Brighton Digital Festival 2012

Digital Brighton

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May 24, 2012, 11:00:44 AM5/24/12

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BRIGHTON DIGITAL FESTIVAL 2012 - CALL FOR EVENTS

Festival dates: 1 – 30 September 2012

Deadline for event ideas: 2 July 2012

Deadline for copy and images: late July 2012

http://brightondigitalfestival.co.uk

Brighton Digital Festival is a celebration of digital culture that happens in venues across the city, throughout September. It includes workshops, exhibitions, performances, meet-ups, screenings, comedy nights and outdoor events, that run alongside Brighton's iconic digital design conferences.

The festival builds bridges between Brighton's digital creative industries and the thriving digital communities which exist in the city, and Brighton's equally vibrant arts community. It includes events organised by a diverse range of designers, tech companies, community groups, arts organizations and individuals who are passionate about Brighton's digital culture.

The festival returns in 2012 and after the successes of last year, we think we have something special going on. What made the last festival so unique last year is that most of 60 events that happened were organised voluntarily by people who are passionate about digital culture. We’re keen to get as many people involved as we can this year, so now’s the time to tell us about what you'd like to organise for the 2012 festival.

We are now looking for ideas from Brighton’s digital and arts communities for events, meet-ups, workshops, conferences, exhibitions, screenings, education activities, or any other projects you'd like to contribute to the festival.

THE FESTIVAL SO FAR ...

Brighton Digital Festival <http://brightondigitalfestival.co.uk> marks Brighton's status as a leading digital destination, and builds bridges between its thriving digital creative industries and its equally vibrant arts communities.

In 2011, the festival included over 60 events, including exhibitions, performances, meet-ups, comedy nights, Brighton's first Mini Maker Faire, the iconic digital design conferences, dConstruct and Flash on the Beach screenings, meet-ups, and workshops. Over 14000 people came to festival events, 37 organisers and hundreds of volunteers put on events, and the festival was featured on ITV, BBC and in the press.

You can check out the 2011 festival programme here: http://brightondigitalfestival.co.uk

Guided by a voluntary steering group and coordinated by arts organisation, Lighthouse, the festival was delivered by a diverse range of technology companies, arts organisations and individuals who are passionate about digital culture. What made the event special was the grass-roots spirit of these organisers, nearly all of whom worked for free. The generosity of the community, who effectively "bootstrapped" the festival, enabled it to happen.

Far from this voluntary effort resulting in something that lacked class and quality, the festival genuinely stood up as a world-class programme. It included leading digital thinkers and doers, such as Kevin Slavin, Joshua Davis, Matt Locke and Alice Taylor, entertainers such as Robin Ince, technology pioneers such as Don Norman and Apple co-founder, Ronald Wayne and internationally regarded artists such as Random Dance, Semiconductor, Blast Theory, Thomas Truax, Julian Oliver, Time's Up, Agency of Coney and Mira Calix.

One organisation would not have had the resources or contacts to create such a large, rich and diverse festival. It was the collective effort of all involved which created such a rich programme.

This year’s programme is starting to shape up brilliantly, and we're quite excited about the range of things we’ve got going on. But we know there's still much more to do. So we're looking for your participation ...

HOW TO GET INVOLVED

To propose an event, please email digital...@gmail.com with a short proposal about your event or project you want to be part of the festival.

Please do:

- Write a paragraph or two about your idea

- Include the Name of event or project, the Date it’s happening, the venue (if you have one yet)

- Tell us a bit about yourself and include a couple of links to things you've done before that you think might be relevant

Just a couple of paragraphs in an email will be fine.

Please don’t send big attachments. If you've got a big file you want us to see, please upload it and send us the link, or pop it on a file transfer service, such as YouSendIt (https://www.yousendit.com/) and send us the download link.

Email your idea to: digital...@gmail.com

Deadline: 2 JULY

WHAT HAPPENS THEN?

The festival is a grassroots, community project and we want to make sure as many great events as possible happen. So we’re not applying strict selection policies or curatorial rules about things that happen in the festival. We are looking for projects that are genuine celebrations of digital culture.

After the deadline the Brighton Digital Festival steering group will take a look at all the proposals we receive. Within a week, you’ll hear back from us confirming your project is in the festival. We will then need copy and images for the website by late July.

WHO’S INVOLVED?

The Brighton Digital Festival steering group includes people from Brighton's digital creative industries and it's arts community. The group currently includes Andy Budd (Clearleft), Honor Harger (Lighthouse), Laurence Hill (Fabrica), Vicki Hughes (Fugu PR), Phil Jones (Wired Sussex) and Andrew Sleigh (Brighton Mini-Maker Faire).

Everyone who’s working on the festival is volunteering their time to make things happen. The festival works as a "do-ocracy", an organisational structure in which individuals choose roles and tasks for themselves and execute them. Responsibilities attach to people who do the work, rather than elected or selected officials. We have volunteers doing lots of different things to make the festival happen, from administration and coordination, to design, marketing and communication and web development.

Pulling together a festival like this takes a lot of time and effort, so if you think you can help out in any way, please let us know.

Email: digital...@gmail.com

WANT TO ORGANISE AN EVENT BUT NOT SURE HOW TO FUND IT?

If you're planning on running an arts or education related event at this year's festival, you might be eligible to apply for funding support from Arts Council England. There's a free free funding surgery being held on Monday 28 May by Jon Pratty and Jon Linstrum from Arts Council South East: http://bdf12funding.eventbrite.com/

The surgery will help answer questions people might have about applying for arts funding.

If you're not sure about how to put your event together, we'll also be able to offer some event planning advice. Andrew Sleigh, co-organiser of Brighton Mini Maker Faire, will be on hand to offer his thoughts about how you plan and manage an event.

Book here http://bdf12funding.eventbrite.com/

STAY IN TOUCH!

- Join our Google Group

https://groups.google.com/group/digitalbrighton

This list is for sharing ideas and plans with the wide group of people who have expressed an interest in being part of the festival. You can sign up on the link above, and post to the group here: digital...@googlegroups.com

- Subscribe to the Google calendar

http://is.gd/festivalcalendar

Find out when other events are happening

- Drop us an email: digital...@gmail.com

- Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/DigitalBrighton

shardcore

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Jun 18, 2012, 8:16:13 AM6/18/12

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Hi BDF people,

We (The Fortunecats) have a new installation work (The Conscious Machine) that we're developing for the Festival - we're currently looking for somewhere to show the work at the end of September.

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A little bit about the work:

The Conscious Machine is an installation in a gallery space, it is free to enter. It uses generative digital technology and audience interaction to comment on the nature of human consciousness in the context of machine intelligence.

This work will show the audience a consideration of what a conscious machine would look like, how it would behave if it was learning about human existence not from the words we speak or the actions we make but from direct access to our unconscious and emotional drivers.

The work will be an artistic representation of the movement of the state of conscious attention between mind, breath and body.

By participating in the action of the machine, our intent is for the audience to consider the nature of their own conscious experience, and how we might cultivate such awareness in the machine intelligences of the near future.

This work is a development of our previous works The Consciousness Engine ( http://fortunecatproductions.com/?category_name=the-consciousness-engine ) and The Enlightenment Machine ( http://fortunecatproductions.com/?page_id=26 )

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We're looking for a gallery or gallery-like space where we can build the installation, suitable for large scale video projection, with capacity for at least 20+ (standing) ideally in central Brighton.

If anyone has a suitable space, or suggestions please contact me off-list ( shar...@shardcore.org )

Cheers

shardcore

http://www.shardcore.org

http://www.fortunecatproductions.com