NESTA‘s second FutureFest is being held March 14-15 at Vinopolis in London.
Robots will be at FutureFest 2015
FutureFest is a weekend of immersive experiences, compelling performances and radical speakers to excite, and challenge perceptions of the future. FutureFest is not designed as a traditional static event but as a multi-format festival, which gives visitors ample opportunity to take self-guided journeys. The programme will span debate, discussion, performances, installations and immersive experiences.
The content is anchored by six themes, which examine the future of: democracy, global cities, machine and human interaction, money, music and thrills.
Speaker highlights include NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden, visionary musician George Clinton, journalist and best-selling author Jon Ronson, human rights lawyer Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, and musician Matthew Herbert. The event will also feature innovative installations and demonstrations including NEUROSIS – the world’s first neurological thrill ride, Paul A. Young and Morgaine Gaye’s Sweetshop of the Future and Emotive City by architecture firm Minimiaforms.
Also in store are robots!
body>data>space is thrilled to announce that Blind Robot, My Robot Companion and Robot World will be exhibited at FutureFest 2015. body>data>space Creative Director Ghislaine Boddington has curated the Future Machines part of the FutureFest exhibition.
Blind Robot is an interactive robotics artwork developed by Louis Philippe Demers. In this installation, visitors are invited to sit down in front of and engage into a non-verbal dialogue with the Blind Robot. The robot delicately explores the body, mostly the face, of the visitor in a manner that recalls the beauty of the touch of blind people wishing to familiarise themselves with a person or an object. This is the first showing of Blind Robot in the UK. The Blind Robot is a 2011-12 development commission for the Robots and Avatars project (body>data>space, KIBLA, AltArt). Commissioned by body>data>space and the National Theatre, it premiered at KIBLA, Slovenia in October 2012.
‘My Robot Companion: Familiar’ is a project exploring social-robotics by Anna Dumitriu and Alex May. This robot is able to take on the appearance of any face it sees or even combine features from a group of faces in order to promote bonding with it. A previous version of this project was exhibited in September 2012 as part of the Robot and Avatars Exhibition at 12 Star Gallery in London.
Robot World is a non-verbal documentary by Martin Hans Schmitt which depicts the evolution of robots from a mechanical somnambulist to an autonomous sensorium. An hypnotic journey exploring robots as our alternate doubles, Robot World was exhibited as part of Robots and Avatars Exhibition at FACT, Liverpool and at KIBLA, Slovenia.
More artworks and panels curated by body>data>space with FutureFest to be revealed soon.
About body>data>space
We are East London based digital pioneers specialised in the visionary integration of the body at the centre of digital interaction. We create innovative connections between performance, architecture, virtual worlds and new media. A long term associate artist of body>data>space, Nick Rothwell is a composer, performer, software architect, programmer and sound artist. www.bodydataspace.net
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