Natasha Trotman FRSA MCSD FIEDP

I’m over the moon about this project! Literally! I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to contribute to the boundary-pushing project Inploration with LAD Design as it brings into focus and fosters deeper understandings of our relationship with space, the cosmos and the collective through transdisciplinary creativity. I’m humbled and beyond grateful to announce POLYCHRONIC, by way of this thought-provoking project was included in the payload and sent into space via @relativityspace Terran 1! Terran 1 (named Good Luck, Have Fun) the world's first 3D-printed rocket! It's fueled by a pressing question concerning sustainability and pathways toward more equitable, sustainable futures.

Being a part of this boundary-pushing work spanning art, design, science & beyond is an exceptional experience. I’m delighted to embrace new challenges with like-minded people, extending frontiers of creativity, curiosity and more. The opportunity to send work into space is unique (for me), a realisation of a mission & dream. The lifelong quest to seek and find new ways to push my personal and professional ND limits, create change & engage with new frontiers is ongoing; this project has allowed me to reach significant milestones across many fronts and now aim even higher and dream bigger because... it's bigger than me, #Collective.

I can now say my work exists beyond the Earth's atmosphere; huge thanks to Lawrence, who invited me to join this exciting Inploration Journey and the amazing team and fellow contributors who have made this possible. Together, we have achieved something incredible. I am grateful to have contributed to this ground-breaking project, extending the frontiers of knowledge.

Let's push beyond our boundaries and reach for the stars! This is just the beginning….

Image: POLYCHRONIC by Natasha Trotman as featured in Inploration, abstract red swirls that represent frequencies, deep blue background. The border is abstract black, pink and turquoise swirls in a marbled effect with text in the lower right-hand corner that reads: POLYCHRONIC by Natasha Trotman 2022. Below this, there is more text that reads: Inploration 

#Inploration #3Dprinting #Terran1 #GLHF #RelativitySpace #EqualitiesDesign

Presentation and Screening of SUBSET / RESET

The piece is based on the poly social reality that we all access, are tethered to or fight against and the multiple selves that are created or born out of this; it also runs parallel to the multiple selves many neuro-divergents or persona's that are developed as a coping mechanism to help traverse the neurodivergent focused online/offline world(s).

// is code for 'statement' and that { } are for commands and ; is to close the command - to run along side he poly social/ multiple self aspect.

Commission for Heart n Soul All sorts Season

Neurodivergent Participants and their carers were invited to hear with their hands, see with their ears and give taste an image or physical gesture. This workshop enabled people to engage with the space, sounds and tastes in new and unexpected ways.

The output for this was a 'gesture relay wall', poetry, 'descriptive sketches' through the use of fabrics and sounds; all resulting in a wonderful

collaborative response, a chorus of 'voices' responding to the space and stimuli on the day through various mediums.

Exhibition and sensorial workshop exploring alternative ways of ‘sensing’ colour.

Images by The National Gallery and Natasha Trotman

Exhibition and sensorial workshop exploring sensorial and linguistic ways of being.

Images by Carnell.

Show and tell followed by sensorial workshop with Tate Britain’s permanent collection exploring neurodivergent and non typical ways of experiencing artefacts.

Natasha Trotman co-programmed The Our Brains and Us five day programme with the Institute of Imagination, this event was a celebration of all types of minds and provided interactions and offerings for all sensory systems.

Images by Wellcome Collection.

Tangible Statistics Linguistics

Tangible Statistics Linguistics is an umbrella project which highlights agency, empathy and awareness with neurotypical and neurodivergent individuals and neurodiverse communities through spatial awareness and haptic elements; exploring the voices within quantitative and qualitative data.

Tune in Tune out is a toolkit born out of the Tangible Linguistics Statistics umbrella project. The objects that form a part of the Tune in Tune out toolkit are an amalgam of the most successful aspects of projects under the Tangible Statistic Linguistics umbrella, these objects are also accompanied by session plans and exercises for each object.

The toolkit described in the simplest way is a provocation, an experience intervention- the objects and exercises are intended to foster empathy, agency and awareness concerning dyspraxia and innate neurodivergence using physical interactions and investigative play. For Tune in Tune out, I used an agile approach with an emphasis on research and testing.

Exhibited at The V&A for The London Design Festival Digital Design Weekend 2016 and TSL textures LDF DDW 2017.

Exhibited at V&A Digital Futures with drop in workshop 2016

Nominated for a Helen Hamlyn Inclusive Design Award 2016

TSL’s Neurodivergent Memoirs, was exhibited at the V&A Museum for the London Digital Design Weekend.

TSL’s Neurodivergent Memoirs is an interactive work. Using a

mixture of analogue and digital technologies to explore notions of

‘error’ in a playful explorative way rewarding participants with

memoirs, poems and ‘sonic gifts’ each time an error has been made

during (ND focused) task.

Hearing with your Hands
Being a Met Office Informatics Associate often presents the opportunity to work with interesting weather data; I decided to focus on remixing weather data sets provided by the Met Office as part of the Tangible Linguistics series.

This TSL sub proejct explores how information can be experienced in more tactile/haptic ways and seeks to discover what is lost or gained when presented with data rich and spoken descriptions of the weather, which is then translated into the articulated output of musical notation, melody and vibrations through the playing of the notation.

This project was exhibited at the V&A for The London Digital Design Weekend 2014.

This project for the V&A Digital Cities Exchange in Collaboration with Fine Artist Gabriel Birch seeks to explores data visulisation through using qualitative and quantattive data to create a location based interactive piece, exhibited at the V&A.

Sensory Way Finding aims to take the visitor on a 'tour' of their journey to the V&A using the other senses through audio and the haptic stimuli the route to the V&A is experienced in a new way for. This project was also used as a case study on embodiment byThe Institute of Education (MIDAS).

ICA Commssion, Sensorium Emporium

Trading and exchanging senses, lenses, memories and ways of 'seeing'. https://www.ica.art/whats-on/ica-public-marketplace  Recent Sensorium Emporium exhibition and interactive workshop at the ICA for the ICA Market Place.

Commission

Meta Stories amplified neurodivergent voices through this commission; performed in real time in front of a live studio audience as part of Zhang Ding's Enter the Dragon.

Role: Planning, leading and creative facilitation

This workshop focused on celebrating intersectional identities, the workshop introduced 'hard copy' lo-tech zine crafting. Through the course of the workshop people explored and celebrated intersectional identities, mental difference and SEND politics. Participants remixed printed outputs and other lo-tech materials and data through folding and formatting techniques taught on the day. Those who attended the workshop got to take their freshly crafted zine home.

Digital hijacking and 'visual hacking'

Role: Visual communication, typography, moving image

The digital takeover consisted of experimenting with, and exploring, post-internet culture, code-switching on the ICA blog, instagram and Twitter.

Accendo is an interactive piece focused on redesigning the conductors place and status during the performance in real time. The conductor is transformed before the audience into a ‘Painter-Jockey’ through responsive technology sound and computer vision to inspire and enlighten fresh eyes and ears, including those who are experiencing this genre for the first time.

Commission for Helen Hamlyn Creative Citizens project

This involved the design, prototyping and production of an interactive wall and written article on project and supporting research. 

The interact wall design was sought to engage and co-creating meaning around the ongoing discussion around what a creative citizen or could be.

This wall was used at the AHRC Connected Communities exhibition in Cardiff on and then again at the RCA as part of the Creative Citizens conference  2 months later in London.

The written article on the process and output can be found here: http://creativecitizens.co.uk/2014/11/03/co-creating-the-definition-of-a-creative-citizen-using-our-interactive-wall/

Blackberry and HHCD Award Winning Project

Blackberry And Helen Hamlyn Centre Connected Kindness Project

Role: Experience designer, moving image maker and creative strategist

Cressigham Gardens 'Light Up' was the award winning project born out of the Connected Kindness Brief. 

During the project my team members and I looked at how digital technology can create trust and altruism. This eight-week student project, organised and led by the Centre. The out put was an interconnected skill sharing beacon network.

Graphics Fifty RCA commission//Curatorial Associate and Exhibition Designer

Graphics Fifty RCA is an international exhibiton which explores and elevates the rich history of graphic design at the Royal College of Art. Graphics RCA: Fifty Years illustrates the ways in which, for the past half century, the RCA has articulated the leading edge of major developments in graphic communication.

Image/s by The Royal College of Art

Residency

This residency focused on the future media Project with Bristol Old Vic, The Saconni Quartet and Watershed.

Using responsive technology, sound and designed objects to hack the quartet, audiences were taken on an engaing and insightful journey which focused on breath, relationships and collective creativity.

Breath of the Quartet was the articulated output; this technology woven and data embedded live performance enabled chamber music to be experience with a wider audience in new and engaging ways.

NASA Leaf me Alone

This projects main focus was exploring ozone quality through mutli media such as computer vision and mobile phones.

The aim was to classify all types of leaves at a local, national and international level, create a vast data base of leaf types which would provide data on trends such as plant based diseases and the impact the ozone quality is having on the arctic, using means that everyone has access to and understands.

Exhibited at the V&A as part of Digital Futures

NASA Space Apps Challenge

Role: Designer, Researcher, moving image maker

This project is solving the Fit as a MOoSE: Metabolic Observations of Space Explorers challenge.

The Great British Space Race is an app & website that uses British astronaut Tim Peake's inaugural mission to the ISS to encourage people on Earth to keep fit.

Keeping track of the exercise they do, participants can pit themselves against friends to earn mission badges and astronaut wings as they race towards orbit.

Groups can challenge each other, and in conjunction with gyms, teams across the world can race around the solar system by earning "rocket fuel" for their physical exercise.
 

Channel Four Black and Asian History Map commission

A selection of challenging images created to provoke discussion around history, identity and feelings of belonging. A celebratory and inclusive exploration of what it means to be BAME and British.

Commission

SWGR was a Sony commission that sought to explore contemporary notions on swagger and it's various presentations/outputs. This research was created using both inside and outside research methods and practices.

Findings were transformed into articulated output which included printed posters and a moving image piece.

MTV Flux experimental typographic piece. This was followed by 5 years worth of commissioned writing and image making for MTV Sticky.

Nike Sustainability project

Role: Research, image maker

This project focused on sustainable ways to invigorate unused spaces in east London home of the 2012 Olympics; a collective east London sustainability art map and 'on the ground' guerilla campaigns were created to inspire and engage the local community.

Output: Printed media

Poetry, Performance, Vocals

A leading member of collaborative performance comprised of a group of voices in the museum working with artist Sharon Gal, Natasha Trotman wrote and performed Poem Creative Wanderer and took part in abstract 'noise making'. This event was part of the programme for All of This Belongs to You, an exhibition at the intersection of design, democracy and public life.

BRI Residency

Meta-Stories is a score/audio based neurodiverse anthology comprising of smaller tracks mapped to streets and landmarks in and around the London Fields area.

Meta-stories aims to explore past, present and future thoughts feelings and memories of selected spaces and their legacy by taking the rider on an audio journey down paths, streets, desire lines and through communal spaces with the hope of waking up the forgotten voices and memories within the space.