At Manchester Art Galleries until January 30 is the solo show from artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer consisting of his electronic artworks which cannot exist without your input. Their interaction with you is memorised, going so far as to detect your heart rate and exploit it as a base rhythm for the 100 flashing light bulbs of installation ‘Pulse Room’. Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is the Mexican-Canadian world renowned electronic artist who invites participation in his work. He uses materials such as cell phone interfaces, robots and ultrasonic sensors and works at some point between architecture, performance and sculpture to examine how perception and deception control our urban existence. Read more ⇒

Set Piece, by Daniel Von Sturmer is currently showing at Site Gallery, Sheffield until October 31. Based in Melbourne, this is his first solo show in the UK, having represented Australia at the Venice Biennale and working internationally.

The exhibition is an installation of a series of small video screens and projections arranged in a space designed by Von Sturmer himself. In the centre of the gallery, a large partition has been built, which narrows the space and creates strong perspectives towards either end. The works set in this space become inter-related as the viewer has to move between them - unexpected views between pieces occur as you move around the gallery.

Von Sturmer wants to investigate measurements, scales and the ubiquitous definitions of space that are around us. The backgrounds of some of his videos feature deformed grids and scales, in others small scale, hand made ‘modernist’ shapes are arranged into compositions. The measured, perspectival understanding of space is confronted by the flat picture plane. Article spoke to him at the opening of the exhibition. Read more ⇒

Echoes of Blackburn Meadows is an sound project based on the history of, and situated at the site of the former Blackburn Meadows power station, home to the Cooling Towers. The project will eventually place radio transmitters across the site, allowing visitors to tune into a historical industrial soundscape of the site’s past. It’s an incredible idea, and one which we hope will add much to ideas that surround the changing Sheffield by avoiding blank symbolism and properly locating memories to form a greater, more critical understanding of place.

We spoke to Jennifer Rich, one of the team behind the project.

How did the project begin, and who is involved?

The project began as a dissertation for my MA in Landscape and Culture at the University of Nottingham in 2006. I looked at Sheffield’s municipal electricity supply up until it was nationalised in 1948, focusing specifically on the machines and architectures of Blackburn Meadows power station. Recently, geographers have begun to collaborate with artists under the title of ‘Public Geography,’ aiming for innovative and engaging methods of exhibiting research findings. As much of my research was based on oral histories with former workers of the power station, it seemed appropriate to explore sound as a medium and I teamed up with two sound artists, Lewis Heriz and Tom Dixon. It was really the demolition of the cooling towers in 2008 that gave the project the boost it needed. We were now able to look at the landscape as a whole and situate the towers within the wider and more dynamic landscapes of a power station. We put in an R&D bid to the Arts Council and here we are about to launch Echoes of Blackburn Meadows (EBM) phase I.

Read more ⇒