Sing The Body Electric Collection 1

Immersive Exhibition

Please note: This event took place in Nov 2024

With four artworks that explore tactile contact and gesture, this unique collection looks at how our bodies engage with the people and environments that surround us.

From invisible forms to be found in mid-air to a shifting mirror of many bodies matching your movements, come and explore what it means to find a story with your hands - and imagine your way into the sensation of touching someone else’s skin.

“The entire body thinks. You don’t think with the mind; you think with the entire fleshed existence.”

— Rosi Braidotti

A blurry black and white photograph of a person, mid-movement

Vast Body

Installation
Mixed Reality

To move, to dance, to flow, to see ourselves, but most of all, to see others; Vast Body is a collaborative experiment on movement.

Through some kind of magic mirror, Vast Body connects your physical body with the digital incarnation of many others, offering the chance to briefly inhabit alternative bodies through movement. Drawing on timely questions of identity, empathy and the constant whirling of our relationships, it is a playful, visually arresting act of imagination.

Vast Body is an installation you enter alone. In a screened off area, you face a projection of yourself. When you move your upper body, a wave of projections of people on a screen mimic your moves. Dance, turn around, wave, or move how you feel comfortable.

There is no beginning, middle and end - you can enter and leave at any time. The more you move, the more bodies you encounter.

Vincent Morisset and Caroline Robert

Vincent Morisset and Caroline Robert, from studio AATOAA in Montreal, are known for their works which combine craftsmanship and technology. In each of their projects, visitors are invited to become participants. These experiences put into perspective our relationship with others and the way we look at the world around us. The astonishing universe of Caroline and Vincent is embodied in different forms (interactive videos, installations in public spaces, XR, net art).

In the past, they have collaborated artistically with Arcade Fire, Skrillex and Sigur Rós. Their creations have been presented at the Venice Biennale, Sundance, SXSW and Japan Media Art Festivals. They have been the recipient of an Emmy Award, a Grammy and several Webbys.

In a dimly lit room a woman sits at a desk wearing a headset. Her back is to us.

Turbulence / Jamais Vu

Mixed Reality
Virtual Reality

XR artist Ben Andrews lives with a disability called vestibular migraine, which impacts his sense of orientation, balance and spatial awareness - and affects his experience of reality. Everything familiar suddenly seems new and different.

In this intimate mixed reality work, Andrews uses a VR headset and a depth camera to explore his own experience, asking audiences to reflect on the fragility of perception and the beauty of our ever-moving world.

You enter a private space, sit down at a desk, and put on a VR headset. Guided by the artist Ben's voice, you complete a series of simple tasks.

As time passes, the animated virtual world becomes unstable and difficult to navigate. This creates an imaginative bridge between you and Ben's experience of the world.

Duration: 10 minutes

Ben Joseph Andrews & Emma Roberts

Ben and Emma are a producer/director team working in location-based virtual realities. Their work merges immersive technologies within bespoke sensory environments to generate unique experiences that verge on the transcendent and sublime.

Their collaboration began with The Moon Is Gone And All The Kings Are Dead, commissioned for the 50th anniversary of the Victorian College of the Arts. The duo has also completed two projects for City of Melbourne: sci-fi installation allthestarstheybleedtogether (2016) and STARLESS (2017).

Before Turbulence, they made Gondwana - winner of the AIDC 2018 Greenpeace VR prize, which was selected for the Sheffield Doc/Fest Alternate Realities Talent Market (2019) and the Cannes XR Development Showcase (2020).

A still of a woman's face. Her eyes downcast.

I You We Me Us

Installation

This double monitor, silent film transcribes sensual expressions of intimacy, connection, love and hope – considering the potential of images, words and movement to convey visceral emotion and warmth.

Hands of family members, friends and lovers make gestures, play, move, touch and write small notes, interspersed with depictions of plants and time-lapsed flowers held under ultraviolet lights. Filmed by Salmon on 16mm colour film in her Glasgow flat, the work explores expressive kinship, love between a child and a parent, inter-generational, multi-gender affection, respect and care.

I You Me We Us is silent film presented on two stacked monitors. You can walk around the piece, sit on low seats, or lie down next to the moving images.

Duration: 17 minutes

Margaret Salmon

Margaret Salmon lives and works in Glasgow. Concerned with a shifting constellation of relations, such as those between camera and subject or human and animal, her work often examines the gendered, emotive dynamics of social interactions and representational forms.

Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at institutions including Secession, (2023), DCA (2018/19), Tramway (2018) Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (2015); Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, USA (2011); Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (2007); and Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2007).

Her work has been featured in film festivals and major international survey exhibitions, including The Yokohama Triennial (2024), The British Art Show 9 (2021/22), Glasgow International (2021), Berlin Biennale (2010) and Venice Biennale (2007) London Film Festival (2018, 2016, 2014). Salmon won the inaugural MaxMara Art Prize for Women in 2006, and the 2021 Paul Hamlyn Foundation Awards for Artists.

A woman wearing headphones and a mask stands before a black hole, feeling what's inside.

Invisible Sculptures (보이지 않는 조각들, 2018-2021)

Installation
Multi-sensory

Air Sculpture uses a technology that might not be suitable for people with pacemakers, people with hearing aids, or those who are pregnant. We advise these visitors to not take part in Air Sculpture - if this is the case for you when you arrive please let the Gallery Assistants know. Visitors with hearing aids are welcome to remove these and then take part, this is not a hearing-based work.

A series of sculptures that can only be “seen” by engaging through senses other than vision.

The series consists of perceptible objects that embody physical space but are completely invisible to the naked eye. Experience two pieces from this ongoing series – Sound Sculpture and Air Sculpture - then have a go at making the invisible form out of clay.

By challenging sighted peoples' dependence on vision, Song expands the way in which we encounter and understand the world around us.

This work is two separate pieces – a Sound Sculpture and an Air Sculpture.

For Air Sculpture, you place one or two hands above the plinth. You will feel pulses of air. Use touch and your imagination to find, feel and perceive the form of the sculpture.

For Sound sculpture you put on head phones and place one or two hands into the darkened space in front of you. The sound will change as your hands move. Use hearing and your imagination to find, feel and perceive the form of the sculpture.

Once you think you’ve felt the invisible form, sit down at a table and make it out of clay. Your work will form part of a collective response to Invisible Sculptures.

Due to the use of Ultrasonics, the Air Sculpture is not suitable for anyone who is pregnant, has a pace maker or is wearing a hearing aid. Please let a General Assistant know if this applies to you and they will turn the piece off.

Yeseul Song

Yeseul Song is a South Korean-born, NYC-based artist who uses technology, interaction, and participation as art media. Her work uncovers creative possibilities of non-visual senses through inventive sensory languages that advocate for imaginative and inclusive views of the world. Her work questions how we normally perceive, think, and interact through novel perceptual experiences. She explores and occupies non-traditional public spaces as well as institutions to challenge commonly held ideas about access and accessibility of art.

Her non-visual interactive experiences have inspired tens of thousands of people at indoor and outdoor spaces, including Clayarch Art Museum (South Korea), Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum (D.C.), Kansong Art Museum Daegu (Korea), Museum of Arts and Design (NY), Art in Odd Places (NY), and public spaces in NYC. Yeseul is an Assistant Arts Professor at NYU Tisch School of the Arts’ Interactive Telecommunications Program & Interactive Media Arts (ITP/IMA).

A close up of a hand on flesh under a yellow and grey filter. — Artwork by Tony Stiles

What is Undershed?

Undershed is a new gallery for showing the best immersive and interactive artwork from all over the world. The first of its kind in Bristol and rare across the UK – this dedicated space will stage themed exhibitions that change every few months.

Undershed is a place to come together and experiment with new forms of storytelling. Come on in, keep an open mind and tell us what you think.

Sing The Body Electric Collection 1

Suitable for 12 years and over