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Pestival says "Insectes Sans Frontières"
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Bridget Nicholls | David Rothenberg | Dr Matthew Cobb | Ed Baker | Ollie Palmer
Pestival insect workers come from all walks of life and corners of the earth; no stones are left unturned. Some are experts in their field, some are enthusiasts or hobbyists, others are cutting-edge practitioners. BUT one thing unites them all: a common cause – to represent the multifaceted world of insects in a collaborative and engaging way.
Bridget Nicholls
Bridget Nicholls is the Director and Founder of Pestival. Known as a naturalist with a sense of humour, Bridget has combined her passion for ecology, love for animals and her mission for as many people as possible to engage with the natural world. She has worked for BBC2, The Discovery Channel, The Ecologist and BBC Radio 3 and 4. She and Pestival will be Artist-in-Residence at London Zoo, from 2010-2013. Awarded the first Art Fellowship of the Zoological Society of London, her mission is to develop an international zoo network whose aim will be to create new cross arts and science collaborations which engage with animals, the environment, insects and communities, as well as continuing to develop Pestival.
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David Rothenberg
David Rothenberg is Professor of Humanities at New Jersey Institute of Technology. A philosopher and musician, he is the author of Why Birds Sing, which has been published in seven countries. His articles have appeared in Parabola, Orion, The Nation, Wired, Dwell, Kyoto Journal, The Globe and Mail and Sierra. Rothenberg is also a composer and jazz clarinetist, and he has seven CDs out under his own name. His latest book is Thousand Mile Song, about making music with whales. He lives in Cold Spring, New York.
Dr Matthew Cobb
Dr Matthew Cobb is a Senior Lecturer in Animal Behaviour at the University of Manchester. He has studied insect behaviour for 30 years, and is particularly interested in the evolution of communication and perception and the way in which they are shaped by genes and the environment. He explored these themes in his book The Egg and Sperm Race: The Seventeenth-century Scientists Who Unravelled the Secrets of Sex, Life and Growth. His animal of choice is a fly maggot.
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Ed Baker
Ed Baker has had an interest in invertebrates, particularly stick insects and cockroaches, for as long as he can remember. Despite spending a few years in the wilderness studying physics he now works at the Natural History Museum, London on projects related to insects and biodiversity informatics. He also works for the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature.
Ollie Palmer
Ollie Palmer is a multi-disciplinary designer. He runs Hoog Design and a collaborator with Open_Sailing. Besides design, he has travelled around the world, hitchhiked across Iceland, taught I.T. in the depths of the Amazon and plays with ants. He is a member of Unit 14 at the Bartlett School of Architecture and a Getty Images contributing photographer.
Other collaborators
Ada Zanditon
Ada Zanditon is an innovative ethical fashion designer who creates beautiful, cutting edge, inimitable collections of high-end women's wear. Ada is known for her visionary concepts which combine high fashion with a serious commitment to the environment.
Her SS'10 collection, The Colony, was inspired by Colony Collapse Disorder, and she also designed the dress and necklace Pestival Director Bridget Nicholls wore to the Observer Ethical Awards ceremony in 2010.
Amenity Space
Amenity Space is a young creative architectural practice based in Hackney, East London. Qualified architects, Anthony Broomhead and Nicholas Kirk, established the practice at the start of 2007. Both partners have worked with some of the best architects in the UK and have experience of delivering important projects in this country and abroad.
Amoret Whitaker
Amoret Whitaker, MSc DIC, is an Entomologist based at the Natural History Museum in London. In the past decade she has worked on various groups of insects including hoverflies, parasitic wasps and fleas, and her Handbook of British Fleas is soon to be published by the Royal Entomological Society.
Whitaker has now swapped parasites of live animals for those living on dead and decaying ones, and is undertaking a PhD in Forensic Entomology. This mainly involves insect succession studies on stillborn piglets and laboratory studies breeding fly larvae, but has also involved field work in Knoxville, Tennessee in the USA to study the decomposition of human donor bodies and the associated insect fauna. She also works as a consultant to UK police forces, attending crime scenes and analysing insect evidence.
Andrew Hinton
Andrew Hinton is a creative producer who has worked closely with director Paul Kelly and Saint Etienne on their film projects for the past 5 years. He was an artist in residence with them at Southbank Centre and continues to maintain a beehive on the roof of the Royal Festival Hall which featured in the most recent London Festival of Architecture. His recent projects include a series of short collaborations between composers and filmmakers for Channel 4, and four short films for the Tate in which spoken word artists respond to upcoming exhibitions.
Dr Rufus Cartwright
Dr Rufus Cartwright is an Academic Clinical Fellow currently based at Imperial College London, having trained in medicine at Trinity College Cambridge, University College London Medical School, and King's College Hospital, London. He has kept bees for 5 years, both in and out of London.
Dr Rupert Soar
Rupert Soar heads the highly publicised TERMES project, featured in Sir David Attenborough’s ‘Life in the Undergrowth’ series in November 2005. Rupert’s team of international experts, within the field of entomology, simulation, construction, physiology, as well as commercial sponsors and government organisations, are performing the world’s first full 3D digital scans of these massive termite mounds located in Namibia, South Africa.
These structures hold the key to adaptive capabilities within our own homes through highly complex geometries and channels which impart homeostatic capabilities and regulation of internal mound environment to remarkably high tolerances. Having built and shipped the world’s largest slice and scanning machine to Namibia in summer 2005, the team now has a remarkable dataset from which simulation and modelling of homeostatic function is taking place. The geometric rules, which emerge, will then be reproduced, by the freeform construction machines, within the walls of our homes.
Robyn Hitchcock
Robyn Hitchcock is an English singer-songwriter and guitarist. Coming to prominence in the late 1970s with The Soft Boys, Hitchcock afterward launched a prolific solo career. His lyrics are an essential component of his work and tend to include surrealism, comedic songs, characterisations of English eccentrics and melancholy depictions of everyday life. His themes include what many psychologists view as the roots of modern neurosis - namely, death, sex and eating. (Recognising this theme, he released an EP in 2007 called "Sex, Food, Death and Tarantulas".)
http://www.robynhitchcock.com