Artist and the Machine

Fountain Room Foyer
1 - 2pm
Free

In this talk led by Sara Brouwer learn about the Institute of Making and it's ethos, ideas and projects. Find out more about the importance of craft and making and the exciting collaborations with artists and machines taking place at their MakeSpace. The Institute of Making is an institutional machine made by artists, for artists: by turns a lab, a workshop, a research hub, a materials library, an office, a store, a stage and a play room.

Level G Studio
Demo between 11am - 5pm
Talk and Being Slime Mould at 2pm and 4pm 
Free, drop-in

Discover the fascinating role that slime mould plays in the cultures of science and art, and participate in a practical experiment to test the capacities for cooperation and communication between two intelligent organisms (human and slime mould).
 
The slime mould Physarum polycephalum is a small yellow organism that possesses a primitive intelligence, problem solving skills and a multifaceted memory. It is used as a model organism in many areas of research including biological computation, robotics and urbanism. It also makes for a great creative collaborator: kept dark and damp and fed on a diet of porridge oats, it will grow in beautiful dendritic patterns whilst foraging for food.

Life Rewired Hub
11am - 5pm
Free, drop-in

Crafts Council’s Young Craft Citizens are taking over the Life Rewired Hub to create an immersive area where visitors can explore the ways we process commands, both as a machine and a human. Working with makers Sabina Weiss and Tom Hartley in our analogue/digital embroidery machine, visitors will work in pairs to be the “artist” and the “machine”, giving and processing commands to embroider your very own piece to take away.
 

Visitors will also be able to learn about the different ways craftspeople use technology to innovate in their practise, and how Crafts Council supports this through its innovation programme. 

Level G Foyer
From 11.30am 
Free, Pop-up performance 

Anthropomorphising versus dehumanising alternate forms of intelligence, natural versus artificial learning, and emotive versus non-emotive existence... 

Through movement and sound, Guildhall School's Performance and Creative Enterprise students explore the paradoxes of our relationships with AI, confronting our fear of the uncertain future AI development holds for humanity, and unpicking our own assumptions of what consciousness means through performance and music.
 

Level G Foyer
All day
Free, drop-in
Inspired by Edward Ihnatowicz’s 1969 Cybernetic sculpture SAM, Ohbot is a 40cm tall robot combinig childlike, kinetic movement and exposed mechanisms to demonstrate the relationship between technology and creativity. Walking Ohbots will display two Ohbot's which move in response to sound leaving an ink trail behind them.