Brighton’s first month-long festival of digital culture, incorporating performances, exhibitions, conferences, workshops and meet-ups, takes place this September on the south coast.
The Brighton Digital Festival together internationally renowned digital leaders and artists, taking part in more than 30 events over 30 days.
The festival will present world leading artists, designers and filmmakers, such as Blast Theory, Semiconductor, Ben Fry, Joshua Davis, and Random Dance, plus thinkers like Kevin Slavin, Don Norman and Matthew Sheret of last.fm The schedule of events, which is growing daily, can be found at www.brightondigitalfestival.co.uk.
The festival will present and investigate key subjects crossing the digital and artistic spectrum including augmented reality, 3D architecture, improving reality and digital design. It will inform and entertain more than 10,000 people throughout September.
Festival events range from a fully interactive and digitally hosted heist movie (from Blast Theory), the dance FAR by Wayne McGregor, choreographed using a radical neuropsychological process (Random Dance) and a Mini-Maker Faire for innovators, creators and inventors.
There’s also the world leading conference (sold out in seven hours) exploring big design issues in digital (dConsruct) and an augmented reality conference looking at how digital artists and designers are radically re-engineering our world (Improving Reality).
In addition, Brighton’s digital community-run event, BarCampBrighton, returns and will cover topics such as the open and social web, mobile, games design, programming and robotics. This free ‘un-conference’ for 200 people lasts for 48 hours over the weekend, with every attendee expected to participate in a 30 minute slot.
The Brighton Digital Festival is a grass-roots led, community-run celebration of digital culture, it is organised by a diverse range of arts organisations, creative digital companies, individual designers, developers, artists and community groups from Brighton and beyond.
Honor Harger, director at Lighthouse, one of the coordinating organisations commented: “Brighton Digital Festival is going to be an incredible hot-bed of digital and artistic talent, and, we suspect, the largest gathering of digital innovators outside of South by South West. We’ve had a fantastic response to the Festival, with some awe-inspiring and thought-provoking events taking place. We’re delighted to be involved and to help bring together the massive talent from our digital and artistic communities.”
Sally Abbott, regional director, Arts Council England, added: “The Arts Council is delighted to be supporting Brighton Digital Festival and celebrating the innovative work of all the organisations involved. The South East is a leader in digital culture and increasing the digital capability of the arts is vital, to ensure that arts organisations stay in the lead of the ever-evolving digital landscape.
“It’s great to see so many organisations and community groups supporting the festival. I hope that by sharing expertise and ideas, and increasing the imagination and demand of audiences for digitally influenced art, we will be taking a huge step forward in supporting all the talented people who work in this area.”
