On Friday 16 November we were treated to a fantastic lunchtime talk by one of our newest Studio residents Sarah Angliss who was talk about her robotics project Trace.

Background

Sarah is a composer, multi-instrumentalist and digital artist, specialising in live electronic music, interactive sound and robotics. She has an unusual combination of skills—in music, electro-acoustics and robotics. Sarah is best known for her theremin playing, her unusual approach to electronic music (which she uses to explore relationships between technology and European folklore) and for the robots she’s devised and built to accompany her live on stage.

She explained that most of the robots she has created are figurative or electromechanical updates of ancient instruments. One, for example is Hugo, a roboticised 1930s ventriloquist’s dummy who performs vocal samples. Another is Wolfgang, a miniature robot drummer in a dapper 1960s suit. And then there’s The Ealing Feeder, a polyphonic carillon (bell rig) that plays riffs at lightning speed. Sarah explained she is keen to develop her practice and devise more poetic forms of robotic performance that don't rely on human figures and other traditional tropes during her residency.

Project Plans:

Sarah then introduced her project Trace, a live electronic music and poetic robotic performance that takes discarded everyday possessions - handbags, furniture, kitchen utensils and so on – and robotically animates them so they mimic the breaths, postural changes, arm movements and other gestures of their former owners. She explained she will be working with experts at the Motion Capture Research Lab at the Academy for Innovation and Research, Falmouth, to learn about the latest motion capture techniques. She’s also planning to include sounds from the objects as they move and (where possible) fragments of conversations with their owners.

Through this work, Sarah hopes to create a new, poetic form of motion capture: an impressionistic playback of absent persons, using their discarded, former possessions. She’s aiming for a humanistic yet non-figurative form of robotic art that’s distinct from traditional automata and stereotypical metallic sci fi robots. She hopes the resulting work that forms Trace, will be an uncanny (Unheimlich) and compelling performance—a visitation of sorts.

What next?

Sarah will be in Bristol part-time for around 25 days, starting in October 2013. Her residency will culminate in a showcase next year. Once she has finished developing Trace she plans to take it to Vivid, Birmingham, Spirit of Gravity, Brighton, Dorkbot Cardiff and beyond. So if you run an arts or tech venue and are interested in hosting a performance of Trace in 2014, do get in touch with Sarah through her website.

Read Sarah's Project Journal to find out more about her plans and progress.