Castlefield Gallery Spotlight
Professor Matthew Cobb at The Festival of the Brain 2023
Matthew Cobb is Professor of Zoology at the University of Manchester where he studies the sense of smell in maggots and Neanderthals. He is also an author of popular science books, including “The Idea of the Brain” (2020).
“I will look at the fundamental question of why are we interested in the brain. In particular, I will show how we came to focus on this lump of apparently inert squishy stuff in our heads, and how our ideas about what the brain does have changed over time, with technology driving our interpretations. Yesterday, we thought the brain was like a telephone exchange, now we think it is like a computer, and tomorrow?”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Cobb
The Festival of the Brain took place on March 11th 2023 at The Whitaker Museum and Art Gallery Rawtenstall. This day long festival featured a variety of guest speakers each of whom presented different areas of expertise and viewpoints all relating to aspects and ideas of the brain.
The festival took place during Clements solo show ‘Everyone In This Room is Connected to Everyone in this Room’ at the gallery (Feb 24 – May 7 2023) where she explored visual representations of the brain alongside AR and AI interactions and films.
Filming by LGBTV https://www.lgbtv.co.uk
Edited by Jo Clements
Dr Libby Heaney at The Festival of the Brain 2023
Libby Heaney is a London based artist, who works across moving image, performance, installation, sculpture and print, usually combining these with advanced technologies such as machine learning, game engines & quantum computing – a new type of computer that processes information on particles following the weird laws of quantum physics.
Heaney is widely known as the first person to make art with quantum computers. Her artwork Ent- has been exhibited across continents, has received substantial international press in places like Der Welt, Wallpaper* and Spike Art, and received the Lumen Prize Immersive Environments Award in 2022.
Title: From binary to non-binary: quantum computing and art
Overview: Imagine programming a slimeball. Taking a gooey, entangled, shapeshifting reality and massaging it in precisely the right way to solve problems that could never be solved on even the largest binary, digital computer.
This is quantum computing – a powerful new type of computer – that is being intensely pursued by big tech companies and governments around the globe. Yet hardly anyone is discussing the forthcoming quantum revolution. In this talk, I’ll use my slimy quantum art practice to unpack quantum computing. I will lift the lid on how big tech companies plan to use these tools and the radical potential of quantum computing in the arts.
Cover photo by Andrea Rossetti
The Festival of the Brain took place on March 11th 2023 at The Whitaker Museum and Art Gallery Rawtenstall. This day long festival featured a variety of guest speakers each of whom presented different areas of expertise and viewpoints all relating to aspects and ideas of the brain.
The festival took place during Clements solo show ‘Everyone In This Room is Connected to Everyone in this Room’ at the gallery (Feb 24 – May 7 2023) where she explored visual representations of the brain alongside AR and AI interactions and films.
Filming by LGBTV https://www.lgbtv.co.uk
Edited by Jo Clements
Dr Karen Lander at The Festival of the Brain 2023
Dr Karen Lander is an experimental cognitive psychologist. Her research has focused on face perception and recognition. She is also interested in why some people are better at recognising faces than others and the application of her work to criminal identification and computer animation of faces.
Her talk provides an overview of what we know about face perception and recognition addressing such questions as – why face recognition is important? what happens when face recognition goes wrong? how do we store information about faces in memory? and what makes a face attractive? We will look at face ‘illusions’ and see how well you can recognise faces.
https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/persons/karen.lander
The Festival of the Brain took place on March 11th 2023 at The Whitaker Museum and Art Gallery Rawtenstall. This day long festival featured a variety of guest speakers each of whom presented different areas of expertise and viewpoints all relating to aspects and ideas of the brain.
The festival took place during Clements solo show ‘Everyone In This Room is Connected to Everyone in this Room’ at the gallery (Feb 24 – May 7 2023) where she explored visual representations of the brain alongside AR and AI interactions and films.
Filming by LGBTV https://www.lgbtv.co.uk
Edited by Jo Clements
Amanda Sutton at The Festival of the Brain 2023
Amanda Sutton is the Director of Venture Arts an award-winning visual arts charity based in Hulme, Manchester.
“Our vision is a world in which people with learning disabilities are empowered, celebrated, included and valued in the arts, culture and society.
Our mission is to shape a new cultural landscape where people with learning disabilities reach their potential as artists, curators, critics, audiences, participants and advocates.”
The Festival of the Brain took place on March 11th 2023 at The Whitaker Museum and Art Gallery Rawtenstall. This day long festival featured a variety of guest speakers each of whom presented different areas of expertise and viewpoints all relating to aspects and ideas of the brain.
The festival took place during Clements solo show ‘Everyone In This Room is Connected to Everyone in this Room’ at the gallery (Feb 24 – May 7 2023) where she explored visual representations of the brain alongside AR and AI interactions and films.
Filming by LGBTV https://www.lgbtv.co.uk
Edited by Jo Clements
Rachel Mason at The Festival of the Brain 2023
Rachel Mason works collaboratively to create visual imagery, including photography and moving image. She has shown collaborative projects at Open Eye Gallery and The Turnpike. Rachel is also FACT Liverpool’s Learning Producer, leading on production of FACT’s artistic programme within the Justice System and supporting on the young people’s programme. Whether working on long term projects, facilitating workshops or creating spaces for people to connect, her projects all revolve around establishing a dialogue and working cross disciplinary.
How I See It is a collaborative art project between Rachel and Anita, who has synaesthesia. Her synaesthesia manifests as every single word having a correlating internal image, some photographic and some 3D forms. Most are not a direct link to the word itself, with some words (mainly people’s names) producing a more prominent image, which is easier to articulate than others. This is a process based project learning about synaesthesia, articulation and representation through dialogue and photographic exchange
https://www.rachelmasonphoto.co.uk
The Festival of the Brain took place on March 11th 2023 at The Whitaker Museum and Art Gallery Rawtenstall. This day long festival featured a variety of guest speakers each of whom presented different areas of expertise and viewpoints all relating to aspects and ideas of the brain.
The festival took place during Clements solo show ‘Everyone In This Room is Connected to Everyone in this Room’ at the gallery (Feb 24 – May 7 2023) where she explored visual representations of the brain alongside AR and AI interactions and films.
Filming by LGBTV https://www.lgbtv.co.uk
Edited by Jo Clements
After This After (2023)
Giclee Print on aquarelle rag paper (28cm x 21cm) Limited edition of 10.
An abstract sculpture represented in velvet and glitter is presented as a still life and photographed.
Deliberately referencing Dutch flower paintings but devoid of their inherent symbolism and structured meaning, this mediated work conversely invites an open-minded, visceral response.
The ambiguous undefined form plays with the idea that not all thoughts amount to knowledge and not all knowledge requires thought.
Documentary by Maria Ruban to accompany the exhibition Everyone in this Room is Connected to Everyone in this Room
The Glittering Centrepiece of the Whole Fucking World
The Glittering Centrepiece of the Whole Fucking World (2023) velvet, copper, expanding foam, scaffolding. 160cm x 100cm
Photo Credit @JulesLister
This work is constructed from hand sewn velvet representations of the human brain arranged as a ‘brain garden’ where colours are organised into groups, or tribes, or displayed as lone actors existing amongst those tribes. This surreal display highlights difference, individualism, nationalism, exclusion and suggests ways in which groups of minds can be viewed as beautiful or disturbing dependent on social, political and cultural constructs. The work explores knowledge gatekeepers, lone voices, feelings of powerlessness, group rebellion and the power structures that uphold harmful narratives and misinformation.
The work is inspired by my ongoing research into visualisations of the brain, how we value knowledge, both human and otherwise, concerns about the brain being the last bastion of privacy (particularly in light of the advent/threat of brain chip technology) the synchronicity of brain waves between like-minded people and the reclamation of land via plant intelligences that science is only just beginning to understand.
What Has Been Comes Not Again
What Has Been Comes Not Again (2022) 110cm x 160 cm giclee print on Aquarelle Rag paper
Photo Credit @JulesLister
An arrangement of hand sewn velvet brains are presented as a still life. Plastic insects infect the scene and an avocado sits in the background. Inspired by Dutch flower paintings and the surrealist movement the scene depicts my interest in autobiographical artificial displays that presents objects that are simultaneously beautiful and disturbing.
This tableau is a meditation on the macabre and the mundane, where objects, once alive, are rendered artificial and inert. The velvet brains, meticulously crafted yet lifeless, evoke a profound sense of loss—the death of organic intellect reduced to mere artifice. This stark imagery conjures an underlying dread of artificial intelligence and the erosion of human intellectual sovereignty.
The Machine Stops
The Machine Stops (2022) giclee print on Aquarelle Rag paper 110 x160cm
Photo Credit @JulesLister
An array of hand-sewn velvet brains are arranged as a still life, juxtaposed with objects that allude to autobiographical moments from my working-class upbringing, setting the scene for a commentary on the accessibility of knowledge—or the lack thereof—for aspiring artists from non-traditional backgrounds.
Each piece of ephemera is carefully selected and strategically placed, creating a dialogue with the central still life arrangement while maintaining a deliberate separation. This juxtaposition not only highlights the disparity between the traditional and the contemporary but also underscores my personal journey through a landscape often marked by barriers to knowledge and artistic expression – an exploration of identity, class, and the often-surreal intersection of personal history with broader cultural narratives.
What if we’d never known this?
What if we’d never known this? (2023) velvet, expanding foam, mdf, crin 100cm x 80cm x 5cm
Two velvet brains are attached to, yet float above, a set of velvet emoji lips—the universal symbol for flirting. This whimsical arrangement channels the mysteries of sexual attraction and the unpredictable consequences of choice, all while engaging with the modern visual lexicon of love. The piece playfully explores how our deepest cognitive processes intertwine with the contemporary shorthand of emojis, blending the cerebral with the sensual in a way that both delights and provokes. It’s a cheeky nod to the enigma of desire, capturing the tension between intellect and emotion in a world where a simple icon can carry a universe of meaning.
Photo Credit @JulesLister
What if you’d never seen that?
What if you’d never seen that? (2023) velvet, expanding foam, mdf, crin 80cm x 80cm x 5cm
A pair of emoji eyes oddly grafted onto a brain ‘nose,’ gaze to the right, reflecting the troubling ascent of right-wing ideologies globally, filtered and warped through the lens of social media. The work critiques how these platforms distort reality, reducing complex sociopolitical shifts to simplistic visuals. With its uncanny fusion of emoji and brain, the piece underscores the disquieting impact of digital shorthand on our collective consciousness, making us question what we’re truly seeing and understanding in the age of social media.
Photo Credit @JulesLister
Nest
(2023) velvet, copper, expanding foam, mdf. 150cm x 40cm x30cm
Photo credit @JulesLister
Would you Adam and Eve it?
Would you Adam and Eve it? (2023) velvet, expanding foam, artificial tree, copper cable, hessian, artificial grass.
photo credit @JulesLister
Meets The Minimal Degree of Creativity
Meets The Minimal Degree of Creativity (2023) Black 3.0 acrylic on canvas, velvet, expanding foam, silver duct tape
This work is a reaction to the recent banana saga by artist Maurizio Cattelan, which sparked a lawsuit from an artist who claimed to be the first to stick fruit to a wall with duct tape. The judge’s decision in Cattelan’s favor, declaring that the piece “Meets The Minimal Degree of Creativity,” invites you to ponder the ever-blurred boundaries of artistic originality. Adding another layer, the black paint used here is Black 3.0 by Stuart Semple, a direct response to Anish Kapoor’s monopoly over the blackest, most light-absorbing pigment.
I’m fascinated by the question of who owns an idea and the absurdity of two artists clashing over duct-taped bananas and my intention here is to critique the ludicrous nature of such disputes through this humorous take on the commodification of ideas and the often arbitrary standards that define artistic value.
Succession #7
Succession #7 gold (2023) velvet, expanding foam, mdf, crin, 3D printed PLA, sand.
Succession is a term coined by botanist Frederick Clements (no relation). Clements described plant succession as a developmental process through which the community underwent a well-defined series of stages that ultimately resulted in a mature, or climax, community. The climax community was both an indicator and expression of the climatic conditions that determined it.
This work plays with the idea of Succession, as described by 2 Clements’s, by imagining a future event whereby all human life has been extinguished but regrows as organic brains that exist without body, controlled movement or obvious purpose. The work also takes cues from science fiction where fears about AI and machine learning taking over from a corporeal humanity abound (The Matrix, The Machine Stops).
3 of the brains have implanted NFC ‘Brain Chips’ each of which narrates a story, in augmented reality, that humanises individual brains.
Photo credit @JulesLister
Succession #1-6
Succession #1-6 (2023) velvet, expanding foam, mdf, crin, 3D printed PLA, sand.
Succession, a term coined by botanist Frederick Clements (no relation), described plant succession as a developmental process through which a community undergoes a well-defined series of stages culminating in a mature, or climax, community. This climax community is both an indicator and an expression of the climatic conditions that shaped it.
In this work, I play with the idea of Succession, envisioning a future event where all human life has been extinguished, only to regrow as organic brains existing without bodies, controlled movement, or obvious purpose. This concept draws inspiration from science fiction, where fears about AI and machine learning supplanting corporeal humanity are pervasive, as seen in works like “The Matrix” and “The Machine Stops.”
Fifteen of these brains are implanted with NFC (near-field communication) ‘Brain Chips,’ each narrating a story in augmented reality. These stories serve to both humanize and haunt the surreally isolated brains, adding a layer of eerie intimacy. The work examines the intersection of organic life and technological advancement, reflecting on the potential future of human evolution and the haunting spectre of a world where our physical forms are rendered obsolete.
Photo credit @JulesLister
Jo’s 90
Jo’s 90 (2023) Single Channel Video.
1 hour 30 minutes, colour, silent.
A 90-minute film inspired by science fiction narratives where vast swaths of knowledge are instantaneously absorbed via an external device. In each of the 90 scenes I pose in a different outfit, creating a distinct fantasy persona against 90 scenes selected from my archive of found footage. Accompanying texts describe 90 ‘facts’ stripped from their original contexts, underscoring a process. of fragmentation and reassembly of information. Animated brains proliferate with each frame and each piece of acquired knowledge, gradually overwhelming the screen and obscuring the backdrops.
The work explores how artists amass and discard knowledge in their quest for deeper meaning in their work. The artist, donning a refashioned 1960s hairdryer hood as a battle mask—both an instrument of knowledge acquisition and a shield against it—embodies this tension.
The film is a critique of the mechanisms through which knowledge is distributed and valued, and the societal constructs that dictate our engagement with it. The work’s layering of personas and facts offers a rich, complex commentary on identity, conformity, and the relentless pursuit of understanding in an increasingly fragmented world.
A Brick That Came Through the Window in the Dead of Night
A Brick That Came Through The Window in the Dead of Night (2022) 4 minutes, colour, sound
Using AI technology, this film employs a process where deeply personal, heartbreaking texts, that refer to events following my mother’s death, are fed into a GPT-4 program, instructing the computer to generate new narratives.
The absurd, omnipresent figure of an animated ‘sinister’ coloured brick with the initials BC carved into it (standing for either Before Computers or Before Cancer) serves as a visual metaphor for the intrusion of technology into intimate human moments.
The piece is an exploration of how technology reframes and reinterprets our memories and feelings. The juxtaposition of heart-wrenching human stories and found film footage with the mechanical reproduction of AI narrations raises questions about authenticity, empathy, and the evolving relationship between humans and machines. This work challenges viewers to consider the implications of AI in the realm of human emotion, suggesting a future where our most personal narratives are mediated by the cold logic of digital algorithms.