Zachary Eastwood-Bloom is a former student and technical demonstrator at Kirklees College and is currently collaborating with Dewsbury Creative Town on a public art project in Dewsbury Town Centre. This project will be coupled with student workshops and talks with students at Kirklees college exploring aspects of digital design, modelling and making.
Zachary is keen to involve Kirklees College students and local young people in his project and has loaned the college four sculptures from his Simulacra series, which are currently on display at Pioneer Higher Skills Centre.
Speaking about the work, Zachary said:
“The Simulacra series of sculptures is a body of work exploring the personification of Artificial Intelligent systems through a lens of history and mythology. The recent rapid growth of accessible AI software has brought into reality what was once considered a fiction, bringing forward questions such as, ‘what happens if a machine gains independent thought processes? And how might this develop society in the future?’.
The Simulacra sculptures draw from the human propensity for mythmaking, historically used to rationalise the inexplicable and the unknown. The sculptures were developed through using AI and Machine Learning systems trained on 3D scans of classical sculptures so that the system could begin to make its own sculptures. The resulting forms were then 3D printed in quartz sand.”
Principally making sculpture but also video, dance, sound, photography, and drawings, Zachary Eastwood-Bloom explores the notions of human progress in relation to historical ideas, scientific development, and digital technology, as well as the ways in which humans attempt to understand the world around them, using methods such as storytelling, religion, science, or technology.
The sculptures explore the mythologies surrounding technology and our social and technological progress as a species. Each sculpture is 80cm high and they were last shown at Cambridge University’s Museum of Classical Archaeology. The sculptures will be on display at Pioneer Higher Skills Centre for two weeks, before moving to Kirklees College’s Huddersfield Centre.
Zachary has been working with students at the college for a number of years. Last year, Zachary joined Saba Rifat and Emmeline North to deliver a talk to our Creative Industries students about the Dewsbury Creative Town project, and how to create a successful career in the arts.
Zachary will continue to work with Kirklees College students this year, who will be helping him with his public art project. Zachary has already consulted our students on the project and local people in a series of engagement sessions last year.
The Kirklees College Marketing team caught up with Zachary last year to chat about his career journey and work with the Dewsbury Creative Town project. Watch the full interview here:
To find out more about Art and Design at Kirklees College, click here.
