Susan Alexis Collins (born 1964,

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major s ...

) is a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, the ...

and

academic An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, ...

. She is currently

Slade Professor The Slade Professorship of Fine Art is the oldest professorship of art and art history at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford and University College, London. History The chairs were founded concurrently in 1869 by a bequest from the art collecto ...

and Director of the

Slade School of Fine Art The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...

in London, England.

Biographical notes

Collins studied Fine Art at Slade School where she graduated as a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in 1987. In the early 1990s she studied at the

School of the Art Institute of Chicago The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which grew into the museum and ...

after receiving a

Fulbright Scholarship The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...

. Returning to England, she was appointed to set up the Electronic Media department at the Slade in 1995. The UCL Slade Centre for Electronic Media in Fine Art was founded in the same year. In 2005 she was appointed Head of the Undergraduate Fine Art Media area at Slade, in 2010 she became Head of Department and Director of the School. In 2013 she was appointed

Slade Professor of Fine Art The Slade Professorship of Fine Art is the oldest professorship of art and art history at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford and University College, London. History The chairs were founded concurrently in 1869 by a bequest from the art collecto ...

. As an artist Collins mainly works with

digital media Digital media is any communication media that operate in conjunction with various encoded machine-readable data formats. Digital media can be created, viewed, distributed, modified, listened to, and preserved on a digital electronics device. ' ...

. Her 2002-03 project ''Tate in Space'' was nominated for a BAFTA Award in 2004. Susan Collins has exhibited in the UK, Canada, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Turkey, Israel, Tasmania, Thailand, Mexico and Peru.

Works of art (selection)

''In Conversation'' (1997-2001): an internet project in which users could talk to people in the street via an animated mouth. The project won the 2012 Dutch ''Kunstbeeld'' thesis prize. ''Classroom of the Future'' (2001-2005): a classroom design for Mossbrook Special School in

Sheffield Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire and ...

, a collaboration with architect Sarah Wigglesworth, which won an RSA Art for Architecture award. Collins added an interactive environment to Wigglesworth' building, consisting of a wildlife surveillance system, a

camera obscura A camera obscura (; ) is a darkened room with a small hole or lens at one side through which an image is projected onto a wall or table opposite the hole. ''Camera obscura'' can also refer to analogous constructions such as a box or tent in ...

and an audio environment called the 'ballpool'. ''Tate in Space'' (2002): Collins invented this tongue-in-cheek project that aimed to establish a branch of the

Tate Galleries Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

in outer space. Part of the project, that included a spoof website, was the launch of the 'Tate Satellite' which was visible from earth. ''Underglow'' (2005-2006): the project consisted of illuminations of a number of drains in the vicinity of Guildhall Yard, King Street and Queen Street in the City of London, which were visible from dusk to dawn during the winter of 2005-06. The project was commissioned by the City of London Corporation and Modus Operandi as part of the 'Light Up Queen Street' programme. ''Fenlandia'', ''Glenlandia'', ''Harewood'' (2005-2014): a series of online project time-coding landscapes and cityscapes. The original commission was by Film and Video Umbrella and Norwich School of Art and Design. For 12 months a webcam was placed on the roof of the Anchor Inn, a 17th-century coaching inn in Sutton Gault,

Cambridgeshire Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a county in the East of England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to th ...

, part of the area known as

Silicon Fen Silicon Fen (also known as the Cambridge Cluster) is the name given to the region around Cambridge, England, which is home to a large business cluster, cluster of high-tech businesses focusing on software, electronics and biotechnology, s ...

. The installation stored a single pixel of the recorded webcam image every second, building up a new image from left to right, top to bottom in horizontal bands. Thus the final image was built up from individual pixels collected over a total of approximately 21 hours and 20 minutes. This process was repeated for 365 days, from May 2004 until May 2005, after which the project was moved to

Cambourne Cambourne is a new settlement and civil parish in Cambridgeshire, England, in the district of South Cambridgeshire. It lies on the A428 road between Cambridge, 9 miles (14 km) to the east, and St Neots and Bedford to the west. It compri ...

(also in Silicon Fenn),

Greenham Common Royal Air Force Greenham Common or RAF Greenham Common is a former Royal Air Force station in the civil parishes of Greenham and Thatcham in the English county of Berkshire. The airfield was southeast of Newbury, about west of London. Opened ...

and

Bracknell Bracknell () is a large town and civil parish in Berkshire, England, the westernmost area within the Greater London Urban Area and the administrative centre of the Borough of Bracknell Forest. It lies to the east of Reading, south of Maiden ...

Berkshire Berkshire ( ; in the 17th century sometimes spelt phonetically as Barkeshire; abbreviated Berks.) is a historic county in South East England. One of the home counties, Berkshire was recognised by Queen Elizabeth II as the Royal County of Ber ...

(both in the

M4 corridor The M4 corridor is an area in the United Kingdom adjacent to the M4 motorway, which runs from London to South Wales. It is a major high-technology hub. Important cities and towns linked by the M4 include (from east to west) London, Slough, Brackne ...

. Similar projects took place in

Loch Faskally Loch Faskally (Scottish Gaelic: Loch Faschoille) is a man-made reservoir in Perth and Kinross, Scotland, northwest of Pitlochry. Geography The loch lies between steeply wooded hills and is approximately in length, narrowing to around wide. ...

Perthshire Perthshire (locally: ; gd, Siorrachd Pheairt), officially the County of Perth, is a historic county and registration county in central Scotland. Geographically it extends from Strathmore in the east, to the Pass of Drumochter in the north, ...

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to th ...

from 2005 until 2007 (''Glenlandia''), at

Harewood House Harewood House ( , ) is a country house in Harewood, West Yorkshire, England. Designed by architects John Carr and Robert Adam, it was built, between 1759 and 1771, for Edwin Lascelles, 1st Baron Harewood, a wealthy West Indian plantation a ...

near

Leeds Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by populati ...

in 2008, and in

Lambeth Lambeth () is a district in South London, England, in the London Borough of Lambeth, historically in the County of Surrey. It is situated south of Charing Cross. The population of the London Borough of Lambeth was 303,086 in 2011. The area expe ...

, London in 2013 and 2014. ''Seascape'' (2009): a digital work that consists of a series of gradually unfolding digital seascapes, featured at the

De La Warr Pavilion The De La Warr Pavilion is a grade I listed building, located on the seafront at Bexhill on Sea, East Sussex, on the south coast of England. The Modernist and International Style building was designed by the architects Erich Mendelsohn and Se ...

Bexhill-on-Sea Bexhill-on-Sea (often shortened to Bexhill) is a seaside town and civil parish situated in the county of East Sussex in South East England. An ancient town and part of the local government district of Rother, Bexhill is home to a number of ar ...

East Sussex East Sussex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England on the English Channel coast. It is bordered by Kent to the north and east, West Sussex to the west, and Surrey to the north-west. The largest settlement in East Su ...

. These digital seascapes were captured in real time by webcams installed at five key coastal vantage points on the South Coast between

Margate Margate is a seaside town on the north coast of Kent in south-east England. The town is estimated to be 1.5 miles long, north-east of Canterbury and includes Cliftonville, Garlinge, Palm Bay and Westbrook. The town has been a significant m ...

and

Portsmouth Portsmouth ( ) is a port and city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire in southern England. The city of Portsmouth has been a unitary authority since 1 April 1997 and is administered by Portsmouth City Council. Portsmouth is the most dense ...

. The webcams were sited at each location for up to a year before the start of the show, recording fluctuations in the light that are a characteristic feature of the English coastline.

References

External links

Official website

Slade Centre for Electronic Media

Tate Intermedia Art
{{DEFAULTSORT:Collins, Susan Alexis 1964 births Living people 20th-century English women artists 21st-century English women artists Academics of the Slade School of Fine Art Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art British conceptual artists School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni Women conceptual artists