If you ever thought artists like Kraftwerk were the first to embrace the machine aesthetic in their dance and music, this curiosity might interest you.

This fascinating dance piece uses steps that directly mimic the sounds and actions of mill machines. Although these steps were danced a century ago by female cotton mill workers, they seem strangely ahead of their time, forerunners of today’s machine-inspired dance music. You can think of this dance as steam-powered Kraftwerk – or techno 80 years before Detroit.

We’ll be performing The Machinery live in the Central Library, Birmingham UK, 13:30 prompt on Saturday 18 September
, admission free
. For the British Science Festival 2010.

A video trailer for Uncanny Valley – coming to the Hen & Chickens, London, 26-28 August 2010.

Uncanny Valley is coming to the Hen & Chickens Theatre, 26-28 August 2010.

Musicians play live with decrepit dolls, theremins and robots in this eerie entertainment, exploring our fears of the almost human – from golems to ventriloquists’ dummies.

Hot from their sell-out run on the Brighton Festival Fringe, dreamlike musical and mechanical inventors Spacedog join forces with gentleman rapper Professor Elemental, known for his YouTube sensation Cup of Brown Joy, a paean to the pleasures of drinking tea.

Death ballads, unsettling live robotics and tales of the professor’s extreme taxidermy experiments. Read more for ticket details…

Ghosts and machines, as they were imagined in the early 1920s, when Lankins slid under window panes and families soothed their babies with Amperes from the first electric servants.

Spacedog will be playing a selection of death ballads, darkest folk songs and twisted takes on the European song book, featuring theremin, vocals, robotic dolls, waterphone, saw and assorted electronic oddities. With spellbinding visuals from Roger Spy and Dennis Da Silva. This event is an ArtHertz collaboration for the Soho Shorts Festival. The show will include a live performance from dolly therematrix Clara 2.0 and the Ealing Feeder, my new robotic bell rig, first seen at the Kinetica 2010 Art Fair.

At the Apple Store, Regent Street, London, 5pm 23 July
. Admission free but booking essential.

A flyer for Uncanny Valley, with Spacedog, Professor Elemental and assorted musical robots. At the Marlborough Theatre, Brighton, 5 May 2010.

Tickets are now on sale for our new show at the Brighton Festival Fringe. This year, Spacedog are teaming up with Professor Elemental to bring you a delightfully unsettling evening, probing our very human fears of the almost human, from zombies to ventriloquists’ dummies. Marlborough Theatre, 5 May 2010.

Accompanied by our home-spun musical robots, we’ll be singing songs of love, death and the uncanny as we explore the darkest reaches of your mind. With theremins, taxidermy and strange automata…

News of an extra date in the Brighton Festival Fringe: Spacedog are teaming up with Jane Bom-Bane, maestro with mechanical hats, and multi-instrumentalist Nick Pynn for a very unusual music night at Bom-Bane’s, Brighton, 13 May 2010…

SORRY – THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED DUE TO ILLNESS: It’s National Science and Engineering Week and Spacedog are celebrating by playing music inspired by the space race. Enjoy the eerie sounds of theremin, vocals, robotic bells and Sputnik beeps as we bring you extraterrestrial music and fascinating tales about Earth’s place in the universe. At Hastings Museum 2pm, and the F-ish Gallery, 8pm…

It’s the press launch tonight of the Brighton Festival Fringe. This year, Spacedog are teaming up with Professor Elemental to bring you a delightfully unsettling evening, probing our very human fears of the almost human, from zombies to ventriloquists’ dummies. Marlborough Theatre, 5 May 2010.

Accompanied by our home-spun musical robots, we’ll be singing songs of love, death and the uncanny as we explore the darkest reaches of your mind. With theremins, taxidermy and strange automata…

Here are some snapshots of the Ealing Feeder – the latest version of my carillon (automatic bell rig), along with some details of the thinking behind the piece.

Thanks to everyone who came along to the Arthertz stand at the Kinetica Art Fair and said ‘hello’. The Ealing Feeder survived admirably and is now back in my workshop until its next outing. Coming soon to the Brighton Festival Fringe and Battersea Power Station…

As the sun sets over Battersea Power Station, Spacedog will be playing live in the turbine hall. Date tbc but fingers crossed for 1 June 2010.

Stay posted for more news of this hugely exciting event, including ticket details. For now I can tell you there will be music from Alex Paterson (The Orb), John Foxx and ourselves, an installation from Andy Back, projections from Ian Eames and Mike Coles and many other treats. Curated by Dennis Da Silva and Beverley Bennett, Art Hertz, the event is titled Electricity and Ghosts (after one of Foxx’ classic tracks).

See some photos of the interior of the power station…

Yep, I did say clog dancing.

This dance piece uses a combination of live, solo clog dancing, video loops and audio which plays at overwhelming levels, revealing a danceform that was directly inspired by the machines of the industrial revolution. With performer Caroline Radcliffe.

Lancashire clog is a deeply unfashionable dance form, often misrepresented as a pastoral dance – a sub-genre of Morris dancing. If you’re put off by the faux nostalgia of the Sunday afternoon clog dancing brigade, see us take Lancashire clog back to its genuine roots, as we evoke the sights and sounds of the industrial cotton machinery that inspired it. I’ll stick my neck out and say Lancashire clog is a pre-electronic forerunner of the industrially-inspired music of Kraftwerk and the noise music of bands such as Coil.

Spacedog will be performing a couple of numbers at the latest School for Gifted Children – comedian Robin Ince’s spectacular, celebrating all things scientific.

At the Komedia, Brighton, Thursday 29 October 2009.
8:30pm (doors open 7pm)

Spacedog will be performing our latest set at Goldsmiths Great Hall, 16 October 2009. We’ll be performing torch songs, death ballads and eerie English folk songs on a host of instruments, including theremin, laptops, vocals and home-spun musical robots.
We’ll be joining Leafcutter John, the Finn Peters Quartet and Slub for this evening of beautiful musical [...]

I’ll be bringing along Spin Recovery, a small, experimental installation, involving robotic bells, cameras and video projections, to Brighton’s first SoundCurious event. Update 11 October: My appearance has been postponed by the venue – I hope to see you there at a later date!

Over the last few months, I’ve been collaborating with Punchdrunk, the marvellous encounter theatre company, to make a very unusual multimodal effect – one that mixes emerging ideas in perception with a one-on-one theatrical encounter.

I’ll be revealing more about the nature of this effect in a few months, when some formal studies are complete. However, I can reveal we’ve piloted the effect – and have had some encouraging feedback – and have already used it (tentatively) in the recent Punchdrunk show: It Felt Like a Kiss. This show is a documentary, the form of a promenade piece, was devised by Punchdrunk in collaboration with documentary maker Adam Curtis (featuring music from Damon Albarn). It Felt Like A Kiss was created in summer 2009 for the Manchester International Festival.

Hot on the heels of our shows at the Brighton Festival Fringe and Science Museum, we’re performing our electroplasmic set in Hastings, 20 June. No seance tonight -- but we’ll be making up for this with our eerie electronica and live Edison phonography (recording a voice on wax -oooh!). Venue: Eat@ 12 Claremont (tickets 01424 426768). We hope to see some of you there!

If you’re in London on Wednesday 20 May, you can catch Jenny, Clara 2.0 and me reprising our electroplasmic set at the Science Museum. We’re performing at the Science Museum Late – an evening when adults are invited to come along and enjoy an array of free entertainment

Read some reviews of Electroplasm, the latest Spacedog show, at the Brighton Festival Fringe. Sarah, Jenny, Clara 2.0 were performing with Colin Uttley (at Bom-Bane’s) and Richard Wiseman (at the Marlborough).

Why is some music spookier than others? Which tracks give you a shiver down the spine? Is it the music, the lyrics or the association with a creepy film or place that gives it that edge? Join our mini survey to find the ‘world’s spookiest music’ and hear a live performance of the top-rated spooky music in the Brighton Festival Fringe.

In a gracefully distressed Regency theatre on the edge of Kemp Town, Brighton, I’ll be teaming up with vocalist Jenny Angliss and psychologist Richard Wiseman for another eerie outing, in Electroplasm. 8-10 May 2009 (with a music preview at Bom-Bane’s on 6 May).

I’ve created some music for contortionist Delia DuSol, who will be bending her body into some extraordinary poses and squeezing herself into a tiny perspex box at Richard Wiseman’s first night of Inexplicable Acts, Thursday 12 Feb. This season of shows at the Wellcome Trust will explore the psychology and physiology of circus performers’ bodies, including the sword swallower, the juggler and the exceptionally flexible Delia.

I’ll be playing again at the Marlborough Theatre, Brighton, at their next Steampunk event on 21 February 2009. Details to be confirmed – but I expect to be appearing with  the robotic bells, theremin, saw and Good Companion – a rigged Imperial Typewriter. I may also bring along Uncanny Valerie – the ‘all-knowing’ robotic dolly [...]

In December 2006, Spacedog assembled a group of musicians in the reverb chamber of the UK National Physical Laboratory. This room has one of the longest reverberation times in Europe. Here are some videos of our extemporisations in this highly unusual musical space.

The theremin AV controller is a device I’ve created to scrub audio and video samples live, using the pitch and volume aerials of the theremin. Here’s a video of it in action, manipulating samples from the Hammer classic The Devil Rides Out.

Senster is a show that mixes live performance with simple robotics and responsive, digital art.