Category: Exhibitions

Nybble at the V&A Museum

This weekend (20-21 September 2013) the garden of V&A Museum will be transformed into a large computing device by Ollie Palmer – and a troupe of “human-computers”.

In 1948 Alan Turing designed the first chess computer programme.

The only problem was that he didn’t have a computer to play it on.

He wrote all of the instructions onto pieces of paper, and played a game of chess as if he were the computer himself. Each move took over half an hour. What’s more, his human-powered computer programme didn’t win the game.

Nybble takes Turing’s human computer and combines it with a sense of theatricality in an immersive architectural-scale installation. Four performers, each representing a different part of a computing CPU, will be parsing a message into the V&A’s John Madjeski Garden. The display is playful, silly and fun – and possibly the most analogue computer to have graced the V&A’s Digital Design Weekend.

Nybble_tests

Where

John Madjeski Garden, V&A Museum
21-22 September 2013
12.00, 14.00 and 16.00 daily (performances last 45 minutes)
Admission free

Part of the V&A Digital Design Weekend.

Funded by Design with Heritage, an AHRC Creative Economy Knowledge Exchange between V&A and UCL. www.designwithheritage.org

Late at Tate Britain

I am building a machine with Krieder + O’Leary for the next Late at Tate Britain on the 1 February 2013.

sentinel_web

It’s a 2.5m-long camera which scans the border between the public and hidden spaces of the gallery, and will be whirring away creating large photographs all evening. It is an homage to Kubrick and Tarkovsky, and a prototype for a system that I’ll be using in Norway over the coming weeks.

Date: 1 February 2013, 18:00-22:00
Location: Tate Britain, Millbank, London SW1P 4RG
More information here

FutureEverything in not-quite-3D

I know not everyone can make it to Manchester for FutureEverything, so took a couple of panoramic photosynths so that everyone can join in the fun. The exhibition is in the world’s first railway warehouse, so it’s a nice contrast between the peak of 1830’s physical technology and 2012’s (mostly) virtual!

First up is the elevator that takes people from the ground floor to the exhibition:

It’s been designed by Jörn Röder and Jonathan Pimay. Called fbFaces, it is the result of a script that trawled the web for public photos of people from and related to Manchester. There’s something of a Philip K Dick novel/Keiichi Matsuda experience in being surrounded by so many little avatars…

Secondly, here’s my Ant Ballet installation:

It has four screens showing documentary footage and theory about Ant Ballet, and a floating circular screen in the middle of the space with a robotic arm and simulation of ant trail following and disruption.

On the other side of the room is Brendan Oliver and Kasia Molga‘s The…. Based around David Bohm‘s philosophy that no human thought can be original, but rather a result of other thoughts in the world, it presents visitors with poetic (and non-Justin Bieber-related) Twitter feeds that are sent from one viewers’ shadow to another.

Unfortunately I didn’t have exhibition features numerous other works by artists such as Lawrence Epps, Jeremy Hutchison, Daniel Jones + James Bulley and more. It is open from the 18th May – 10th June at the Museum of Science and Industry

Ant Ballet at FutureEverything

My Ant Ballet installation is featured in FutureEverything‘s art show this summer, from the 16 May to the 10 June 2012.

The festival was recently listed among the top 10 ideas festivals, scattered in a plethora of interesting venues around Manchester. My installation is be in the world’s first railway warehouse building in the Museum of Science and Industry – a showcase of the future, from a building that built Britain’s past.

Entry to the art exhibition is free! Visit FutureEverything’s site for details.

The exhibition at FutureEverything has been gaining a lot of press recently – see the Press page for more.

Bartlett M.Arch Show 2011

The Bartlett School of Architecture M.Arch show will be opening on the 27th September at Wates House. Amongst the myriad of interesting and bizarre projects will be an Ant Ballet machine, and some related films.

Opening times
Tuesday 18:00 – 21:00
Wednesday – Friday 10:00 – 18:00
Saturday 10:00 – 16:00
(The opening is probably the best time to come, but it’s open to the public for the rest of the week too.)

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