In Conversation with... AXNS Collective

axnscollective.org @AXNSCollective

Who are AXNS?

Rachel Stratton

Curator and PhD student at the Courtauld Institute

Miranda Marcus

Designer and MA student in Digital Anthropology at UCL

Rachel Bedder

Science Communicator and Research Assistant in Dementia at UCL

Romy Lorenz

Cognitive Neuroscientist and Neuro-technologist at Imperial College London

- Curatorial collective exploring the intersection between art, science and technology

Commission and Curate Artworks

2013

‘Affecting Perception’ (pictured bottom right)O3 Gallery, OxfordExhibition featuring artworks exploring, and done by those with neurological disorders and developmental conditions. Alongside schools workshops and seminar series.

2015

‘Fractured Visions’ (pictured top right)London Bridge AreaAugmented Reality App exploring visual perception disorder Palinopsia

Coming up…

‘Phantom Pain’ – 2017 (venue tbc)Artist/Scientist collaboration exploring the visualisation of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome.

Devise and Chair Panels

2015

‘When Science Fiction becomes Reality: AI in the digital age’&‘Neuro-plasticity in the Web’Web We Want Festival, Southbank Centre

‘William Blake: Artist of Visions or Visionary Artist’Inspired by Blake festival, Ashmolean Museum & Blackwell’s

2016

‘Art, Neuroscience and Society’London Student Neuroscience Conference, Imperial College

‘Quantifying Aesthetic Emotions: What are the Implications for the Arts?’STATE Festival: The Sentimental Machine, Berlin (pictured)

Invited back November next year for ‘Longevity’ theme

Devise and Facilitate Workshops

2015

‘Material and Mechanical’Ada Lovelace exhibition, Science Museum London

‘Database Matter: An Art and Data HackThe Cube, London

Coming up…..

‘Psychedelic Sounds’ – January 2017 (venue TBC)

Sound artists, musicians, neuro & data scientists will explore an MEG data set from LSD or psilocybin research from Imperial College London to create musical compositions and aural installations.

Collaboration Ideas for the Hub 1/4

Dementia & Audition

- Dementia can cause changes in auditory perception (less know, causes alienation)

- In collaboration with sound artist and electronic composer Soosan Lolavar.

- Interviews, or using archive recordings of people with dementia and their support network (family, carers, neurologists etc) to form a multi-channel installation.

- Multichannel installation.Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller, The Forty Part Motet, 2001

Collaboration Ideas for the Hub 2/4

Dementia Care and Agency

- Exploring agency, care management and ‘lie therapy’.

- Bus-stop replica constructed outside a care association used to minimise restricting people leaving the care home when they want to leave.

- Reconstructing a bus-stop in the Wellcome, possibly as a listening post to a repository about experiences of dementia.

- ‘Dementia friendly communities’ – can London be one?Bus-stop constructed outside

Benrath Senior Centre in Düsseldorf, Germany

Collaboration Ideas for the Hub 3/4

Future health technology and understanding self-hood.

- Early diagnosis of dementia, or knowing your genetic likelihood becoming more of a possibility (i.e. Cambridge’s CANTAB software).

- What is the impact on our sense of self when we know there is a high likelihood of neurodegeneration?

- Use new technologies to explore this (i.e. immersive virtual reality).

Collaboration Ideas for the Hub 4/4

‘What is the role of the artist in telling the tales of mental illness or disorders?’

- In collaboration with Wellcome Trust funded ‘Abdullah and Leliah’ short film about having dementia and with English as a second language.

- Short film showing and panel discussing the responsibility of artists to work with dementia and other disorders and conditions.

Thanks for listening!

Previous funders