UNKNOWN UNKNOWNS (2020) is a project bringing together patient ambassadors for Blood Cancer UK and stem cell researchers working at the Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre. Through a series of stop-motion animation workshops held via Zoom, participants developed hand-cut animation sequences exploring their experiences of ‘the unknown’ in relation to living with blood cancer, the challenges of research and the global uncertainties of Covid-19. Animation materials included paper, velvet and issues of National Geographic published in 1960, the year Blood Cancer UK officially became a charity.
Commissioned by the Wellcome - MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute as part of its Public Engagement programme, project outcomes include an animated film featuring participants’ stop-motion sequences (Futuramic Unknown, 2020) and an installation for the Jeffery Cheah Biomedical Center at Cambridge Biomedical Campus (The Night the Mountains Moved, 2020).
A VALE
biosensor-activated sound installation
2016
Playfully out of sync with its architectural surroundings, A VALE explores pleasurable displacement through sound and the action of swinging. Equipped with a solar-powered, bio-sensor controlled sound system, the swing replies to your presence. Shifting from functional pastime to experiential medium, as you swing the structure responds with a polyphonic vocal composition. With its steel A-frame base and nautical rope seat-bed, the installation juxtaposes work and relaxation whilst encouraging a skyward view – a proposition to reconsider the familiar.
• Steel swing frame, aluminium and rope seat-bed
• Solar panel
• Steel sound box with coded control system, infrared sensor & speaker
• Engraved aluminium instructional plaque
Featuring an original composition by Seaming To
Commissioned for UCL Festival of Culture (2016)
Supported by Arts Council England
"Other stand out work on this whistle stop day was Anna Brownsted’s swing sculpture piece. It’s impeccable production values translating what would typically be warm playful inter-action into a curiously quasi clinical public experience." A-N online review