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LIFE ­ BUT NOT AS WE KNOW IT!

the Sage Gateshead at night

The AV Festival 06 is the UK's newest, and largest, international festival of film, digital arts, music, games and new media. A bi-annual event (the 2006 festival is the second, the first was in November 2003) AV Festival 06 is taking place in venues in NewcastleGateshead, Sunderland and Middlesbrough from 2 - 12 March.

AV Festival 2006 will include an impressive range of energetic and challenging new work which has never been seen in the UK before (including several ambitious new commissions), from renowned international artists, filmmakers and musicians from countries as far a field as Japan, Australia, USA, France, Norway and Germany.

The Festival will feature over 90 concerts, performances, film screenings, exhibitions and installations, club events and parties, outdoor projections. It will also include an international symposium (10 -11 March), and a dynamic education programme.

The theme of the 2006 festival is LIFE. The AV Festival 06 will examine the relationship between digital and biological life as explored by audiovisual practitioners from all disciplines.

Explains AV Festival 06 Consultant Director, Honor Harger: “ AV Festival 06 will explore and present new ways of thinking about LIFE. The Festival will examine the boundaries of what is ‘natural’ and what is ‘synthetic’, and aims to extend and re-work our notions of what life is and how it shifts, evolves and mutates. We will look at how artists and scientists fabricate new life-forms, and the myriad ways in which they interpret this ever-changing world in which we live.”

She continues: “ AV.06’s LIFE theme reflects the role that North East has carved out for itself as a bioresearch centre of international significance. This area was the crucible of technological innovation in the Industrial Revolution and today looks set to become one of the global flashpoints for innovation in the biotechnical revolution. For example a so-called "licence-to-clone" was granted to scientists at the Centre for Stem Cell Biology and Developmental Genetics at the University of Newcastle engaged in human embryonic stem cell research. It’s an exciting, controversial and dynamic field and AV Festival 06 will give audio-visual artists from around the world the opportunity to echo these provocative issues”.

The AV Festival forms part of a programme of world class festivals and events co-ordinated by NewcastleGateshead Initiative.

AV Festival 06 is sponsored by CODEWORKS, and their CEO, Herbert Kim said: "At Codeworks, we are busy developing new technologies that will support the work of our region's digital media community. The AV Festival is a great opportunity to explore the wonderful creativity coming from this fusion of art and technology".

Highlights of AV Festival 06:

- Autotelematic Spider Bots by Ken Rinaldo (8th March ­ 19th March 2006, Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens). Renowned US inventor and artist Rinaldo will create a new artificial life robotic exhibition installation featuring a gaggle of large spider-like sculptures which will interact with the public in real-time.

- Orchestrating the Genome by Michael Nyman and Northern Sinfonia (5th March, The Sage Gateshead). The Northern Sinfonia and guest soloists perform rescored extracts from Michael 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 life. Nyman will also perform his score for Jean Vigo's A Propos de Nice in a solo piano performance. This event includes an exclusive pre-concert on-stage interview of Michael Nyman by Dr Tom Shakespeare.

- RoboticMusic by Suguru Goto (4-5th 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 Marching Plague by Critical Art Ensemble (4th March, Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle). A new work by the Critical Art 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, 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 composition & C4I by Ryoji Ikeda (3rd 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.

- Swell 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.

- System C by Marius Watz (2nd ­ 12th 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.

- Sustaining Life, Designing Life a two day International Symposium (10th -11th March, University of Teesside in Middlesbrough). In collaboration with the Social Futures Institute at the University of Teesside and featuring leading artists from the AV programme, scientists, ethicists and academics such as Dr Tom Shakespeare of the Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Research Centre in Newcastle; Dr Sally Jane Norman, Director of Culture Lab, University of Newcastle; Australian artist Lynette Wallworth, founder of the Doors of Perception conferences, John Thackera; Bristol based performance artist, Kira O'Reilly, University of Teesside’s Professor Robin Bunton, and Heath Bunting whose work with internet art, border crossings and bioscience have made him a well known figure. It will examine life from a social, scientific, technological, artistic and ethical perspective. Lectures include: ‘(Re)design for living? A social and ethical critique of enhancement technologies,’ ‘Life in the Lab’ by bio-artists Oron Catts & Ionat Zurr, and ‘Sustaining lives and the geopolitics of food production.’ Bookings for the Symposium can be taken at the AV Box Office 0191 2328289 or at the University on 01642 342321 and a 2 day tickets costs £20 or are free for North east academics and students.

- The Remains of Disembodied Cuisine ­ Steaks Grown from Frog Cells by Oron Catts & Ionat Zurr (10 ­ 12th March, Café Sassari, Middlesbrough). Australian artists Catts and Zurr are internationally well known for their work with living tissue. This new show brings their 'victimless steaks' (grown from frog cells taken without harming the frogs) to a café in Middlesbrough. This is the first time The Tissue Culture & Art Project has been exhibited in the UK. Catts will also lead a workshop on tissue engineering.

- Film Season (throughout the festival at venues around the region including Tyneside Cinema). AV presents films which show how our perceptions of life have been transformed by cinema’s depictions of science and technology. Visions of artificially intelligent robots and lifelike technology are presented in perennial classics like The Stepford Wives and Blade Runner, and films which portray genetic science, such as Gattaca, Able Edwards and Code 46 form the heart of this film season.

www.avfest.co.uk