Dr Emit Snake-Beings
Snake Beings
Born
London
Nationalityjoint British / New Zealand citizenship
Known forCollaborative media production, Maker culture, Hackerspace Film, Video ethnography, DIY technology,Photography, Sculpture, DIY audio, DIY ethos, Visual arts, Writing, Intermedia, Sound art, Open-design movement
Websitewww.snakebeings.org
Creative Ethnography Network
Still from the Creative Ethnography Network series of video documentaries made by SnakeBeings

Emit Snake-Beings also known as Snakebeings is a British/New Zealand writer multi-media visual artist and sound artist who has also worked in kinetic art, DIY ethos, DIY technology,[1] sculpture, Cinematography, and Video Editing.[2] He has a master's degree from the University of Waikato,[3] and in 2016 was awarded a PhD, entitled The DiY ['Do it yourself'] Ethos: A participatory culture of material engagement for his work linking the DIY ethic and Maker culture with contemporary theory of material agency and Material culture.[4] Recent publications have focused on developing an idea of techno-animism and ethnographic studies of technology.[5][6]

Biography

Early life

Born in the Royal Free hospital in Islington, London, Emit and his sister Bella Basura were moved by their parents to the new town of Welwyn Garden City. At the age of 20, after studying art and design at the University of Hertfordshire he moved to London to pursue a career in art, where he lived and worked in Hackney, London between the years 1987 and 1998. During this time he encountered diverse influences, including artist cooperatives, lo-fi music, underground film, outsider art, Cabaret Voltaire circuit bending art collectives, installations using found material, and site-specific installation art.[7][8][9][10] All of which was going on in the relative obscurity of one of the poorest areas of London. In 1998 Emit moved to New Zealand, continuing to work with multi-media projects including street theatre and the organisation of a 13-piece Free improvisation orchestra called The Kaosphere orchestra.[11] In 2006 he founded the Hamilton Underground Film Festival and created Karen Karnak, an invented multiple-use pseudonym under which multiple filmmakers could participate.[12]

Portrait of Karen Karnak – private collection of the author

Published works

  • Avoiding the (Tourist) Gaze: Pursuit of the ‘Authentic’ in the Tbilisi Edgelands. (2021)[13]
  • DiY (Do-it-Yourself) Electronics, Coin-operated Relic Boxes & Techno-animist Shrines (2021)[14]
  • The Quiet Earth: Re-functioning Socio-material Knowledge In The Crisis of Pandemic (2020)[15]
  • The Liquid Midden: A Video Ethnography of Urban Discard in Boeng Trabaek Channel, Cambodia (2020)[16]
  • Learn to Spot the Dangerous Wanderings of a Maker Mind (2020)[17]
  • DIY (do-it-yourself) Postdisciplinary Knowledge (2019)[18]
  • Animism and Artefact: The entangled Agencies of a DIY [Do-It-Yourself] Maker (2018)[19]
  • DiY (Do-it-Yourself) pedagogy: a future-less orientation to education (2018)[20]
  • Community of difference: the liminal spaces of the Bingodisiac Orchestra (2017)[21]
  • Maker Culture and DiY technologies: re-functioning as a Techno-Animist practice (2017)[22]
  • The Do-it-Yourself (DiY) craft aesthetic of The Trons − Robot garage band (2017)[23]
  • It’s on the tip of my Google: Interactive performance and the non-totalising learning environment (2017)[24]
  • The DiY ['Do it yourself'] Ethos: A participatory culture of material engagement (2016)[25]
  • Trash aesthetics and the sublime: Strategies for visualising the unrepresentable within a landscape of refuse (2015)[26]
  • DiY participatory culture: Allowing space for inefficiency, error and noise (2014)[27]
  • From ideology to algorithm: the opaque politics of the internet (2013)[28]
  • The construction of Karen Karnak: The multi-author function (2013)[29]
  • The construction of Karen Karnak: The multi-author-function (2010)[30]
  • Orchid ID[31]

Films

One of the Snake-Beings's first films made was The Shrine (1993)[32] which began as a documentation of the creation, display and destruction of four Shrines made during a journey through Holland and Spain lasting over 6 months between 1990 and 1991. Three nomadic shrines were eventually made during this time, each dedicated to a different element, with the fourth air shrine being the film itself. The first three shrines were destroyed but the super 8mm film, which documented the process, was preserved and exhibited in a series of underground film festivals including the exploding cinema in summer 1993. The preservation of The Shrine led to the beginning of a series of coin-operated shrines, which are described below, as well as the beginning of several super 8mm films.[33] Santa Arson (1995), filmed on super 8mm, was made with Steve Rife, a pyrotechnics artist from Saint Paul, Minnesota.

A later film The Remote Viewers (2008) examines the connection between technology, the mass media and magic. The synopsis from snakebeings website provides a clue into some of the seemingly random imagery of which the film seems comprised:[34]

Selected filmography

Ramanik Dweep Kaliya Dengei Myths of Fiji
Ramanik Dweep Kaliya Dengei Myths of Fiji
  • Creative Ethnography Network Series[35]

Electrical Shrines

Between the years 1991 and 2001 Emit Snake-Beings created over 30 coin-operated electrical shrines, reflecting a combination of technology and religious deities within a polytheist system. Described as techno-animist machines the shrines were made as a series of free standing works and commissioned pieces and ranged from 4 cm X 4 cm to over 2 Meters in height. "The Shrine to Nikola Tesla", created in 1995, was displayed in the tattooist shop 'Sacred Art'[36] London N16 for several years-

The shrine "Tattooist´s Electrical Reliquary Spirit Box" was made in 1998 as a commissioned piece for Temple Tattu in Brighton.

Detail from Tattooist's Electrical Reliquary Spirit Box – coin-operated shrine made by Emit Snake-Beings
Bascilica of the Tattooist – coin-operated shrine made by Emit Snake-Beings
NSTRA SNRA de las Bombillas – (our lady of the lightbulbs – coin-operated shrine made by Emit Snake-Beings

References

  1. ↑ see illustrated Log (New Zealand) volume 10 "http://www.physicsroom.org.nz/log/archive/10/"
  2. ↑ Audio Foundation New Zealand "http://audiofoundation.org.nz/artist/snakebeings Archived 2 June 2010 at the Wayback Machine"
  3. ↑ Snake-Beings, Emit (2010). The construction of Karen Karnak: The multi-author-function (Masters thesis). Waikato Research Commons, University of Waikato. hdl:10289/4327.
  4. ↑ Snake-Beings, Emit (2016). The DiY ['Do it yourself'] Ethos: A participatory culture of material engagement (Doctoral thesis). Waikato Research Commons, University of Waikato. hdl:10289/9973.
  5. ↑ Snake-Beings. 2017. Maker Culture and DiY technologies: re-functioning as a Techno-Animist practice. Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, Australia. "https://doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2017.1318825"
  6. ↑ Snake-Beings. 2018. Animism and Artefact: The entangled Agencies of a DIY [Do-It-Yourself] Maker. Visual Ethnography, Vol. 7, N. 2, University of Basilicata, Italy "https://www.snakebeings.co.nz/texts/2018%20artefact%20and%20animism.pdf"
  7. ↑ "http://www.explodingcinema.org/" Exploding Cinema Collective
  8. ↑ in the form of the group work of Lennie Lee trevor knaggs and the ARC group
  9. ↑ such as influenced by Kurt Schwitters
  10. ↑ From the interview 'between technology and magick "http://www.arma.lt/introspect/texts/introspect-interview-Snake_Beings.htm Archived 4 December 2010 at the Wayback Machine"
  11. ↑ see the article "New Zealand experimental film genres" by Martin Rumsby Onfilm (NZ) March 2010 "http://www.onfilm.co.nz/"
  12. ↑ from the featured filmmaker 'profile in Onfilm (NZ) June 2010 "http://www.archivesearch.co.nz/?webid=ONF&articleid=51582" or "http://www.onfilm.co.nz/"
  13. ↑ Snake-Beings, E. (2021). Avoiding the (Tourist) Gaze: Pursuit of the ‘Authentic’ in the Tbilisi Edgelands. Tourism Geographies, https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2021.1964589
  14. ↑ Snake-Beings, E. (2021). DiY (Do-it-Yourself) Electronics, Coin-operated Relic Boxes & Techno-animist Shrines. Leonardo Journal, 54(5), 500–505. https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_a_01913
  15. ↑ Snake-Beings, E. (2020). The Quiet Earth: Re-functioning Socio-material Knowledge In The Crisis of Pandemic. Knowledge Cultures, 8(3), 34–41. https://doi.org/10.22381/KC8320205
  16. ↑ Snake-Beings, E. (2020). The Liquid Midden: A Video Ethnography of Urban Discard in Boeng Trabaek Channel, Cambodia. Visual Anthropology, 33(5), 397-411. https://doi.org/10.1080/08949468.2020.1824969
  17. ↑ Gibbons, A. & Snake-Beings, E. (2020). Learn to Spot the Dangerous Wanderings of a Maker Mind! In The body of the work / it does no harm to wonder. (Ed. Richard Reddaway). Aratoi Wairarapa Museum of Art and History. ISBN 9780473532628
  18. ↑ Gibbons, A. & Snake-Beings, E. (2019). DIY (do-it-yourself) Postdisciplinary Knowledge . In Postdisciplinary Knowledge, 1st Edition (Ed. Tomas Pernecky). Routledge: UK https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429058561
  19. ↑ Snake-Beings, E. (2018). Animism and Artefact: The entangled Agencies of a DIY [Do-It-Yourself] Maker. Visual Ethnography, Vol. 7, N. 2, University of Basilicata, Italy https://www.snakebeings.co.nz/texts/2018%20artefact%20and%20animism.pdf
  20. ↑ Snake-Beings, E. (2018). DiY (Do-it-Yourself) pedagogy: a future-less orientation to education. Open Review of Educational Research. Routledge/Taylor & Francis Volume 5, 2018 - Issue 1. (Co-authored with Gibbons, A.) https://doi.org/10.1080/23265507.2018.1457453
  21. ↑ Snake-Beings, E. (2017). Community of difference: the liminal spaces of the Bingodisiac Orchestra. International Community Music Journal- Intellect Journals, UK. Issue 10.2
  22. ↑ Snake-Beings, E. (2017). Maker Culture and DiY technologies: re-functioning as a Techno-Animist practice. Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, Australia. https://doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2017.1318825
  23. ↑ Snake-Beings, E. (2017). ‘The Do-it-Yourself (DiY) craft aesthetic of The Trons − Robot garage band’, Craft Research, UK: 8: 1, pp. 55–77, doi: https://doi.org/10.1386/crre.8.1.55_1
  24. ↑ Snake-Beings, E. (2017). ‘It’s on the tip of my Google’: Interactive performance and the non-totalising learning environment. E-learning and New Media journal – Sage Publications Australia DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/2042753017692429
  25. ↑ Snake-Beings, E. (2016). The DiY ['Do it yourself'] Ethos: A participatory culture of material engagement. Doctoral Thesis. https://hdl.handle.net/10289/9973
  26. ↑ Snake-Beings, E. (2015). Trash aesthetics and the sublime: Strategies for visualising the unrepresentable within a landscape of refuse. New American Notes On-line, USA: 7 (The Aesthetics of Trash).
  27. ↑ Snake-Beings, E. (2014). DiY participatory culture: Allowing space for inefficiency, error and noise. Acoustic Space #12, Latvia: (Techno-Ecologies II), 37-46.
  28. ↑ Snake-Beings, E. (2013). From ideology to algorithm: the opaque politics of the internet. Transformations Journal of Media & Culture, Australia: (23), 1-8.
  29. ↑ Snake-Beings, E. (2013). The construction of Karen Karnak: The multi-author function. Media International Australia, Incorporating Culture & Policy, May(147), 40-50.
  30. ↑ Snake-Beings, E. (2010). The construction of Karen Karnak: The multi-author-function. University of Waikato: Masters Thesis. (Download here: https://hdl.handle.net/10289/4327)
  31. ↑ Snake-Beings, E. Orchid research profile: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5828-4603
  32. ↑ The Shrine (1993) "http://snakebeings.co.nz/films/the%20shrine/index.htm"
  33. ↑ The exploding cinema "http://www.explodingcinema.org/"
  34. ↑ "Creative Technologies and the Entangled Artefacts of Dr Emit Snake-Beings".
  35. ↑ "Dr Emit Snake-Beings".
  36. ↑ Sacred arts tattoo Stolenewinton London "http://www.sacredskulls.co.uk/sacredart/¨"
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