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DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260317T100000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260327T170000
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SUMMARY:Animoted 
DESCRIPTION:Animoted brings together a collection of artworks and projects led by Adinda van ’t Klooster investigating how emotion can be tracked and assessed by machines and used aesthetically in mapping decisions in interactive artworks and interfaces.   \n\n\n\nExhibition Opening times : 17 – 27 March\, 10am – 5pm weekdays \n\n\n\nThe immersive interactive VR artwork VRoar (2023) invites you to step into a surreal landscape where your voice reshapes the world around you. Wearing the headset\, visitors navigate by looking in a chosen direction and moving forwards with the controller – and as they travel\, new tree forms grow into the landscape. But it is the voice that truly animates the space. Each sound you make alters the environment in real time. With every burst of sound – whether a whisper\, hum or roar – new blobs appear and blend\, shifting texture as your pitch\, tone and intensity change. Trees pulse and distort. Surreal\, comic clouds dance and warp\, speeding up or slowing down in response to your voice. \n\n\n\nAt the press of a button\, the background transforms and different sound qualities take control of the trunks and branches\, creating unexpected visual consequences. The work encourages playful experimentation and embraces the unpredictable relationship between expression and outcome. Designed and animated by Dr Adinda van ’t Klooster\, with Unity programming by Prof Nick Collins\, the work operates as both art installation and exploratory art game – a space where voice becomes a tool for shaping the environment. \n\n\n\nThe exhibition also offers insight into the Emote VR Voicer project\, a major AHRC-funded research project currently in development. This project aims to go one step further than VRoar (which works with feature detection) and will be able to detect emotion from the voice and use that as an input for the graphics. Video material\, 3D printed sculptural forms and 2D drawings reveal how hand-modelled wax and clay shapes are 3D scanned\, rigged and animated to form the basis of a future voice-responsive VR environment. This project will be shown in full in 2027 and is currently being led from MMU by Adinda van ‘t Klooster with advisers Prof Carlo Harvey and Jason Hockman\, and external collaborators Robyn Dowlen (Edge Hill University) and Nick Collins (Durham University). \n\n\n\nAlongside the VR experience\, Animoted presents documentation of earlier interdisciplinary projects including the interactive sculpture Emotion Light (2009) and performance works In a State (2014) and BioCombat (2015). These works trace Adinda’s long-standing exploration of emotion-sensing systems across live performance\, sculptural and digital contexts. \n\n\n\nDr Adinda van ’t Klooster\, a Senior Lecturer at SODA\, Manchester Metropolitan University\, has worked for over thirty years as a UK-based interdisciplinary artist\, collaborating with programmers\, musicians\, engineers\, poets\, composers\, psychologists and medical professionals. Her practice bridges physical making and digital systems\, continually probing how human feeling and expression are interpreted by machines. \n\n\n\nAnimoted offers both an immersive VR encounter through VRoar and a wider view of the evolving research behind it – inviting audiences to experiment\, vocalise and experience how emotion can become a dynamic artistic force.
URL:https://ahead.mmu.ac.uk/event/exhibition-animoted/
LOCATION:School of Digital Arts (SODA)\, 14 Higher Chatham St\,\, Manchester\, M15 6ED
CATEGORIES:AHEAD,Exhibition
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DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260325T140000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260325T160000
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SUMMARY:Frantz Omar Fanon & Stand Up to Racism : Philosophies of Resistance
DESCRIPTION:The Manchester Metropolitan University Human Sciences Seminar Series is an invited speaker and research seminar organised by the Philosophy section of MMU’s Department of History\, Politics and Philosophy \n\n\n\nTickets £5 full / £3 concessions \n\n\n\nFree tickets for Manchester Met staff and students – email ahead@mmu.ac.uk for more details \n\n\n\n\n\nThe 2026 series\, Philosophies of Resistance\, will explore the philosophical thought that has resisted colonial\, racial and carceral oppression. \n\n\n\nThe series aims is to question the role that philosophical ideas have played – and continue to play – in collective struggles for social justice\, and human emancipation more broadly. \n\n\n\nThe three seminars in the series are: \n\n\n\n\nFrantz Fanon & Stand Up to Racism\n\n\n\nPhilosophy in Prisons\n\n\n\nHuman Rights & Resistance\n\n\n\n\nEach seminar includes an academic talk followed by an ‘in-conversation’ discussion between the speaker(s) and a local political activist\, and questions from the audience. \n\n\n\nA 15-minute refreshment break is included.Suitable for 18+ \n\n\n\nWednesday 25 March\, 2.00pm – 4.00pm\n\n\n\nFrantz Omar Fanon (1925-1961) is one of the most important anti-colonial thinkers of the twentieth century. Fanon says colonialism is not simply a physical system of inequality and oppression\, it also involves a framework for categorising people\, and relating them to each other in social space. He argues that under colonialism the central system for categorising people is race. \n\n\n\nIn this seminar\, philosopher Komarine Romdenh-Romluc will speak about the life and work of Fanon. This will be followed by an in-conversation discussion between Romdenh-Romluc and Stand up to Racism activist Nahella Ashraf\, exploring the significance of Fanon’s ideas in contemporary anti-racist struggles. \n\n\n\nContributor biogs \n\n\n\nDr Komarine Romdenh-Romluc is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. Her fundamental interest is in who we are. She works within the phenomenological tradition in philosophy\, and uses its resources to understand our bodily existence\, and the ways we are shaped by the surrounding world. She is particularly interested in questions of diaspora identity and what it is to belong. \n\n\n\nNahella Ashraf is an anti-racism activist affiliated to Stand Up To Racism\, where she is engaged in grassroots organising and public education aimed at challenging structural and institutional forms of racism. Her activism focuses on opposing Islamophobia\, racial discrimination\, and the normalisation of far right and exclusionary ideologies within public discourse and policy.
URL:https://ahead.mmu.ac.uk/event/philosophies-of-resistance-stand-up-to-racism/
LOCATION:People’s History Museum\, Left Bank Spinningfields\, Manchester\, M3 3ER
CATEGORIES:AHEAD,Event,Talks
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