Digital art and sound resonates in the north

After a summer of international arts festivals, it seems the up and coming months in England are devoted to smaller, eclectic and experimental festival fare. The London Musicians’ Collective hold their annual festival of experimental, improvised and electronic music this weekend; while in October, Leeds hosts the art and technology event, Evolution and Nottingham is home to the cutting-edge NOW arts festival. Also in October, in the digital sound and video art realms, Brighton is the location for AVIT 2003, which celebrates VJ culture, and Huddersfield buzzes with activity surrounding the Ultrasound Festival.

Leeds and Huddersfield, in particular, are hotbeds for new media arts creatives in England’s north. Evolution runs alongside the Leeds International Film Festival, while in Huddersfield, the combination of activity underway at Huddersfield University and The Media Centre – a hub for creative industries and digital art research, exhibitions and a festival – ensure the creative arts are thriving in the northern city.

It’s a trend that has not gone unnoticed by Tom Holley, the Creative Director of The Media Centre. Holley was persuaded to relocate from London to the north because of the burgeoning cultural renaissance in the region. Prior to taking up his current position 18 months ago, Holley spent a number of years working in new media in London, including a four-year stint as the Head of New Media at the ICA.

‘You can’t help but notice it,’ Holley says of the creative activity in places like Huddersfield and Leeds. ‘There’s a huge amount of activity…I think the regional arts authorities just embrace new media…it is also tied in with the regional development and Yorkshire’s regional development agency, which is Yorkshire-Forward, [who] have identified a number of key areas for development,’ Holley explains. ‘One of [the areas] is technology, the other is creative industries.’

Which, Holley adds, is great news for a place like The Media Centre, which invests in technology and creative industries.

Although the centre was established about nine years ago, it has only existed in its current capacity for the last three years, transformed under Chief Executive, Toby Hyman. Since 2000, the centre has been responsible for redeveloping a derelict mill building into studio and workspace for creative businesses. The centre now spans three buildings; incorporating offices, studios as well as living spaces for the creative industries. However, it is also home to the very new Digital Research Unit, which opened in October 2002, to host UK and international digital artists-in-residence as well as commissioning new works. Tied in with the research unit is The Media Lounge, an exhibition space designed to cater for new media artworks; and the Ultrasound Festival, a three-day event exploring experimental and electronic music.

It is this festival which has garnered the most interest, Holley notes with a hint of surprise. The Ultrasound website experiences the most traffic of all The Media Centre websites, although this year’s festival is only the second event.

‘We were very surprised last year’, Holley says of the first, almost impromptu, Ultrasound festival. ‘We did it very late in the day, and to be frank, it was something I thought, “Well, let’s do an evening of laptop music”. And it grew.’

From the initial idea, the University of Huddersfield then offered to organise a related conference (Space, Soundscape and the Urban Landscape), while Holley and his colleagues pulled together a program of digital workshops which took place in The Media Lounge facility.

But it was the live programme which was packed to capacity, Holley remembers, and he expects the popularity of this year’s live festival to build on the 2002 event, measured by the level of interest in the festival website so far. The 2003 live programme focuses on the contemporary electronic music scene in Iceland, and has been co-programmed by one of the founders of computer music software company, ixi, Thor Magnusson. ixi, which is described as an ‘international digital media collective’, also happened to be the Digital Research Unit’s first artists-in-residence in October 2002. The company creates playful, interactive music applications which can be downloaded from their website.

It is these types of applications which the Digital Research Unit is interested in exploring, Holley concedes, when asked to comment on any trends he has observed emerging in the field of digital art.

‘What interests us here is the use of the programming, and creation of software,’ he explains. An artist running workshops at the centre recently has created what Holley describes as ‘Social Software’ – that is, a software programme which enables computer illiterate people to create personal narrative space online. ‘It’s low level multi-media, but you need to know nothing about computers [to use the program],’ says Holley. ‘Which in itself, is considered to be a work of art.’ However, Holley says that it is the digital artists creating software specifically for audio performance, that is of particular interest to the Digital Research Unit.

‘That’s why we do the Ultrasound festival,’ he says. ‘Because a lot of practitioners seem to be not only working with visuals and interactivity, but the sound that goes with that. Sometimes that falls…into straight music, sometimes its quite experimental, and sometimes it’s sound rather than music. But it’s the audio aspect of work that really interests us.’

And it’s an area, he adds, that he feels has been marginalised by the major arts institutions in the UK. ‘The big institutions, I don’t think, have done a particularly good job in the last ten years of documenting and recording what is happening in art and culture.’

But the artists are out there doing it – and October and November are the months where major innovations in digital and new media artworks in the UK and internationally will be showcased. You will just have to travel to Leeds and Huddersfield to see it.

More information on The Media Centre, the Digital Research Unit and the Ultrasound Festival can be found via the main website, www.the-media-centre.co.uk