Grants

Money No Object

Adopting a broad line of enquiry, Money No Object questions prevailing concepts of value, and playfully explores alternative economic ideas; considering for example, a new significance for material and physical currencies in an increasingly immaterial world, where smart payment transactions are imperceptible, but human emotions, creativity and culture, remain something that money can’t buy. Alongside sex and war, physical money has been a constant in human history. But coins, cash and credit cards, are arguably obsolete now that digital representations of currency are beginning to substitute these material objects. Yet trading still relies on trust. So how can we trust what we cannot tangibly experience, what we can no longer touch, see, smell or hear? http://vimeo.com/64412606

Interactive Story Wall

Stuart will be creating an interactive story wall using motion sensors and computers with chord sequences and musical loops stored. The interactive story wall will allow the viewer to explore and compose music through gesture without musical training.

Shamanic Healing Through Sound

‘Dom & Passmans’s Shamanic Healing Through Sound’ is an emerging collaborative performance project between multi-disciplinary artist Dom Allen and musician / performer Passman. It came about after invitations to perform at the latest ‘Resound’ event hosted by CAZ and at the ‘Lived Art 2013’ festival at The Performance Centre UCF.‘Shamanic Healing…’ challenges both practitioners to expand the limits of their individual practices, and plumb the depths of the spirit world. The project has been informally invited too Supersonic festival, and events in Berlin and London. The Fascinate Digital Arts Grant will be be used to create a spectacular interactive costume equipped with a variety of tactile controls and wireless technology to wear during performances. Embedded into this costume will be multiple sensors and controls (buttons, sensors, patch-bay, Quantum Tunnelling Composite, etc.. Utilizing Arduino boards and wireless shields, the costume will interface with the various handmade hardware and software used during performances. In addition it is intended that the costume will have LED s embedded into it which will linked to the costumes input devices, as well as being controlled remotely.

Glow

Although Cornwall is a geographically remote peninsula with a less dense population than the South East, large areas of the region are affected by artificial light pollution and sky glow. This is due to urban centres such as Falmouth, Truro and Redruth being in close proximity, considering the ubiquitous and uninterrupted nature of sky glow. The human affect of this is a disruption in the ability to clearly see the night sky and variations in lunar sky brightness. Aesthetically speaking this creates the traditional ‘orange sky glow’ associated with HPS lamps. The project will create an immersive viewing experience in the form of a video and sound installation. Effectively creating a visual representation of the data taken from sky quality meters (SQM) recorded across a gradient of increased light pollution, rural and urban. The data used forms part research for the EcoLight Project by Exeter University’s Environment and Sustainability Institute, Tremough, Penryn.

Absence of Appropriate Affect

The ‘rules’ which govern standard musical harmony are often so prescriptive that they are conceptually little different to a computer program. This begs the question, why not just use a computer program to compose? There is little in sound and music which, given the will and processing power, cannot potentially be codified. It seems ironic that despite being considered perhaps the most sensual and sublime of the arts, music is composed in such a formulaic manner through all its implied systems of scales and chords. Marcus is interested in exploring the point at which the systems behind generative music become complex enough to make works largely indistinguishable from human-composed pieces, complete with their ability to convey deep emotions through sound alone. It seems there is a vanishing point where technology in music stops being perceived as some kind of gimmick and becomes almost invisible – most of us, for example, do not pay attention to the existence of PA or backline equipment at a live concert or question the validity of using music scores or notation systems to aid memory. Instead we allow ourselves to be pulled in and experience the performance as intended. What would it take to persuade listeners to value music created by a generative system in the same way?

A sound sculpture of Cornwall

A visible map of Cornwall which results not from its geographical characteristics but from its sound. The final work will be a sculpture resulting from sound and my impact as a maker will be that of collecting and filtering the data. It will resemble an aerial map (the quieter places will be flat and resemble the sea or lakes and the noisier ones mountains) of a non existing land. But that land does in fact exist although not in the physical or visible world. My interest in this project comes from the fact that often the memories we have of a specific place are not as close as we could think to the actual reality of such a place but rather the result of the combination of sounds, smells, memories and feelings which we experienced in such place.

Tangible Sequencer

Ollie will develop a project which explores how the input of digital messages can be abstracted through the introduction of tangible objects and tactile physicality, in order to create engaging and user friendly control interfaces. The project is the development of a tactile, MIDI step sequencer based around moving and placing cubic blocks on a grid, to create looped sequences of triggered events. The tangible sequencer wILL be a playful and engaging device allowing users to have direct, tactile control over musical and multimedia sequences. Primarily a musical device, it wILL feature both an integrated sound module, allowing it to be used as a standalone device and would send midi data, allowing the sequencer to control a multitude of external hardware and software, including synthesisers, samplers, live video, microcontrollers and robotics. The different sides of the blocks can each control different instruments, with the block’s placement on the grid representing its pitch (y) and its timing in the loop (x). An LED at the bottom of each column indicates the step currently being played. A dial allows the user to control the tempo of the loop, changing the speed at which the steps are played through. The device functions through circuit forming metal contacts on the faces of each block, using a microcontroller to sequentially check for the circuits and to react to the blocks and their specific placement on the grid. Prototype Tangible Sequencer: http://vimeo.com/70028145

Ketamine

Tim’s work grapples with important contemporary and political issues while evoking mythical and metaphysical worlds. Working across a range of different mediums and scales, he produces both single entities and all encompassing, multi sensory installations that utilise sight, sound and smell. Dealing with primordial human instincts these works are timeless in quality and relate both ancient and modern humanity. Tim Shaw graduated from Manchester Polytechnic and then at Falmouth School of Art in 1989; contemporaries here included Tacita Dean and Hew Locke. He has had a number of significant solo shows Internationally, throughout the UK and Ireland with works included in many public and private contemporary art collections. He has undertaken a number of public commissions; ‘The Rites of Dionysos’ for the Eden Project (Cornwall), ‘The Minotaur’ for The Royal Opera House (London) and ‘The Drummer’ in Truro City Centre (Cornwall). Based primarily in a studio near Falmouth, Shaw has been supported by The Delfina Studio Trust, The British School of Athens and The Kenneth Armitage Foundation through residencies in Greece Spain and a Fellowship in London.s Firyal of Jordan, The Connaught, BC Partners, Scroders, Coutts & Co., Royal Bank of Scotland, The Forbury Hotel, Les Ambassadeurs Casino, Sovereign Capital, Kelly Hoppen and private collections worldwide.

Poetic Threshold

My work explores the poetic threshold between the digital and the physical: points where the incorporeal becomes material and tangible. At the heart of my work is the acknowledgement of a profound shift in material relations, from an industrial to a post-industrial society. I’m interested in how this shift into a digital age of information flow, this move from solid to fluid, affects us materially, perceptually and experientially. My most recent work explores the translation of blood through processes of microscopy and computational modelling, and the material process of nylon 3D print. I use these forms to quietly unravel the logic of science and its quest for certainty and self-replication.

new work using digital technology

Naomi is an established visual artist based in St Ives. Regionally, she has been included in exhibitions of contemporary work at Tate St Ives, Newlyn Art Gallery, Exchange Penzance and Falmouth art gallery. Solo shows have been with Millennium Gallery in St Ives and at Beaux Arts Bath.. Naomi graduated from Sunderland College of Art in 1986 winning the Printmaking Prize. She is a founder member of the Porthmeor Print Workshop, a not for profit open access space for artists and has been involved in gallery education since the Tate opened in 1993. Naomi was awarded a Porthmeor Studio in 2005.

Secrets of Creation: a live event

Matt Tweed (author and illustrator) and Matthew Watkins (author and mathematician) have been collaborating since the 1990s, first creating the reference book Useful Mathematical & Physical Formulae, published by Wooden Books and since licensed by Walker & Co., NYC and translated into several languages. Their current collaboration Secrets of Creation will soon culminate in the publishing of the final book in a trilogy which looks at unexpected connections between prime numbers and quantum physics. Matt had been illustrating since the 1980s when he began creating a pantheon of bizarre cartoon creatures (“the Möbius Slug”, “Vegan Space Cat”, etc.) in his spare time and producing artwork and calligraphy for the Spacegoats, a band with whom he was also a musician. Matt’s collaboration with Matthew began in the 1990s with Useful Mathematical & Physical Formulae (Wooden Books) and he went on to both author and illustrate a number of others in the series, drawing on his interest in maths and science: Essential Elements (chemistry), Compact Cosmos (astronomy) and Ozmon and the Golden Carrot (a ridiculous yet profound children’s story). Matt is now an established illustrator with a unique character-based hand-drawn style. In addition to his work as an illustrator Matt learned sound engineering and production skills from the legendary Dave Goodman (Sex Pistols, UK Subs, etc.) and has since produced dozens of albums for a diversity of artists, from a network of ‘eco-bardic’/protest/folk/festivaloriented/ acoustic/psychedelic/pastoral/pagan musicians, mostly based in the south of England (but with connections extending worldwide).

MoCap sculptured spaces/objects

Motion Capture is associated with the physical recording of human movement (arms, legs and head) allowing digitally animated characters to be controlled directly by real life actors. For all of its technology it is essentially the same process as Rotoscoping or tracing; originally developed by Max Fleischer in 1915 and more noticeably implemented by Walt Disney in the production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937. The actor enacts an event or action and the information is copied cell by cell in order that the movement is represented through animation in the most accurate way, every foot fall is correct and no limbs lack gravity. This ability to correctly assign physics to a character through a real life actor means their movement is accurate within the bounds of real life. As a viewer we can believe that Snow White is walking down a forest path, through the process of Rotorscoping, or similarly watch the Hulk run through New York, with Motion Capture. Every strain and force is enacted through the actor and into the virtual, animated world. There are no slippages or bounces, such as you might see in an early Mickey Mouse cartoon, the characters movements are give physical grounding, reinforcing believability and resulting in the acceptance of a fictional space. The physicality of this process or the leftovers of the physical process is what interests me. Rather than capture the performance of an actor, I would like to further explore the residues of interaction between actor and object. A space where physics is dependent on both inanimate and live inputs, a region where physics dictates an object’s placement and what it might do, as much as how and why it is being used. The inanimate object is activated within a network of potential actions and intentional movements resulting in the generation of a layered narrative.