SERVER \\ Talks Programme
SERVER will be playing at Barnsley Civic and online over the festival weekend. You can enjoy the stream here from 10.30am on 25 September.
KEYNOTE: Jussi Parikka
Environments of Digital Culture: Data Ruralism and Layered Landscapes
In this talk Jussi Parikka discusses the concepts of “data ruralism” and “banal datafication”. Taking its cue from recent data centre projects in South East Finland, the talk continues to address particular points about technological landscapes, including references to the book Living Surfaces (Gil-Fournier and Parikka, 2024).
Jazmin Morris
Introduction to Northern Passage: A Quest To Hopian
Jazmin Morris talks through her new commission Northern Passage: A Quest To Hopian, an interactive three-level game inspired by real locations in Barnsley and Doncaster, drawing connections between digital play, social infrastructure, and the realities of working-class towns across the UK. Inspired by the artist’s lived experience of growing up and practising in North England, the work unfolds across three distinct sites, each shaped around an archetypal gameplay figure: The Creator, The Healer, and The Joker.
Dian Joy
Introduction to Krumville
Dian Joy talks through her new commission Krumville, a multi-screen film exploring memory, perception, and mediated experience through a fictional town created from remixing algorithmic image-making and personal recollections.
MONOM
Introduction to Acoustic Memories
MONOM’s Alejandra Ríos talks through their new commission Acoustic Memories, an immersive spatial audio installation to explore the acoustic memory of extraction and the hidden infrastructures beneath Barnsley’s industrial landscape. Drawing on archival research, industrial histories, and the evolving ecologies that have emerged in their wake, the work forms a dense sonic composition that moves between hyperreal atmosphere and surreal abstraction.
Clusterduck
Introduction to (W)HOLE
Clusterduck talk through their project (W)HOLE , a cooperative world-building journey exploring the hidden world of digital infrastructures. The project combines many forms of making and imagining, such as sculpture, sound, Augmented Reality, and 3D models. For Barnsley, (W)HOLE combines six manhole covers located across the town centre with corresponding AR works that reveal the hidden layers of digital infrastructure: Earth – the ground and materials everything is built on; Cloud – big computers that store and move information; City – the streets and buildings around us; Address – the systems that help us find things and people; Interface – the screens and tools we use every day; and User – each of us.
Metahaven
Introduction to Chaos Theory
Metahaven talk through the work Chaos Theory, an audiovisual poem structured around the dialogues and wanderings of two characters: X and Y/Z as they reflectively confront the contemporary world and its puzzling flows of interconnected phenomena. Avoiding the use of conventional narrative language and the binaries of information technology, Chaos Theory operates as a non-linear tale challenging the divisions between fiction and fact, shared realities and dreams. Shot on location in the outskirts of Amsterdam, the movie’s landscape appears in contrast with its dreamlike scenes and the open-ended poetics of its dialogues.
Illona Sagar
Infrastructural Bodies
Infrastructural Bodies explores the relationship between the archive and the body through Ilona Sagar’s films Deep Structure and The Body Blow. The talk considers how architectural, institutional, and medical infrastructures not only organise material environments but also shape wider political and social landscapes.
Bringing together Deep Structure’s examination of Sheffield’s Park Hill estate as a radical post-war experiment in housing and community with The Body Blow’s collaborative research into the latent legacies of asbestos exposure, Sagar examines the narratives constructed around civic infrastructure, questioning how ideas of failure and obsolescence have shaped public understandings of housing, health, labour, and the body.
Wassim Z. Alsindi
There’s Trouble at t’Line
What gets lost when a landscape is designed as a digital render? Wassim Z. Alsindi’s talk elaborates on the concept of “Golf Futurism” and the utopian promises of technocolonial projects such as seasteads and network states. In the smoothness of capital-rendered space, he reflects on where the space remains for human connection, subjectivity and empathy.
Pavel Prokopic, Andy Miah and Jayne Sayer
Beyond the Screen: Nested Cinema and the Future of Cinematic Experience
In this talk, Pavel Prokopic, Andy Miah and Jayne Sayer discuss the future of cinema and how emerging technologies might reshape the relationship between films, audiences and exhibition spaces. They trace the genesis of the Nested Cinema project, which expands a film beyond the main screen through spatialised sound, lighting, projection and VR to create a more immersive shared experience. They also outline the vision for the AHRC-funded project and how it will explore the creative and practical potential of this approach for filmmakers, cinemas and audiences
Bea Xu
Do Not Love: the Dynamo is Loading
Elucidating on the theoretical underpinnings of a biopunk love story adapted into the digital realm, ‘Do Not Love: the Dynamo is Loading’ is a part lecture-performance, part visual teaser of Bea’s forthcoming commission for HERVISIONS, The Dynamo is Loading Exactly As Intended. A non-linear meditation on attachment and human agency, subterranean features of karst and urban landscapes alike function as geotraumatic sites of human suffering when physical forces become analogous to cosmic attraction and repulsion.
Agnes Cameron and Lydia Phillips
Peaceful and Noisy Machines
Agnes Cameron and Lydia Phillips discuss a series of new musical instruments developed for performance. They unpack the military context of the components used to create new sounds, and on questions of social value as they relate to technology.
Felix Loftus
Return to Normal Devices? Phone Bathing for Smart Phone Repurposing
The frictionlessness of smart phones means we generally look straight through them. This, twinned with the frustration we feel at their ability to suck in our attention and data, and the fact that smart phones are generally locked down bits of hardware, mean we often look past smart phones as creative computing devices. In this presentation, Felix Loftus, who uses repurposed smart phones in his art practice, does a ‘Phone Bathing’ meditation to re-attune our perception to what a phone actually is and to the potential ecological value of re-using these devices instead of starting afresh.
Research for this talk was supported by The Photographers’ Gallery and The Ampersand Foundation
Sarah Selby and Dr. Gabrielle Samuel
What Counts? Health, Data and the Limits of Legibility
This talk gives an informal glimpse into an ongoing collaboration between artist Sarah Selby and social scientist and ethicist Dr Gabrielle Samuel. They discuss the environmental and local health impacts of AI infrastructure, and how these impacts are translated through particular forms of data and measurement. The conversation also considers what these ways of accounting allow us to see, and what they might conceal or leave out.
SERVER is a continuous, 7-hour, artist-led festival film channel creating space for critical reflection, speculative storytelling and interdisciplinary exchange.
SERVER is commissioned and produced by Abandon Normal Devices (AND) and Going Away.tv for AND Festival 2026. Supported using public funding through the National Lottery by Arts Council England, with further support from Barnsley Council and Barnsley Civic.
How to experience SERVER
SERVER takes place in the gallery space in Barnsley Civic. It is free to attend and drop in, no prior booking is needed.
It is a continuous, 7-hour screening of artist talks, keynote presentations, in-conversations, film screenings and digital game playthroughs. We will provide schedules if you’d like to catch a specific section of the programme. You can spend as much or little time as you want in the space. The experience may be more suitable for ages 12+ due to the themes of the programme.
If the space is full when you arrive, you might have to wait a short time before a seat becomes available.
Access Provisions
- AND aims to caption all SERVER content, we aim to have additional access information available here from mid August.
- There will be a mixture of seating options, including some with arms and backs.
SERVER is a new work and therefore currently in development. We aim to have additional access information available here from mid August. Additional access information on the venue can be found on our Access Information page.
Age Guidance
We recommend the minimum age for this installation is 12+. It features artists, academics and creative practitioners talking through artworks, artistic practices and themes of the festival. Some content may contain strong language and images of a sexual nature, violence, and body horror, which is suitable for ages 16+. Sections with this content will be clearly labelled on the programme schedule.
About our speakers
Jazmin Morris is a Creative Computing Artist and Educator based in Leeds. Her practice and pedagogy consider the historical trajectories of modern technology and critically speculate on the landscape of human-computer interaction.
Using free and open-source tools, Jazmin crafts participatory digital works that challenge power dynamics and hierarchies within cyberspace, with a particular emphasis on the processes of simulating culture and identity. Despite her critical approach, Jazmin appreciates the early days of the internet and is a huge fan of the classic gaming icon, Super Mario 64.
Dian Joy is a British-Nigerian interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker based in London. Working across video and installation, Joy’s practice explores the entanglement of biological and technological systems through a speculative, research-driven approach. Their work critically engages with the ever-evolving terrain of selfhood in the digital era, frequently investigating how the machinic and the embodied intersect within contemporary culture. Bridging theory and praxis, at the core of Joy’s inquiry is an exploration of desire as a subjectivity-shaping force in a world increasingly governed by algorithmically charged media. Through this lens, Joy examines the affective and material dimensions of otherness and power. Never indebted to a darkening horizon, their installations and moving image works cultivate spaces for collective reflection, asking how we indeed “make sense” amid the ideological forces that shape contemporary life.
MONOM is an artist-run studio working at the intersection of spatial sound, music, art, and technology. Utilizing 4DSOUND technology, we craft spatial sound experiences across the entire spectrum, from ideation to exhibition—artistic direction, touring, curation, technology and system integration. We believe in sound as a powerful medium for change and transformation. With spatial sound at the center, we aim to create transformative experiences that are accessible and available to everyone.
Clusterduck is an interdisciplinary collective working in the fields of new media studies, design, and transmedia, investigating the processes and actors behind the creation of Internet-based content. Clusterduck has developed Meme Manifesto, a transmedia project that collectively explores the occult meanings and communicative potentials of memetic symbology. Over the past seven years, Clusterduck has also created the participatory exhibitions #MEMEPROPAGANDA and #MEMERSFORFUTURE, which examines the role of memetics in post-truth times and the global climate justice movement. Clusterduck’s works have been exhibited at KW Institute of Contemporary Art, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Ars Electronica, Villa Arson Nice, Transmediale, The Influencers, Werkleitz Festival, Impakt Festival, re:publica, Arebyte, Greencube Gallery, Tentacular Festival, and IFFR.
Metahaven is the author persona for Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden, an artist collective known for their elusive aesthetics and groundbreaking interdisciplinary research. They have created solo exhibitions at MoMA PS1, New York; Guggenheim Museum Bilbao; ICA London; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; Asakusa, Tokyo; Izolyatsia, Kyiv; e-flux, New York, and State of Concept Athens, among others. They have participated in group exhibitions at the Gwangju Biennale; the Sharjah Biennial; Ghost:2561, Bangkok, and many others. Their films have been screened at IFFR, Docs Against Gravity, CPH:DOX, the Museo Reina Sofía, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, among others. Their work features in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Sharjah Art Foundation, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, among others. Metahaven’s current work centers on the foundational role of poetry in its cinematic and cognitive senses.
Ilona Sagar is a London-based artist and filmmaker, and resident of Somerset House Studios. Drawing on archival research and interdisciplinary collaboration, her work explores how civic and social identities are constructed and contested through the infrastructures of health, technology, and the body. Recent projects include Other Actors (Stanley Picker Fellowship, 2025), currently touring to the Architecture and Design Museum Helsinki, Nordic House Reykjavík and Röhsska Museum Gothenburg. Her work has been presented internationally in venues including the 24th International Exhibition at Triennale Milano, Serpentine Gallery, Barbican Art Gallery, Hayward Gallery, Wellcome Collection, CCA Glasgow, Villa Arson Centre National d’Art Contemporain and Art Rotterdam. In 2027, she will undertake a collaborative research project with neurologists at King’s College London and the University of Eastern Finland in partnership with Saastamoinen Foundation. Forthcoming work includes projects with Cement Fields and a solo commission with public programme at Somerset House Studios.
Wassim Z. Alsindi Ph.D. operates at the intersection of intersections, chronicling visions, designs, and externalities of contemporary technologies across context and episteme. Wassim holds a Ph.D. in ultrafast physics, co-founded MIT’s Cryptoeconomic Systems journal, and has performed, lectured, and exhibited in over 30 countries.
Pavel Prokopic, Andy Miah and Jayne Sayer
Pavel Prokopič leads the Nested Cinema project, and is a Czech filmmaker, and lecturer at the University of Salford. His current work focuses on advancing cinema as a unique form of art and storytelling by combining creative experimentation, philosophical concepts, and cutting-edge technologies. Pavel is the creator of Nested Cinema (nestedcinema.com), and the co-founder and principal investigator of the International Network of Experimental Fiction Filmmaking (ineff.org). His work has been widely published, exhibited and presented, including FACT and the V&A Museum, as well as the Leonardo journal and the Journal for Artistic Research. He holds an AHRC-funded PhD, and a Master’s degree in Film Aesthetics from Magdalen College, University of Oxford.
Andy Miah co-leads the Nested Cinema project, and his work explores the relationship between emerging technologies, human experience and culture. His practice works across digital media, immersive technologies, AI, extended reality and speculative futures, bringing together artistic experimentation with critical research. Through installations, exhibitions, public engagement and interdisciplinary collaborations, he explores how technologies reshape the ways we imagine ourselves, our communities and the future. His work sits at the intersection of art, science and technology, creating spaces for audiences to encounter complex technological ideas through creative and experiential forms. With previous roles at the Royal College of Art and the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, Professor Miah had worked collaboratively with artists, designers, and technologists to realise new creative propositions that challenge our understanding of what it is to be human.
Jayne Sayer co-leads the Nested Cinema project, and is a lecturer and researcher exploring the intersections of production design, immersive cinema and expanded screen technologies. Her work investigates spatial narrative through reactive lighting, multi-screen installation, and 180°/360° cinematography using design-led practice-as-research methodologies. She examines how emerging technologies reshape storytelling, audience experience and film pedagogy. Her outputs include immersive exhibitions, conference presentations, funded pedagogic research and prototype development. She contributes to the AHRC-funded Nested Cinema project and collaborates through international research networks including the Production Design Research & Education Network.
Finnish cultural historian Jussi Parikka is professor of Digital Aesthetics and Culture at Aarhus University. He has written and co-edited a number of books on media theory, history of digital culture, and environmental media. Some earlier work includes What is Media Archaeology? (2012) and Insect Media (2010). More recent work includes The Lab Book (with Lori Emerson and Darren Wershler, 2022), Operational Images (2023), and Living Surfaces: Images, Plants and Environments of Media (with Abelardo Gil-Fournier, 2024). He also works as curator, including such past projects as Weather Engines (2022) and Climate Engines (2023-2024) with Daphne Dragona. In 2026, he is co-curating Josefina Nelimarkka’s solo show Arctic Clouds. His new book, Abstract Agriculture, is contracted with MIT Press for 2028.
Bea Xu is a Chinese-British psychic worker exploring the use of psychotechnologies for reality production through live art and mixed media installation. A practicing integrative, transpersonal psychotherapist, Bea is currently developing an ‘alter-fidelity roleplay’ concept that draws on IFS and Psychosynthesis to resist through playing with intrapsychic identities. They are currently completing a commission for HERVISIONS, with work previously shown at Bolding, Organhaus, NEW FEARS, au JUS, Gossamer Fog, Furtherfield Gallery and FORMA.
Agnes Cameron and Lydia Phillips
Agnes is an artist and technician who works with hardware and software. This year she has been thinking about new sounds by making new musical instruments, and working with industrial knitting machines.
Lydia normally plays horn or harmoniums, usually improvising or performing in Music / Theatre contexts in the north west. This year she learnt the flute as part of her role in Bow Down at the Black Lights festival – Blackpool this June.
Lydia and Agnes work together as part of the Commission for New and Old Art, a collective concerned with music, theatrical performance and political work in the North West of England, New York City and beyond.
Felix Loftus is a creative technologist engaged in action-research centering around contemporary relationships to the land and commoning practices, with a particular focus on how digital and network technologies can contribute to contemporary commons. His practice involves creative computing, computational photography and digital fabrication working primarily with embedded electronics through a permacomputing approach. He works as a Lecturer on the MA Design for Industry 5.0 at Central Saint Martins where he has previously been the Specialist Technician for Web and Creative Code. He contributes to discourse on permacomputing through the London Permacomputing Club, the international community of practice and through freelance projects
Sarah Selby is an interdisciplinary artist whose work makes tangible the hidden systems that organise contemporary life. Her practice explores the political, ecological, and material infrastructures that shape interactions and consequences across human and more-than-human worlds.
Dr Gabrielle Samuel is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine, and an internationally acclaimed social scientist and ethicist who explores the complex intersections of technology, health, and the environment. Her work critically examines the social and ethical dimensions of emerging technologies, with a particular focus on creating a more sustainable and equitable future.