For all those with inquisitive minds, I’ll be hosting a circuit bending workshop as part of the British Science Festival on 10th September
A three-hour workshop in which you’ll learn how to make unusual noises by creatively modifying toys and other devices.
Circuit bending is the creative art of making experimental modifications to toys and other small devices, making them perform in unexpected ways, making new sounds and discovering new functions. Explore the basics of circuit bending, including soldering, and try it out on your own battery powered toys or devices.
Dirty New Media took place on Thursday 21st March at The Barber Institute of Fine Arts. It was one of the most adventurous exhibitions that I’ve curated!
All of the performers, lecture-deliverers and artists that got involved (more below)
And last, but not least, thanks to you, the audience, for travelling from the far reaches of England to attend Dirty New Media! You helped to make it a success!
Here’s a list of all of the works/pieces/artists included in the programme, should you want to check out more:
The invisibility of various technologies, interfaces, and wares, via their often seductive and seamless interfaces, fosters a kind of cultural ocularcentrism[1] vis-a-vis capitalist consumerism. Dirty New Media (DNM) seeks to disengage our perception of screen-based activity from the two-dimensional, and critique material production of objects and systems that produce, curate, and guide reception of various texts.
THURSDAY 21 MARCH | 4-10PM | THE BARBER INSTITUTE, BIRMINGHAM
An engaging day of performances and interactive installations from digital artists, hacktivists and new media explorers from the West Midlands, Chicago and beyond. Artworks take the form of hacked and customised hardware, accessories, demos, lectures, data-mangling, projection and more!
Description: A short audio visual journey exploring abstract narrative, movement, shape, colour, non verbal expression and spatial awareness. Sounds sourced from “The Octophonic Loop System"8.1 sound installation by Bobby Bird /Modulate, commissioned by Francisco Lopez.
Dan O’Hara - An Irregular and Spasmodic History of Glitches and other Systemic Stutterings
Glitches interrupt the smooth realism of our mediated experience of the everyday world, from malfunctioning train announcement boards to distorted video streams and white noise in our phone calls. But is it only machines that glitch, or does ‘glitching’ exist in nature too?
An optical theremin is a motion-operated instrument, based on an LM386 op-amp chip, we’ll be building them from scratch, learning the basic principles behind audio manipulation using voltage, and making some unholy racket! No soldering experience necessary.
Following a group shows’ theme of “home in the digital age”, Approach utilizes 3D modeling software to create a private digital sculpture garden textured, in part, with personal screenshots.
Tracert (pronounced trace route) is an examination of how traditional craft ideas translate into the modern multi-media networked world. A sampler has been cross-stitched by hand from a transposed graphic of a tracert DOS command.
Cityscape #46 image is from a series of GIF based images that are made to resemble city skylines, the images are created using digitally broken image files
An engaging day of performances and interactive installations from digital artists, hacktivists and new media explorers from the West Midlands, Chicago and beyond. Artworks take the form of hacked and customised hardware, accessories, demos, lectures, data-mangling, projection and more!
Description: A short audio visual journey exploring abstract narrative, movement, shape, colour, non verbal expression and spatial awareness. Sounds sourced from “The Octophonic Loop System"8.1 sound installation by Bobby Bird /Modulate, commissioned by Francisco Lopez.
A stupid joke, told badly.
Appropriated Phil Morton video, twisted and built through analog video mixers
> Applying reality safeguards… > Discarding morality values… > Deactivating motivation protocol… > Accessing Internet Database… > Initialising… > Ready.
Glitches interrupt the smooth realism of our mediated experience of the everyday world, from malfunctioning train announcement boards to distorted video streams and white noise in our phone calls. But is it only machines that glitch, or does ‘glitching’ exist in nature too?
Following a group shows’ theme of “home in the digital age”, Approach utilizes 3D modeling software to create a private digital sculpture garden textured, in part, with personal screenshots.
Tracert (pronounced trace route) is an examination of how traditional craft ideas translate into the modern multi-media networked world. A sampler has been cross-stitched by hand from a transposed graphic of a tracert DOS command.
Cityscape #46 image is from a series of GIF based images that are made to resemble city skylines, the images are created using digitally broken image files