</2021>

Posted on 31/12/2021 by hellocatfood

I don’t have too much to say about this year. It was of course difficult in many ways but there were some moments of relief, especially when I get to see people IRL. Of course the pandemic and everything else in this world is still happening but I really valued those little moments, especially around August – October, where I could just do things. Anyway, on with the overview of 2021!

January

Not much happened in January. The Idle Index exhibition at Phoneix concluded with a talk between some of the artists involved.

February

There were a lot of presentations, lectures and workshops delivered this year and this activity all started around February. After lectures for VCU and The Courtald I did a rather big presentation as part of the Screenwalk series from The Photographer’s Gallery and Fotomuseum . It was a general overview of my practice but also welcomed back a sonification performance but with added Korg Volca synths.

I also started delivering a four-part Blender workshop series. Side note, check out Devon Ko’s amazing thread on Blender resources and in particular why you shouldn’t follow the donut guy.

Finally this month I announced (Algo|Afro) Futures.

This programme is really important to me, and its launch comes/came at a time when it’s more important than ever to address racism and diversity in every aspect of art and culture.

March

This month I did two presentations which came out of my takeover on the Minorities in Stem twitter account in 2020. The first was a presentation about live coding for Nerd Nite London. The second presentation only two days later I had the honour of being a Guest Conductor on The Coding Train!

Although I don’t use Processing/p5.js in my work I do really admire the work that Dan Shiffman does and how accessible his tutorials are. He’s really one of my favourite online educators and so it was an honour to be asked to present my work and talk about live coding to his audience. I followed my presentation with a little performance too!

Fundraisers for both of those events helped to raise nearly £10,000 for Coders of Colour 🙂

April

It was fairly quiet in terms of output, partly due to ill health. I spent a week in London delivering workshops for New Town Culture with Company Drinks.

After a long deliberation process I was happy to announce the successful applications to the (Algo|Afro) Futures programme, Jae Tallawah, Samiir Saunders, Rosa Francesca, and Emily Mulenga.

May

The Rules of Engagement exhibition that I curated for ODI happened back in November 2020, but in May I was in conversation with two of the participating artists, Everest Pipkin and Nick Briz, about their work . Always great to speak with them!

I also made a new video work for the Estuary Festival , which took a trip down the Thames Estuary, showing how it was projected to flood over 100 years. The video I created is titled A Short History of Nearly Everything (big-up to fellow Reuben fans).

Making this video was a real learning experience, particularly in making the soundtrack. I feel that since making the soundtrack for Windows Explorer and Nodes I’ve slowly begun to be more considerate about making music, and making a 40-minute soundtrack gave me a lot to think about in terms of pacing and transitions. Still more to learn about mixing and mastering, but I definitely could sense I made progress.

I also did visuals at the Overlap Social event, which was my first in-person performance since February 2020!

And also this month I contributed to an NFT artwork that was sold at the Proof of Sovereignty Christies auction. The artwork, F473 by Coin Artist was an NFT and also a game! I was really happy to be working with Coin Artist/Blockade Games again (I previously did some work with/for them in 2018 with Plasma Bears).

If you’ve been on the internet at all this year you will have no doubt seen the discourse around NFTs. I still have mixed-to-negative opinions about NFTs in general, so it’s very unlikely that you’ll see me “mint” or “drop” my own works,

June

This month I was really excited to finally launch A.M. Darke’s artwork that I commissioned for the ODI Rules of Engagement exhibition, fairlyintelligent.tech. To launch the artwork I was in conversation with A.M. about their work

Another huge announcement was that I Am Sitting in a Room was acquired by the Government Art Collection!

This artwork, originally made in 2010, is a remix of Alvin Lucier’s (RIP) work of the same name. I’m really happy that they chose to acquire this piece as it marked a significant moment in my career as a digital artist.

July

The big thing to happen this month was the conclusion and celebration event for the (Algo|Afro) Futures programme. After a bunch of in-person and online workshops each of the participants presented a new performance at Vivid Projects!

The whole event was live-streamed:

I’m really proud of what they all achieved in just a few short months!

I also made a music video for Affirmation by Echo Juliet

August

I did an online performance for Flash Crash and then presented some illustration work for Birmingham Design Festival’s Creative City exhibition

September

Another month of not much output, primarily as I was busy preparing new works. I celebrated my birthday with a performance at an Algorave in Sheffield, my first in-person live coding performance since February 2020!

I also produced a new commission for Beatfreeks’ Youth Trends report. You can see the commission and listen to a discussion I had about art made with data.

By far my highlight of September was Errorcamp, which saw around 50 live coders spend a few nights in the Lake District. We did some performances, some workshops, and some talks, but the most important thing for me was all of us just being in the same space together. The community aspect of Algorave and live coding is so important and I was really missing the in-person stuff, so I was glad to be there with others 🙂

I also appeared as a guest on the BBC Arts & Ideas podcast.

October

This was a big month! It seems as though almost everything that was postponed in 2020 was rescheduled to take place in October 2021! My month of events started with a couple of performances at No Bounds Festival in Sheffield. Part of it was a presentation of prerecorded performances by (Algo|Afro) Futures participants and music by me, and then I performed visuals with both Alex McLean and eye measure.

Then, a week later I presented new video work at the Corridor of Light festival in Manchester. The video, Move Fast And B̴͓̝͉͝r̴̞͕̬͒̾̃e̷̜̖̾̊a̸͙̲̾͐́k̴̡̩̥̆͘ Things is quite possibly my biggest projection and was placed in a very prominent position on Oxford Road. It was such a joy to see people stopping and watching the piece.

Move Fast And B̴͓̝͉͝r̴̞͕̬͒̾̃e̷̜̖̾̊a̸͙̲̾͐́k̴̡̩̥̆͘ Things from Antonio Roberts on Vimeo.

This was another instance where I was really happy with the music that I made. It was made primarily using TidalCycles which I mostly used as a sequencer, and then did lots of editing in Ardour.

I also co-cutrated an Algorave, which saw Bad Circulation do their only public performance of the year.

The following week I was in Nottingham to deliver a few workshops and then to install my work for the Cut & Mix exhibition at New Art Exchange. The conversations with the exhibition’s curator, Ian Sergent, started in February 2020, and so I’m glad that the exhibition was postponed rather than cancelled.

The exhibition is quite close to my heart, and it’s the first time I’ve ever really focused on race in my own work, but it’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. I’m already planning an extension of the work and will definitely talk and write more about the concepts behind it in the future. Also happy to see the exhibition get a mention in the Guardian.

On the same night Careful Networks also launched.

November

I started running another short course in Blender and then started doing Hydra workshops at Site Gallery in Sheffield.

I also made a variable glitch typeface and some gifs for the Animate Assembly website.

By far the biggest thing was the Concerning Photography event by The Photographers’ Gallery and Paul Melon Centre. I did a keynote artist talk about my practice on the third day of the conference. ~~I’ll update this post with a recording once it’s published.~~

December

As usual December was quite quiet. I did a performance for the Between Sound and Concept: Listening with the CCRU event at Coventry Biennial. I was quite ill that day so wasn’t my usual energetic self, but did use it as a chance to do a live debut the Pulse and Nodes tracks. I’m definitely near the point where I’m ready to make an EP or something more official.

I then took part in a discussion with Alexandra Cardenas at ICLC.

We were discussing diversity within the live coding community and the challenges we have both faced in this area. I was really happy to discuss the (Algo|Afro) Futures programme further. In general I really hope that the programme inspires live coders and algoravers in other communities to start their own similar programme. I would hate it if people saw this programme and thought that the work to combat racism is now “done”.

I finished the year by taking part in the TidalClub Longest Night live stream event. My performance was similar to the CCRU set but with a more refined and a new ending piece.

Also in December a remix I provided for Phoneutrian’s Sercle EP was released! My contribution was a remix of the song Crystal Mashup. Lots of other great songs on there!

<a href="https://interworldmedia.bandcamp.com/album/sercle-remixes">Sercle + Remixes by hellocatfood</a>

End

So that was the year! No specific hopes for the future other than to survive and continue to learn and develop. Vague, I know, but then so is the future.

</2020>

Posted on 31/12/2020 by hellocatfood

2020 was definitely a hard year, which feels a pretty repetitive and redundant thing to say at this point. I did try to stay creative, and did create things, but sometimes I just felt like staying still and watching the world crumble around me. At times just getting out of bed before 12:00 felt like enough of an achievement for one day.

When exhibitions or performances did eventually happen, albiet online, it all felt a bit anticlimactic. Sometimes months of work would go into preparing for an online exhibition or performance. After the adrenaline of the event wore off there was no release, no celebration, no friends around to hug or high five. Just a sudden comedown, get your pajamas on and realise that you’ve not travelled more than 50 metres from the kitchen in days. Oh, and the world is still falling apart.

So, with that cheery start here’s most of the things that I got up to in 2020.

January

As usual not much happened in January. Imagine that, an uneventful month. How I’d wish for that right now…

February

In early February I made my way to Limerick to attend ICLC and perform at an Algorave with Maria Witek (mxwx). I feel that the academic side of live coding sometimes passes me by, but what I do like about events like these is the critical reflection on the practice and the gathering of artists from all parts of the world. It helps to remind me that live coding is a global thing, not just UK/western world.

I really enjoyed performing with Maria. You can see a bit of our performance from around 03:09:00.

Shortly after that I was in Norwich share some new work for Love Light Norwich. I shared a new video work, Let’s Never Meet.

I did a couple of blog posts detailing how I made both the audio and some of the visuals.

March

On 5th March I had the honour of performing at the Algorave at Cafe Oto. I was really nervous as I was making music, not visuals. By this stage I had performed music live a handful of times in venues and online. To then perform at this prestigious venue was daunting but in the end it pushed me to learn and practice more. Here’s a recording of the performance.

Little did I know that this would be my last performance in a venue this year.

On 19th March the year of live streams started. The Eulerroom Equinox took place over three days and featured performances from myself and Alex McLean and one of my favourite performances from myself and mxwx:

This event had been in planning since late 2019 but I think it took on new relevance with the whole world now moving online.

Also in this month I did live streams with Echo Juliet and published a lot of blog posts on (mis)using FFmpeg’s motion interpolation commands. To gather all of the findings together I melted a cat:

April

Online group exhibitions and performances dominate my activities from April onward. On of the first was the Well Now WTF? exhibition which launched on April 4th. This exhibition featured over 140 exhibiting gifs and videos that raised the question of what should/can we do now that everything is cancelled. I contributed a gif in the “Wash Your Fucking Hands” room reflecting on the collective loneliness that comes from online parties.

I did a couple more online live coding events, including a performance with Yaxu for Graham Dunning’s Noise Quest series and a performance for Open Data Institute where we got cut off half way through, possibly for copyright violation! Another sign of things to come.

Also In April I did an overview of the Design Yourself project I ran with Barbican is 2019. Working with a select group of their Young Creatives we created artwork that asked what it meant to be human in an age of technology. One of the participants, Tice Cin, wrote a really good summary of the programme. Here’s one of my favourite videos:

May

Live streams this month included performances with Yaxu on a Cyberyacht(!) (from 32:00) and a performance for Github (better quality version here).

As part of the Well Now WTF? exhibition I presented Gifhouseparty, a lockdown party for all the gifs stuck at home. The music was all live coded and features music/code from me and mxwx, and also gifs of people you may recognise.

Perhaps the biggest event of this month was the opening of the Copy Paste exhibition on 22nd May at Piksel in Bergen, Norway. As Curator I had been planning this exhibition for over a year. I had fully expected this exhibition to not go ahead but the lockdown situation in Bergen at the time allowed for events to still go ahead and so it went along, just without me there. A carefully curated online component was added to allow some of the works to be enjoyed online.

I’m of course thankful to Piksel for their work in allowing the exhibition to go ahead, but I still can’t help but feel sad that I wasn’t able to be there to see it in person!

Other events this month include another performance with Yaxu for the Copy Paste exhibition, a presentation and discussion about copyright/copyleft at Photographer’s Gallery and a performance and presentation at Art Meets Radical Openness. The presentation, called Sorry About That, was about the role that copyright plays in online streaming.

You can watch the presentation here (from 01:40:00), or listen to a rebroadcast of the talk that happened on Radio FRO in July (from around 21:20).

June

This month was kinda quiet. The Copy Paste exhibition continued with events including a presentation from Constant and a workshop from Duncan Poulton. With my skills in audio production getting better I decided to revisit the Wonderland video I made for the Wonder exhibition in 2019 and add a soundtrack.

July

I did visuals for a mix from Reprezent Radio for Late at Tate Online on 17th July. The video’s no longer online so have a couple of gifs!

On 18th July I did two performances in one day! The first was for Oxidize Global and then later me and mxwx collaborated again for a performance at Network Music Festival. Sadly there’s no recordings of either performance but there will hopefully be rerecordings of the music at some point.

Elsewhere in this month I was interviewed by Thisandthatzine and also did a self portrait for it.

Click for larger version

August

The collaboration between me and mxwx finally got a name! We’re now known as Bad Circulation and you can find our music here. At the moment it’s just live recordings and rehearsals. We’re working on an EP. In the meantime here’s one of my favourite recordings.

I was also on the selection panel for Hyperlink from Test Card. Congrats to those that were successful!

September

The online component of Copy Paste was included in Ars Electronica. This included the online exhibition as well as a Curator’s tour, an rebroadcast of Constant’s presentation and the performance from me and Yaxu.

I also published a blog post about it being 10 years since the first GLI.TC/H happened in Chicago. It had quite an impact on me in many ways so I felt it right to mark the occasion somehow.

I was also on the selection panel for the Jerwood Arts / FACT Digital Fellowship. I’m intrigued to see what the three selected artists will create next year!

All the way back in February I was on the selection panel for Ten Acres of Sound, “a festival of noise, sound, sonic art, music, performance, whatever located within Stirchley, Birmingham”. I’m glad it managed to happen as it was postponed from earlier in the year.

October

Back in July I was undertaking a “Stay at Home” residency with New Art Gallery Walsall:

In response to the Coronavirus pandemic, The New Art Gallery Walsall initiated a series of remote residencies to support artists to produce work from their homes. Departing from the Gallery’s usual emphasis on making and sharing work within the context of the Gallery’s purpose-built studio space, artists were encouraged to find creative approaches to developing their practice amid imposed national restrictions and, in particular, to explore the benefits and possibilities of engaging with an online audience.

I challenged myself to learn more about film making and make a video using only what I already have at home. Here’s my video called Windows Explorer:

It was a big challenge and I wrote three blog posts detailing each challenge.

I took part in another online group exhibition (this time featuring 50 artists) called The Archive to Come. For this I made a gif/video reflecting on the tearing down of statues and the Black Lives Matter protests. Here’s a lower resolution gif version:

A better quality video can be seen here and you should check out all of the works in the exhibition.

I also (finally) took part in DA Z. This event was cancelled back in March as was a related event in September, and though I wasn’t able to be physically present in Switzerland I was still happy to be part of it.

November

November was unusually busy. Since July I was working behind the scenes with Open Data Institute to curate Rules of Engagement, an online programme of artworks that make a case for ethical practices when working with data.

The commissioned artists were Nick Briz, Everest Pipkin, and A.M. Darke. The artworks were launched at ODI’s annual Summit and are still available online to view now. It was a lot of work to get the programme together but it was a pleasure to commission new work from some great artists!

You can hear myself, Nick Briz and ODI’s Hannah Redler-Hawes talk about the programme on the TECHnique podcast.

The next day on 11th November I presented new work as part of the Peer to Peer online exhibition. I was one of the three UK commissioned artists and created a piece called Nodes.

It’s the first time I’ve been commissioned to make a piece of music (I did make the visuals as well though) and I really enjoyed making it.

Sticking with music, in November the Compassion Through Algorithms Vol. II compilation was released. The compilation is raising funds for Young Minds Together and was created in response the Black Lives Matter protests, and the general recognition that live coding/electronic music is still heavily dominated by White men. I made a track for it called Pulse.

<a href="https://lightentries.bandcamp.com/album/compassion-through-algorithms-vol-ii">Compassion Through Algorithms Vol. II by Antonio Roberts</a>

I also did a short blog post about how I made it. It’s still on sale so go buy it!

I provided a screensaver for the The Idle Index online exhibition from Phoenix Leicester. It’s delivered via a browser extension which you can install in Chrome.

I also took part in Abuja Art Week‘s digital exhibition with two existing videos, Visually Similar and Abundant Antiques.

Back in September I was a judge for the second year running for the Koestler Arts Digital Art category. In November their annual exhibition, this time called No Lockdown of the Imagination launched. Lockdown prevented me from seeing the works in London in person but they have an app you can use to view all of the works.

In other selection panel/judging activities, I was on the selection panel for the MADE IT graduate exhibition which features around 50 artists. The selection process took place between September – October but the online exhibition launched in November. Congrats to all those selected!

December

A fairly quiet month. From 7th – I did a takeover of the Minorities in STEM twitter account. Each week on that account a different person talks about their experiences of being, well, a minority working in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths). Though my work does use all of those there’s also the Art side (sometimes called STEAM) so I used some of 3700 words to talk about how al of these overlap. I also talked about how in my experiences of learning about digital art there was never any talk of Black people or anyone other than mainly White men. Things have gotten better since I was in education but there’s still so much work to do to recognise the contributions of Black people in (digital) art. You can read each of the daily threads here:

Monday – how I got into working in art+tech, with a focus on setting up the fizzPOP makerspace
Tuesday – glitch art and early experiments in making generative art using code
Wednesday – realising that the history of Black people working in art + technology is often overlooked
Thursday – demonstrated live coding and talked about Algorave
Friday – covered a handful of the organisations in the UK that are helping to make art and technology more diverse

I ended the year with a performance at the Eulerroom Winter Solstice. I combined live coding using Tidal Cycles with a couple of Korg Volca synths. No video yet but I’ll update when it becomes available.

end

And so ends a crappy year. That sense of community from being part of group exhibitions and performances definitely helped keep me sane and connected but I really need human contact again. Anything that isn’t a Zoom window… I of course hope that 2021 will be better, but I think we’ll need to fight to keep our galleries, museums, venues and other institutions open. Time and time again our government has shown that they don’t value the arts, and I fear that so many of the places I love will be lost next year. Did I also mention that there’s a pandemic still going on?

Laters 2020!

</2019>

Posted on 31/12/2019 by hellocatfood

Back at it again with the Year in Review blog post! As suggested in 2018 this year I have been focusing more on my own independent projects and building my practice. Here’s some of the highlights.

January

Started January with my first visit to ICLC which was held in Madrid. Myself and Olivia Jack led a meetup and discussion for Visualists. I compiled some of the notes from that meetup here. and then I joined Class Compliant Audio Interfaces for a performance.

In January I also publicly announced my departure from Vivid Projects. I had been in this role in one fashion or another since 2010. I enjoyed so much of it and learned a tonne but decided I needed to focus on my own work.

I made some animations for Plasma Bears, which is a “collectible crafting and questing game”.

data.set, which was originally commissioned by Open Data Institute for the Thinking Out Loud exhibition, was part of the Forward exhibition at Ikon Gallery/Medicine Bakery. I did an interview with Ikon Gallery about my thoughts on being on artist in Birmingham

I also started mentoring for Random String again. You can read about one of my mentee’s progress here

February

Despite being relatively new to live coding music I took part in the Toplap 15th Anniversary [Live] Stream.

It was scary performing to the whole internet but it was fun!

I started working with Barbican again on a series of workshops as part of their Life Rewired season. To help launch their new season I performed with Emma Winston/Deerful at their launch night.

Also in February an Algoave documentary produced by Edited Arts was published on Resident Advisor.

March

The biggest event of March was most definitely going to SXSW in Texas to present Algorave!

The Algorave featured ALGOBABEZ, Alexandra Cardenas, Belisha Beacon, co34pt, Coral Manton, hellocatfood (that’s meee), Scorpion Mouse and Renick Bell.

Many thanks to Joanne Armitage who took the lead on planning this and to British Underground and Lush for the support.

We did an interview with the SXSW magazine to promote our events there.

Quite soon after landing back in the UK I created new work for the V&A’s Friday Late event Copy / Paste.

The two video works, called Visually Similar, look at how a false narrative can be created through images found on the internet. I wrote a bit about the process of making this work in June’s Development Update.

I also became an Artist Adviser for Jerwood. I was already familiar with the gallery as I had exhibited with them in 2016 as part of Common Property. It was an honour to be invited back to have a role in shape how they fund the arts.

Also at the beginning of the month I curated the opening of Black Hole Club, which was my final event for Vivid Projects/Black Hole Club.

April

As if SXSW wasn’t exciting enough in April I performed at an Algorave at the British Library.

It was one of the more unconventional places I’ve played but still highly enjoyable.

Later that month I performed at the Afrotech Fest opening party and the artwork I made for Fermynwood’s programme Toggler went online. I was also interviewed by Lynae Cook whilst at SXSW for her podcast BTS. In April the interview went online.

May

In early May the Time Portals exhibition at Furtherfield opened its doors. I collaborated with Studio Hyte to create a billboard which could be scanned to reveal an augmented reality artwork.

There’s an overview video featuring all of the artists including me and Arjun Harrison-Mann from Studio Hyte.

AlgoMech was back for 2019 and I was present to perform with CCAI, do a solo music performance, and also to exhibit in their exhibition Patterns of Movement.

I exhibited a video and print work called A Perfect Circle in which I captured the movement of trying to draw shapes. Quite a departure from my usual work but I liked the performative nature of it. I wrote a bit about the technical challenges of making it here.

Elsewhere two articles about Algorave were published, one in Riffs and another in The Times.

June

One of my biggest exhibitions of the year was the group show Wonder curated by Rachel Marsden

For my work in this exhibition I continued with my critique of Disney for being a company to negatively impact copyright laws. I also created a slightly sinister wonderland (video will be online some time in 2020). You can take a virtual tour of the exhibition through this youtube video or page on the Google Arts and Culture website.

I was back in Manchester to do a presentation and some mentoring for Manchester International Festival’s Creative Lab programme

(that video features some of my very early live coding music!)

I also returned to regular blogging with a series called Development Updates. Through this series I want to demystify the “magic” of creating digital art and show that there’s still a lot of problem solving, hacking, and messiness that go into creating a “finished” artwork or exhibition. Follow the development-update tag to see all of them.

Elsewhere I revamped the Proxy Pavilions artworks for the Vague but Exciting exhibition at Vivid Projects and was on Matthew Evans’ podcast sharing some of the songs that influence me and talking about being an artist in Birmingham. I also played a huuuuge Algorave at Corsica Studios. To prepare for this I started live streaming my rehearsals.

July

I headed out to the city of Nevers, which is not far from Paris, to take part in NØ SCHOOL NEVERS as one of their teachers. It was definitely a school but kinda like one without textbooks or lesson plans. We all learnt from each other and explored some really experimental stuff, like Daniel Temkin’s esoteric programming languages which use folders as its input!

After a busy first half of the year is was really nice to spend a week with like-minded people learning about art and tech, eating great food and occasionally relaxing on a beach 🙂 I feeling a strong eight to light nine on this experience.

In July it was also announced that I had joined a-n Artists Council

Click to embiggen. Photo by Joel Chester Fildes

You may remember that I had run one of their Assembly events in June 2018. I’m really happy to be part of this group and hope to bring my perspective of being in the West Midlands and as a digital artist.

August

As part of the Wonder exhibition I organised an Algorave at The Herbert, which also happened to be Coventry’s first Algorave! I invited Lucy aka Heavy Lifting, Innocent, Carol Breen, and newcomer Maria Witek who I collaborated with on music.

It was for sure one of my favourite Algoraves! The staff at The Herbert were lovely and prepared the venue and equipment perfectly, the performers were ace and the crowd brought great energy.

Fellow Visualist Rumblesan released his live coding software Improviz in July. Think of it a bit like LiveCodeLab but it’s on the desktop and you can use your own image and gif textures. For the occasion he commissioned me to make some gifs that would come preloaded with the software.

In August I made the Blender files available to the public for y’all to experiment with. I definitely think you should try Improviz out!

September

September started with me being featured in a BBC Radio 4 documentary about copyright and the relationship between artists and brands/corporations.

Art of Now – Sell Out featured myself and artists including Nan Goldin, and Gary Hume each giving our thoughts on brands and art. It’s still online so go listen.

Also at the beginning of the month the Bcc: exhibition opened at Vivid Projects. I’d previously taken part in the online version of this in 2018 and for the IRL exhibition I acted as Producer. It was a technically challenging exhibition to install which I wrote about in three Development Updates in December.

It made me really happy to see so much digital art being exhibited in Birmingham and was great to meet the Editor of Decoy Magazine, Lauren Marsden, IRL.

Elsewhere I was a judge for the Digital Art category for Koestler Arts’ exhibition Another Me which took place at Southbank. I sadly didn’t get to see the exhibition in person but it was inspiring to see the work coming from people in prisons.

I organised an Algorave for Llawn in Llandudno and then I exhibited a rather odd artwork for the Odds exhibition at TOMA in Southend-on-Sea.

I exhibited a video showing me attempting to compile Blender, as a way show that sometimes making digital art involves a lot of waiting!

Aaaaaand Ian Davies photographed myself and Emily Jones as part of his Brum Creatives project.

October

October was quiet-ish. I did two Algoraves in two countries in 18 hours! The first was at OHM in Berlin and was organised by Renick Bell. I then made my way to Walthamstow to do an “Algowave“, which was basically a more ambient rave. Radical Art Review did a feature on the event.

I made a rerecording of the performance and put it on Soundcloud:

Following on from the Assembly events in 2018 the organiser myself, Thomas Goddard (organiser of the Cardiff event), and Joanna Helfer (organiser of the Dundee event) embarked on a week-long journey to each of our respective cities to check out the art scene and reflect on how arts organisations were responding to the challenges they faced. It was a tiring but very inspiring week.

Also in October I was commissioned to make some work for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. It’s on view in Stratford until October 2020 so go see it!

Finally, I was on the selection panel for the Collaborate exhibition at Jerwood Arts and in October the exhibition opened.

November

By far the biggest event of the November was my solo exhibition, We Are Your Friends, which took place at Czurles Nelson Gallery in Buffalo, NY.

It’s my second solo exhibition and the first time I made a multichannel video. I had a really great time, which inluded a trip to Niagara Falls. Many thanks to Brent Patterson for working so hard ot make it happen.

Not even two days after landing back in the UK I was in Berlin to take part in Right the Right at Haus der Kulturen der Welt. The festival explored “Ideas for Music, Copyright and Access”. My video Unauthorised Copy was on show throughout the exhibition, I performed at an Algorave and I was in conversation with Beijing-based musician Howie Lee. You can listen to our conversation below and watch the video recording here.

Also in November I Am Sitting in a Room was exhibited at Gamerz festival in Aix-en-Provence in France. That piece is nearly ten years old!

December

As usual December was very quiet, and it was much needed after being away from home for nearly a month in November. I didn’t exhibit anything but I did use this month to prepare for stuff happening in 2020. It’s been my first year being completely freelance and I think it’s gone really well! My plans for next year are to do much of the same but also look into working with/for a gallery, and maybe even a slight career change. More on that as it happens. 2019 was ace. Thanks to everyone who helped make it great!

</2018>

Posted on 31/12/2018 by hellocatfood

What a busy year! I think compared to previous years 2018 was filled with more (Algorave) performances and projects and less exhibitions and gifs. 2018 was also the year that Vivid Projects became one of Arts Council England’s National Portfolio Organisations, which basically means that the gallery has funding for the next four years. Because of this my workload there increased and so, unlike previous year-in-review blog posts I’ll be including an overview of my work there 🙂

January

This month started off really busy with the opening of two exhibitions in London. The first was Basquiat’s Brain at Barbican. The exhibition in the foyer (near the exit of the curve gallery) was the culmination of the work I’d been doing with the Barbican’s youth group and imagines what Basquiat’s take on art could’ve been if he were alive today and working digitally.

It was only supposed to be on display for a weekend but went on to be exhibited for a few months!

Only a week later Transformative Use had another showing at the Granular exhibition at the University of Greenwich (which, btw, is liek really far from many things).

My first Algorave performance of the year took place at the National Video Game Arcade’s All Your Bass Algorave event.

Elsewhere I started an Instagram account just for my art. I always felt a bit weird forcing my friends to see promotional posts about my art and exhibitions alongside personal family/friends stuff, so this kinda solves that.

February

For February I was mostly ill and preparing for the launch of Black Hole Club in March. Elsewhere stills from Basquiat’s Brain went on display on the Shoreditch Digital Canvas. Cue lots of friends sending messages asking if my big face is on a billboard!

March

At the beginning of the year I started doing workshops with the Barber Collective, which is Barber Institute of Fine Arts youth group. Over a few sessions we made animations by remixing images from the Barber’s collection. For University of Birmingham’s Arts and Science Festival we projected the finished animations on the Old Joe clock tower for one night.

I then did a day of LiveCodeLab workshops for the Imagine If event at Tate Britain.

Black Hole Club was supposed to have its launch exhibition on 2nd March but the snow, cold weather, and the absence of insulation and heating in warehouse spaces that art galleries tend to occupy forced us to reschedule. On 30th March the cohort finally had their first exhibition.

April

A few days later couple of my videos were on display at Late at Tate Britain: Echoes.

Later in the month my commission for Spon Spun’s 2017 Art Trail was on show in the CET Building.

The dark industrial building was certainly a much more effective venue for the LED infinity mirrors.

I spent a little over 48 hours in Karlsruhe for an Algorave at ZKM.

I got back on a plane this time to Seveille, Spain, to deliver a presentation about No Copyright Infringement Intended at Libre Graphics Meeting (LGM). I’d previously presented about glitch at at LGM in Toronto in 2015, so it was good to be back around my peers and see how the libre graphics community has developed over the years. Y’all can watch my presentation below.

Being in the room with like-minded people allowed me to go into more of the nuances of the exhibition’s theme and spend less time on educating people about what copyright is. You can hear some of the questions at the end of that video.

To round off this busy month Black Hole Club their second exhibition, Stellar. This exhibition, co-curated with Lumen, featured works that responded to celestial events. It was also lit af 🔥🤘😩🤘🔥.

May

I presented an overview of my Curating the Machine research at Phoenix’s Art-AI Festival.

It’s a good video to watch if you’re curious about my still ongoing research.

The biggest event of this month saw me in Stockholm, Sweden to perform a new piece, Digital Domestic, which was commissioned by Aly Grimes (she previously commissioned me for Short Circuit Project).

June

I was back at Tate Britain, this time IRL to do a workshop inspired by stained glass for their Late at Tate Britain: Spire event. I, of course, reworked Glass 😉

Cheltenham Science Festival invited myself, Joanne Armitage, Alex McLean, and Joseph Wilk to do a mini Algorave. Having a team of technicians at hand who could install projectors and move screens at a moment’s notice was a welcome change to the usual DIY warehouse events.

Still in June myself and Aly Grimes teamed up to bring Living Room Light Exchange (LRLX) to Birmingham. I had first come across it when I was invited to talk at one in Paris by Benjamin Gaulon in 2016. I really liked the relaxed and personal nature of it and so, with their permission, worked with Aly to bring it to Birmingham. For the first LRLX we had presentations from Duncan Poulton and Emily Roderick.

The biggest event of June was Assembly Birmingham. The Assembly events, organised by the (impossible to Google) a-n aim to “support artists to lead debate on and open up discussion about the things they need for a sustainable career”. I organised the Birmingham evnt in the newly reopened Eastside Projects which invited loads of new(ish) organisations to talk about their experiences of being based in Birmingham and the West Midlands and what their hopes and fears were for the future.

Pete Ashton did a darn good writeup of the day for a-n. a-n have also started uploading videos of the presentations.

To round off the month Black Hole Club launch the Another Dimension exhibition, which looked at optical illusions.

July

This month opened with the second LRLX event which featured Edie Jo Murray and Dinosaur Kilby.

If you needed a condensed version of my New Now research an “Insight Film” was uploaded this month.

August

This month was really quiet for my own work. I did a few small events and workshops for Vivid Projects and then went to Green Man Festival to talk about my artwork. This is the closest I have been to having a month off!

September

I organised the Visualists Meetup for the Livecode festival. We had a couple of visuals workshops but what was most important was the discussion around the role of visuals at Algoraves. A feeling that is shared amongst people doing visuals across all music genres is the feeling of being an afterthought or second best to the the musicians. We all shared our experiences but also how we can move forward to a more collaborative environment. There will be a fuller discussion at ICLC in Madrid in 2019.

Later that night I performed a huuuge Algorave at DINA.

A few days later Black Hole Club had its first online exhibition.

In my experience of working with artists and institutions many of them see the internet as a promotional tool. Through this exhibition I wanted to see how the cohort’s practice could be translated to the internet where many of the IRL restrictions of space and time either don’t exist or are transformed. For example, in IRL land there’s a logical way to navigate a space and work can be viewed without distractions. On the internet we’re often fighting for attention from ads, 100 other tabs and, well, each other. This was Black Hole Club’s first online exhibition, so not all these issues were explored but I think we made a good start! View the exhibition here: https://blackholeclub.hotglue.me/

Over in Finland the “Glitch Art” exhibition opened at Kuntsi Museum of Modern Art. It features my work What is your glitch? 1bitgifavibmpbmpcmykbmprgbjpgmpgpcxpixpngppmsgisvgtgawebp and Unstable Mediums alongside works by Rosa Menkman and JODI . Go see it before it closes on 13th January 2019 (or pay for my flight and I’ll come with you 😉 ).

October

I was in planes for what like felt like forever to play at an Algorave in Odense, Denmark.

I did a public discussion with Eyal Gruss at Near Now in Nottingham. He was one of the folks who heavily influenced my Curating the Machine project. Video will be online soon I hope.

To close the month I organised the Birmingham Algorave at Vivid Projects to close their/our Mediafest programme.

November

More performances this month, the first being at databit.me in Arles, France. I first performed at databit.me back in 2012 as artist in residence, and then again in 2013. There’s so many things I like about this festival, but above everything I love the people (and the food) and the sense of community (and the food).

For databit.me I did my first ever live coded music performance! This took place in a barn in Tarascon on a horse-drawn carriage:

I went on to do another two performances in the festival in similarly weird places. Y’all can listen to a bit here.

In a surprise to many, including myself, the next week I took all the flights to perform at the opening event of Piksel in Bergen, Norway. Can I just state the obvious and say that Norway is dope af. Everything’s just so clean and tidy. It’s also cold and, like, there are lots of hills everywhere but whatever idc. I wish I as there for more than two days.

I think I’m now going to make it a requirement that when I perform it needs to be in as unconventional a space as possible. For my Piksel performance I did visuals in a band stand in the city centre.

I also had an updated version of Copyrgiht Atrophy on display as part of their Pikselsavers programme.

December

It’s supposed to be a month to wind down but instead in December I was doing lots of preparatory work for things happening in 2019. The only public event was the last Black Hole Club exhibition of the year and the launch of their publication.

2018 was certainly one of my favourite years for Black Hole Club. Part of this was due to having funding which allowed me to focus more on building and delivering the programme but also the cohort was 🔥. Y’all can still apply to be part of Black Hole Club in 2019.

And so, 2018 is now over. A big thanks to all those who have helped make things possible 🙂 I feel like I’m at a turning point in my career and so next year I will be exploring some other things. Not a massive depature from my usual artwork or curatorial stuff but perhaps more narrowly focused. Until then, happy new year!

</2017>

Posted on 31/12/2017 by hellocatfood

After a two year hiatus I’ve decided to bring back the end of year blog posts. As you will have noticed this blog isn’t updated that much aside from event notifications, and as I’m not on Facebook any more it can be a bit difficult to follow what I’m up to (psst look at my Events page).

January

January as always is a bit quiet. For us freelancers it’s a chance to catch up on the millions of e-mails we didn’t do over the year and hassle people to pay invoices, and to do all of our taxes (yay!).

February

Short Circuit Terminal 2 launched with a show in Venice. This second iteration of the work showcased the more complete web interface of the piece.

Also there was my first Algorave performance of the year over at Rough Trade in Nottingham.

March

I provided visuals for Steve Davis (yes, the snooker player) at Hare and Hounds (thanks Capsule). The night was just generally full of joy 🙂

After doing a workshop in ImageMagick at BOM I jetted off to Montreal, Canada to talk to lots of Canadians about digital art and Copyright for the Arts in a Digital World Summit. It was a pleasure to have been invited and help reflect on digital communities. I also got to meet the awesome Carrie Gates for the first time IRL!

I did a small writeup of my experience for the New Art West Midlands website.

April

My biggest curated exhibition to date launched in April. No Copyright Infringement Intended opened its doors at Phoenix in Leicester. The exhibition featured 10 artists whose work tackled copyright in a variety of ways. I’m of course very thankful to Phoenix and Arts Council England for their support (and to Kerry Leslie for her awesome graphic design for the exhibition).

Elsewhere, in my Curating role at Vivid Projects we, in collaboration with Flatpack Film Festival, presented the first UK screening of all four episodes of Ways of Something.

Hybrid Landscapes launched at Digital Catapult in London and featured a video of Unauthorised Copy.

Later that month I welcomed various artists from the No Copyright Infringement Intended exhibition to a panel discussion called Copyright as Frame and Prison.

May

Short Circuit Terminal 3 – the final one – launched in Venice and showcased the most completely versions of both Unauthorised Copy and Exposed.

I then made my way up to Newcastle for the Chemical Algorave, which was my first time experimenting with Pure Data and OBS for live coding visuals.

Why this is notable is because prior to this I wasn’t able to overlay my patch onto my visuals. So, whilst I was live coding no one could tell! Using OBS I was able to do this and much more (for example try using the LUT effect).

June

Aside from curating work at Vivid Projects June was relatively quiet and focused on Algoraves. For the first I curated and performed at an Algorave for Supersonic Festival, which featured Miri Kat, BITLIP and Heavy Bleeding, which is/was the collaboration between Blood Sport and Heavy Lifting.

I then made my way over to Kortrijk to provide visuals for Yaxu at an Algorave for the BUMP design festival.

July

I continued my Summer of festival Algoraves with a performance at Bluedot Festival at Jodrel Bank. We couldn’t quite compete with Orbital but we drew good crowd 🙂

Back in May I started a Fellowship at Near Now in Nottingham. My project, Curating the Machine, aimed to investigate the relationship between automation (AI) and curating. In July myself and the other Fellows did our first public presentation about our respective research projects.

You can read more about my research here: https://curatingthemachine.wordpress.com/

August

My main task of this month was to embarked on one of my most ambitious projects/artworks to date at Green Man Festival. My work, Mirrored, aimed to replicate the experience of live visuals but in a fixed form.

Many thanks to Green Man for supporting this art work. It was tough at times but I enjoyed it 🙂

If doing that project wasn’t enough I also performed at Green Man’s first Algorave in Einstein’s Garden.

At the end of the month I published my five days of Pure Data series of blog posts and tutorials, something which I had been meaning to write and publish for many years!

September

Barely a fortnight after being in a field for a week I was back on curating duties for the second iteration of No Copyright Infringement Intended at Vivid Projects.

This time the exhibition was only three weeks long but it still had the same amount of activities as the exhibition at Phoenix in April. In fact I somehow managed to add in a meme-making workshop and a presentation from Gretchen Andrew!

Other activities in this busy month included a commission for Spon Spun’s Art Trail and a performance with Michael Lightborne at the Coventry Biennale.

With the Support of my Near Now Fellowship I did a presentation about No Copyright Infringement Intended at CopyCamp in Warsaw, Poland.

People like myself, Nick Briz, Ariele Elia, and Mitch Altman provided takes on the state of copyright from the perspective of creators and artists, which was a great complement to the insightful presentations from copyright lawyers and professionals.

To round off the month Exposed and Unauthorised Copy were exhibited at the V&A’s Digital Design Weekend.

October

This October was a bit quiet due to teaching again at University of Westminster and starting occasional teaching at Staffordshire University.

I also started a series of regular workshops at the Barbican in response to the Boom for Real Basquiat exhibition. This kicked off with a bit of live digital and collage art with Maria Midttun for their Too Young For What event.

Towards the end of the month I was back at Parsons Paris to give another talk about my work but this time focusing on No Copyright Infringement Intended and remix culture in general.

November

The biggest event of November was a performance at Algomech in Sheffield. I had previously provided visuals at their closing party in 2016 but this year I was on visuals duty at their main Algorave. The Guardian even did a feature on it for their series on underground music.

You can see your favourite visuals live coder throwing some shapes at 0:27 😉

December

I actually had no events in December!

As you can probably tell, this post wasn’t originally written in 2017, or even in early 2018 as I had planned. Instead it got pushed further and further back until now, December 2018. With the deletion of many social media accounts I eventually want to return to writing more on this website and elsewhere. Oh, and make art 😉

</2014>

Posted on 31/12/2014 by hellocatfood

It’s been a tough year.

January

As usual January was quiet. Libre Graphics Magazine 2.2 was released and I also did the artwork for Maximilien Irregular. He’s got an EP out y’know.

February

Back in late 2013 myself and Joe Newlin set out to collaborate on an audio visual artware piece. In early February, a month later than planned, we unleashed Neon Plastic onto the world! Download it here.

Later that month I took part in VOID, curated by Amy Kirkham and Charlie Levine, alongside some really cool local artists. I made some new artwork focused on jpg compression.

March

At the beginning of the month I headed off to Stony Brook University in New York for the first of two State-side visits in March. I took part in f(Glitch) where I gave lecture about glitch art and organised my last BYOB event.

After spending 10 days back in the UK I want straight back to the States – this time Chicago, New York City and a surprise visit to Miami – for a social visit. I know, I know, I should have just stayed abroad for an extra week….

I, of course, took this opportunity to do some work and performed alongside Jason Soliday at Antagonists Anonymous.

April

I released spɛl ænd spik to the world. It was a slight departure from my usual glitch aesthetic, but I feel it still referenced some of its key themes, especially randomness and finding signal in noise.

I also did some live coded visuals at an Algorave in Gateshead. I wrote up my experience of this, which was rather interesting.

May

Nathan Jones (not the wrestler)/Mercy, the same person/people that comissioned spɛl ænd spik, kicked off a colaboration with performance artist Rachel Sweeney. We did a performance outside FACT for Light Night

Daniel Rourke invited me to take part in the massive GIFbites/Bitrates online exhibition. If you don’t value your retinas you can experience my contribution.

An unexpected highlight of May was spɛl ænd spik being featured in the Next Wave exhibition at the RBSA, the outcome of which results in me becoming an Honourary Associate of the RBSA!

June

After soooooooo many dealys I finally launched Copyright Atrophy, a project that was previously shown at Glitch Moment/ums in June 2013

In addition to joining the Board of Directors of Fierce Festival, participating in a short residency at Jephson Gardens in Leamington Spa and making a video for UUOO, I made public my explorations of sonification.

This approach, inspired by the work of the Cyborg Foundation, would make several appearances throughout the year. Check out the software for yourself if you like pixel noises!

July

On the surface this was a quiet month but there was a lot of preparation work going on behind the scenes!

The main highlight was returning to Liverpool to perform again with Rachel Sweeney. I think this collaboration could go somewhere…

August

The month started with a David Lynch inspired exhibition at Vivid Projects. Between Two Worlds was a collaboration between Black Hole Club (of which I am a member) and Stryx that saw the space transformed into something resembling the set of Twin Peaks.

Although it was only up for one day it was the resut of a month of hard work. Pro tip: filling a space with soil is harder than it sounds. Let’s not talk about the wig…

I was/am part of another big online project, this time an ambitious project by Lorna Mills to invite artists to recreate Jon Berger’s Ways of Seeing minute by minute.

ways_of_something_12

The project, Ways of Something, has been well received so far even though only episodes one and two (I’m in episode two) have been released!

The final big news of the month was that I became an artist in residence at the University of Birmingham.

In a departure from my usual glitch aesthetic, during my residency, which goes on until September 2015, I’ll be exploring issues of copyright, patents, intellectual property and art – issues which are pertinent as online communities become more prolific and harder to police. I hope to find ways to increase accessibility of collections at the University of Birmingham whilst still maintaining the integrity and reputation of the University and Copyright holders.

Believe it not, but these themes have been running through my work since the beginning! Notice how I only use open source software and Creative Commons licences? Expect more of my work to focus on these themes.

September

After releasing a JPG glitch pattern generator I went to the Chicago again (I hate flying) to take part in glitChicago and do a bit of teaching at SAIC.

I couldn’t be more thankful to Paul Hertz, jonCates and everyone that helped me get over there again. It should go without saying that I really enjoyed everything!

October

The sonification work that I had been doing earlier in the year, and that I had performed at glitChicago, came to a closing point with the release of the Pixel Player software I had made for the sonification of pixels.

On the back of the sonification work I went to Brussels to work with Constant/OSP at Balsamine for their Print Party

This time I converted the curves of SVG files into audio.

November

noteNdo came to visit and we both performed at Fierce Festival’s Algorave, which also saw me perform with My Panda Shall Fly (he rocks).

I then got an invitation to participate in Loud Tate: Code at Tate Britain.

It was an ever so delightful surprise to be featured along side my peers in a gallery that, to my knowledge, hasn’t heavily featured glitch art or “new media” in the past. Thanks to Jasper at Tate Collectives for recommending my work! The piece is still being developed and will see a proper release veeeeeeery soon.

December

For once December has been/was pretty quiet. Most of this time has been/was spent making preparations for 2015. Delete as appropriate, depending on when you read this.

I’ve spent of December learning new skills such as 2D and 3D animation, compositing and even music making. Most of that energy is currently being pumped into the Arhive Remix residency.

Fin

I started writing these end-of-year review posts as a way for me to grasp everything that was happening in my artistic life. Since I started “doing things” in 2009 when I co-started fizzPOP it seems that, out of nowhere, I started to do more and more, er, things. It overwhelmed me at times. As the years have progressed I’ve become more settled in my ideas and more confident in my abilities. Maybe using this end-of-year review format isn’t necessary anymore.

See you in 2015.

</2013>

Posted on 30/12/2013 by hellocatfood

2013 brought with it many surprises but was mostly a time for me to reflect on my practice and refine my skills. Unlike the previous year summaries I won’t give a massive list of everything that I’ve done – lest I still be writing this article at 23:59 on December 31st – just a couple of selections from the highlights from each month.

January

Nothing, as usual, happend in January

February

AlphabeNt, the book that I presented at GLI.TC/H 2112, finally got its release. The book, by Australian Authors Daniel Purvis and Drew Taylor, remixes the alphabet using glitch art aesthetics. Go buy it! I made a video to celebrate the occasion.

In addition to co-directing the rehang of the FRAME_birmingham exhibition, February also saw the release of Lbire Graphics Magazine 2.1, for which I am now a contributor. Various technical issues have prevented the next release from coming out, but in the meantime go read the current issue, Localisation/Internationalization.

More February news.

March

The main event for this month was Dirty New Media. Since there was no GLI.TC/H 2013 this event was the only chance to bring together many of those from the digital arts, new media and glitch art world.

Being situated within the Barber Institute of Fine Arts presented many interesting opportunities and challenges. They don’t seem so keen on letting me drill holes into the walls 😉 regardless, it was great to challenge the space and situate broken Kindles next to a collection of artworks dating back to the 1500s!

More March news.

April

Another slow month which saw me included in the Art + Copyright online exhibition from Interartive.

adobe_ca dell_ca nvidia_ca

android_ca hp_ca starbucks_ca

I exhibited some gifs from Copyright Atrophy, which will launch soon. Honest.

More April news.

May

For awhile I have/had felt that I didn’t understand the tools that I was using or how to develop new ones, so in May I took a break from producing artwork. My Github account finally saw some usage and, in general, a lot of coding skills improved! w00t!

I also released this animation which I had been working on sporadically since 2008. Never again.

More May news.

June

The highlight for June was the opening of the Glitch Moment/ums exhibition at Furtherfield Gallery in London, for which I performed at the opening event.

Ever since I graduated from my undergraduate studies I’ve been admiring the work of Furtherfield from afar, so to be included in one of their exhibitions was a highlight of my artistic career! Here’s a little video from the exhibition:

More June news.

July

I took part in a rather special edition of Bring Your Own Beamer (BYOB), which saw the usual barrage of artists projected against a backdrop of music from Mark Ronson. At times I couldn’t tell if the projections were supporting the music or vice versa, but I had a good time regardless.

July also saw the release of Multimedia Programming with Pure Data, for which I was a technical reviewer. If you don’t know anything about Pure Data already then I’d recommend getting it!

I also discovered the joys of analogue video hardware.

More July news.

August

An old friend of mine, Gabriella Gardosi, was in the area so we decided to collaborate on some artwork. The combination of noisy digital shapes and organic shapes seemed to work well!

Later that month I also unveiled my reworking of Variations on a theme by Casey & Finch. The original work by Erik Bünger used the aesthetic of a skipping scratched CD as a composition method. I aimed to replicated this using scripts and coding.

More August news.

September

For the Lumiere screenings I did a remix/remake of the Dark, Eerie and Manic video that myself and Alex Juno made earlier in the year.

The highlight for September was definitely doing visuals at SuperByte Festival! Everthing about it – the artists, the musicians, the organisers, the location, the free sweets – was completely awesome 🙂

Photo by Jon Blenky

Above all, I liked being surrounded by a bunch of my peers and friends, and making many more new ones. Even if I don’t do visuals for it next year I’ll still be attending.

More September news.

October

In addition to running in a half-marathon and giving a lecture in internet cultures at Fierce Festival, I was in Arles again for databit.me #3.

This year I had a “guest” spot as a performer at the closing party (last year I was artist in residence there). It was great to meet noteNdo for the first time in three years and also to finally perform with Axel Debeul on the Magnetophon piece.

noteNdo did a great writeup of the event.

More October news.

November

Shortly after getting back from Arles I was off again to Barcelona! I perfomed with Gabriella Gardosi and Kerian Lao as Feedback Symphony at Molécula/The Wrong Biennale. We were joined by musicans Diego Lara, Evgeni Krane and Hugh Tetley.

It was fun again to explore combining two different practices and also great to visit a new city! Spain’s nice 🙂

At the end of the month I curated BYOB Birmingham 2013, my final show of the year, with assitance of the awesome Pete Ashton.

Photo by Katja Ogrin

We had more projectors than last time and the music reached 11 on the awesome scale. I’m just thankful none of the equipment blew up.

More November news.

December

December is usually a very quiet month, but not this time! I performed at the 7 Days of Sound Festival, took part in a group exhibition in London and then did a decidedly different performance at Come Heavy Sleep with Kindle Theatre.

Photo by Jonathon Blackford

This production, which is loosely based around Othello, saw me create my usual style of noisy visuals but it a more controlled way. I also got to stand on a two-metre high plinth in the middle of the stage :-/ Overall, though, it was a very enjoyable challenge for me and great to apply my working style in different areas.

More Decembere news.

And so, that’s it for the year!

I have no definite goals for 2014, but I do hope to do more explorations into the poltical side of my artwork. As many of you will know, I exclusively use Ubuntu Linux and open source software for my work and have done for many years. This isn’t accidental, and I do so that others will be more easily able to access my work and the processes behind it. This area is something I want to focus on more in the future.

See you next year x

</2012>

Posted on 29/12/2012 by hellocatfood

2012 was a very surprising year. 2011 was definitely exciting, but this year saw me travelling a lot more and making links with people all over the world. Here’s most of what I got up to this year.

January

As usual, January was a quiet month, with one exception: In addition to helping to organise Network Music Festival, I did two performances: one with BiLE and the other with Freecode.

February

I started this month with my graduation ceremony. I had finished my MA in Digital Arts in Performance at Birmingham City University in October 2011, so it was nice to have a proper send-off!

Later that month I made my first international trip to take part in the Co-Position meeting for the Libre Graphics Research Unit in Brussels, Belgium. It was great to see the guys at Constant again and to many other practitioners, thinkers and hackers that are interested in open source software tools for the creation of art.

Photo by Tom Lechner

I published a report on the activities at the meeting for Furtherfield.

As soon as I came back work from international glitchers, myself included, were included in the Bus Tops exhibition that took place around London. Here’s a short video.

March

BYOB Birmingham, which took place as part of Flatpack Festival, was the main focus for this month. Myself and Pete Ashton brought together 18 artists from around the UK, 23 projectors and three musicians to VIVID for one night of video projection. It was a highly successful event and a great way to start my year of curating exhibitions.

April

When I’m not glitching, one of my favourite things to do is cycling-related activities. Papergirl is an idea that originated in Berlin in 2005, where rolls of art are distributed on bicycles to an unsuspecting public!. Kate Grundy, with support from 48 Sheet, made Papergirl Birmingham happen. On 28th April lots of cyclists gathered to distribute art!

Photo by Lee Basford

I supplied some prints from I Am Sitting in a Room. Some unlucky person in Birmingham has these!

May

Another quiet month for my digital art. I played a small part in organising the The Big Vintage Ride. More than 100 people, dressed in their best vintage attire, cycled across the busy streets of Birmingham on a hot May afternoon.

Photo by Jonathan Melhuish

There’s lots of photos and a video of the event.

Something In The Water, a magazine by Ross Cotton that I provided a few illustrations for, also came out this month.

June

June started with my biggest VJing gig to date. Com Truise toured the UK to promote his album, Galactic Melt. I provided visuals for his gig at The Bull’s Head in Birmingham. Here’s a sample of the visuals that I did:

After this, the second of my curatorial projects took place. TOYBOX was an exhibition with TROVE that drew upon the industrial history of Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham and the different interpretations of the word “toy”. There were plenty of hacked and reinterpreted toys, videos and performances:

July

I joined Freecode once again to perform a very improvised set at The reUNION in London.

I also showed off some generative self-portraits, entitled CóRM

August

Despite the pouring rain, BYOB Leicester happened. It was great to meet other digital artists from/based in my home town and was cool to meet hexler as well!

I then used my tech skills for something other than glitching and performing! For the week of 6-12 August I was working with 3D Native to help a group of under 18 year-olds to build apps for the Young Rewired State Festival of Code.

The team sadly didn’t win any prizes but it was amazing to see the skills of these youngsters, some of whom had started coding since age 6!

Finally, this month saw the world premier of Mittwoch aus Licht/Wednesday from Light. For the Orchester-Finalisten/Orchestra Finalists section, Birmingham Opera Company asked me to make a video with Ember Television that responded to a piece of audio. Here it is below:

September

I started this month in Manchester in the presence of many chiptune and 8-bit musicians. On 1st September I did my final gig with Freecode at the first SuperByte festival.

It was a very fun night, and I was happy to meet some of my internet friends, including Henry Homesweet.

I then revealed how you can use Pure Data to make jpgs, which was then used for Some Of My Favourite Songs

October

This month started the busiest 2.5 months of my life! I started October by hacking a toy for TROVE’s third birthday on October 12th.

The day after that the third annual BZF Independent Publishing Fair took place, which I helped to organise.

Photo by BZF

It was the biggest BZF yet and was very well received by exhibitors and attendees! There’s lots of photos on Flickr.

I stayed up till 4am the following day (14th) to catch a plane to Arles, France to take part in Databit.me for a week. In addition to taking place in a very beautiful small town, the festival itself was amazing!

Lots of artists travelled from many corners of Europe for a week of performances and digital experiments. The festival saw me give a Pure Data tutorial, a lecture and I also did my first solo audio and visual performance. I’m planning many more, so watch this space!

November

With no time to rest, I jumped straight back into action! I gave a Pecha-Kucha style presentation about glitch art, my other work and being a Birmingham-based artist at “Brand” New Generation on the 1st.

Photo by Kalaboration

Despite there being a few technical glitches (oh, the irony!) the presentation was well received. You can watch a recording of it on YouTube

The next day it was time for another festival! Flip Festival is an annual animation and digital art festival that takes place in Wolverhampton. In 2011 I curated a small screening of glitch videos in preparation for GLI.TC/H 20111. This year I did much more! On the 2nd I gave another Pure Data workshop, followed the next day with the curation of another event! The People VS The Machine was a night of livecoding and live illustration, loosely themed around a cyborg uprising!

Shortly after this, on the 17th, FRAME_birmingham launched. The exhibition features artwork from 40 international artists exhibited at venues across the centre of Birmingham. Three images from Some of My Favourite Songs were chosen to be part of this:

Photo by Elly Clarke

The exhibition continues until February 2013, and all of the works are for sale.

I then launched Comic Sans Must Die, which was a short project that progressively destroys everyone’s most hated font!

To round off this month I took part in the Midlands Experimental Moving Image Collective’s first exhibition.

December

December is usually a very quiet month, but thanks to the generosity of a friend (thanks, Jon!) I jetted out to Chicago for the third annual GLI.TC/H conference/festival/beerfest/gathering on 6-9th. You may remember that the festival stopped off at Amsterdam and Birmingham last year. This year it stuck to its Chicagoan roots for a very intense four-day event.

Photo by Daniel Rourke

Photo by Pillip Stearns

Photo by Phillip Stearns

For the event I gave another Pure Data workshop (noticing a theme?) and I teamed up with Daniel Purvis to present, amongst other things, AlphabeNt. It’ll be out very soon, honest!

GLI.TC/H was great, and I already can’t wait to be back in Chicago!

2012 really did take me by surprise. I can’t pinpoint one particular moment that was amzing. I really loved being around all of my peers and friends and making lots of new ones. I wonder how 2013 will turn out…

</2011>

Posted on 02/01/2012 by hellocatfood

2011 was probably one of the most exciting years in terms of my artistic development. Overall, it’s seen a lot of my work go out into the wild, rather than just sitting on a server or on my computer.

January

January was pretty slow and saw me mostly carrying on with my studies at Birmingham City University.

February

Although it was a slow month I did finally meet Rob Myers at the Furtherfield show opening in London. I was also asked to join BiLE as their visuals guy. After initially being hesitant, due to my lack of experience in performing live, I accepted the offer.

March

What Revolution? appeared in Libre Graphics Magazine (you can still buy a copy).

I uploaded the What Glitch? scripts to the interwebs and showed off their capabilities in this video:

I still think I’m probably the only person to use these scripts. Someone please prove me wrong! Although the scripts are very rough, as one of my first attempts at writing someone functional I was happy with my achievement

BiLE also had their first performance at SOUNDkitchen:

Whilst it didn’t blow the socks off of everyone in the audience it represented how we were going to progress as a group

April

I became a regular VJ for SOUNDkitchen, and also joined Laternist, minuek and Chromatouch to form the Freecode collective. We played our first gig at the EXZYT space:

I then stayed up for nearly 24 hours to support Film Division in the Sci-Fi-London 48 hour film challenge:

The finished competition entry, Internalised, sadly didn’t win but did go on to be shown at Cannes in a Van later in the year.

I also had the pleasure of meeting Rob Canning of GOTO10 whilst they were in residence at Grand Union. Pure Dyne, which is made by them, was one of my first positive experiences with Linux so it was great to meet those who have inspired my work!

May

BiLE performed at We Are Birmingham (RIP) on May 1st, the day of the Royal Wedding. Videos from the performance are available here

I did slip in some footage from the wedding itself, but it did seem no one noticed. We then played our first gig outside Birmingham at the Electroacoustic Compostion Forum in Liverpool.

I made available for download my general purpose video mixer:

Has anyone else tried using it?

It lacks a lot of features found in many VJ applications but it worked for me for most of 2011. I think I’m still he only person to use it…

June

I traveled to Brussels for a short trip to meet OSP (Open Source Publishing) (more photos are here.

Some of team OSP

They’re one of the few design agencies that focus on producing work made entirely using open source applications. What more proof do you need that open source tools are more than capable of producing design that is indistinguishable from work made with proprietary tools.

I’ve been an Ubuntu user for a number of years and whilst I’ve faced many problems I’m now at a stage where I can produce work quite easily.

A day later BiLE performed in Wolverhampton

July

I’ve been helping to organise Birmingham Zine Festival since its inception in 2010 and in July we expanded to fill the We Are Birmingham shop.

I (still) don’t make many zines, but it was really great to see such an active DIY/zine scene in Birmingham

A day later I jetted off Venice with BiLE to perform at the Laptops Meet Musicians Festival. Whilst there I met rukano IRL and the band he’s part of, Benoît and the Mandelbrots.

Like a boss!

(More photos from the event are here.)

Throughout my time in BiLE I’ve mostly been learning about the whole electroacoustic music scene. Being mostly a fan of heavy metal and the like, this is all new, and at times, just plain weird! Events like this, where people are able to talk freely about their motivations and approaches to this type of work, have really helped me to understand it better.

BiLE also performed at SOUNDkitchen’s SONICpicnic (more pics here).

August

Freecode performed at the hexagon theatre at the mac.

This was quite a special gig for me as I performed alongside Modulate and Scree (Catweasel and DJ Sir Real. Back in 2007 when I was looking for local digital arts groups/artists it was these that I came across that then went on to inspire my work.

Did I mention that I met Richard Stallman?

September

I finally completed my MA in Digital Arts in Performance. Whilst my final piece for the course was criticised for its shallow storyline it was a great learning experience of using digital technology in a performance:

Despite it being 90% finished earlier in the year, in September I finally finished Skin Cells.

Straight after that it was time to get started on GLI.TC/H. With only two months to go things were getting a bit hectic. A (successfully funded) Kickerstarter was launched to support GLI.TC/H in Amsterdam and Chicago, whilst Birmingham opted for support from other sources.

October

I curated a screening of some great glitch videos as part of Flip Festival in Wolverhampton. This acted as a preview to GLI.TC/H, which by this point, had eaten up most of my free time.

A video for local Jazz-Metal band, Meatfeast, went online. I provided some effects for it:

Meanwhile, Birmingham Zine Festival held a stall and small zine exhibition at Supersonic Festival in Birmingham.

Birmingham Zine Festival at Supersonic Festival 2011

Myself and Lizz Lunney, one of the organisers of the zine festival

November

November was all about GLI.TC/H!!! The festival kicked off in Chicago at the beginning of the month, then went to Amsterdam before finally setting down at VIVID in Birmingham.

GLI.TC/H, for many reasons, was definitely the highlight of my year. Although I had organised art and tech events for awhile (most notably fizzPOP), I had never done anything on this scale. I’m thankful to the GLI.TC/H bots for allowing me to curate GLI.TC/H Birmingham and to the various people and organisations for supporting all of it! srsly, thanks!

I really liked how GLI.TC/H brought together many like-minded artists, many of whom had never met before in real life and were more likely to know their username than real name! Here’s some of the GLI.TC/H superstars hanging out after some good fuuuud!

Enough waffling, just look at the photos and videos from the event

Also, this month I Am Sitting In A Room, a piece inspired by Alvin Lucier’s work of the same name, had an extra-special showing at a celebration of Alvin Lucier‘s work in Connecticut in the US. I never would’ve thought that this video would’ve been seen by the guy who inspired it!

Elsewhere, What is your glitch? 1bitgifavibmpbmpcmykbmprgbjpgmpgpcxpixpngppmsgisvgtgawebp was shown at Leeds International Film Festival and I did a micro residency in Coventry.

December

Practically nothing happened, and for that I’m thankful! With most major things in my life over bty this point (my studies and GLI.TC/H) I used December as a period to reflect and think about where I could attempt to take my practice next.

2011 was definitely a year that took me by surprise. Here’s to 2012 being just as awesome!