Design Yourself: This home was not built to last

In the second workshop of our Life Rewired inspired Design Yourself project, the Young Creatives worked with artist Laurie Ramsell who led a practical workshop exploring the concept of ‘human’.

Through exploring trans-human and post-human philosophies, the group looked at examples of Laurie’s work which examine construct of personhood and how it has been imbued into our culture. Together they created new work that explores the notion of what makes us human and imagined how the label of ‘human’ could be applied in an increasingly digital future. As a response to the workshop artists Pietro Bardini, Tice Cin and Hector Dyer worked with Antonio Roberts to create This home was not built to last.

More information here: https://www.barbican.org.uk/read-watch-listen/design-yourself-what-is-human

Design Yourself: Augmented Bodies

In the first session of our Life Rewired inspired Design Yourself project, the Young Creatives explored how people are augmenting their bodies with technology.

We looked at examples in science fiction and current day of people augmenting their bodies with technology. Currently a lot of this exists as wearable devices that read our bodily functions, present us data and affect our bodies on an external level. Before we started to look at technology implants I invited each participant to create a mask that would act as a piece of wearable technology that would change them somehow.

More information here: https://www.barbican.org.uk/read-watch-listen/design-yourself-augmented-bodies

Addictions and Habits

Bcc:, Decoy Magazine’s monthly e-mail subscription programme, ended in 2019. I had made an exclusive artwork for it back in 2018 that was only available to people who subscribed to it, and then in September 2019 at the IRL exhibition at Vivid Projects. If y’all didn’t catch that show here’s my work below:

When you identify something toxic in your life you recoil from it, only to be drawn back in again and again. Addictions and Habits is inspired by how technologies built on the idea of enriching our lives have only amplified our anxieties and made us more physically and emotionally vulnerable

Here’s the really nice essay from Lauren Marsden which accompanied the release of the artwork:

This month, we are very honoured to be featuring UK-based artist and curator Antonio Roberts. With an extensive body of work that entangles glitch, appropriation, sculpture, screens, digitalia, and interaction, he is well suited for the task of questioning and confronting the limitations of copyright law and the corporate appropriation of cultural aesthetics and technologies. Here, with Addictions and Habits, we can imagine either side of the issue. For one, the hand of the creator that opens itself freely to the gesture of sharing, remixing, re-circulating (ad infinitum), and then, perhaps, the other hand—the one that closes the deal, signs the cheque, gives a comforting pat on the back, or plucks an idea out of the ether to secure its containment and regulation. Within this paradox, we enjoy the exuberance of Antonio’s work and see a space for liberation among his many fragments and shatters.

Thanks to Lauren Marsden for including me in Bcc: 🙂

Improviz gifs

Earlier this year fellow visualist and live coder Rumblesan commissioned me to make some gifs for his new live coding software, Improviz. In July he unleashed it into the world!

Looking at the above videos you could easily be forgiven for thinking that it looks a bit like LiveCodeLab. He is, after all, one of the developers of LiveCodeLab. However, Improviz differs in a few ways. As Rumblesan himself explains in the Toplap chat:

the language in Improviz has a lot in common with live code lab, and the basic functionality for shapes, styles, transformations and loops is all pretty much the same. but in terms of implementation and usage they’re very different

lcl is using three.js as an intermediary, whilst improviz is entirely haskell and uses opengl directly (which I think long term is going to cause me grief but we’ll see haha)

the major difference is that improviz lets you use images and gifs as textures, which is something I’d like to back port to lcl, but wouldn’t be a small task unfortunately

That’s right, you can load textures! As mentioned before Rumblesan commissioned me to make a set of gifs to go along with the initial public release. They’re all released under a Creative Commons Attribution licence so you’re free to use them as you wish as long as you attribute me.

As an added bonus I’m also releasing the .blend file that was used to make each one.

Click here to download the Blender files.

These were made using a beta version of Blender 2.80. I’ve tested them in the stable release and they appear to work fine but they definitely will not work in 2.79 or earlier versions. I’m providing these for you to explore and won’t be doing a writeup/tutorial on how they work. If you remix them please share what you make 🙂

Definitely give Improviz a try! Thanks to Rumblesan for commissioning me to make the gifs 🙂

Curating the Machine

Since May 2017, alongside everything else, I been undertaking a fellowship with Near Now in Nottingham. The Fellowship, now in its third iteration, is for anyone interested in developing a project that uses technology in a creative way.

For my fellowship I have been conducting research into the relationship been copyright, curating and automation. There are no concrete outputs yet but do take a look at the blog, Curating the Machine, which collates all of my research to date.

If any of this sparks an interest or it you want to know more please do get in touch! I’ll also be at Transmediale on a research trip (thx Near Now) at the end of January if you want to meet IRL 😺

Green Man Festival 2017

I spent an intense eight days at Crickhowell installing my work, Mirrored, at Green Man Festival and I’m only now beginning to process it! Green Man is very different from a lot of music festivals. There’s a real focus on building a strong visual aesthetic and visual arts programme. The location itself is also beautiful and gives a pleasing backdrop to all the activities.

Green Man Festival

I was there to install my work, Mirrored. It was my first time building sculptural works at that size and my first time working outdoors. It was definitely a success, but as with all new experiences I learnt a lot and have a lot that I want to build on and develop further.

Mirrored

Mirrored

Mirrored

Mirrored

Mirrored

(more photos can be found here)

I’m currently thinking about how to develop the piece further, and exploring ways of possibly even ways of reconfiguring it for display in different environments. If you’re interested in displaying them please do get in touch.

Many thanks to Alexis Zelda Stevens and the rest of Green Man for the invite to develop and exhibit new work, and for taking me out of my comfort zone. It was scary but it’s definitely been beneficial for my practice and I can definitely see this being developed further.

Posted in Art

Blood Sport – Live at Cafe Oto video

On 5th May Blood Sport released their latest LP, Live at Cafe Oto which, as the name suggests, is a live recording of a 40 minute set they did as part of their residency at Cafe Oto.

To coincide with its release Blood Sport asked me to create a one-take video. The video below shows track two from the LP, Melts Into.

The full 40 minute video will be made available at a later date. In the meantime you should buy their LP. They will be performing alongside Heavy Lifting at Supersonic Festival on June 16th.

Blood Sport - Live at Cafe Oto

Last Day

As part of the Random String microFestival on Thursday 9th June I installed Last Day at Unit 22 at the City Arcade in Coventry.

Last Day

Last Day

Last Day

Last Day is a piece that highlights the fragility of financial markets and the unpredictable nature of consumer habits, market forces and trends. The effects of these have been far reaching, seeing once thriving retail parks home to small businesses and former retail giants rendered as ghost towns of empty units. The choice of imagery shows that nothng is too big to fail.

Last Day

Last Day

Last Day

Last Day was commissioned by Ludic Rooms for the Random String microFestival. It is situated in a derelict shopping unit the City Arcade in Coventry where it will remain until the space becomes occupied again. Many thanks to Dom Breadmore and Anne Forgan for accepting my proposal and Malachi Cummings-Hall for his assistance installing.

More photos are available here.