BRIGHTON DIGITAL FESTIVAL, 2014

A CELEBRATION OF DIGITAL ARTS AND CULTURE

Lighthouse took part in Brighton Digital Festival 2014, a month-long exploration of digital culture with exhibitions, conferences, events, performances, workshops and outdoor events.

Brighton Digital Festival is a community-driven grassroots festival celebrating digital arts and culture. Held throughout September in Brighton, BDF supports an expansive and diverse programme, independently organised by a diverse range of designers, tech companies, community groups, arts organisations and individuals who are passionate about Brighton’s digital culture.

Lighthouse’s programme for Brighton Digital Festival 2014 centred around two major events; Newstweek – Fact Fixing Bureau, a new exhibition by Julian Oliver and Danja Vasiliev; and Improving Reality, a one-day conference that brings together an international community of artists, thinkers and makers to share and experience groundbreaking art and ideas of the present.

Newstweek – Fact Fixing Bureau by Prix Ars Electronica Award winning artists Julian Oliver and Danja Vasiliev, transformed Lighthouse with a simulated news bureau that invited visitors to enter the subversive world of critical engineering and set their own news agendas.

Improving Reality: Visibility is a Trap returned for a fourth edition with the theme Visibility is a Trap. It is a visceral response to the tension between the tendency to share our lives in public, and our desire for more privacy. With acclaimed international speakers and performers the event addressed the coming of immediacy, the aesthetics of disappearance and the performance of visibility. Improving Reality placed a greater emphasis on experiencing artistic work and includes electronic music from composer and sound artist Holly Herndon and the screening of a new moving image artwork by Design Studio Metahaven. They were joined by Professor of Media Arts John Armitage, artist Jananne Al-Ani, writer, editor and film curator Basia Cummings, New York-based Social Media Theorist, Nathan Jurgenson, Founding Director of Edgeryders Nadia El-Imam and groundbreaking artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan.

We were also pleased to support a series of workshops, presentations, hack days, performance and learning events for the festival. Lighthouse Studio our interdisciplinary programme supported new work for Brighton Digital Festival – Laser Light Synths by Seb Lee-Delisle, and Undercurrent, a Brighton Digital Festival Arts and Technology commission by designer Coralie Gourguechon in collaboration with artist/technologist Natalie Kane. Meanwhile, technologist and former studio resident Philo van Kemenade lead Popathon Hack Jam, an immersive workshop for artists, filmmakers and technologists to explore new practices in web-based storytelling.

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Brighton Digital Festival is a month long celebration of digital culture. It is run by members of Brighton’s arts and digital communities and supported by Arts Council England and Brighton & Hove City Council.