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.

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…

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…

I’ll be showing off the Ealing Feeder, the latest version of my carillon (automatic bell-playing rig) at the Kinetica Art Fair, P3 Gallery, 35 Marylebone Road, London, 5-7 February 2010.

The words Ealing Feeder come from the control room of Battersea Power Station, which provided London with electricity during the boom years of the fossil fuel age…

Hear 8-bit sound artist extraordinaire Paul B Davis, Dave Green and I talking about electronic music, robots and other geekery on Shift Run Stop, a new weekly podcast from Leila Johnston and Roo Reynolds…

My first test with Hugo, the 1930s vent doll who will be appearing in future Spacedog gigs. Here, you can hear him singing the Kurt Weill classic Alabama Song. Stay posted for further developments – and look out for Hugo in the Brighton Festival Fringe…

Hello! You’ve stumbled on my rough and ready page of videos on the Uncanny Valley hypothesis – a hotly debated theory about our very human fear of almost human objects.

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).

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’m back now from the Newcastle where I was exhibiting a few odds and ends at the UK’s first Maker Faire. It was a hugely entertaining weekend — great to meet so many other hardware hackers, crafters and so on. I’ll be posting a few videos and writing about some of my favourite sights — [...]

I’ll be bringing Uncanny Valerie, Clara 2.0, the robotic bell rig and a selection of other playful experiments with sensors, sound and music to the first UK Maker Faire.

This is my Mk III robotic bell rig, designed to make it easier to take the bells to venues. I’ve already used the bells in my own compositions at the Gasworks Gallery, Vauxhall (a Resonance FM night, curated by Ed Baxter) and at the Freebutt, Brighton. Here, for Christmas 2008, they’re playing Troika (from Prokovief’s Lieutenant Kije).

Named in honour of the original theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore, Clara 2.0 is a robot doll who can play the theremin live. I call her the ‘polite robot thereminist’ as she listens to a line from another player and moves her dolly arm to bring her own theremin in perfect tune.

A mini, automatic puppet show in a shed, created on a shoestring budget for the South Bank Centre, summer 2007. The brief was to come up with something novel inside a garden shed that would celebrate the area and appeal to families.

Devised for the 2004 Cheltenham Science Festival, The Cyborg Project was an event for the public, exploring enactive perception.
This is a holding page for the project on this new website – more details to follow shortly.