Join us for this free work in progress discussion with composer, performer and roboticist Sarah Angliss, at the halfway point of her part-time residency at Pervasive Media Studio. During this event, Sarah will introduce her project Trace, discussing the work she has created so far, and what she might do next.

No booking necessary, just turn up.

More about Sarah’s residency project:
Over the last six years, Sarah Angliss has been performing live with music augmented by robotics. Most of the robots she has created are figurative or electromechanical updates of ancient instruments. For example, there's 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 is fond of these bandmates and knows they have quite an impact on stage, but she's keen to develop her practice and devise more poetic forms of robotic performance that don't rely on human figures and other traditional tropes. With support from Arts Council England, this residency is enabling Sarah to take time out of her performing schedule, to experiment with more imaginative combinations of music and roboticised objects.

Sarah set out to create Trace, a project she envisioned as a live music and poetic robotic performance that would take discarded everyday possessions - handbags, furniture, kitchen utensils and so on - and robotically animate them to mimic the breaths, postural changes, arm movements and other gestures of their former owners. She’s aiming to create an impressionistic playback of absent persons, using their discarded, former possessions, staying true to her interest in creating a humanistic yet non-figurative form of robotic art that's distinct from traditional automata, and stereotypical metallic sci-fi robots. In developing Trace so far, Sarah’s made some interesting discoveries and her thinking around what is possible with motion capture data sets, is hugely exciting.

You can visit Sarah's Project Journal to read more about her thinking and project plans here.

Why we hope you will join us:
We often host work in progress discussions at the halfway point of research residencies at Pervasive Media Studio. It’s a great opportunity for people who come along, to better understand and contribute to the development of artists’ work, and it is a great way for artists to share their thinking, and receive feedback from interested people on where they might go next with ideas. Expect something informal, slightly chaotic and hugely interesting. We’ll also throw in a few biscuits and will most probably pop along to the bar afterwards for more conversation.

We do hope you can join us.