Exploring human relationships with technology

A few weeks ago, we opened applications for Black women and non-binary music creators based in South West to participate in our 2023 Artist Development Project. 

This year’s programme will centre on a paid commission from Saffron to create a musical work exploring the relationship between humans and technology, a theme we hoped would be broad enough to inspire a range of creative responses.

Technology is a broad term and can have many meanings: your phone, a kettle or even ‘natural’ technology such as herbal medicines. Since the first stone tools, people have always lived in a push-and-pull relationship with tech. It shapes us as much as we shape it – although ‘who’ gets to shape technology is another question!

This brief is an invitation to examine human-tech relations and the opportunities and challenges they present, in the hope that it can encourage more intentional and inclusive ways of engaging with tech in the future. It is not intended to restrict your creativity, nor does it require any prior technological knowledge.

To help unpack our brief a little and inspire creative thinking, our Artist & Label coordinator, Hari has compiled a list of audio-based art projects that explore this theme.

1) THE VOICE OF A LOST GOD RETURNS BY DANIELLE BRATHWAITE-SHIRLEY

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley is an incredible artist whose work combines live music, painting, game development, web design and augmented reality to archive the lives of Black Trans people – both around her and throughout history. Her latest work The Voice of a Lost God Returns is “an investigation into building mythology around Trans Spirituality and Love between two people who were never made for each other.”

2) PROTOPIA DREAMS (REST) BY MONIKA BIELSKYTE, STUDIO DOSAGE, SARAHSSON, DELARAM KAMAREH AND NYSKA

Where most SciFi visions today erase the importance of humans’ relationship with the living world – focusing instead on isolated humans in brutalist dystopian cityscapes – this project by Monika Bielskyte and Bristol’s Studio Dosage engenders a story world exploring futures of rest and sensuality outside of colonial, cis-hetero-normative bounds. Showing queer bodies resting in their home, grown into the living world rather than built on top of it, PROTOPIA DREAMS (rest) offers a glimpse into the future of love. 

The piece is soundtracked by Saffron Springboard participant Sarahsson and features a Sufi poem sung by Delaram Kamareh as well as Amazonian field recordings from Nyksa.

3) ACTS 1 & II BY SEIGFRIED KOMIDASHI

This 26-minute found-footage and rap piece by Seigfriend Komidashi is inspired by a hoax email sent around about a Nigerian cosmonaut trapped in space after the fall of the Soviet Union. A play on Gil Scott Heron’s ‘The Revolution Will Not be Televised’ at 18 minutes highlights how technology has changed both our personal lives and political sphere.

4) CALLED TO RESPOND BY SHENECE ORETHA

Produced during a period of isolated residency at the Cell Project Space Gallery in London this ‘online participatory performance’ is the first iteration of a two-part project by multi-disciplinary artist Shenece Oretha.

Called to Respond intends to provide an ‘interactive and holding breathing space’ incorporating sounds, words and moving image. Hover your mouse over the interactive surface to activate an inhaling and exhaling speaker, provoking a rattling of bones on its surface as words appear and dissolve across the screen in an ‘improvisational chorus.

Applications for Saffron’s 2023 Artist Development Programme close at 6 pm on Monday 14th November. Download the application pack using the button below.

Saffron’s 2022 Artist Development Programme is supported by the PRS Foundation as part of its Talent Development Partner network.