The AV Festival is back and livelier than ever before.
The AV Festival is the UK’s newest and largest, international festival of digital arts and music, electronic art, games, film and new media. AV Festival 06 is about vibrant audio and visual experiences, experiences that will entertain you, maybe frighten you and certainly make you question the way the modern world is turning out to be.
The theme of AV Festival 06 is life — though it’s life not quite as we know it. You will see the very stuff of our existence portrayed, remixed and even made from scratch by some of finest international artists in the world and by some of the talented artists that we have right here in the North East of England. We have art happening in galleries, clubs, concert halls, cinemas, schools and even on the outside of buildings across the region.
Why is the festival exploring life? Because advances in genetic engineering, bioscience and nanotechnology that not long ago seemed purely the stuff of science fiction are now real. On top of that we are all already increasingly swapping our ‘real’ lives for artificial realities, lived virtually in online communities and games. And a great deal of this is happening right here on our doorstep. A hundred years ago the North East of England was the crucible of technical innovation in the industrial revolution. Today, we are at the international leading edge of the biotechnical revolution, with pioneering work happening here.
Many of the world’s leading artists are already grappling with this science and it has implications for us all.
LifeLike – AV Festival 06 will remind us all that life is so much more than just breathing in and out!
Our perceptions of what life is, when it starts and ends and how it works have been transformed by science and technology. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, it seemed that the greatest challenges to our perceptions of life might come from technological advances. Cinema showed us visions of artificially intelligent robots on such a regular basis that the notion of lifelike technology became almost commonplace. Click here to read more.
Robotic Spiders Installation by Kenneth Rinaldo (7-19 March 2006, Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens). Renowned US inventor and artist Rinaldo will create a new artificial life robotic exhibition installation featuring 25 large spider-like sculptures – entitled, The Autotelematic Spider Bots – which will interact with the public in real-time.
First-ever Audio Visual Concert by Michael Nyman and Northern Sinfonia
5 March, The Sage Gateshead
Northern Sinfonia and guest soloists perform rescored extracts from Nyman's music for Gattaca (the sci-fi movie on genetic engineering starring Uma Thurman, Jude Law and Ethan Hawke), and Facing Goya (his opera about cloning), with visuals by filmmakers YEAST, using Nyman's own images of human diversity. Nyman will also perform his score for Jean Vigo's A Propos de Nice in a solo piano performance. This event include an exclusive pre-concert on-stage interview of Michael Nyman by Dr Tom Shakespeare.
Robot Orchestra Concert by Suguru Goto
4-5 March, The Sage Gateshead
Never seen in the UK before. An orchestra of robots will play a specially commissioned new work by Japanese pioneering multimedia performer and musician Goto.
Bio-Terrorism - the World Premiere of The Marching Plague by Critical Art Ensemble
4th March, Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle
A new work by the Critical Arts Ensemble art collective whose founder, Professor Steve Kurtz, was arrested on charges of bio-terrorism in USA in 2004. While the US Department of Justice has been preparing its case against Kurtz, Critical Art Ensemble have made a new documentary-drama film which addresses the paranoia surrounding bio-terrorism. Commissioned and produced by the Arts Catalyst, The Marching Plague was shot on location in Stornoway, Scotland, and centres on the recreation of sea trials conducted by the UK government in the 1950s as part of a programme of bio weapons research. This screening of The Marching Plague is a world premiere. Steve Kurtz will be in Newcastle to take part in a Q and A after the screening.
New Commission by Ryoji Ikeda
3 March, The Sage Gateshead
AV Festival 06’s Opening Gala will include new work by Japan’s leading electronic composer and a major force in electronic music since the 1990s. AV will present Ikeda’s ground-breaking audiovisual work C4i, plus a brand new composition, (a co-commission with ISEA). Both works explore the relationship between data and the natural world. Both are produced by Forma.
First Ever Site Specific Exhibition by Anthony McCall
7 March – 7 April 2006, Reg Vardy Gallery, Sunderland
Well known British artist, (founder of 1970s ‘Expanded Cinema’) McCall will produce his first-ever site specific exhibition, Swell, a 50ft horizontal projection inspired by the wave action of the North East coastal landscape and the Roker Lighthouse. This ‘solid light’ film will focus on the force of projected waves of white light rolling through a haze of mist.
Organic Outdoor Projections by Marius Watz
2–12 March. Outside of BHS building, Lindthorpe Road, Middlesbrough
AV are collaborating with mima to produce a projection programme in the town centre which will include new work by Norwegian artist Watz whose signature style is organic, non representational visuals. He has worked for several years on creating software-drawing machines that simulate artificial life.
Two-Day International Symposium
10-11 March, University of Teesside in Middlesbrough
In collaboration with the Social Futures Institute at the University of Teesside and featuring leading artists, scientists, ethicists and academics such as Tom Shakespeare of the Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Research Centre in Newcastle; New York based artificial intelligence scientist, Brian Lee Dae Yung; Bristol based performance artist, Kira O'Reilly, Dr Sally Jane Norman, Director of Culture Lab at the University of Newcastle; and Heath Bunting who’s work with internet art, border crossings and bioscience have made him a well known figure.
For full details download the Symposium e-flier (.pdf)
AV Festival 06 is part of NewcastleGateshead's Festival of Visual Arts, celebrating the North East's creativity, cultural vibrancy and artistic talent.
AV is organised by the Tyneside Cinema, Middlesbrough Council, the University of Teesside and Sunderland City Council.
As well as presenting you with a dizzying array of events during the ten days of the 2006 festival, AV are also working on a range of projects throughout the year. We have commissioned artists to make new work for the festival, who have been working hard on their new projects for many months. We have carried out round tables in the North East region finding out about the artists and curators who live in the. We have collaborated with other festivals, such Transmediale 06 in Berlin and the Utopiales Festival in Nantes, France.
One of the most important aspects of our ongoing work is our outreach and training work in the communities of the North East. Within the festival itself, you will see a reflection of this in our workshop on game development at Middlesbrough City Learning Centre, and in the Sound Art Lab we are holding in collaboration with ISIS Arts in Newcastle. But harder to see within the festival is the extraordinary efforts of the locally based arts organisations in developing projects for schools, communities and local people. For AV, Creative Partnerships Tees Valley and Middlesbrough Arts Development Team have been working Tollesby and Hall Garth schools and MacMillan College in a long-term audio project. Their work will be showcased at Young A, an event for schools and teachers on Friday 10 March. They will also be joined by a team of industry professionals who will deliver workshops and presentations. If you are a school wishing to get involved, please contact Middlesbrough Arts Development Team on 01642 315 244.
AV are also proud to work with local media arts group, Polytechnic, who have transformed community centres into media laboratories for local people. Grow Your Own Media Lab is a networked national project initiated by Access Space in Sheffield, which promotes the development of independent media labs, using disused computers and open source technology. The Polytechnic have been working with AV to establish three Grow Your Own Media Lab projects here in the North East. The first is in Tyneside in the small settlement of Thockley at their Community Town Hall, the second is in Wearside at the community cultural organisation, Arts Centre Washington, and the third is at Middlesbrough City Learning Centre.
The media artists at Polytechnic, including Dominic Smith and Sneha Solanki, have twinned the latest free, or open source, software with locally recycled computers to develop creative, open access IT centres in these locations. Grow Your Own Media Lab is embedded in an ethos which is all about open access to technology. The software these Labs use is all ‘open source’, meaning that the source code uses to make these programmes is publicly available. This helps other software developers learn more about software and promotes sharing amongst communities of software users.
As part of Grow Your Own Media Lab in the North East, Polytechnic and AV are running public workshops in open source technology at Digital Theatre, Newcastle Central Library, Saturday 25 February 10.30 – 12.30 and 13.30 – 15.30. The workshops will explore audio production, video editing, image manipulation, DJ & Vj’ing, 3D modelling and streaming. The workshops are suitable for people of all levels of ability, and all the software shown is user friendly. AV will supply a range of discs for workshoppers to take away to grow their own media. To find out more about Grow Your Own Media Lab and book for a workshop, contact our AV Education team on 0191 232 8289 ext 107 or visit the Polytechnic website.
To complement the Remains of Disembodied Cuisine exhibition in Middlesbrough, AV are working with the artist Oron Catts on a special bioscience workshop. As well as being an internationally recognised artist, Oron Catts is the co-Director of the Symbiotica lab from the School of Anatomy & Human Biology at University of Western Australia. Oron Catts will run a two day hands on intensive Workshop in Tissue Enginering , aimed at adults. For more information, or to book a place on the workshop, contact AV.
WishList at Coulby Newham Parkway Shopping Centre, Middlesbrough also
follows AV Festival's theme of 'Life' and is due for completion in summer 2006. Artist Ron Haselden is currently working with the members of the older generation of Coulby Newham community, looking at their 'wishes' for life.
The completed work will contain revolving images of texts projected across the floor of Parkway Shopping Centre.
This project was curated and project managed by ARTS UK and commissioned by Middlesbrough Borough Council as part of a Percentage for Art scheme. See www.ronhaselden.com and www.arts-uk.com.
The first AV Festival was held in Newcastle, Middlesbrough and Sunderland, 8 – 22 November 2003.
The festival delivered over one hundred events across three towns in two weeks, and included performances by the Cinematic Orchestra, DJ Food, Tina Frank and General Magic, screenings of Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle, a Mike Figgis film retrospective, onedotzero screenings and a lively programme of workshops and lectures. Over 35 new works were commissioned, including new pieces by Richard Fenwick and The Light Surgeons.
AV.03 proved to be the biggest new media, digital arts and digital music festival in the UK, and is the only festival event to occur in each major population centre in the North East region.
The AV.03 website has been archived, click here to view it.
AV Festival is based on an original idea developed by Jeff Cleverley.
