2014-08-27 16:00:00
The Fascinate Showcase 2014 is centred on Falmouth’s historic old town square The Moor, where you will find an amazing mythical stage with live performances every day (Thurs 28 – Sat 30 August) from midday till 23.00, artist installations, and from dusk each night a spectacle of light and sound on the Moor’s most prominent buildings. Venues around The Moor play host to further digital and interactive exhibits produced by local, national and international artists. The Showcase runs alongside the Falmouth Tall Ships Regatta
For additional information like Fascinate Showcase on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @FascinateCon
“Monster” digital stage with live performances, installations, information and son et lumière projections every day. Stage: see Performances & Fascinate Showcase on Facebook for announcements and detailed line up. The Sketch House @ Fascinate every afternoon.
Installations: A Drawing Instrument Of Brobdingnagian Proportions, Sound Mirror, The Anthropic Organ..
Activities/Information: Faceback, If You Go Away, Stories in The Salty Air, Projectionist Orchestra
Son et lumière: interactive projection installations, and live projection to accompany after-dusk stage performances, on to the façades of historic buildings surrounding The Moor! Artists/Installations including: Motherbox, Transmission of Body-Time into Computer-Time, Graphic Ships, Twisted Vision…
1st Floor Hall: Consequential Spaces, Verisimilitude I, Dear Sea
Lobby: The Curators Room
1st Floor/Lounge: Pop Goes The Pine Apple 2nd Floor/Attic: Sailmakers’
Eggshibition
Faceback – Get your badge and join Faceback at Fascinate from the Fascinate Outlet on The Moor. Stories in the Salty Air – Digital storytelling, listen on your mobile using the QR codes displayed around town. Information from the Fascinate Outlet on The Moor. If You Go Away – A journey through town using binaural sound and interactive text on using your GPS equipped mobile. Information from the Fascinate Outlet on The Moor.
All Eyes On The Sea (Gemma Garwood)
The machine of Brobdingnagian proportions is a version of a pen plotter sometimes referred to as a polargraph. It is simple in design, two motors on each top corner of a drawing surface. When the motors are moved in particular directions and speeds, the pen is manipulated to draw across the canvas.
We invite the public to interact with the machine, to collaborate and enjoy making their mark. By engaging with the machine you become the input, the data which decides the direction and speed of the motors and therefore the image produced.
The output of this will be an evolving image unknown before-hand in its appearance, perhaps delicate, perhaps chaotic but a celebration of drawing and mark making as a basic human desire. The image is potentially never finished, when it will peak aesthetically no one knows.
http://vimeo.com/100024330
A performance storytelling event, weaving legends about submerged landscapes with accounts of our relationship with the rising tide.
All Eyes on The Sea is a performance storytelling piece weaving legends of submerged landscapes with accounts of our relationship with the sea. Originally conceived in Aberystwyth in 2008 a longing to revisit the piece was triggered in the aftermath of the February storms earlier this year.
’Verisimilitude I’ is a collaborative project between Mexican artist Pilar Cortés and Bristol-based UK digital artist Marcus Dyer. The piece consists of a polyptych of nine oil paintings by Pilar Cortés, accompanied with a smartphone-based virtual reality application and generative music composition by Marcus Dyer. The application places the user in a fixed position within a constantly changing 3D landscape, created using further work by Pilar Cortés. In June 2014, the piece was featured as a finalist entry in the Camaradas 2014 Mexican/UK art competition, held at the Mexican Embassy, London.
By juxtaposing artwork in both a ‘traditional’ gallery setting alongside a virtual space, the piece seeks to challenge traditional notions of authenticity, specifically what is considered to be real/natural vs what is unreal/unnatural. It seeks to address whether this new artificial, non-place can ever be accepted and valued on an equal footing. These themes are further reinforced by the accompanying generative music and ambient sound design, posing the question of whether such detached, systemic processes are capable of invoking a deep, emotional response in the listener.
Ultimately, the piece asks what would it mean if our sense of the sublime could be invoked by deterministic calculations alone?
http://www.pilarcortes.co.uk
http://itunes.apple.com/app/verisimilitude-i/id886034688?mt=8
In the early 1820’s the whaling industry accounted for the shipment of over 27,000 tons of oil from Nantucket to Europe. With each voyage, ships had to load cobble stones from Europe in order to provide ballast during the trans-Atlantic return journey. Over a few years, cobble stones became abundant in Nantucket. With a prosperous economy and a free paving material, in 1821 the Surveyors of Highways requested the paving of Straight Wharf with cobble stones, a project which was extended in the following years. The street paving, which is now protected by law, started as a consequential detail but eventually became part of a spatial identity. The second major unintentional consequence of ballast technology resulted from the use of seawater as ballast in life-supporting harbours, after the 1970s. As environmental laws started to become enforced, international harbours became cleaner and could once again support marine life. In the late 1970’s most ships used untreated seawater in order to balance themselves when empty, which they would dump into their destination port prior to loading cargo. This lead to the displacement of nonnative marine species from one country to another, such as the introduction of the invasive zebra mussel in the Great Lake region, US. Consequently native mussel species disappeared from the region within ten years, and substantial damage was undertaken by marine architecture which became covered with this alien species. These two references serve as a backdrop to the investigative design research into the creation of consequential spaces as an unintentional product of the shipping industry.
Dear Sea is a new interactive multimedia work from Peter Kirby and Roger Thorp. Using poetry, music and video Dear Sea questions our relationship with the ocean within the vernacular of everyday domesticity. By placing the viewer in the multiple roles of conductor, appeaser and analyst, the participant can ascribe meaning to man’s relentless desire to control.
Digital video projection, sound, light harp, 2014.
Egglab is a browser based open source multiplayer game in which players search for hidden eggs against different backgrounds. As more people play, the eggs gradually evolve with the use of genetic programming techniques. The resulting patterns, evolved against nest site backgrounds of different species of bird, are being studied in order to help make new discoveries concerning camouflage and its evolution.
If You Go Away is a locative cinematic experience, at once a game, a story and a public place of convergence. It is a work about grief, loss and emotional geographies. It is a journey through multiple landscapes, where the physical and the virtual become indecipherable from one another. A global multi-player experience that plays out on city streets. It is a sound work, a game and a story where the city is the setting. The experience is told through binaural sound and interactive written text ascribed by GPS to physical real world locations. Participants navigate two worlds through one map, that of a fiction and that of their city.
Participants journey through the narrators selective amnesia as they attempt to piece back together a
place that has become alien and fragmented to them. An unnamed event has changed the narrators city
beyond recognition and as participants explore the fractured world of the story they are invited to get
lost in their own environment, to consider how we rewrite the meaning of places through our lives lived
in them.
“It is a game, a detective agency, a dating service, a meeting point, a friendship circulation, a live Facebook, a socialising … it gives people stuff to do, it connects them, there are wonderful moments of joy when people find their face or someone else’s.” Join Faceback on The Moor and participate during your time in Falmouth.
http://faceback.org.uk
Pop goes the pine apple is an interactive sound-art and digital-poetry installation written and designed for teh Lounge-Bar at Jago’s Bar. Set in the disused upstairs cocktail bar in this beautiful 200 year old pub, the site-specific exhibition explores the paranormal activity, the macabre, pina coladas, lust, deception, disco, hauntings, folklore, pop, and human nature.
Created for the 2014 Fascinate Showcase, in response to the context of the Tall Ships Regatta and the history of the Falmouth Packet service, ‘The Sailmakers’ explores the work of Penrose Sailmakers. Established in 1825 to service the many sailing ships that called into Falmouth, Penrose Sailmakers still designs, makes and maintains sails from its site on the quayside – the last remaining sailmaking service in Falmouth to do so. ‘The Sailmakers’ is a visual exploration of the processes and materials involved in the work of Penrose Sailmakers, from cutting patterns to machine-stitching sails using a mix of up-to-date technology and traditional methods. Exhibited as a looped projection in the attic at Jago’s Bar to the rear of Falmouth Art Gallery, the work offers a glimpse behind the scenes at the skills and people that support and service the sailing activity around Falmouth.
Using relatively Qr codes and weblinks, empathetic with smart phone technology, an archive of site specific audio stories will be available for download at various ‘listening points’ mapped around falmouth during the tall ships weekend. Some of these sound and oral pieces will be experiemental in nature, others will inhabit more conventional narrative structures.
The Curators Room is a clubhouse for artists, curators, writers and cultural explorers where ideas are generated, supported and developed through research and experimentation. It is a space for testing curatorial frameworks and community boundaries, questioning where the line is between artist, curator, colleague and audience member and who should draw it?
Pop by to talk with Rosie and Cat about your interpretation of installations and performances at the Fascinate Showcase, explore opinions and resources, grab latest updates or discuss the wider landscape of the Tall Ships Regatta.
Performers appearing on the Fascinate Monster Moor stage will be announced here. Running schedule will be announced nearer the event. Every afternoon is Sketchhouse@Fascinate.
Described as ‘one of the most exciting sonic experimenters to come out of Birmingham for some time’ by Midlands promoters Colour, Arc Vel’s explorative electronica is touched by elements of hip hop, world, post rock and house music. An inherent warmth and instinctiveness fills his sound which is realised by his creative use of field recordings, unique synth sounds, live instrumentation and his application of intricate and often off kilter- rhythms.
Recently, after some time away working on live shows supporting artists such as Ulrich Schnauss, Baths, Gang Colours and Martin Creed as well as opening the Boyd and Evans exhibition at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, Arc Vel released his debut album ‘Orrery’ through experimental independent First Fold Records. ‘God is in the TV’ commented, ‘Best viewed in an after hours setting ‘orrery’ provides for a gloriously Technicolor headphonic trip, the melodies smooth, sleek and spacious …whose application of mood, atmosphere and ear candy arrangements appears second to none.’
Bacteria is a compositional environment created wholly within Max/Msp using parametrically limited Aleatoric processes to create a Chaosonic Ambient soundscape. Each performance piece is generated in the binary swamp of discretion, its he sound of numbers smashing into digits, Like bacteria twisting and torturing itself in an endless cycle of sonic reproduction until the Petrie dish is full and the disease is complete.
Animation/Projection: Climbing Time Digging Light focuses on ladders and the action of digging, subjects I have previously carved in stone, performed, and animated. They re-emerged into my consciousness on moving to Cornwall. Perhaps it was reverb from Cornwalls mining heritage or simply technology now provides solutions to creative ideas I’ve had in the past.
A special audio and video compilation prepared by Clock DVA:
Formed in the 80s in the Sheffield’s industrial scene, heirs of Kraftwerk and forerunners of cyber-punk aesthetic, the Clock DVA are now a cult name in the electronic music scene. Their style full of gothic and metaphysical contours is unique and unmistakable.
Led by the legendary Adi Newton, the current lineup of the group sees him at voice and computer, accompanied by the electronic producer and experimenter Maurizio “TeZ” Martinucci and by the video artist Panagiotis Tomaras.
Their cultured and dark techno-pop, so fascinating and narrative, is absolutely unique and overwhelming. The
alien voice of Adi Newton runs on rhythmical textures and hypnotic minimalist electronic sequences, disclosing layered cultural references that focus on the conflicts that affect the man in the age of the machines, showing the most common and massified iconographies of this time, and suggesting more complex links between art, politics, science over the centuries. The live videos highlight and emphasize this atmosphere, making the whole show a thoughtful and hypnotic journey through the maze of the human mind and the relationship between emotion and technology.2014 is the year of Clock DVA’s discographic return after eighteen years of silence.
www.armcomm.co.uk
www.anteriorresearch.com
Peter Edwards has been exploring the field of circuit bending and experimental musical electronics since 2000 through his business Casperelectronics. He performs regularly under the same name.
Edwards received a BFA in sculpture from The Rhode Island School of Design in 2000. He is currently studying electronic music and experimental interface design as a Masters student at the Institute of Sonology and at STEIM in Amsterdam NL.
Dan Gibson is an English musician and sound artist. In 2011 he completed a Ba (Hons) Degree in Creative Music Technology at the University Centre Doncaster and he is currently in the middle of a MA in Instruments and Interfaces at Sonology and STEIM in the Netherlands. Gibson’s work incorporates experimentation and improvisation and aims to explore the sonic subtlety, textural nuance and dynamic intensity found in the natural soundscape through the embodied practise of playing and building investigative hardware and software instruments.
DakaDoum – Afro-Brazilian percussion and dance group, specializing in the folkloric music of the NorthEast of Brazil. Styles include Samba Reggae, Afoxé, Maracatu, Rio Samba, and a multitude of grooves in-between these styles. We also take inspiration from the rhythms of Candomblé – an animistic Afro-Brazilian belief system. The music contains a strong percussion tradition which has mixed African heritage, in the most part Igbo, Yoruba, Ewe, Fon, and Bantu ethnic groups, but has developed all on its own for some 350 years in Brazil.
Graphic Ships is a live audio/visual event, built from interactions between audience and performers. Sound artists and musicians perform from an ever changing graphic score generated by data from the performance environment. Graphic Ships can adapt to exploit different data sources in different environments; dancers, audience members, moving trees, passing crowds, cityscapes. Remote artists can participate via telecommunication technology, the graphic score serving to connect them with the venue over global distances. The interactive visuals become a vehicle, a means to transport creativity between individuals.
Taiko is a drumming style originating in Japan, traditionally requiring intense discipline, concentration and dedication. The iconic-looking drums and awe-inspiring sound of Taiko means that this particular drumming style is one you will not forget!
MOTHERBOX is the first part of a 3D projection mapping audio visual installations acting as a gates or a glitches between the digital reality and the real world. The artwork represents the ever growing infiltration of the technology in our life and it’s impact over us. In one side -technology is a “gate” to greater possibilities – empowering us, extend our expression or improving our life, in the other side – there are “glitches” which can affect our privacy, freedom of speech or being a powerful tool for surveillance and control. The project aims to open different “gates” at every specific location it is installed and exhibited in respect to the local history and culture, as well as social context. Augmenting the physical space with a 3D projection mapping, the installation creates an illusion of presence of the artificial objects in the real world and therefore manifests their “materialization”.
From becoming Falmouth’s first professional mix DJ and with a career spanning over 20 years within the nightclub, bar and free party scene in the South West of England and beyond Paul has always been keen to stay one step ahead not only with the music he plays but also the technology he uses to deliver it to an audience. From early sessions with Carl Cox on three decks in 1992, utilising the latest DVS( Digital vinyl System) set- ups for DJ battles through the Noughtie’s right up until learning the new native Instruments S4 DJ controller last year he has always embraced the advances in DJ technology to help give the crowd an unparalleled sonic experience. When asked how he decides what to play for any particular venue he answers that it is always the crowd and his interaction with them through the medium of the music and that then informs him what to play, his sets are never pre-planned and form organically, growing and blossoming whilst being nourished by the constant two way flow of information between him and the audience. Recently Paul has been exploring new methods of re-interpreting and remixing tracks live using the remix/sample decks within the new Native Instruments Traktor Scratch Pro software which he can be seen using on his popular Audio Amusements nights around Falmouth.
What happens if the listeners take control of the music and the auditorium becomes the stage? In this participative performance the audience is invited to engage as members of a conductorless orchestra by means of their individual handheld devices. By connecting to a website via WIFI each participant is provided with a 2-axis touch interface on their phone to control one sound which is played back on the main PA system. Up
front on stage there is a large projection visualising all control actions happening in the network. The performers, sitting frontrow of the audience and facing the screen are at the same time navigating through the performance steering the input mapping between direct control and indeterminate clicks and beeps.
Robotnik is a Falmouth based glitchstep producer and live electronics artist/DJ. He runs the southwest based DIY label “Autonomonster Records” and is a veteran of the Falmouth University Creative Music Technology course. For fans of; Koan Sound, Akira Kiteshi, Reso, Pixelfist, Teknian.
According to Juno “Selecta Demo (one half of Titan Sound) specialises in the kind of booming, bass-heavy reggae, ragga and dancehall mash-ups that meld together familiar riddims and accapellas in devastating new ways.”
Purveyor of the finest Jamaican Bass Music since 2003 and an active DJ (mainly in and around the Bristol & S/W scene) since 1995 taking influences from Hip-Hop, Drum & Bass & Dub and blending them all up with vinyl based DJ techniques while incorporating the latest advances in digital DJ software & hardware. With an internationally acclaimed and globally supported radio show on Invader FM Selecta Demo will take you through a blend of genres on a dancefloor oriented musical voyage and always keeping you one step ahead of the game with a healthy respect for the origins of the music.
Acoustic mirrors (or reflectors) are smooth dished surfaces that literally “sculpt” or focus the sound, to a “sweetspot” enabling the listener to pass through a space extraordinarily varied sound intensities. The reflectors are painted bright, saturated colours to give the viewer engaging visual experience, without any reference or associations to the sounds they are hearing. At certain times the “mirrors” will turn into projection screens as films are projected them.
The Sketch House is a creative community event in Falmouth where people can perform, play, exhibit, curate, integrate and communicate. We are developing a dynamic community of local performers and artists in the Falmouth area as well as giving opportunities for new and emerging practitioners to perform in a safe and friendly atmosphere.
The Sketch House presents a diverse range of talented artists and performers every afternoon on the Fascinate Showcase Moor Stage. The Sketch House on Facebook
SKETCHHOUSE ACTS @ FASCINATE WILL INCLUDE:
Taking inspiration from historic showman’s and fairground organs, the Anthropic Organ is a gaudy assemblage of reclaimed organ pipes, automated gilt statues, mechanised bells, gongs and drums; levers, pulleys, cogs, wheels and knobs – all programmed to play bizarre mechanised arrangements of hits old and new. The nefarious organ grinder will bring the organ to life, along with the performers, musicians and automated creatures ensnared in the machine, and coerce the public to join them in the macabre cacophony that lies inside the anthropic organ…
‘theskyisthinaspaperhere’ is the work of Bristol-based multi-disciplinary digital artist and musician Marcus Dyer. His performance at last year’s Fascinate showcase was met with much praise, using generative compositional techniques to combine ambient post-rock with dark, electronic soundscapes. This year’s performance will also feature multi-instrumentalist and looping expert, Chris Cole, aka Manyfingers (Acuarella Discos & Ici D’ailleurs), playing drums and adding additional live-looping effects.
“I was in a 382 mood; I had just dialled it. So although I heard the emptiness intellectually, I didn’t feel it. My first reaction consisted of being grateful that we could afford a Penfield mood organ. But then I realised how unhealthy it was, sensing the absence of life, not just in this building but everywhere, and not reacting – do you see? I guess you don’t. But that used to be considered a sign of mental illness; they called it “absence of appropriate affect”. So I left the TV sound off and I sat down at my mood organ and I experimented. And I finally found a setting for despair.”
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Phillip K. Dick.
http://www.theskyisthinaspaperhere.co.uk
The transmission of body-time into computer-time and its retransfer into the physical space as visual component of the digital environment unveil the tension between reality and representation, between live performance and its digital depiction and transformation.
All visual content is modified in real-time by the performer by using 3d tracking and motion analysis, therefore the choreography is not only for the perspective of the audience, but also for the different perspectives of the camera placed on stage.
VJs!
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In 2013 the Fascinate Showcase instantly established itself as a must-attend evening for anyone wishing to see outstanding performances incorporating the latest digital techniques and technology applied to music, dance, projection, improvisation, theatre, installations and a team of VJs. Some 400 visitors experienced 50 performances and installations in 2013’s 12 hour Showcase evening. Checkout the 2013 Fascinate Showcase line up, pictures, video and another video. In 2014 the Fascinate Showcase will relocate to down town Falmouth – shoreside, waterfront and afloat – running alongside the tall ships regatta and fireworks on the afternoon and evening of Saturday 30 August. In addition to Fascinate delegates we anticipate 30,000+ visitors will be in Falmouth on the same day as the Showcase to see the Falmouth Tall Ships Regatta and evening fireworks which the Showcase is also a part of. All Showcase performances and installations will be open for viewing by the general public providing an amazing audience for participants in the Fascinate Showcase!
Last year we showcased a diverse range of digitally enabled artists from 30+ countries. In 2014 we are seeking proposals for the following:
As the Showcase is running alongside the Tall Ships Regatta you are encouraged to explore themes of maritime exploration and environment but we invite submission of any independent theme that is digitally empowered. A series of special events during the Showcase will explore Packets as communication. The port of Falmouth was – until 1851 – Britain’s communication gateway to much of the world using the Packet Ships that called here. Cornwall has a rich history of enabling analogue and digital communication: Marconi and wireless at Poldhu and Lizard; Porthcurno and telegraph; Goonhiilly satellite communications and space exploration; and today the landing point for many of the fibre optic undersea cables that carry Internet traffic. You are welcome to propose installations, film, animation and performance that might be incorporated with this special events strand. 
There will be a diverse range of venues throughout Falmouth town available for installations and performances. Confirmed installation/performance venues for the Fascinate 2014 Showcase to date:
Email: please forward all proposals to [email protected] Document Formats: please submit your written proposals in only PDF, OpenOffice (.odf) or MSWord (.doc) formats. PDF IS PREFERRED. Video: if you wish to provide video or other large files in support of your proposal then please provide links where they can be viewed online, link to a dropbox folder or on CD/DVD/USB media. Proposals for installations and performances should include:
A limited number of bursaries will be available for artists and performers participating in the Showcase to cover e.g. registration, travel, accommodation and materials. If you would like to apply for a bursary then please state this in your submission together with details of expenditure requested.
