I'm an award-winning composer, engineer and historian of technology. I present talks, make radio shows and perform live with Spacedog - my band of humans, theremins and uncanny robots.
News of an extra date at 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.
Expect plenty of delightful, musical surprises from your hosts Jane and Nick.
We’ll be adding some musical highlights from our new show uncanny valley - songs that probe our very human fears of the almost human, from zombies to ventriloquists’ dummies. There will be musical robots, moving hats and songs of love, death and the uncanny as we explore the darkest reaches of your mind. Compered by Hugo, the disembodied ventriloquist’s doll.
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. 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.
Click on the thumbnails on this page to see high-res images.
Venue
8:00pm and 9:40pm (show lasts 75 minutes)
5 May 2010
Marlborough Theatre
Brighton
Tickets (£8/£7 -- on sale soon from Brighton Festival Fringe)
Professor Elemental
Sarah Angliss (Spacedog) on theremin
Spacedog with Clara 2.0 (photo Melita Dennet)
The badgermingo - the results of one of Prof. Elemental's taxidermy experiments
An early test with Hugo -- the 1930s singing vent doll.
Professor Elemental singing Cup of Brown Joy
Press
Click on the thumbnails on this page to see high-res images.
For more information about this Brighton Fringe show, please contact Sarah Angliss (Spacedog): sarah [dot] spacedog [at] gmail [dot] com. Read more about Spacedog shows, robots and reviews on this website. Hear more of Elemental’s work on his MySpace site.
I’ll be showing off the latest version of my carillon (automatic bell-playing rig) at the Kinetica Art Fair, P3 Gallery, 23 Marylebone Road, London, 5-7 February 2010. You’ll find me on the ArtHertz’ stall Electricity and Ghosts, which gives a sneak preview of our upcoming live show at Battersea Power Station.
Here, it will be playing an electric lullaby, inspired by a delightfully unsettling poem I discovered on the pages of The Electric Age (Vol 1, 1930), a pioneering gadget magazine published by the Electrical Association for Women. The words of the lullaby are inscripted on the piece, along with fragments of domestic circuitry from the time.
I’ll be posting images of the new carillon in a week or so – it features a new figure which may interest anyone who has enjoyed watching my other robotic dolls in action. 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.
If you’re into computer games, electronic music or other geekery, you might be interested in Shift Run Stop, a new weekly podcast from Leila Johnston and Roo Reynolds. There are different guests every week – you can hear them talking to Adam Curtis, Maggie Philbin, Ariane Sherine, Dave Schneider and many others.
Episode 9 features 8-bit sound artist extraordinaire Paul B Davis discussing NES cartridge reprogramming and cassette tape DJing, and me talking about robots, clogs and infrasound. Resident snack expert Dave Green also gives a lay person’s overview of farmyard animals in chocolate.
I had a great time at Shift Run Stop and was really struck by the common ground between Paul and me. I’m dying to enter a cassette tape DJ-off (if that’s what you call it) and am already respooling my Klaus Wunderlich.
This is the Mk III robotic bell rig, designed to make it easier to take the bells to venues -- earlier versions saw the bells inside a shed or scattered around a gallery, in dozens of separate boxes. Here, I’ve mounted them on an old shop fitting, salvaged by Vivien Angliss from a place in Bedfordshire that was closing down.
The Mk III bells had their first outing in the Malborough Theatre’s inaugural Steampunk night (Brighton -- curated by Tarik Elmoutawakil). I’ve also taken them to the Gasworks Gallery, Vauxhall (for a Resonance FM night, curated by Ed Baxter) and to a Spacedog night at the Freebutt, Brighton. I’ve been using them quite a bit in my own compositions for bells, saw, theremin and vocals. But here’s a video of the bells playing a classic -- it’s Troika, from Prokovief’s Lieutenant Kije. Over the next few weeks, I’ll endeavour to post more videos of the bells in action.
Technical notes
The bells are being percussed by servo-driven, spring-mounted beaters. These are controlled by a LynxMotion SSC-32 servo control board, which is receiving serial signals from Max/MSP. As you can see, the springs make the beaters remarkably responsive -- they can even tackle the odd semiquaver. See also the Mk I version of the bells, in Swinging London -- my automaton show for the South Bank Overture Weekend.
I'm performing live at the Lovebytes Festival, Sheffield, QEDCon, Manchester, and the Catalyst Club, Brighton, and composing music for CE3K-inspired Electronic Encounters and some other forthcoming collaborations (stay tuned for news). I'm also hard at work, re-engineering some Spacedog robots, and selecting films for Rocket Lolly, Spacedog's two-hander with Project Moonbase at the Edinburgh Science Festival in April.
News: January 2012
Juice for the Baby, Spacedog's debut album, is here! I'm ducking out of the Kinetica Art Faire this year but am huddled indoors, writing, sleuthing (investigating a recording in the archives) and devising a new biologically-inspired musical instrument - all will be revealed soon.
News: December 2011
Juice for the Baby, Spacedog's debut album, launches in mid-December. Join us for the launch gigs at the Marlborough, Brighton, on 9 December and the Horse Hospital, London, on 14 December.
News: November 2011
A busy month writing and editing the forthcoming Spacedog album - stay tuned for news.
News: October 2011
I'm focusing on my writing this month (so am quite the hermit) but I'm squeezing in the occasional live performance here and there.
I'm looking forward to working with Helen Keen in her Spacetacular on 20th. I'm writing a code-based work for the new label Chordpunch and some owlish music for that fine wordsmith Professor Elemental.
Spacedog are booked into the studio at the end of the month to complete work on our album.
News: September 2011
A busy month writing, preparing a get-together of maker musicians for the Brighton Maker Faire After-show party. I've also been electrifying a teapot for the Chi-Tek - an exhibition by MzTek of female tech artists at the V&A. And with my fellow Spacedog Stephen Hisock, I made an appearance on the 10th Anniversary edition of BBC Click.
News: August 2011
The Spacedog song For Laika is now available on iTunes (and the album is on its way). Meanwhile, we've been busy preparing our set for Green Man, including the first outing of our torch song for Tommy Cooper.
I'm procrastinating over a teapot which I'm going to electrify for a MzTek event at the Victoria and Albert Museum in September.
I took a short trip to a very rainy Edinburgh Fringe where I played at an event for Edinburgh Skeptics in the Royal Observatory and made some plans for a Spacedog show next summer.
Apart from that, I've been busy writing. More news on that shortly, I hope...
News: July 2011
I'm interviewed by Leila Johnston in this month's Wired UK magazine and will be appearing with my fellow Spacedogs at a Wired: The Future of Music on 20 July.
I've rounded up a bumper crop of links and soundclips for my BBC Radio 4 doc The Bird Fancyer's Delight, which is broadcast on 5 and 9 July and is also available on Listen Again. Thanks for all your cheery emails about the doc, to ProjectMoonbase for mentioning it in their podcast PMB038 and for the many national papers who gave the documentary such lovely reviews - I'm glad people enjoyed it! On Sunday 10 July, the doc was featured on Graham Seed's Pick of the Week (Radio 4). A good week!
My latest collaboration with Richard Wiseman is a free and fun magic trick for your iPhone. It's called Paranormality and it's been put together for the launch of his book by the same name in the US. Thanks to Phillis on Derrren Brown's blog for giving the app a mention - thousands of people have now downloaded it and are busy bamboozling their friends.
News: June 2011
Playing theremin for Louise Colborne's homage to Loie Fuller (pioneering cybernetic dancer c1900) and composing sounds for Sonus, an homage to the analogue age with Spacedog, ArtHertz, Rushes Soho Shorts Festival and Ridley Scott Associates. Discovering how easy (or difficult) it is to publicise events in 2011 without Twitter - will report back!
Getting ready for BEAM - a brand new festival of electronics and music at Brunel University (24-26 June). I'll be speaking, running a workshop on optical flow and performing live with my fellow Spacedogs. I'll also be playing a short theremin set at the Speaky Spokey, a new arts salon in Brighton (Wed 22 June).
Putting the finishing touches to a sonic-themed BBC Radio 4 documentary, with producer Neil McCarthy, due for transmission on 5 July 2011.
Presenting a workshop for Hack Circus at Interesting, in the Conway Hall, London, 18 June, and performing theremin at a family day at the Science Museum, 19 June.
