Extremely pleased to announce that Simon Howden and myself, or the art duo Uncalculated, have recently had a couple of pieces accepted for exhibition and publication, in Europe and North America this July.

– Signaletic Flow 2.0, a digital file as video based on performing with mixed reality and plants, has been included by the pioneering feminist curator Kathy Rae Huffman, in the online exhibition “Digital Power: Activism, Advocacy and the Influence of Women Online”, premiering at ACM SIGGRAPH Washington D.C and live on the ACM Digital Arts Community website 17 July 2020.

– the Contact Projects is to be discussed as a whole body of three works at the 8th Conference on Computation, Communication, Aesthetics & X
8–10 July, Graz, Austria ( now moved to online and global). Paper to be published in CITAR Journal, Special Edition on xCoAx. http://xcoax.org/

– Contact/Sense, the work we premiered at SIGGRAPH Asia Brisbane, is the subject of our paper at the 11th International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics, this year in San Diego. Forthcoming book series published with Springer International, also in July.

A bit of information about the works ……

Through the Contact Projects – an iterative series of three artworks ( Contact Zone, Contact/Sense and Signaletic Flow) we explore novel performance techniques within the medium of head-mounted Mixed Reality (MR). Combining gestural, computer vision, tactile and sonic instruments with physical bodies (human and plant) the concept is to generate a different mode of MR from the dominant paradigms being advanced by industrial and commercial interests. This research investigates potential for multimodal performance in MR using a bespoke technical set-up that combines the HTC Vive (with Leap Motion head-mounted), the MIDI Sprout interface, Logic X, Touch Designer and Unity 3D. Playing with experimental physical techniques for affectively co-composing with expressive conjunctions of augmented materials (both digital and organic), we think through strategies such as: modulating augmented data in real-time; amplifying bio-electrical signals from plants to produce a mode of augmented audio; choreographing hand micro-gestures to weave tactile and signaletic connections with plants and digital augments; and passing augments through the Leap Motion interface in a head mounted configuration. We propose a new method, technique, and practices for performing with MR environments and various interface technologies, informed by embodiment and electro acoustics, and underscored by new materialism and critical posthumanism.