally to support a range of people, organisations and projects in the arts, environmental, social and political spheres. This includes ecovillages in West Africa and Latin America; social enterprises and spiritual communities in Scotland; climate change and environmental sustainability initiatives in Beijing and Singapore; experimental artists in Brussels and large political and corporate institutions across Europe. She has additional qualifications in development and innovation with an MSc in Org Dev from Sheffield Business School and an undergraduate degree in Politics and Education.
Maggie strongly supports interarts, digital arts and creative technology in NZ. She has taught creative technology at Bachelor and Masters level at AUT University and regularly speaks on this topic at events and conferences. She also Chairs the national Aotearoa Digital Arts Trust, and co instigated and leads the Creative Technology Northland network. For more info see her personal site:
Kim Newall
Kim Newall (MCT) is creative technologist, performance artist and educator working within the multimedia, mobile, interactive and immersive art forms. His passion is applying emerging and creative technologies (such as Augmented Reality, Arduino, IOT) within community-based settings and/or with grass roots audiences. Kim is one of NZ’s foremost VJs with regular appearances at festivals such as Rhythm and Vines, Splore and Northern Base.
In addition to his own artistic practice, Kim provides advice to other creatives to support their practice and works and has instigated and facilitated a number of capacity building networking groups in the creative technologies area. He has a Master of Creative Technology and has taught on the Bachelor of Creative Technologies programme at AUT and currently teaches Part Time at NorthTec. For more info on Kim see his personal site: