AND joins Somerset House Studios’ new interdisciplinary programme, n-Space

We are pleased to announce our participation in n-Space – a new initiative for interdisciplinary collaboration that brings together artists, technologists, academics, and industry professionals, led by Somerset House Studios. AND, alongside our collaborator School of Digital Arts (SODA) at Manchester Metropolitan University, will host Hypersea (Hannah Cobb) as part of the initiative, encouraging interdisciplinary experimentation across art and technology. 

In collaboration with key academic and cultural partners, n-Space will be an evolving workspace and network, supporting a diverse range of practitioners and collaborations, focused on process, creative inquiry and outcomes that don’t fit within traditional institutional platforms. The initial pilot programme will be a series of funded fellowships for an interdisciplinary cohort of six practitioners, invited and selected by the partners for this initial 18-month long pilot programme. n-Space’s first fellows are:

• Audio investigator and researcher Adnan Naqvi, whose work hinges on philosophy of technology and electronic music history
• Computing specialist technician and lecturer Agnes Cameron; artist duo dmstfctn, who explore opaque systems of power and AI folklore through installation, performance, video games and film
• Artist Ed Fornieles who examines the invisible structures such as our habits, protocols, and narratives we inhabit through immersive simulations, role-play, installation, and sculpture
• Post-disciplinarian Hypersea explores the implications of new digital technologies through speculative fiction and documentary-style analysis
• Researcher Leela Jadhav who works across legal, literary, and spatial registers

This inaugural n-Space fellowship explores the question of governance in human and more-than-human collaboration, as a prompt for both how participants might focus their time on the programme, and how they might contribute to shaping and driving its direction and outcomes. Fellows will build upon their existing research interests, working towards the development of interdisciplinary methods, interventions, and insights that expand how we might organise, intervene, and imagine possible futures in art, technology, and society.

In the first phase of the programme, fellows will participate in collaborative, knowledge exchange workshops and experimental design methods, led by UAL’s Creative Computing Institute. The second phase, led by Somerset House Studios, introduces artist-led provocations aimed at broadening and challenging the research interests of the group, designed by artist leads Dr Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Dr Rashaad Newsome and Sarah Friend. Goldsmiths Computing will contribute through network mapping and creating the foundations of an iterative archive, while Abandon Normal Devices in collaboration with SODA will provide a platform to Hypersea in the North of England.

A public programme will run from April 2026 onwards, connecting the emergent themes and research with audiences, building towards a final showcase taking place in March 2027. Join our mailing list to be the first to hear the developments on n-Space.

Read the full announcement on Somerset House Studios’ website.

Based in Manchester, Hypersea (Hannah Cobb) is a generalist whose practice explores the emergence of new digital technologies and their wider cultural and social implications through speculative fiction and documentary-style analysis. She works across film, digital 3D design, sound, live performance and writing, often experimenting with the use of Generative Al models trained on her previous work, and is 1/2 of the artist-writer-curator duo Y7 with Declan Colquitt. Hannah has collaborated on Shumon Basar’s Lorecore Trilogy for the Zora Zine residency and her work Report 5923, a feature-length sci-fi film based on Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed was shortlisted for both The Lumen Prize and the SOLO AI Award. She took part in the Samarbeta residency in Salford, in partnership with IKLEKTIK, Salford Museum & Art Gallery and Hybrid Futures, co-organised and produced a zine for Open Secret’s touring internet cinema programme, and spoke on post-music at Unsound Festival in 2024. Most recently she curated the 18th edition of the Global Art  Forum under the title The New New Normal, and was commissioned to create a new  work for May Al Help You, an exhibition presented by Patchlab and FutureEverything in Krakow, Poland.

Somerset House Studios is a space for experimentation in the centre of London connecting artists, makers and thinkers with audiences. The Studios supports artists across disciplines to push bold ideas, engage with urgent issues and experiment with new technologies. At the heart of Somerset House, the home of cultural innovators, up to 70 artists are resident at any one time for a period of between one and seven years, with a number of shorter term national and international residency programmes running alongside. The Studios develops ambitious cross disciplinary projects and creative collaborations on a range of scales, and powers Channel, Somerset House’s online space for art, ideas and the artistic process.

School of Digital Arts (SODA) at Manchester Metropolitan University is a purpose‑built, interdisciplinary school at one of the UK’s leading universities. Offering industry informed courses and specialist spaces with the latest technologies, SODA is a £35M investment into the workspaces, networks, teaching and research that will drive the next generation of creative content. A proud part of Manchester Met, we build on the creative, science, tech and business strengths of a university whose research is rated as ‘world-leading’ and is changing the way we live, work, learn and play.

n-Space is curated by Linda Rocco for Somerset House Studios, and supported by the Rothschild Foundation.