Design Yourself
Throughout 2019 and the early part of 2020 I led a programme for Barbican’s Young Creatives called Design Yourself.
What does it mean to be human? Can technology be used to replicate the pheromone communication of ant colonies? Can we use technology to mimic the camouflage abilities of chameleons? Can movement be used as a language, similar to the waggle dance of honey bees?
Inspired by Life Rewired, a collection of young creatives from our Barbican Young Creatives and BA Performance and Creative Enterprise will respond to these questions to explore what it means to be human when technology is changing everything.
Mentored by visual artist Antonio Roberts and in collaboration with four guest artists, the group will create new digital work that explores how scientific and technological advances could allow artists to become ‘more human’ by heightening our natural and creative instincts. As a group they will explore technological impact on sound, movement, language and aesthetics and share their findings through new imaginative works.
The eight participants from Barbican’s Young Creatives were Tice Cin, Zack Haplin, Cosima Cobley Carr, Pietro Bardini, Nayla Chouaib, Evangelos Trichias, Hector Dyer, and Cleo Thomas.
I had the pleasure of inviting some of my favourite artists/art groups to deliver workshops to the participants exploring lots of issues surrounding our relationship with technlogy and the future of humanity. Invited artists were: Laurie Ramsell, Matthew DF Evans, Yoke Collective, New Movement Collective, Erica Scourti.
Over the next few days I’ll be sharing the videos we made over the year and some photos from each session.
Congrats to all of the participants on creating such great work, thanks to the invited artists for delivering engaging workshops, and thanks to Chris Webb for inviting me to Barbican again to work with their Young Creatives :-)
