Al Jazari

Al-Jazari was an influential scholar and engineer who lived at the beginning of the 13th century, this project was inspired by his robot musicians who were designed to play at royal drinking parties.

Al-Jazari is also an audience participatory livecoding performance/installation. Originally created for 15 minute livecoding gigs for art students in south London alongside punk bands, it uses robot characters in order to make livecoding more tangible for wide audiences.

In the summer of 2008 an installation version of Al-Jazari was commissioned for the Seville Biennial to be shown in the Palace of Charles V, in the Alhambra, Granada. This version was designed for 4 people to play at once.

In recent incarnations Al Jazari has become an exploration of Minecraft inspired worlds, in order to take livecoding into schools and explore higher level programming concepts in a familiar environment.