Festival of the Mind

Professor Leonard Eastham with primate skeletons in view, image copyright University of Sheffield.

Currently in Sheffield Festival of the Mind has taken hold, whipping up the lesser seen activities and ideas of University of Sheffield, from it's world renowned thinkers to its youngest academics, its labs and its archives, with the artistic and creative thinkers and makers of the same city. FOTM extends from its own temporary Spiegeltent in which screenings, parties and cultural debates are unfolding, to cross city venues, woodland walks and a temporary tourist office housed in a shipping container dropped proudly in front of the streamlined 'entrance to the city'. This perhaps is my highlight, as a self appointed Sheffield Publicity Department ambassador. It's dream tourism in exactly the spirit required, by any city. 

All in all, people are doing some good for the city of Sheffield this week in making something of the minds it houses and supports, minds which may occupy scientific departments, artists studios or neither - or both.  These minds are persistent in their work, busy seeing and questioning, playing tricks, revealing solutions and curiosities and posing more questions. We might not usually get to see evidence of this work, to visit the rejuevinated Alfred Denny Museum of 1905 tucked away inside the university, including prehistoric fish, ichthyosaurs, an array of decorative caterpillars, to engage with computer stimulations of heart activity as an exhibit in a virtual art gallery. Thanks to Vanessa Toulmin of FOTM for pursuing the curious in all of this work and making things more tangible, and for placing great weight upon the incredible artistic temperament of Sheffield, coaxing out creativity and showmanship otherwise shied away from by the academic insitution. Or, otherwise unnoticed despite being within our reach.

Article Magazine produced the FOTM Magazine 'Misc.'. Sitting nicely alongside the festival programme, interviews with contributors, previews and reviews and general thoughtfulness around the festival. I wrote on Computer Love, the virtual art gallery - it's free entry, click here to go! - and I interviewed Guy Brown in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Sheffield.

Here's a snippet:

The process of curation will be selective and specific to a theme, some works will be unable to materialise as something remotely solid, and commissioned purely for Computer Love. Cherry-picked out of laboratories / artist studios, placed strategically in this online gallery which specialises in visual phenomena. Flooding our eyes and brains with impossible colours and incomprehensible feats of construction with pixels and coding, the Computer Love aspiration is apt for an increasingly perceptive, impatient audience which knows the sensation of disbelief all too well...
Please pick up a copy around Sheffield this week. It's bright yellow. A bit like this: