Noisy Spaces: Embodiment, Technology and Public Space

Contrasting (but not contesting) Mark Fisher's analysis of the modern device as a "portal to cyberspace", Kat's work looks to interact with questions of physical embodiment as it relates to technology. Using it as a view to exploring political and personal agencies within spaces, sounds and actions.

During the workshop, she'll be exploring technology as it relates to collective sound making (through exercises taken from the London Community Laptop Orchestra), taking students through a history of London's experimental collective performance scene of the 1970's and how those methods can be adapted and applied to our current art culture. Through this lens, she'll be situating and deconstructing the laptop as a tool for collective performance, looking at a relationship with the device that has us looking outwards rather than inwards.

Workshop requirements:
The workshop is open to all, regardless of skill level, experience with sound / coding or understanding of arts and technology discourse, all you need is a laptop.

About Kat Macdonald: 

Kat Macdonald is a London-based sound and performance artist exploring collective practice, desire and public space through technology, transmission and performance. Her work focuses on the use of technology to examine activations of agency, particularly looking at space, community and pedagogy, engaging holistically with technology to critique the ways in which it can shape culture and practice.

Having received her MA in Experimental Music from Brunel University in 2018, she has gone on to make work both within collectives and independently, having worked as the resident sound and sensor artist for the Design And Performance Lab between 2017 - 2022 under the direction of choreographer and dance technologist Johannes Birringer designing custom sound and visual software and working with wearable sensors. During this time a core concern of her practice was generative and indeterminate compositions, relying on live-data to create free-form sonic environments.

Making between disciplines, Kat works with sound, visuals, the web, sculptural work, choreography, scoring and performance, in addition to site-specific installations. Her work has been shown internationally at festivals such as DRHA, Lumbung Radio Assembly, Intimidades Públicas (ICNOVA), The World Transformed, and more.

She is the founder and organiser of the London Community Laptop Orchestra (2024 - ), an all-abilities, community-organised laptop orchestra, inspired by groups such as the 1969 - 1974 Scratch Orchestra, with a focus on guerrilla performances, using the laptop as a tool for collective creative engagement.