Alastair has ten years experience as a senior creative within
the digital industries, specialising in interactive design and
works at digital media marketing company, Amaze.
Over the last few years he has developed an arts practice outside
his commercial role. His participatory artwork has been seen in
Manchester and Paris. He holds an MA in Creative Technology from
The University of Salford.
He works in close collaboration with James Bailey a creative
software developer. James and Alastair started an arts practice in
early 2008 after working extensively in the creative industries,
exploring professional and personal interests, both together and
apart. Their practice focuses heavily on intervention in public
spaces to produce artwork that has an open framework making
participation integral to its success. The artists' roles are to
develop mechanisms, which allow the participants to produce 'the
work'.
They realised their first landmark project, handprint, in
December 2008, a public installation which engaged the thousands of
people who pass through Manchester's, Piccadilly Gardens.
Projecting volunteers' handprints onto the side of the 105m tall
City Tower. A major reworking of handprint will form part of the
Northwest Cultural Olympiad in 2012 as part of the WE PLAY
programme of events. A record of the first installation can be seen
at www.handprint.org.uk.
Their next major self-initiated project, Trinity entered
development in late 2009 as an installation for Manchester's main
railway station which 85,000 people use every day. This project
remains under wraps, but will be realised in a three week residency
in 2012.
Working from the North West of England, the artists are also
responsible for two permanent, interactive commissions for a new
build National Health Service, Neighbourhood Health Centre in
Liverpool. Wishing Well is operational in an outdoor
courtyard and 26:14:17 interrupts the tension of a waiting room.
Both works combine a physical artefact with an online community
component that allows the pieces to grow and change over time,
drawing content from the people that encounter them. As a focal
point for the community, potential users have been put at the heart
of each work.
A further major commission, Lowry to Life is scheduled
for late 2011. An ambitious telematic project, the outdoor
intervention uses human skeleton mapping to connect people between
two versions of L.S Lowry's painting of Piccadilly Gardens. One
will operate in the original setting in central Manchester and the
other at MediaCity UK.
They have and continue to work with BBC Big Screens and have taken
up residencies and exhibitions at both Hub in Manchester and FACT
in Liverpool.