(USA)

Heather Kelley is a media artist, curator, and game designer based in Vienna, Austria. Ms. Kelley crafts playfully expressive software, environments, and events with her experience design firm Perfect Plum and her experimental game collective Kokoromi. Her Wellington Road residency will focus on the communicative and functional role of scent in new media installation. Collaborating with UK-based perfumers and scent technologists, Ms. Kelley will develop a physical spatial game which requires players to more consciously smell the world around them.

When I applied for 20 Wellington Road, I imagined it as an opportunity to take some time and space, gather a few collaborators from around Europe, and “jam” on a particular manifestation of my artistic research in smell and interaction. Well, it was undoubtedly that. But perhaps even more crucially, my residency was a two-month object lesson in how one can live and work as part of a practising artist’s group. Seeing Blast Theory in action every day, talking care of each other and making great work with gentle dedication, was just as valuable to my practice, and my life, as were the infrastructural and technical support of their team. I strongly recommend the 20 Wellington Road residency to any artist or artist group seeking a dose of practical and soulful inspiration.

Heather Kelley