Bethan Hancock

About

Bethan Hancock is a Welsh creative technologist, artist and researcher currently based in London, UK.  Her work observes themes of community heritage, landscape, collective consciousness, and human connection with technology through the lens of immersive digital storytelling. She holds a particular interest in the phenomenology of digital spaces, and how through experiences of technology, communities can augment and connect with history and heritage.

Her most recent project “Pathways Through The Memory Archive” seeks to consider alternative archival recordings of Welsh history, seeking connectivity through online groups and forums where digital artefacts, memorial material, and collective accounts of memory form a natural growing archive or, in essence, an evolving virtual archaeology. Experimental digital methods to discuss this have been explored through creating digital artefacts with photogrammetry, LiDAR scanning, audio recordings, and sound data. These pieces of documentation have been translated using Unreal Engine to create a fragmentary liminal world, running parallel with a fictional spoken-word narrative written as a reflective stream of consciousness dialogue.

Her practice aims to question human evolution with technology; considering how we can handle current topics and issues, particularly that hold a posthuman quality, in a way that still holds aspects of care and consideration that remain human. Further work explores these themes and questions through short film, creative coding, Arduino robotics, experimental music / audio composition, and painting practice.

In recent accomplishments Bethan has exhibited her collaborative project “Consciousness In The Landscape” at IRCAM Paris as part of their 2024 Forums. This project also secured acknowledgement from the 2024 Innovate UK Immersive Tech Awards as runner-up in their Sensory category. Through these awards she became a Grand Prize Internship winner, resulting in her current work as Immersive Tech Intern for a collaborative XR project with Arcade XR in London, and the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff. Alongside this, she has also recently designed audio visuals for an immersive music performance at the Royal College of Music, and completed a successful year as Editor of RCA’s Student Newspaper “The DODO”.