Art / Control Shift

New arts programme to explore life with machines

By Charlie Watts  Monday Mar 27, 2023

A new arts programme in Bristol is bringing together local and international artists to explore humans’ relationship with machines.

The Feelings Machines Weekender, by Bristol-based collective Control Shift, will see a series of film screenings, installations and workshops from Thursday, March 30 to Sunday, April 2.

It will kick off with an “algorave” at Lost Horizon, where electronic musicians will make futuristic rhythms and beats using live coding and algorithmic processes.

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On Saturday, an open day of artist walks, drop-in workshops and installations at St Anne’s House will explore the ways we live between physical and digital worlds.

Through the programme, Dzata, a “meditative and transportive” film on the fictional institute of technological consciousness, will be screened on loop in the Arnolfini’s auditorium.

The Feelings Machines Weekender will kick off with an “algorave” at Lost Horizon – photo: Ana Caria and Leonor Fonseca

“We are taking a deep dive into the sticky, messy, fluffy ways that we live our lives with machines,” said Control Shift’s curators Becca Rose, Martha King, Rod Dickinson and Coral Manton.

“In a time when phone apps define who our friends and lovers are, when AI have become artists, and algorithms decide the music that moves us we ask what it feels like to feel with machines.”

Control Shift are funded by Arts Council England, Knowle West Media Centre, Watershed, UWE Bristol, Bath Spa UniversityBristol+Bath Creative R+D, Pervasive Media Studio and Container.

The Feelings Machines Weekender runs from Thursday, March 30 to Sunday, April 2. For more information, visit: www.control-shift.network/programme  

Main photo: Richard Hodgkinson  

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