ROOM2DREAM is an immersive 360 Film Sharing songs, poetry, music, and imagery from young people from fourteen centres in seven partnerships. Each international centre is partnered with an English hospital school, hospice, or school. Over the past year the young people have worked together exchanging poetry to create a single shared work. The collaborative process has involved creative writing, learning, and recording shared choruses from their own songs, learning how to film in 360 and sharing storyboards to create the final 360 film collaboration that accompanies their words. The renowned composer, Jocelyn Pook, has created the score in response to the young people’s poems and songs.

The ROOM2DREAM Preview screening takes place Wednesday 6 July 2022 at the Devonport Market Hall.

ROOM2DREAM takes audiences on a journey from Zimbabwe, Rwanda, South Africa, Gaza, Syria, India and Nepal, England and Scotland. Partnerships include two children’s hospices, an Oxford Hospital School, a refugee camp in Rwanda, a young person’s charity in India and a choir based in Syria.

A preview is taking place on 6th July at the fulldome, Market Hall, Plymouth. The fulldome enables audiences to experience immersive realities, without the need for a VR headsemarkett, opening up a world of incredible creative and immersive experiences for all ages.

Andrew Prior, John Matthews, Lauren Hayhurst and Joel Hodges have received £17,000 funding from Story Futures, to develop Actor Training and approaches to Narrative Design for Virtual Production.

The project, entitled Water Course, is a collaboration between i-DAT staff (Andy and Joel), the School of Society and Culture (John) and Hi9 Natural Language Agency (Lauren); as well as drawing on actors from Theatre Royal Plymouth.

Digital Dervish + Flamenco Sonic

A Multimedia Performance Work by Hedy Hurban

May 6^th and 7^th at the Market Hall Dome theatre in Devonport, Plymouth

The sema of the Dervish blurs the lines between dance and meditation while symbolically expressing the formation of the universe and mans’ transference of love and respect to God. This ritual turning practice of the Mevlevi Sufi Order dates back to the 13^th century to Muhammed Celaleddin better known as Mevlana. The duende is the expression of the soul for a Flamenco dancer- a flame that is provoked when in a state of ecstatic movement. Duende is not a tangible concept but one that is felt throughout the body and conveyed through passionate and striking movements.

Digital Dervish and Flamenco Sonic is a story about a Dervish who is in a dream and wakes up to birds and the sounds of nature- he begins to meditate and perform his Sema. He becomes enveloped in a storm of chaos as he whirls wildly and then collapses where he becomes dormant again. A Flamenco dancer notices and begins to move in similar patterns attempting to awaken him. They exchange their sounds and movements until they become intertwined in whirling. This is a story about landscape, earth, love and life that encompasses music, imagery and physical movement. The movements and gestures which are specific to these dance traditions are being highlighted and augmented with an original wearable device called a Sound Drop.

The Sound Drop is a small device that is attached to the body via a strap on the wrist or ankle. It is designed to track certain movements from the performer to which sounds and LED lights are mapped. The dancer uses the device as an extension of the body- a musical instrument that can provide layers to the separate pre-recorded music composition.

Vimeo link:

https://vimeo.com/681502330?embedded=true&source=vimeo_logo&owner=8880645

Website:

www.firoza.co.uk

Credits

Music Composer, Wearable Tech Designer and Choreographer: Hedy Hurban
Filmmaker and Production Designer: Kaz Rahman
Flamenco Dancer: Mercedes Romero
Dervish: Mayez Rahman
Visual Effects Editor: Barış Çelik

Key people on project

Hedy Hurban bio (creator, wearable tech designer)

Hedy Hurban is a designer of costumes and composer of electronic/electroacoustic music. She showcased her collections at DSYN O4 (Delhi, India) and has designed the costumes for the Operas Lampedusa (Plymouth, UK) and The Mother of Fishes (Pittsburgh, USA). Hedy is music composer for several short films such as Dead Body, Grand Theatre and Picture Palace, Bees Mecanique, the TV episode Green and Blue and the feature films Salaat and Deccani Souls. Her interest in interlacing sonic and digital art with traditional folk performance practices led her to create a prototype body instrument inspired by the Whirling Dervishes of Turkey called Dervish Sound Dress (2018) that combines music, wearable body technology and live performance. She has a BFA in Visual Arts from York University (Toronto) and a ResM in Computer Music from the University of Plymouth and is currently associate lecturer in Digital Art and Technology where she is completing her PhD.

Kaz Rahman bio (filmmaker)

Kaz Rahman has worked extensively as Visual Artist, Filmmaker and Academic with both commercial and public institutions, festivals, and broadcasters over the last 20 years. His work has played in film festivals and venues such as Anthology Film Archives (New York City), National Film Board of Canada (Toronto), India Habitat Centre (New Delhi), Salar Jung Museum (Hyderabad), Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh), The San Jose Museum of Art (California), Bogazici Film Festival (Istanbul), SUFICINE Festival (Konya) and broadcast on TV24 (Turkey) and has been featured in publications such as The Times of India, The Hindu, The New Indian Express (India), Daily Sabah and Star Gazette (Turkey).

Mercedes Romero bio (flamenco dancer)

Mercedes Romero is a professional Flamenco dancer, teacher, and choreographer. She graduated from the Conservatory of Alicante, Spain (Spanish Dance and Flamenco and Classical Ballet). She has performed and taught for over 25 years in Spain, Mexico, France, Italy, and England with various dance companies such as Ballet Teatro Español de Rafael Aguilar, Ballet Español y Flamenco Martin Vargas, Ballet de Carmen Mota, Ballet titular Teatro de la Zarzuela and Teatro de la Maestranza. She is based in Plymouth and has performed at venues throughout the region with her group Flamenco Vivo as well as Flamenco Amigos.

Mayez Rahman bio (dervish)

Mayez Rahman is a student at Lipson Co-operative Academy in Plymouth. He has lived in both Pittsburgh, USA and Istanbul, Turkey where he first took encountered the traditions of the Whirling Dervishes. His interests include designing video games and all aspects of computer programming.

The work is in partnership with the University of Plymouth, Canada Council for the Arts, Creative UK, and Real Ideas Organization. The University of Plymouth has supported this project from the beginning with the help of technicians and staff including a supervisory team that have helped shape the direction of this project. It is also part of an extended project that will be showcased in Canada in the fall of 2022 which is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts. Creative UK has awarded funding to develop the wearable body instrument devices that are worn by the performers to further explore the possibilities of commercializing the devices as a viable consumer product. Real Ideas Org. have been instrumental in supporting the vision of exhibiting an original 360 film that has been made especially for the dome by filmmaker Kaz Rahman in conjunction with live performance by two distinct cultural practices. The inspiration for this work stems from years of research at the University into examining how traditional, folkloric dance practices can be augmented with technology to create new works by way of also digitally preserving their heritage for future generations.

Virtual Dartmoor: Laser Scanning a Devon Farmhouse | Time Team

Joel Hodges, Chris Booth and James Sweeting with a squad of DAT students, in collaboration with Dartmoor National Park can be seen on the Time Team. Digitally scanning an historic farmhouse, igher Uppacott, to create a 3D game environment.

Premiered on 5th March at 7pm on the ‘Time Team Official’ You Tube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7pfGWQOwCk

Thursday, 10th March 2022 4pm 
Computation Otherwise: Carbon Endings and Regenerative Practice
Dr. Helen V. Pritchard i-DAT, University of Plymouth/The Institute of Technology in the Public Interest

Design Informatics, University of Edinburgh.

As a response to the endings of carbon-based energy there have been many techno-utopian solutions for communities––grounded within imaginaries of survival, repair and resilience. Such emerging imaginations and politics remain powerfully attached to the image of the individual and their “smooth life” maintained by computational infrastructure and continuous energy. Instead, in this talk we will discuss working towards modes of regenerative practice, informatics for carbon endings, indeterminacy and the de-presencing of technosolutionism. In particular engaging with collaborative projects that attempt to practice a “computation otherwise” through sensing, hotspotting, and queering damage. I will discuss our work on pollution sensing with Citizen Sense; the Underground Division a collective research project on techniques, technologies and infrastructures of subsurface rendering and their promises; the project “Regenerative Energy Communties” in which artists, designers and farmers work together on regenerative imaginaries for energy; and the work of “The Institute of Technology in the Public Interest”.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/design-informatics-webinar-helen-pritchard-plymouth-tickets-293045425757

Helen Pritchard & Femke Snelting November 2021, with the publication of audit late 2021.

Helen Pritchard and Femke Snelting from The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI), will help NEoN to 'audit' its digital practices. Through queer and feminist practices, Helen and Femke will interrogate NEoNs digital operations with a view to enabling the organisation to imagine other environmental and “just” practices.

(TITiPI) is a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists initiated by Miriyam Aouragh, Seda Gürses, Helen Pritchard and Femke Snelting. Together they convene communities to hold computational infrastructures to account and to create spaces for articulating what technologies in the “public interest” might be when “public interest” is always in the making. They develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, computation, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies.


About the Artists

Helen Pritchard & Femke Snelting from The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest. (TITiPI) is a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists initiated by Miriyam Aouragh, Seda Gürses, Helen Pritchard and Femke Snelting. 

Bees, Robots and Light : A Celebration of South West Creative Technology

In 2018 the South West Creative Technology Network (SWCTN) began a £6.5m Research England funded project to expand the use of creative technologies across the South West.

We’re now ready to share the learning from an incredible three years, as we launch our SWCTN Final Report.

Taking place on Youtube we will be joined from around the South West by partners from Plymouth, Falmouth, Exeter, Bristol and Bath, looking at the amazing projects that were developed and what the future holds.

In a unique partnership between the University of the West of England (UWE), Bath Spa University, Falmouth University, Plymouth University, Watershed and Kaleider, the main focus of the SWCTN was to build a network across the South West and support big thinking.

We ran three one-year funded programmes around the themes of Immersion, Automation and Data, with the aim of linking up research, prototyping and business development in the world of creative technology.

Three years later we have supported 75 research fellows, 24 prototype teams, plus a whole host of microgrants. It has been a wonderful journey, and with the added challenge of the pandemic, a time of great learning for all of us.

In this celebration we will be sharing our learning, bringing all of our partners together to speak about their part in this groundbreaking R&D project, asking questions about how we can support the future of creative technology in our specific regions as well as in the wider South West.

Come join us and help raise an online glass to the past three years and an exciting future.

Online details to be sent closer to the event

The event will be BSL interpreted and contain automated live captioning but please email hello@swctn.org.uk if you have any further questions or access requirements.

Tickets:

LEONARDO LASER LINZ – with Christiana Kazakou from i-DAT.

Die Gartenlaube,

The Garden Gazebo 10.

September 2021, 14.00 bis 17.00 Uhr

Leonardo LASER Talks – LEONARDO LASER LINZ, Garden Gazebo at Ars Electronica 2021 at the University of Art and Design in Linz, supported by Interface Cultures.

Hybrid Futures

Christiana Kazakou (UK), Dr. Christoph Thun-Hohenstein (AT), Dr. Monica Gagliano (IT), Dr. Martin Pfosser (AT), Leisenhof Gärtnerei Linz (AT), Mag. Gabriele Winkler (AT), Dr. Christa Sommerer (AT), Fabricio Lamoncha (ES)

Linz is joining the Leonardo Art & Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER) network with an international program hosted by Interface Cultures at Ars Electronica 2021. Artists, scientists, scholars and the general public are invited to join conversations about sustainable ways of living, environmental protection, and artistic and scientific developments for a “climate-modern” future. In a modernized “Gartenlaube,” Climate-Care, Climate-Digital and Climate-Social — terms proposed by Christoph Thun-Hohenstein — will be debated and discussed with a focus on Interspecies Collaboration, The Mind of Plants, Herbal Pedagogy, and Biodynamic Farming. It will be supported by the exploration and celebration of artistic and folk wisdom, to bring everyone together for a ”Gartenlaube Waltz.”

https://ars.electronica.art/newdigitaldeal/en/hybrid-futures/

Very pleased to be hackathoning through the launch events for the Real Ideas Organisation’s Devonport Market Hall.

Video clips rendered by Joel Hodges and Musaab Garghouti:

Unreal Engine 5 Photogrammetry demo:

Powderham Castle Stair well data capture by Dr Alejandro Veliz Reyes and his team and rendered by Musaab Garghouti.

Murmuration: Joel Hodges remix.