We briefed artists to produce work that combined the growing interest in physical hand-made products and cheap emerging technology.
Many artists, whilst appreciating the facility of digital solutions, have returned to a hands-on approach as this incorporates a more human and integrated experience for the audienceand maker.
From a production / aesthetic perspective the themes we wanted to explore were the interactionbetween digital and analogue, the manifestation of authenticity and the hand of the maker, genuine diversity and the development of new audiences.
The term ‘contact’ is the starting point for human communication. A range of tools connects the physical world with the virtual.
Sociologist Richard Sennett makes a case for "man as maker" - harking back to the workshops of the medieval guilds to prove Kant's dictum that,"the hand is the window on to the mind".
Sennett proposes it is only through making things, by trying and failing and repeating that we formulate a creative and forward moving artistic practice.
We invited visual artists, film-makers, sound designers & musicians to collaborate on work which explores these themes and the relationship between analogue and digital.