Ludic Rooms, in partnership with Coventry City of Culture Trust, are delighted to announce details of this year’s Random String Festival; a spectacular night-time experience of art and light for all ages. Random String is Ludic Rooms’ biennial festival of arts and technology, which has been running since 2014. This year sees the festival taking place along Coventry Canal to mark the city’s tenure as City of Culture, with a range of artists commissioned to create work specifically for the festival. The festival runs from Thursday 11th – Sunday 14th November 2021.
Random String Festival 2021: The Canal Network(ed) brings light, sound and projections to a stretch of Coventry Canal, following a 1km trail that ends in the Canal Basin. Audiences will be able to venture along the canal and explore artworks that transform the waterway and their sense of place. This year’s theme is ‘Future Folk’, with the festival exploring new kinds of folklore and rituals for life by the water in the 21st Century. Visitors can expect to discover the future creatures of the urban canal, gods and goddesses of the waterways, and new kinds of folk tales, and will also be invited to think about what it means to be by the water in the most landlocked city in the country.
Artists involved in the festival include singer, electronic rock-sitarist, producer, and performer BISHI, who is creating an abstract music audio-visual installation ‘Reflektions’, inspired by Coventry’s anti-racist legacy, and modern day English folk duo Crewdson & Cevanne, who have produced two new musical compositions for the canal, inspired by and featuring found-sounds recorded in and around the basin.
Multidisciplinary artist Ling Tan will be in residence over the festival period itself, working alongside a group of young performers from Highly Sprung Performance Co’s Sprung Advance group for 13-19 year olds, to devise and co-create a new iteration of SUPERMOMENTS; an interactive outdoor site-specific performance that uses illuminated wearable technology to explore people’s personal agency, empathy, and collective actions towards changing the environment we live in.
Coventry-based artist Edie Jo Murray, whose mission is to disrupt notions of reality, works as lead artist with the support of Vortex Creates, Mechanismo Ltd and the Ludic Rooms team (all Coventry & Warwickshire based) to realise her largest physical installation to date, the transformation of a pedestrian footbridge over the Coventry Canal.
Following the trail in Coventry Canal Basin, Ludic Rooms will be hosting a rolling programme of “Post-trail popups”, where Ludic Rooms artists, friends and collaborators will share earlier-stage experiments and works in progress. These pieces and experiences invite members of the public to inform and participate in the development of works which may form a part of future Random String festivals and events.
Random String is produced by Ludic Rooms in partnership with Coventry City of Culture Trust as part of Coventry UK City of Culture 2021. Supported with funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, Arts Council England and the Canal & River Trust.
Find out more about the festival online: https://www.randomstring.co/
Listings
Random String Festival - Light Night Art Trail
Dates: Thursday 11 – Sunday 14th November
Location: Leicester Row
Times: Entry every 20 mins between 17.00 – 21.00
Duration: 60 minutes
Tickets: Pay what you wish – suggested amount £1 - 5