FACT presents BitParts, a series of seven newly commissioned digital arts projects by leading British and international artists. The works will be premiered in venues across the West Midlands between February and April 2003.
These projects include:
Paul Sermon’s interactive Peace Talks and Gair Dunlop & Dan Norton's Console, a modern, stripped down version of a control room open at Worcester Museum and Art Gallery, 1 February - 1 March.
Paul Sermon’s piece presents an absurdist virtual theatre in which the performer/users unwittingly participate in a simulated peace talks conference.
Dunlop and Norton’s joint project explores the ‘Industrial Sublime’, in which mighty technological forces are seen to be the powerhouse of the workplace.
Lucy Kimbell unveils The Most Beautiful Thing in the Gallery, her interactive installation at New Art Gallery, Walsall, 14 February – 30 March. She takes as her point of departure the commonly held view that art’s value is in accordance with its beauty. Presenting us with statements defining beauty, her artwork is essentially a 3-D questionnaire where our response to the title of the work is registered by a hidden computer, which aggregates our replies and calculates a score, effectively issuing a performance rating for the piece.
Austrian artist Herwig Weiser will be presenting a major new work, The Intimator at The Custard Factory, Birmingham, 28 February – 15 March. This project continues the artist’s exploration into the representation and reinterpretation of the raw stock that fires new technologies by creating a remarkable sound sculpture containing reactive magnetic substances modulated via a live internet based sound source.
Ken Feingold’s animatronic installation, Animal, Vegetable, Mineral (Virtual); and Alison Craighead and Jon Thomson’s internet-based Weather Gauge open at Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery, 8 March - 26 April. Feingold’s latest project features three virtual characters whose personality, vocabulary, habits and obsessions are embodiments of ways of thinking about human nature and violence. Weather Gauge is a deceptively simple installation which presents live-linked information publicly accessible via a world weather site. Numerical weather data from over 150 countries is projected on the gallery wall accompanied by a soundtrack arranged from web radio streams. By re-presenting this found material, the artists hope to produce ‘an hypnotic abstraction of what in reality amounts to just a grid of numbers, place names and songs.’
BitParts also includes a series of internet TV programmes by artists Geoff Broadway, Jose Ferreira and the collective C21 Vox’s. These will broadcast on the Superchannel network (www.superchannel.org).
BitParts is supported by regional arts board, West Midlands Arts, who are committed to developing digital arts practice in the region and to supporting the infrastructure for future commissioning and exhibition.
FACT was selected by West Midlands Arts, to commission and manage this important digital arts initiative, in recognition of FACT’s expertise in this area. FACT is the UK’s leading agency for the commissioning, production and presentation of artists’ film, video and new media, and in February 2003 opens the FACT Centre, a major new centre for film, art and creative technology, in Liverpool.
BitParts also coincides with Metapod, an annual showcase of innovative, experimental digital media arts in Birmingham, 28 February – 3 March 2003.
BitParts also presents a series of artists’ talks and seminars exploring the range of issues and ideas suggested by these artworks, such as artificial intelligence and creative developments in streaming media.
Ken Feingold is in conversation at the Music Hall, Shrewsbury, 8 March at 2.00pm.
Paul Sermon is in conversation at Worcester Museum and Art Gallery, 8 February at 2.00pm.
For further information please contact:
[email protected]
[email protected]
www.fact.co.uk
BitParts Digital Art Festival
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Type: discussion