It’s bright, it’s exciting, it’s innovative and it’s in Dundee for a whole week. Jennifer Cosgrove looks at NEoN, Scotland’s only digital arts festival.
Starting today, the city will be brimming with events as part of the NEoN (North East of North) international digital arts festival.
The seven-day festival is organised and co-ordinated by a collective of local people working independently in the creative industries. It will feature a programme of talks, workshops, exhibitions, commissions, screenings and performances at various venues.
The collective recently took up residence in Chamber East (Dundee’s former Chamber of Commerce building in Panmure Street) and this will be the festival’s HQ, open daily from noon-5pm between now and November 12.
Lyall Bruce, a local freelance graphic designer who helps to organise NEoN, says he hopes it will become a real focal point in Scotland’s festival itinerary.
“It’s the only digital arts festival in Scotland and we are in a strong position to grow it. We want it to keep its base in Dundee because it is a hub of digital art in Scotland and therefore the logical place for it to be. I’d like it to have more venues and more independent events like people coming to us to suggest things,” he explains.
NEoN was born out of Interactive Tayside a partnership between public, private and academic sectors working to develop and promote Tayside’s digital media industry. Lyall said there was originally no one from the industry acting as advisors so a few became members on their steering group and a conference in Dundee was mooted.Follow on Twitter for festival updates: @weareneon“We said we didn’t want a conference. We wanted something that would appeal to everybody, not just businesses, so that was the genesis.”
Since 2009, the festival has been expanding to various venues across the city and this year is even more wide-reaching, taking in places like Dundee Contemporary Arts, the Hannah Maclure Centre at Abertay University and the Reading Rooms.
Lyall says the festival was so named because of a bugbear: “North East of North was the original name. National news coverage always talks about the ‘north’ but is referring to Manchester and Liverpool.
“So beyond the ‘north’ is Scotland and we are located in the north-east of north. It was only once I had the name down on paper that I realised it formed the word ‘neon’, which was bright and snappy.”
NEoN will feature moving image, performance, music and technology-driven arts and organisers say it is a platform for experimentation on a digital level.
Highlights include a week-long geocaching event, a family fun day where people can get creative with digital technology, and an insight into the work of artist Jaygo Bloom, who has produced live visuals for band Franz Ferdinand’s world tour and will be collaborating with Dundee company Denki to produce a new interactive piece.
Other events include the first ever PechaKucha night in Dundee, which has proved popular amongst early bookers.
PechaKucha was devised in Japan in 2003 as a means for young architects and designers to meet and network. It is a presentation based on the format of 20 images which change every 20 seconds, keeping the talks fun and, most importantly, concise.
Lyall says: “It was invented to try to keep architects from waffling! They now license it out round the world and there are more than 400 cities doing this Dundee is the newest.”
Speakers taking part in the event include Gary Penn from Denki and Philip Long, director of V&A at Dundee.
Japanese artist Akinori Oishi came to Dundee as part of last year’s NEoN festival and was taken by the city’s landmark Law. He went on to design a character inspired by the hill and the quirky creation is now being made into a product for NEoN 2011. (The full story of the models’ creation can be read here.)
“We are having 60 models made of his design and they are going to be for sale over the course of the festival,” Lyall explains.
Representatives from Helsinki-based design and animation studio Anima Boutique are coming to the city to do a screening and a talk about how to remain creative and independent in a tough climate.
On the final day of the festival there will be events across the city encompassing music, installations and digital happenings, rounded off by a DJ set at Reading Rooms by dance outfit Utah Saints as well as a video, light and sound display by the Scheinwerfer Collective from Zurich.
The following day a film made by Icelandic band Sigur Rs Inni will be screened at DCA cinema, providing festival-goers with a chance to relax and reflect on the week’s events.NEoN runs at venues across the city from today. To see the full programme visit northeastofnorth.com