This year, WITCiH continues with a series of live streaming events at The Rattle to coincide with the launch of a WITCiH Patreon. As ever, these salons will focus on the artistry & ideas of Women/Womxn in Tech. Guests include:
Laura Kriefman
Laura Kriefman is the Director, Producer and Artist behind Hellion Trace and has over a decade of experience delivering interdisciplinary projects worldwide that fuse the performing arts and creative technology.Her expertise in these areas has been recognised by numerous international fellowships including: Questlab Artist in Residence with Wayne McGregor, 2018 Mozilla XR Studio Fellow, PRS Female Innovator in Music (keychange.eu), 2016 INK Fellow, 2015 WIRED Magazine/The Space Creative Fellow and a 2011-2012 Fellow of the Clore Cultural Leadership Programme.
Hellion Trace (formerly Guerilla Dance Project) have won multiple awards for digital innovation and specialise in Augmented Dance: the fusion between movement and technology. Resident at the Pervasive Media Studio, Bristol, they create interactive installations and spectacles that have been commissioned worldwide including USA, Brazil, Ireland, Croatia, Europe, India, and Indonesia. Recent work includes Kicking The Mic, a performance piece fusing live tap dance, looping and a fully sound reactive LED dress, winning the Smart Oxford Playable City Commission, and Mass Crane Dance which was launched as part of her Creative Fellowship with WIRED Magazine. Mass Crane Dance is a spectacular meeting of music, light, and synchronised construction cranes dancing across the skylight at night: The inaugural Crane Dance Bristol event was seen by 10,000 people and reached 4 million people online.
Laura has been a guest speaker at INK, WIRED, ReMIX, SxSW Interactive, World Science Fair (New York), IRCAM Paris, the Southbank Centre, and TEDxRoma, TEDxDanubia and TEDxLondon. She has been an expert reviewer for MoCo for the last 4 years, and for SIGGraph and has recently started a practice based PhD into Augmented Choreography with the 3d3 Research Centre.
BISHI
Musician, Artist, Multimedia Performer, Producer and Curator, BISHI was born in London of Bengali heritage. Bishi received musical training in both Hindustani and Western Classical styles, including the study of the sitar under Gaurav Mazumdar a senior disciple of Ravi Shankar. She has recorded two albums, produced by Matthew Hardern: Nights at The Circus and Albion Voice. Bishi is the Artistic Director of WITCiH: The Women in Technology Creative Industries Hub, a platform she co-founded to celebrate Women & Non-Binary at The Intersection Creative Tech & STEM.
Commissioned by National Sawdust NYC, her third album ‘Let My Country Awake,, co-produced with composer, Jeff Cook is inspired by ‘The Good Immigrant,’ collection of essays edited by Nikesh Shukla.
Bishi's collaborations & commissions for the stage have included The London Symphony Orchestra, Yoko Ono’s Meltdown, The Science Gallery, Nick Knight/Showstudio & session work with Sean Ono Lennon, The Kronos Quartet, Daphne Guinness & Tony Visconti.
Bishi has been commissioned by the Delia Derbyshire Archive to compose a piece of music, to celebrate 50 years of ‘An Electric Storm,’ which Derbyshire was responsible for the electronic sound realisation. Bishi is currently making a documentary for Radio 4 about the groundbreaking tech company, ROLI & is touring nationwide with Emmy The Great in May/June 2019.
Abi Wade
Using cello, vocals, orchestral arrangements, choral ensembles, location samples, synths and piano Abi Wade explores human nature through real and abstracted personas on her debut album ‘Beautifully Astray’ released in April on Love Thy Neighbour.
‘Beautifully Astray’ was recorded with support from Help Musician’s Emerging Excellence award, and the release with support from PRS for Music Foundation’s Women Make Music.
While developing as an artist, she has has toured the UK & Europe with Patrick Wolf, sold out her debut EP and released music on the label set up by Daniel Copeman of Esben & The Witch and has played shows with the likes of CocoRosie, Polica, Michael Kiwanuka, Other Lives, Deptford Goth and festivals such as End of The Road, The Great Escape and Wilderness.