Thank you very much for awarding us the Grand Prize for netarts 2009 from the Machida City Museum of Graphic Art. We are a hard working bunch and have been dedicated to connecting with others via creative, networked practices since 97. Shockingly, this is our first award ever. This may be because we never enter competitions, hoping that the spirit of what we do will be recognised for what it is on its own terms. Perhaps we may change this idea, especially when it feels so good to be recognised for our efforts, such an appreciation can do wonders for morale.

VisitorsStudio is a furtherfield.org project and has been developed under the creative direction of Neil Jenkins, Marc Garrett and Ruth Catlow. The interface and backend is programmed by Neil Jenkins and the calendar by Atty (Andy Forbes). Special thanks must also go to Roger Mills of furthernoise.org who has organised many of the live AV sessions with international sonic artists and musicians, Chris Webb who created the orginal VisitorsStudio manual, Sim (soy.de) and Graziano Milano regular visitors, promoters and bug testers and the many artists who have contributed to the creative programme.

VisitorsStudio is a real-time, multi-user, online arena for creative 'many to many' dialogue, interviews, networked performance and collaborative polemic. Through simple and accessible facilities, the VisitorsStudio web-based interface allows users to upload, manipulate and collage their own audio-visual files with others', to remix existing media. Providing a platform for the exploration of collective creativity for both emergent and established artists from a diverse array of geographical locations and social contexts. Designed so anyone in the world can access it from a 56k modem. Participants upload sound files and still/moving images (jpg, png, mp3, flv, swf) to a shared database, mixing and responding to each other's compositions in real-time. Individuals can also chat with each other and are located in the interface by their own dancing-cursors.

http://www.visitorsstudio.org

About Furtherfield - Furtherfield.org believes that through creative and critical engagement with practices in art and technology people are inspired and enabled to become active co-creators of their cultures and societies. Providing platforms for creating, viewing, discussing and learning about experimental practices at the intersections of art, technology and social change.

http://www.furtherfield.org