Workshop and Performance at the Dana Centre in November

If a robot is programmed to draw a portrait is that art?

 

These are some of the questions we will be investigating in Algo-rhythms a workshop at the Science Museum’s Dana Centre on the evening of November 14th.

 

In it, we will be looking at whether we rate automated art differently than art that we know was produced by a human being.

 

Participants will choose from a range of creative tasks to come up with a drawing, a dance or a sound-scape – or a combination of these – which we will then share, asking ourselves if we can spot the difference between what was created from a set of automated rules and what was constructed freely from a human perspective.

 

We will talk a bit about the different automated and creative strategies we used to create our dance Meeting Place and then we will perform it.

This event is free but has to be booked in advance. Click here to book.

We hope to see you there!

 

Dance production tips

Ideas Tap asked us to share some of our experiences of Resolution!

The support of individuals and institutions is critical. As Resolution! artists, we were lucky enough to be able to sign up for professional development workshops run by The Place, in everything from project management to lighting design. People working outside of this environment can find courses and workshops through organisations such as Creative Choices.   Continue reading

Unfolding an algorithmic formula

Meeting Place is a duet which plays with visually unfolding an algorithmic formula.

An algorithm is a step-by-step list of instructions that need to be followed to solve a problem. Algorithms are heard about in the context of computers, for example Google uses an algorithm to turn our search terms into a list of relevant links, and there was a lot of attention in 2011 on how algorithms are infiltrating more of our lives for example in the stock market. But there are much simpler algorithms that we use regularly, such as recipes which tell what ingredients are needed to make a dish and what steps to follow.

Systems music and algorithmic composition use such sets of instructions to make music with minimal human intervention and Meeting Place began by applying this approach to movement; with a simple algorithm that builds up a number of simple steps.

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Hamish, Martine and…Kurt

There are really three of us in this duet: Hamish, Martine and Kurt Schwitters, the German artist who worked in several media, including painting, sculpture, poetry, sound and graphic design. Born in 1887 and working largely after the First World War, Schwitters invented his own branch of Dadaism called ‘Merz’ that aimed to remove the boundaries between different arts.

“I pasted words and sentences together into poems in such a way that their rhythmic composition created a kind of drawing. The other way around, I pasted together pictures and drawings containing sentences that demand to be read.” — Kurt Schwitters

Twelve by Kurt Schwitters

Twelve. Taken from Rothenberg, J. and Joris, P. (eds) 2002. Kurt Schwitters: poems performance pieces proses plays poetics. Exact Change: Cambridge

When Martine introduced his number poetry to Hamish they were both so excited by its relevance to their work on Meeting Place. Above is a photograph of the poem Twelve and below you can watch Martine reading it. Continue reading