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Take your step into Undershed with this introduction.

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Welcome to Undershed, a new kind of gallery for showing the best immersive and interactive artwork from all over the world.

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The first of its kind in Bristol and rare across the UK, this is a dedicated space for people to come together and explore new forms of storytelling.

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When you're in the building, there will always be people around who can answer any questions you might have, and there are places for you to sit and rest whenever you need.

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Sing the Body Electric is the first exhibition at Undershed and it is arranged in two collections.

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The first collection is open from the 26th of October to the 24th of November. And the second is from the 30th of November to the 22nd of December.

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My name is Amy Rose and I am the Lead Curator of Undershed.

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Keep listening to find out more about interactive artwork and what it asks from you the audience before a full description of the four pieces in the first collection.

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Interactive and immersive artwork is different from cinema, reading and art galleries. It is different because it invites you, the audience, to actively take part.

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Even though other art forms might transport you deeply and beautifully into other worlds. You are usually an invisible guest who will leave no trace and create nothing new in the air of the exhibition space.

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In Undershed, we offer artwork that asks you to participate. This might mean something simple like choosing between standing up, sitting down, or laying on the floor. Or it could be much more complex, like verbally responding to questions or modelling things out of clay.

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What's important is that you do something. And in some small but important way, when you choose what to do, you bring a bit of yourself into the room.

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In all exhibitions, we believe that there will be no single way to experience any of the pieces. Each one has an invitation implicit in its design, but perhaps you can dream up some other way of playing with what the artist has created for you.

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There's also no right order to explore the artworks, even though the layout of the room might beckon a particular pathway. Feel free to experiment with different orders that spark different thoughts in your mind and bodies.

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If you have any thoughts or questions, you're always welcome to speak to our gallery assistants, and this might be around how the technology works, what the artist is really trying to do, or anything else that comes to mind.

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The most important thing to remember is that here we are all experimenting. Settle in, keep an open mind and see where it all takes you.

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When you come to Watershed in person, the door to Undershed opens directly from the Box Office on the ground floor. And when you walk in, there's a welcome area where the gallery assistant is waiting to speak to you about what to expect.

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You can sit down for as long as you like before you go through the curtains into the main space. The welcome area is designed as a little rest stop between the outside world and the world of the exhibition.

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There are spaces to leave any possessions that you don't want to carry around with you. And Undershed has been designed specifically as an accessible space. With enough room for wheelchairs and places to sit down and rest whenever you need.

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Beyond the curtains that contain the welcome area, four artworks are installed in the exhibition space in the first collection. Each piece explores movement and gesture. Either through what it asks you to do with your own body, or how it documents other people's bodies.

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Interactive and immersive artworks offer you an opportunity to do something for yourself rather than just think about it. And as you explore the collection, keep this question in your mind. How do we all get out of our heads, into our bodies, and engage with the world in a new way?

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The first piece you meet when you enter the exhibition space is called I You We Me Us.

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It is a 2 channel, 16mm silent film that plays on two stacked monitors, one on top of the other. The piece lasts for 17 minutes, and it is on a loop. You are invited to walk around it, sit on the floor, or lie down next to the moving images. Whatever feels comfortable for you.

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This beautiful silent 2 channel film transcribes sensual expressions of intimacy, connection, love and hope. Considering the potential of images, words, and movement to convey visceral emotion and warmth.

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Hands of family members, friends and lovers make gestures, play, move, touch and write small notes indispersed with depictions of plants and timelapse flowers held under ultraviolet lights.

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Filmed by Margaret Salmon on 16 mm colour film in her Glasgow flat, the work explores expressive kinship, love between a child and a parent, intergenerational multi-gender affection, respect and care.

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I You Me We Us is by an artist filmmaker based in Glasgow called Margaret Salmon. Concerned with the shifting constellation of relations, such as those between camera and subject or human and animal.

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Salmon's work often examines the gendered emotive dynamics of social interaction. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at institutions in the UK, US, Netherlands and beyond, and her work has been featured in film festivals and major international survey exhibitions, including the Yokohama Triennale, the Berlin Biennale and London Film Festival, among many others.

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Salmon won the inaugural Max Mara Art Prize for Women in 2006, and the 2021 Paul Hamlin Foundation Award for artists.

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The next piece you'll see in the exhibition is called Vast Body and it is an interactive installation you enter by yourself. Once you're inside a small space contained by some curtains, you face a screen.

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And when you move your upper body, a wave of people reinterpret your gestures and mimic your moves.

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Summon music in your head. Or not. Dance. Turn around, wave, wriggle or move however you feel. Vast Body is an encounter with your own body language and a collaborative experiment or movement.

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Through some kind of magic mirror, this piece connects your physical body with the digital incarnation of many others, offering the chance to briefly inhabit alternative bodies through movement. During untimely questions of identity, empathy, and the constant whirling of our relationships, it is a playful, visually arresting act of imagination.

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Vast Body was made by Vincent Morisset and Caroline Robert and their team at AATOAA, who are based in Montreal, Canada. AATOAA is a creative studio known for their works, which combine craftsmanship and technology.

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In each of their projects visitors are invited to become participants. Music experiences put into perspective our relationship with others and the way we look at the world around us.

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The astonishing universe of Caroline and Vincent is embodied in many different forms, including interactive videos, installations in public space, VR, and net art.

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Beyond Vast Body, we have two of a series of sculptures called the Invisible Sculptures, part of an ongoing series that can be perceived by senses other than sight.

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The Invisible Sculptures are a series of perceptible objects that embody physical space but are completely invisible to the naked eye.

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By challenging sighted people's dependence on vision. The artist Yeseul Song expands the way in which we encounter and understand the world around us. Questioning the meaning of object, sculpture and what it even means to exist through sculptures that are immaterial.

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The two sculptures we have in the collection are the sound sculpture and the air sculpture.

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For the sound sculpture, you put on a pair of headphones. Whereas for the air sculpture you just need your hands. Both shapes can only be found in mid-air.

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When you approach each sculpture to find and feel the form of each invisible shape, you need to try and synchronise multiple sensory functions, including your imagination. Once you think you found the shape, you are invited to make it out of clay and then add it to our growing collection on the shelves.

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Please be aware that with the air sculpture, the work involves hardware that creates subtle vibrations in the air, so it's not recommended for people with pacemakers, hearing AIDS, or who are pregnant.

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South Korean born New York based artist Yeseul Song uses technology, interaction and participation as art and media. Her work uncovers creative possibilities of nonvisual senses through inventive languages that advocate for imaginative and inclusive views of the world.

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Her work questions how we normally perceive, think, and interact through novel perceptual experiences. She explores and occupies non-traditional public spaces, as well as institutions to challenge commonly held ideas about access and accessibility of art.

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Her non-visual interactive experiences have inspired tens of thousands of people at indoor and outdoor spaces in the US and South Korea.

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Yeseul is an Assistant Arts Professor at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts Interactive Telecommunications Programme and Interactive Media Arts. Yeseul also teaches on two Masters programmes as an Assistant Arts Professor at the Tisch School of the Arts, based in New York.

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The final piece in the first collection in Undershed is called Turbulence and it is a first-person creative documentary made for virtual reality. It's about 10 minutes long.

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Artist Ben Andrews lives with a disability called Vestibular Migraine, which impacts his sense of orientation, balance and spatial awareness. It also affects his experience of reality. Everything familiar suddenly seems new and different.

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In this intimate mixed reality work, Ben Andrews uses a VR headset and a depth camera to explore his own experience, asking audiences to reflect on the fragility of perception and the beauty of our ever-moving world.

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When you arrive in the gallery, one of the gallery assistants will book you into a time slot so you don't have to wait in a queue for this piece of VR. And remember, if you haven't tried VR before, there is a headset in the welcome area that you could pick up, put on your head and get a bit more familiar with.

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When it's your turn to begin, you go into a round private booth so nobody is watching you. You sit down at a desk and the gallery assistant will help you put on the VR headset. Guided by Ben’s voice, you are asked to complete a series of seemingly simple tasks. And the story unfolds.

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Turbulence was made by Ben Joseph Andrews and Emma Roberts, who are from Australia. Ben and Emma are a producer/director team working in location-based VR. Their work often merges immersive technologies within bespoke sensory environments.

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Their collaboration began with a project called The Moon is Gone and All the Kings Are Dead. Commissioned for the 50th anniversary of the Victorian College of the Arts in Australia. The duo have also completed two projects for the City of Melbourne. Before Turbulence, they made a project called Gondwana, winner of the AIDC 2018 Greenpeace VR Prize.

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So that's it for the first collection. It's available to come and experience until November the 24th. And after that there will be another collection with three more pieces to come and try. Thanks very much.