Based in London, the artists work together & often as igloo recreating environments & systems where coding joins hands with choreographies of the body. They collaborate to create virtual worlds as locations for enquiry. The artists' first work won them a BAFTA nomination and their installations, video works, online projects and performances have featured in international exhibitions and festivals including the 52nd Venice Biennale. Their practice combines the physical & virtual and relationships between natural and artificial to make computer generated environments, novel interfaces and video installations. By re-purposing media tools and combining them with remodeled objects, prints and interrupted surfaces they create ambiguous topographies to simulate and reconfigure representations of the world.
The artists' work presents us with surprising juxtaposition of places, transposing sites and designing interactive experiences for audiences, their investigation aims to challenge ideas of place & understandings of it.

Bruno Martelli graduated from Central Saint Martins with a first class degree in graphic art before setting up a multimedia platform for interactive design. He has since worked with artist John Latham, muf architects and co-curated Wired Worlds a computer games exhibition at the National Media Museum, Bradford. He is a recipient of a Wingate Scholarship through which he continues his research into technologies to abstract the human body, it’s movement, and it’s senses. Martelli develops serious games projects involving architectural modeling and works on sensory installations for special needs children.

Ruth Gibson graduated from University of Kent Canterbury with a BA (Hons) in Performing Arts. She studied with the Marcel Marceau Group whilst on a scholarship at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti USA. She continued her education at the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam. Nominated for a Paul Hamlyn Award for Visual Art in 2000, she has worked with many artists including Sandra Fisher, Gary Rowe, Leonard McComb RA and Gaby Agis. Gibson is an AHRC fellow in the Creative & Performing Arts at Coventry University's School of Art & Design researching avatar and environment design in relation to her dance and motioncapture practice.

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Publications / Reviews
Performance Persepectives - Sita Popat & Jonathon Pitches published byPalgrave 2011
Interfaces of Performance - Janis Jefferies, Maria Chatzichristodoulou and Rachel Zerihan, Digital Research in the Arts and Humanities series published by Ashgate 2008
SwanQuake: The User Manual - Leonardo Reviews 2009
SwanQuake...- Guardian Games Blog 2008
Underground Movement - Edge Magazine (issue 195)
SwanQuake: the user manual ISBN 9781841021720 published by Liquid Press/i-DAT 2007
SwanQuake review The Guardian Games Blog 2007
Tanecní zóna (Dance Zone) - Quarterly - Pavel Sedlak 2007
AURORA Catalogue ISBN 9780955382215 2007
Rob Myers review of Summerbranch on Furtherfield.org 2007
Cedar Lewisohn Inspire curator review Summerbranch at the Venice Biennale - Saatchi blog
New Forest Pavilion catalogue published by ArtSway & The Arts Institute at Bournemouth 52nd Venice Biennale - la Biennale di Venezia, Palazzo Zenobio ISBN 0954393090 2007
Digital Performance: A History of New Media in Theater, Dance, Performance Art, and Installation by Steve Dixon MIT Press ISBN 9780262042352 2007
The World as Virtual Environment edited by Johannes Birringer, Thomas Dumke & Klaus Nicolai CYNET art _ 07 ISBN 3981024729
Exhibitions ‘Pick of the Week’ The Guardian Guide 2006
La Phratrie, Maison Follies, by Aurelie Legrand  2006
Norwich Animation Festival Catalogue ISBN 9780955382208 2006
PC Gamer, Games In Art January 2006
Journal for Patterns Recognised, Winterspace, www.socialfiction.org
New Visions in Performance (Innovations in Art and Design) by Gavin Carver and Colin Beardon Swets & Zeitlinger ISBN 90 265 19664 2004
New Media Art - Lucy Kimbell Published by Arts Council England in association with Cornerhouse Publications ISBN 0948797886
Exhibitions ‘Pick of the Week’ The Guardian Guide 2002
Le Monde Exhibitions Section MDDF December 2002 Dance Theatre Journal Vol 17 No 3 2001
Interfaces - anomalie digital arts No 3 ISBN 295188110X March 2003
Creation Magazine - Acting Up, Ruth Gibson ISBN9771367257000 2000
Creative Review and Cover Disc WindowsNinetyEight January 2000
La scena digitale: Nuovi media perla danza, Armando Menicacci and Emmanuele Quinz Giangiacomo Feltrinelli editore Milano, Italy 2000
The Art of the Accident, Art + Architecture + Media Technology NAI publishers Dutch Electronic Art Festival Catalogue ISBN 9056620908
New York Times Online - Arts At Large - ASCII Art - Matt Mirapaul September 1999
Wired - Dr Rachel Armstrong review February issue 1996

 

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Awards
Henry Moore Foundation New Exhibitions Commission 2010
British Council Visual Art Award 2008
NESTA Invention and Innovation award 2004
Royal Opera House Commission 2004
Computer Space Prize XV nomination 2003
BAFTA nomination 2002
Travel Award Arizona State University IDAT 1999
ArtsAdmin bursary 1999
Travel Award Dutch Electronic Arts Festival, Rotterdam, NL 1998

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Artists in Residence
Arctic Circle Residency 2010
Deakin University Melbourne Motion Lab 2010
Banff Centre, Canada 2009
Londonprintstudio Paddington, London, UK 2008
RMIT Associate Artists, Melbourne, Australia 2004 & 2006
Centre for Astrophysics & Super Computing, Swinburne University Melbourne, Australia 2004
Jerwood Space, London, UK 1998
Riverside Studios, London, UK 1997
Sadlers Wells, Software for Dancers, London, UK 2001
V2 Lab, Future Moves, Rotterdam, NL 1998

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Visiting Tutor/Lectures
V&A
University Technology Sydney
Critical Path Sydney
Slade  School of Fine Art
Royal College of Art
Goldsmiths College
Bartlett School of Architecture
Huddersfield University
Brunel University School of Arts
CLEAR, Centre for Landscape & Environmental Arts Research, Cumbria University
Women in Games, University of Wales Newport
Transistor 2 CIANT, Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic
Gametime, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne, Australia

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Artist Statement
"Our current practice examines the postmodern notion of simulacra. This concept is based on the idea that nothing is real, the world is a series of interlocking illusions, swimming in a sea of media driven images and signs that are bewildering and ultimately uninterpretable. Our desire is to play in the spaces between the 'real' and the 'imaginary' to provide a counterpoint to the simulated landscapes via the human form. We exploit virtual reality to explore the relationship between the natural and the artificial in both wilderness & urban environments. We are addressing problems and the connections between interface and design and the best materials to use to express ourselves. Our newer works deal with the unknown and unattainable, we're trying to put the spectator in a position of privilege and discovery.

The changing narratives of nature inspire our thematic choices and though we are not painters, geologists or botanists our practice parallels the pathways opened up by the likes of Rousseau, Ruskin, Morris & Glover. We are working with 21st century tools to explore new ways of presenting, recording and experiencing our observations of the familiar, unfamiliar, unattainable and remote. Our recent video works and navigable worlds have questioned the role of the 'real' in virtual environments but also the reproduction of nature in the history of art, particularly landscape work. We are exploring this through a variety of artistic methods so we may develop our inquiry into computer graphic visualization and the moving image. Our objective is to gain a greater understanding of our surroundings and question our place within it."

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Research Areas
The use of animation tools and digital methods to explore and realise unique approaches in developing real-time screen based works. The creative expansion of interface development into new territories evolving science and new display technologies. Specific attention paid to the modification that nature undergoes as technology develops.

The exploration of the interface between motion capture technology & movement practices opening up a quite different set of questions about the relationship between motion capture/movement tracking and the dancing body. How the sensing body can interact with motion capture and enable researchers and dancers to understand more about how immersive environments affect user, viewer engagement; and by seeking to reveal more about somatic movement practices, it will enhance kinaesthetic awareness and engagement.

The creation of serious games projects and interactive environments for a wide range of users. Making creative virtual worlds and interactive experiences using a range of technologies including computer vision, motion detection, game engines, stereoscopy and 3d visualisation. Creating projects with SEN children and 3d interactive visualisations of real and imagined spaces for theatre, opera and ballet, concert halls and stadia, heritage buildings and architects and festivals.

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