Our first event of the year took place at Maker Faire, where we were invited to programme a stage for the two days of the festival. Our plan was to have an artist on each day who would talk about their work in a slot in the morning and then perform in the afternoon. As it worked out, we just ran the whole of each day as a drop-in session, for people to come and ask questions etc…with a performance in the afternoon.
For this If Wet we invited the wonderful Graham Dunning back with his Mechanical Techno set-up and Paul Granjon with his musical robots. They both went down a storm.
Thank you to our artists, all who attended and to Maker Faire for being such wonderful hosts!
We are the Music Makers
Setting up…
Paul trying out the prototype of our latest piece Amplification
Day One featured Graham Dunning. It was wet and cold, and we were outdoors…but the show still went on!
Graham Dunning with onlookers
Graham Dunning with record
Graham Dunning adding to the stack
Graham Dunning tweaking
Graham Dunning putting a donk (cymbal) on it
Graham Dunning manipulating light-dependent synth
Graham Dunning with full stack
Graham Dunning smiling
Day Two was Paul’s day, and the sun had come out. He played his wonky dance music to an appreciative crowd.
Paul Granjon with audience
Paul Granjon with tail and ears
Paul Granjon with tail and ears
Paul Granjon readying Mofo
Paul Granjon with Mofo
Paul Granjon dancing with Mofo
Once again, huge thanks to our wonderful artists, audience and to Maker Faire!
If Wet #21 is our first of 2015 and takes place across the weekend of the 25th and 26th of April as part of Maker Faire!
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We are delighted to be part of Maker Faire this year, where we will host an If Wet strand on one of the stages. We have invited Graham Dunning to present his work on the Saturday and Paul Granjon will be showing his on the Sunday; each giving performances later in the day.
For our first If Wet event of 2015 we will be heading to Newcastle for Maker Faire.
As your hosts we will kick the event off, as usual. We will set the tone each day and present our latest piece of work. It will soon be over to our invited artists though to discuss their work and working methods.
On the Saturday, we have Graham Dunning presenting his ingenious Mechanical Techno system, which he uses to create wonky techno, through a series of stacked platters, tonearms and contact mic drum / synth triggers. In his words:
“Mechanical Techno: Ghost in the Machine music – vinyl dissonance for lost memories. A live dubbed rhythmical collage made of squeezed record crackle, analogue synthesizer, dubplates of field recordings, dusty shellac records and clumsily triggered drum machines.”
During our first session of the day Graham will discuss this system and his approach. Later in the day you will get chance to come back to the stage to hear him perform a Mechanical Techno set.
On the Sunday, Paul Granjon will present his work as an electronic artist interested in the co-evolution of humans and machines, a subject he explores with hand-made robots and other machines.
Paul has exhibited his machines worldwide, for example representing Wales at the Venice Biennale 2005 with a couple of Sexed Robots. More recently he’s been turning art galleries into factories where people are invited to dismantle obsolete consumer electronic items and turn them into interesting stuff, or just have fun taking them apart. Paul is currently working on Coy-B, an intelligent biting machine and on Guido, a robot guide for an art and technology exhibition.
We are delighted to invite Paul and Graham to present their work at Maker Faire and that we will all get to see them perform too! We look forward to seeing you in Newcastle.
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