A sketch for a new artwork - an interactive tablecloth that supports convivial gatherings around seasonality and kinship.

 

Rituals and Robots

Rituals and Robots is a new project being developed by the artist Rachel Jacobs, building a platform for participatory engagement that brings people together to consider the future, inviting thinking, participation and making in response to the question “will we need rituals or robots when the future comes?”

Through a process of research & development the project aims to create:

  • 3 new interactive ‘slow’ sustainable artworks, each acting as a ‘totem’, ‘punctum’ or ‘trigger point’ for public interventions and convivial gatherings
  • An ethical, sustainable & trustworthy online space, building an informal community to share ideas & positive visions of the future through short stories, essays, videos and recorded conversations.
  • 7 public workshops & convivial gatherings to take place across 4 regions in England
  • A final event in Nottingham

Concept:
As a pioneer of digital and interactive arts in the 1990s, I come from a tradition of developing disruptive, radical approaches to working with interactive technologies. When I started this work, the ephemeral nature of digital, virtual & networked technology was more in the hands of the users & makers, providing exciting new opportunities to make visible the invisible, initiate experiences of connectedness, magic, enchantment & play. Since the advancing corporatisation of the digital world, the assimilation of our real, visceral experiences into corporate, privatised spaces has been normalised, particularly in respect to AI, robotics, VR, automated systems – increasing polarisation & disconnection from each other, our environments, seasons & non-human nature.

‘Rituals and Robots’ pushes back, reflecting on the disruptive, imaginative and radical traditions of this past work & exploring new ways of making by: – building an artistic platform for sharing ideas & positive visions of the future by extending the face-to-face & online participatory methods that have grown out of my past work – exploring ways of making slow, ethical and environmentally sustainable technologies, towards a healthier, participatory arts practice.

The Artworks:
I will be making 3 interactive, robotic, ‘slow’ sustainable artworks, that embed technology, data and narratives into textiles, clay, food, metal & wood. The early ideas for these works include:
– Creating a walking device that can be passed between participants to help us witness & mark the changes & entanglements of our bodies & environments over time.
– An interactive tablecloth that celebrates kinship, seasonality & food
– A participatory map representing the 3 places, ecologies & communities where the project takes place (Nottingham, London, Cumbria)