Category: News

Visit The Decision Machine on 2 or 3 June, at The Vestibules (Park Street side) City Hall, College Green, Bristol BS1 5TR 

Thurs 2nd June 10:00 – 19:30 and Fri 3rd June 10:00 – 18:00

FREE ENTRY

The Decision Machine is an interactive installation as the result of an artist residency by Ellie Shipman with Jean Golding Institute at the University of Bristol from June 2021 – February 2022. Ellie is a participatory artist and illustrator living in Bristol and working around the world, spending a year in Vietnam in 2019. Ellie regularly collaborates with researchers and universities to create installations, exhibitions and illustrations as part of public engagement projects.  

Ellie worked with researcher Dr Ben Shreeve to explore his research on decision making in industrial control systems and big data, using a table-top game called Decisions & Disruptions (decisions-disruptions.org). Ellie became particularly interested in the notion of human fallibility in these unfathomably large scale decisions. 

The Decision Machine was created as a playful response to this incredibly vital research – a machine adapted from a vintage writing bureau, inspired just as much by Victoriana steampunk as contraptions invented by Wallace and Gromit. The piece was wonderfully fabricated by Jack Stiling of Stiling’s Workshop. 

The installation invites viewers to reflect on a decision they need to make in their own lives, write it on a card and insert it into the machine then crank the handle to reveal its answer. The machine will give a simple yes or no response, reflecting the binary 0-1 foundations of digital technology as well as highlighting the almost flippant simplicity of potentially huge decisions prompting reflection on the scale and impact of decision making we undertake every day. 

What will The Decision Machine tell you?

Find out more: eleanorshipman.com / ellie@ellieshipman.com / IG: @ellieshipman
Find the event on Facebook: bit.ly/decisionmachine

The Decision Machine was commissioned by Create React, funded by Jean Golding Institute. It will also be exhibited alongside the Decisions & Disruptions game at the Jean Golding Institute’s Bristol Data & AI Showcase 2022 on Tuesday 7th June from 10:00 – 17:00 at the M Shed. Find out more and book tickets at bristol.ac.uk/golding/get-involved/showcase

The Little Library is a new project run from the University’s micro-campus in Barton Hill. It is a small multi-lingual library service co-developed with local residents, open to all every Tuesday 10-5pm.

As part of the Little Library project we are offering a free lunchtime workshop each month that brings academics and artists together with local residents to creatively explore aspects of libraries, archives or literacy. On May 19 we hosted a hands-on workshop with book historian Rhiannon Daniels from the Centre for Material Texts and printmaker Barbara Disney, exploring the materiality of books.

Visit Clouds, a student-initiated exhibition, online and at Bristol Central Library, (College Green,  BS1 5TL) from Tues May 11th to Sun May 15th 

Now in a time when Covid-19 becomes endemic, with no legal requirement to self-isolate, an installation and online presence has been created to bring people together to share perspectives around well-being. Working with healthcare and student communities as well as the general public, the project hopes to raise awareness of the importance of self-care and resilience, highlighting the role of the arts in positive embodiment whilst facing challenging and distressing periods in life.

This installation was co-developed by students of Medicine and Music, with support from South-West Arts & Health practitioners and academics from external universities whose research focusses on the psychological impacts of sound.

ART EXHIBITION – OPEN TO ALL

Friday 29 April, 11 to 3 pm / Richmond Building, Queens Road, Bristol

From Cabot Conversations  – a fascinating collaboration between researchers and Bristol-based artists – comes a brand new exhibition, Creative perspectives on the Climate Emergency. With original artworks in different mediums, this exhibition offers an interdisciplinary perspective on our changing planet. Hosted by the Cabot Institute for the Environment on the University’s Climate Emergency Day of Action, this event includes a unique opportunity to meet the artists.

Cabot Conversations was a project that saw ten local artists invited to create an artwork in response to a conversation around climate change. The conversations –  between two experts from different disciplines, from across the Cabot Institute for the Environment and beyond – took place in the lead up to COP26 in 2021.

Find out more about the exhibition 

Thursday 7th April | 11am | Royal Fort Gardens | FREE

The Royal West of England Academy is offering a free, baby-friendly tour of the University of Bristol public art commissions in Royal Fort Gardens.  Bring your Baby tours are relaxed and informal sessions in a safe and comfortable space for parents with babies (12 months and under) run by Jane Porter. Buggies welcome, but you may prefer to use a sling.

Admission is free. Booking is essential via the RWA website 

Artist Bryony Gillard has been commissioned by Bristol Doctoral College to work with  a team of PhD researchers from the departments of Physics, History and English Literature, and materials from Special Collections and Archives, on a collaborative project in response to the centenary marking 100 years of postgraduate research at the University of Bristol.

Three short films: More than Human, More than Bristol, and Less than Perfect, explore three distinct but interwoven themes discovered in the life and work of students in the first twenty years of PhD research at the University. From trail-blazing women researchers, international academics, traces of empire and colonialism and innovations in agriculture — the socio-political, academic and civic shadows and legacies of the University’s alumni are very much present today.

Liam Taylor-West  Composer and creator of immersive artworks, has been working with the School of Mathematics as part of a Create-React residency, since August 2020. During the residency, Liam has worked closely with mathematicians to understand active research in a number of diverse and complex areas, including algebraic number theory, the geometry of quasicrystals, fractals and mathematical forest fire models. His latest audio-visual compositions are inspired by these topics and often employ underlying rules that are directly drawn from mathematical concepts.

The work he has produced has culminated in IN/FINITE: Order in the Unknown – an exhibition of music and art, which is open to the public at Liberty House, Stokes Croft, from January 19 until end of January 2022.

On 10th December 2021, on Human Rights Day 2021 and part of Disability History Month, a new mural was inaugurated on Easton Community Centre, Kilburn Street, BS5 6AW. The mural brings together the messages and experiences of Deaf, Disabled and asylum-seeking people living in the Bristol area. The mural is dedicated to Kamil Ahmad, a disabled asylum seeker who was murdered in Bristol in 2016.

The project was coordinated by Dr Rebecca Yeo, senior research associate in SPAIS, working on issues of disability and forced migration. She explained ‘the disabled people’s movement has long argued that the system itself is disabling. The new mural highlights the particularly disabling impact of the UK asylum system and the urgent need for solidarity.’

Artist Andrew Bolton collaborated with Yeo. He created the mural design, bringing together messages and images contributed by people with lived experience of disability and / or forced migration. This included activists, students and academics, local authority employees, refugees, asylum seekers, homeless people and people with many of those experiences combined.

The mural includes an image of Kamil Ahmad which he contributed to a mural with Yeo and Bolton in 2012. He is seen holding his head in despair at the injustices he was facing in the UK. The mural is designed to build understanding and solidarity in his honour.

Image courtesy Grant Associates. Photographer: Alison Thorpe.

The Guangzhou China: Guangzhou Garden that was crowned the best garden at this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show, taking home the coveted Best in Show prize, has been gifted by Guangzhou to Bristol and will be rebuilt at the University of Bristol’s Botanic Garden. Bristol has been twinned with Guangzhou since 2001.The Guangzhou China: Guangzhou Garden will be rebuilt at the Botanic Garden in the coming months and will be unveiled in early Summer 2022, in the 21st anniversary year of the sister city relationship between Bristol and Guangzhou.

More information: University press release

‘If there is no image, there is no identity’

A photography exhibition on College Green focuses on individuals affected by HIV/AIDS and their living spaces. The project aims to counter a decline in visibility of the HIV/AIDS community by inviting the audience in to these personal spaces, which have been curated to better the mental health of their inhabitants.

This interdisciplinary research project is a collaboration between Dr Adrian Flint (University of Bristol, SPAIS), Mareike Günsche (Photographer/Educator and Lecturer of photography at the State University of Arts, Mongolia) and Martin Burns (Writer, HIV/AIDS activist and equality advocate). This exhibition has been produced as a result of the Bristol Photo Festival commissioning programme in collaboration with the University of Bristol’s Brigstow Institute.

Dates

Location

A new mural, by Bristol artist Cai Burton, has been installed at the University of Bristol’s Cantock Steps this weekend to mark the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Roadmap to Defeat Meningitis, which will be officially launched on 28th September.

Commissioned by Bristol-based charity Meningitis Research Foundation (MRF), the 12-metre mural is located near the Biomedical Sciences building in recognition of the research conducted at the university towards defeating meningitis.