AlgoMech 2017
When: 8th – 12th November 2017
Where: Sheffield, South Yorkshire
£: Tickets cost from £9. A festival concert pass costs £30
What is it?
AlgoMech festival, a celebration of algorithms and mechanisms in the arts, will take place in Sheffield from Wednesday 8th to Sunday 12th November.
Visitors should expect robot musicians, hacked accordions and gramophones, e-textiles, live coding, kinetic art, sonic machines and a full-on algorithmic rave. There will also be a weekend of performances, talks and workshops which celebrate mechanisms and algorithms across music and the arts.
65daysofstatic, known for blending guitars, drums and technology into huge songs, are this year’s headline act. AlgoMech will also be hosting three premiere shows of their new audio/visual project Decomposition Theory or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Demand the Future. This work centres around algorithmic composition and procedural audio, pushing their sound further into uncertain territory, with every show being different. They’ll be supported by a new algorithmic collaboration between aggrobeat band Blood Sport and algoraver Heavy Lifting aka Lucy Cheesman.
goto80’s robot music
Continuing the algorithmic theme, the festival will also feature an Algorave or ‘algorithmic rave’. Algoraves are parties where all the music is made with algorithms, live coded by human musicians, with all the code behind it projected for your pleasure, while it is being written.
Informally coordinated from Sheffield, Algorave has spread into a worldwide movement, reaching 50 cities over the past five years.
AlgoMech will be taking it to the next level with immersive algorithmic visuals, and handmade music-generating mechanical systems and robots mixed in with the algorithms. This will include a duet between renowned ‘chiptune’ artist goto80 and a robotic hand, both typing at old school Commodore 64 computers from the 1980’s.
Sarah Kenchington’s Mechanical Orchestra
Sonic Pattern, a seated concert, will feature musicians who get hands-on, building their own mechanisms to make other-worldly music, including hacked gramophones and accordions, pedal-power violins and other sonic machines. Musicians will include Leafcutter John with new work treating peak district millstones as records, turning them into music, and Sarah Kenchington, bringing her Mechanical Orchestra from Glasgow.
The festival will take place at the Millennium Gallery and Access Space venues in Sheffield city centre. This is the second edition of the festival, and is curated by Alex McLean, co-founder of the Algorave movement.
More info: algomech.com/2017