- Venue
- Millennium Gallery
- Starts
- Wednesday, November 8, 2017
- Ends
- Sunday, November 12, 2017
- Address
- Sheffield
- Location
- Yorkshire
AlgoMech festival (http://algomech.com/) is a celebration of Algorithms and Mechanisms in the arts, taking place in Sheffield UK 8-12th November 2017.Robot musicians, hacked accordions & gramophones, e-textiles, live coding, kinetic art, sonic machines and a full-on algorithmic rave. A weekend of performances, talks and workshops which celebrate mechanisms and algorithms across music and the arts. Taking place in Millennium Gallery and Access Space venues in Sheffield City Centre, supported by Arts Council England, PRS Foundation and European Research Council.
65daysofstatic (http://65daysofstatic.com) are this year’s headline act. 65dos are known for blending guitars, drums and technology into huge songs toured tirelessly worldwide and released via 7 albums over fifteen years. AlgoMech will host three premiere shows of their new audio/visual project “Decomposition Theory or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Demand the Future” (http://decompositiontheory.info/). This work centres around algorithmic composition and procedural audio, pushing their sound further into uncertain territory, with every show different. They’ll be supported by a new algorithmic collaboration between aggrobeat band Blood Sport and algoraver Heavy Lifting aka Lucy Cheesman.
Continuing the algorithmic theme, the festival will also feature an Algorave (http://algorave.com) or “algorithmic rave”. Algoraves are parties where all the music is made with algorithms, live coded by human musicians, with all the code behind it projected for your pleasure, while it is being written. Informally coordinated from Sheffield, Algorave has spread into a worldwide movement, reaching 50 cities over the past five years. At AlgoMech we’ll be taking it to the next level with immersive algorithmic visuals, and handmade music-generating mechanical systems and robots mixed in with the algorithms. This will include a duet between renowned ‘chiptune’ artist goto80 (http://www.goto80.com/) and a robotic hand, both typing at old school Commodore 64 computers from the 80’s.
Another unmissable event is Sonic Pattern, a seated concert featuring musicians who get hands-on, building their own mechanisms to make other-worldly music, including hacked gramophones and accordions, pedal-power violins and other sonic machines. Musicians will include Leafcutter John (http://leafcutterjohn.com/) with new work treating peak district millstones as records, turning them into music, and Sarah Kenchington (http://algomech.com/2017/artists/sarah-kenchington/), bringing her Mechanical Orchestra from Glasgow.
This is the second edition of the festival, and is curated by Alex McLean (http://slab.org), co-founder of the Algorave movement.
