Artists' Residencies

The artists will be collaborating with researchers and partners from the Centre to make creative and speculative work building on ongoing research, and exploring particular sociodigital futures issues.

The art and design work will be included in a public exhibition in June 2026. 

The artists are: 

Vincent Baidoo

Vincent is a creative technologist and project manager from Bristol with over a decade of community-focused transmedia practice across film, music, comics, anime and games.

He combines practical engineering with inclusive storytelling to build holographic installations, hand-tracked demos and interactive learning experiences.

Vincent’s research and public engagement interrogate AI ethics and algorithmic bias through a Global Majority lens. As an authorised Nintendo developer Vincent spends his free time indulging in Nintendo Switch based creeping features.

Alistair Gentry

Alistair is an artist and writer who makes live art, performance lectures, artistic interventions, digital installations, online and real world participatory experiences and live role-playing games.

He likes folklore, magic, silly costumes, museums, absurdity, the uncanny valley, doing things that help people think, improving the world incrementally, and making machines and systems do things their creators wouldn’t approve of.

He also works as a researcher, producer and educator with a particular focus on environmental and social justice, and disabled people in the arts. Recent commissions and collaborations include working with the Global Disability Innovation Hub at University College London, the Open Data Institute, and the Department of Informatics at King’s College London. 

Annette Mees

Annette is an award-winning theatre director, artist and dramaturg. She works at the intersection of culture, innovation and change. 

She began her career as a co-Artistic Director of Coney, was a Creative Fellow for WIRED and the Head of Audience Labs at the Royal Opera House - a department where opera and ballet met cutting-edge technologies.

She works for and with interdisciplinary teams to create stories and experiences that defy definitions and spark new thinking. Often in collaboration with technology companies incl. Imaginarium Studios, Google Creative Lab, Magic Leap, and cultural institutions incl. National Gallery (UK), National Ballet of Canada, NITE (NL), The Public Theatre (US), the European Cultural Foundation and the Southbank Centre (UK).

Rachel Smith

Rachel is an artist, creative technologist and software engineer based in Bristol. Often making performative installations with silly machines, she is interested in humans, technology and the space in between. 

With a background in maths and an MFA in Media Art from Bauhaus University in Weimar, Rachel is happiest when straddling the boundary of art and tech. 

She is a resident of the Pervasive Media Studio in Bristol and has exhibited at Science Gallery Melbourne, Ars Electronica, and Kunstverein Tiergarten Berlin.