theatre of restless automata

boredomresearch are launching their new exhibition

Theatre of restless automata
this friday 8th April, 7-9pm

@ Aspex Gallery, 27 Brougham Road, Southsea, Portsmouth, PO5 4PA
T/F: 023 9281 2121
E: [email protected]
W: www.aspex.org.uk

Collaborating as boredomresearch Southampton based Vicky Isley and Paul Smith have gained an international reputation for interrogating the creative role of computing. Their enthusiasm for scientific modelling techniques and fascination with natural systems inspires them to produce beautifully crafted software art that presents an exciting alternative to our technologically fraught lives.

The title references the craft of the mechanical automata makers from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, who made mechanised creatures which at their time were shocking in their display of life-like behaviour. Many used a barrel of pegs or pins that held the program of movements, much in the same way that early computers used punch cards.

Theatre of restless automata will be boredomresearch’s largest solo exhibition to date, containing computational works inspired by in-depth research into artificial life and digital biology. By exploring the aesthetics of life, they challenge our willingness to see life where there is none. Through a number of glass portals you will be able to watch the complex and fascinating behaviour of the restless automata as they interact in their closed computational universe, triggering sounds that spill out into the space.

Theatre of restless automata is a collaboration between Aspex Gallery, HTTP:// (House of Technologically Termed Praxis), London and Peterborough Digital Arts.

For further on boredomresearch please visit www.boredomresearch.net