I should be in Finland right now, finishing the installation of a messy Mud Machine and getting ready for weekend workshops at Kubu KulturHus. Due to family circumstances, I could not travel.
Instead I prepared a box of kit and instructions so that the work could be installed by the crew. I was so lucky that curator Teresa Dillon successfully took the box through customs at Heathrow and that fellow creative technologist Marc Dusselier @dusjagr was on hand to put the bits together and ensure the splutterings of mud were of good standard! Thanks Mark and Teresa for your invaluable help :>))
The Mud Machine is part of a group exhibition and project called The Garden and the Hedge, (info about the programme below). Opening is today 5th June, pop in if you are in the Kimitoon area
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The Garden and The Hedge
International summer exhibition and program
The Garden and The Hedge is Kulturhus Björkboda’s (KUBU) inaugural international summer exhibition and programme, developed in partnership with the artist and researcher Teresa Dillon. Focusing on the garden and the hedge as interfaces and borderlines that shape our understanding of nature and our relationship to it, Kubu’s setting—a former school building nestled in the rural heart of the Kimitoön municipality on an island in the Archipelago Sea, Southwest Finland—provides a unique and rich context for exploring these themes.
With 35 artistic works, performances, and workshops, the exhibition explores soil health, care, and community. It invites reflection on visible and invisible boundaries, resilience, and how we listen and respond to the land beneath us. With the exhibition, through installations, performances, workshops, and our learning programming, emphasising the importance of soil care, its environmental significance, and the ways in which it connects to our larger ecological, sociocultural and political landscapes and soil stewardship.
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The Mud Machine in Kubu is supported by an International Opportunities Fund from Wales Arts International @waicymruwales and the Arts Council of Wales.
I found out recently about an excellent project: The Clearing, A Report From The Future by Alex Hartley and Tom James. They “set out to build a living, breathing encampment where people could learn how to live in the collapsing world coming our way.”
In 2017 they constructed with the help of volunteers a geodesic dome from scavenged materials and for several months invited people to workshops on skills that might be useful in the future (fire making, bread oven, democracy, radio, loo…).
Public engagement was very rich and a temporary community of sorts emerged. The artists have published a full report on the experience, photocopied by hand, with a cover made from used cardboard boxes. I recommend this informative and inspiring read.
The report is available at https://drive.google.com/open?id=1FrdLTkW8bA8OITUCHrqHqcG-wA496G0Y
A year after the end of the clearing, Hartley and James wrote that “the more time we spent at The Clearing, the better we felt. The Clearing made us feel hopeful, and confident, and capable, and even happy. Perhaps this is how it could be in the future> Softer and simpler and slower. Perhaps the end of this world, and the beginning of a new one, could even be good?”
Experimental kinetic mess Mud Machine made with 90% materials recycled or found in nature. Made with a group of young people in Peak Cymru, Crickhowell UK in a 6 hours wrekshop on 19th February 2020.
Collecting mud and sticks
Working the e-waste
Mud Machine
Control panel
“SUPERFREIGHT is an exhibition of work from four artists; Nadja Buttendorf, Paul Granjon, Dina Kelberman and Ian Watson, exploring how we live with, exchange and use technology in creating culture.”
Thus goes the blurb for a group show in Arcade Campfa, Cardiff UK where I have two new works: a set of 4 Insect Buzz electronic placards and The Future, an installation where people can air their views about the future by writing on the wall, talking at a special table, and listening to a strange talking flower thing.
Nadja Buttendorf and Sabrina Labis are showing 360º Nail, a slightly disturbing video featuring a fingernail-mounted action camera.
Ian Watson built a one-off stand out of self-made polystyrene pebbles where a vintage monitor plays a deep glitch text monologue with a groovy 80s video pixel vibe.
Dina Kelberman presents two artworks: I’m Google is a scrollable collection of found web images that deal with buildings, tech, domestic, DIY, and The Goal is to Live, a mesmerizing video collating segments of the well-known TV program How Things are Made.
Doodlebot workshop for kids in Barbican London, 23rd and 24th November, free! Just drop in between 10:00 and 16:00. Part of the Life Rewired season. Anybody aged 7+ can attend and take their Doodlebot home.
Next up in December, a 3 hours upcycling challenge for students in the Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University. 11 teams are each given a PC tower to cannibalise and an Arduino to make an interactive module for some corner of the buiding.
And the seasonal Disobedient Objects project running until Christmas in Cardiff School of Art and Design. Photo below of a 40 minutes task: make a wearable device to defeat face recognition algorithms.
FabCre8 is a research group of Cardiff School of Art and Design, focusing on creative technologies and digital fabrication. Severla micro-grants were allocated to members of the group in 2016-17 for research and development. The exhibition features work by Ingrid Murphy, Jon Pigott, Aidan Taylor, myself and other members of staff.
I am showing two Mudbots that were developed as a direct application of Power of the Mud, my FabCre8 experiments with microbial fuel cells. Also on display are four recently made Insect Buzz objects.
The sounding, wearable objects are to be used in marches and events in support of an ecological society. The Insect Buzz prototypes are being developed as part of the EASTN-DC European research project. Early versions were tested in Extinction Rebellion and Strike for Climate protests in Cardiff.
Strike for Climate Cardiff 20 September 2019
Extinction Rebellion Summer Unrest July 2019
The good people of the Deershed have invited me again for supervising the execution of several hundred kilos of obsolete consumer electronics by several hundred children (12 at a time maximum). The operation is called a Wrekshop and takes place in the Science Tent of the family friendly Deershed Festival 10 in Topcliffe North Yorkshire UK from 26th to 28th July.
In the Science Tent this year for the first time: Sam Battle, of youtube fame as Look Mum No Computer, is the inventor of the Furby Organ, the Flamethrowing Henry Hoover and he plays a giant analog synth in his lab. I am looking forward to meet this interesting man and his creations!
After making a doodlebot the participants learn how to use a Microbit and include it in their design.
Amazingly free workshop where you get to take your doodlebot and Microbit home (also includes a free lunch)!
Another one should happen in spring 2019, watch this space, workshops organised by the Arts and Education Network Wales
