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	site13 exhibitions & events at sva week 1 week 2 week 3 week 4 week 5

	EVENTS

			The New Natural Symposium Semiconductor, Prof. Sue Thomas and Squidsoup Saturday 25th May 10.30am-5pm SVA, 4 John St, Stroud GL5 2HA The New Natural Installation Friday 24th-Sunday 26th May 11am-4pm Goods Shed, Stroud GL5 3AP Modern technology and the natural world are often seen in opposition, the former perceived as either destroying or at least disconnecting us from the latter. So what of a new relationship, a new approach towards the natural world that reconnects us in ways only possible through the use of technology? The New Natural will bring together three people whose work explores different aspects of this question. A day of presentations at 4 John Street, a film installation in the Brunel Goods Shed, interwoven with good food and finishing with an open discussion led by Rob la Frenais of The Arts Catalyst (www.artscatalyst.org). Semiconductor are Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt who through their animated films, often using sound to generate image, explore the material nature of our world and how we experience it, oscillating between the visible and invisible. With residencies at NASA, on the Galapagos Islands, and the Smithsonian Institute, this award-winning duo have had access to some extraordinary scientific data with which to work. For The New Natural they will be showing their film 20Htz in the Brunel Goods Shed, and taking part in the seminar. via Skype, from the States. (www.semiconductorfilms.com) Professor Sue Thomas's forthcoming book Technobiophilia: Nature and Cyberspace looks at how we embed life-like images and processes in everything we create, including the virtual terrain of the internet. Research Professor of New Media in the Institute of Creative Technologies at De Montfort University, Sue's publications include the novel Correspondence (short-listed for the Arthur C Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction Novel 1992), the online writing project The Noon Quilt, and Amplified Leicester, a city-wide experiment in social media. (www.technobiophilia.com) Squidsoup is an international group of artists, researchers and designers led by Anthony Rowe who create interactive digital installations that explore the boundary between physical space and virtual worlds. Their work has been nominated for a BAFTA (Interactive Arts) and seen at festivals around the world including Ars Electronica (Linz Austria, 2010), SIGGRAPH (Los Angeles, 2001, 2010), Glastonbury (2010) and Kinetica Art Fair (London 2010). (www.squidsoup.org) The New Natural is presented by Heart of Wonder (www.heartofwonder.info) in collaboration with SVA , and supported by Alias (www.aliasarts.org). In association with The New Natural, Resound and Qu Junktions have programmed sound and performative evening events during the symposium weekend. See Resound and Qu Junktions for more information. Tickets £12 including lunch and refreshments, £20 for weekend inclusive of evening events Booking is essential as places are limited 01453 751440 or office@sva.org.uk Book online Book Now

			Ed Davenport hosts John Street Social Club Friday 24 May 9pm SVA, 4 John St, Stroud, GL5 2HA An evening of electronic music and accompanying archive film. Over the last two years Ed Davenport has been releasing emotionally powerful, texturally rich and structurally inventive electronica on the Highpoint Lowlife label. Always carrying a strangely evocative geographical feel, 10-20 last 4 EP’s for the label were a collective sequence under the title of Landforms. Whilst Ed has always dealt in fractured, fragmented textures and glitches, these were wrapped up in a chunky production of rich clarity. Magnet Marsh on the other hand engages with the idiosyncrasies of magnetic tape whilst the 10-20 sound has plummeted through a surreal wormhole of crumpled sublimity.

			Hacker Farm Saturday 25 May 10am-4pm SVA, 4 John St, Stroud, GL5 2HA www.hackerfarm.net Hacker Farm are South Somerset-based audio-visual artists who repurpose salvaged materials and junk. They work with redundant hardware, hand-soldiered electronics and obsolete-media to create in situ multimedia installations and live improvised performance. Their work is a critique of the IT-infrastructure that underpins and facilitates modern social commerce and mobile e-marketing strategies. Hacker Farm's intention is to disrupt these processes by exposing them, thus inverting the relationship between producers and consumers. Having just released their second CD ‘UHF’ (Exotic Pylon Records) to critical acclaim they will be converting an empty shop-space into a performance/workshop/recording studio combining live-sounds / farm-yard-PA and obsolete-technology.

	THEATRE

			Qu Junktions presents Guargantua An Excessive Entertainment by Ergo Phizmiz Saturday 25 May 8pm Goods Shed, Stroud GL5 3AP gargantuadisappears.blogspot.com Gargantua, a brand new 'vaudeville of the imagination' from the beautifully scrambled brains of UK polymath Ergo Phizmiz. A multi-sensory feast and genuinely unique patchwork of artistic disciplines, Gargantua plunders history and culture and places them in a boiling pot ready for explosion. A devilish mix of storytelling, performance, animation, puppetry, moving image and collage all garlanded by an original music score that's equal parts contemporary electronic, medieval and 1930's British dance band. If 'F is for Fake' then 'E' could be for 'Ergo'. This hallucinatory odyssey through time and culture tells three simultaneous stories: one a detective story on the disappearance of the giant King Gargantua, another of an adventure by French writer Francois Rabelais across Europe, the third a strange, elliptical board game that draws these threads together, in a story told by the more than reliable Gargantuan narrator Orson Welles...As one portal gives you access to insider knowledge, a trapdoor opens and leaves you wonderfully displaced, and so it goes. Grey matter is constantly electrified and eyes lavished by Terry Gilliam-esque architectural constructs, political sensibilities are enlightened by meta-narratives, absurd social commentary echoes Thomas Pynchon or Felix Kubin and limbs and laughing muscles loosen as if being tackled by a crack tag-wrestling team of Andy Kaufman and Phil Kay. If you haven't visited before, welcome to the world of Ergo Phizmiz. Tickets: £6 advance, £7 on the door Advanced tickets can be bought online Book Now Or from Trading Post, 26 Kendrick Street. Stroud GL5 1AQ

	MUSIC

			Resound presents - Anvil & Stirrup, Robert Curvengen, and Matt Davis Friday 24 May 7pm Goods Shed, Stroud GL5 3AP recordedfields.net, f-i-e-l-d.co.uk Anvil & Stirrup is the collaborative project of composers Iain Armstrong and Antti Sakari Saario. Their practice combines acousmatic sensibilities, live electronics, improvisation and multi-channel spatialisation. Iain Armstrong (Anvil) is a composer/sound artist based in Birmingham, Antti Sakari Saario (Stirrup) is an award winning fixed-media composer based in Cornwall. Robert Curvengen is an Australian composer/sound artist living in Cornwall. His work spans immersive resonances via turntables and custom-made vinyl, instrumental harmonics and guitar feedback, through to carefully detailed field recordings from remote areas where he lived for many years. It draws on the physicality of sound - not just the physical impact on the body but the way in which the auditory can shape our perception of space and the flow of time. Matt Davis has been working in improvised and experimental music since 1994, using trumpet and field recordings. He has also been director of ‘Field’, a live art/performance project since 2003. His work investigates the question of sound (noise) as music; music as a tool for improvisation; improvisation as a tool for the creation of a space of encounter, not as a projection of a concept, but a space (place) which can be entered conceptually, experientially or otherwise. Tickets £5 on the door

			Struck and Blown Sunday 26 May 8pm Goods Shed, Stroud GL5 3AP www.struckandblown.co.uk There are more trumpet and percussion duos in the world than you might think and 'Struck and Blown' features two of the finest. Both also add electronics to their sonic pallette but each group creates their own distinctive sound world from their self-imposed minimal resources. London based Tank and Trumpet are Steve Chadwick and Saul Eisenberg. Steve plays trumpet and electronics to deliver a spacey mix which can range from old english folk to fast Bebop. Saul plays a selection of self-built instruments made from recycled gas tanks, fine-tuned with a variety of power tools to find the resonance and tone he requires.Tank and Trumpet's recent projects include providing the music for a track on Sam Lee's Mercury Prize nominated album 'A Ground Of It's Own' and soundtrack music for the films 'Frank' and 'Samasara'. Returning to the SITE Festival from Bristol are Eyebrow. Eyebrow feature Pete Judge (Get The Blessing) on trumpet and electronics and Paul Wigens (ex Blurt) on drums, percussion and electronic percussion. Paul has been described as a human metronome and lays down repetitive, evolving and compelling beats. Pete explores his sparse melodies from every angle over hypnotic live-sampled textures. In 2012 Eyebrow were commissioned by the b-side Multimedia Festival to create a 'walking soundtrack' for a section of the Dorset coast. For dance company Taikabox they composed and performed the soundtrack for the dance piece 'Beyond The Body. Tickets: £6 advance, £7 on the door.Advanced tickets can be bought online Book Now Or from Trading Post, 26 Kendrick Street. Stroud GL5 1AQ

	EXHIBITIONS

			Unit 56 4th-31st May Opening night: Saturday 4th May 7-9pm 56 High Street, Stroud GL5 1AS An eclectic and diverse mix of artists will be bringing guerrilla TV, dog in a trash can and painting by numbers to the high street with Mould TV , Simon Brundret and Sarah Dixon. Other work will be on show including Victoria Garden's bold bird motif paintings, Catell Ronca's collages, Sam Marsh and Ed Lawrenson's "Polyrhythmic Snarl" and Dan Sparkes.

			more coming soon
	View or download Site Festival Programme and Open Studios Directory here See Site Festival Programme with downloadble PDF www.sitefestival.org.uk See Open Studios Directory with downloadble PDF www.sitefestival.org.uk Links www.sitefestival.org.uk www.indexgallery.co.uk www.stroudartsfestival.org
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