IMAGE CREDIT: 'The Golden Age' by Paul Nicholls

Alpha-ville 2011
International Festival of Post-Digital Culture
“Zeitgeist, from digital to post-digital”
22nd-25th September 2011
at Netil House, Arcola Tent, Whitechapel Gallery, the V&A, Rich Mix, Space Studios, XOYO,
the streets of Hackney and online

www.alpha-ville.co.uk

“The idea that digital is something new and transformative is now quite old. So the question for most creatives is not about going digital - it's about making it feel less digital, about making participation and interaction feel post-digital; making the tech less techy. We see this reflected back in the freshest creative and cultural work and Alpha-ville is probably where you see that most vividly in this country.” Tom Uglow, Director of Creative Labs at Google.

The 2011 edition provides an online and live platform to explore, test and disseminate new ideas, emerging trends, collaborations and groundbreaking works. Running from 22-25 September the programme presents social media and interactive art, open labs, meet-ups, talks, workshops and screenings alongside with live music, visual performances and parties.

Taking place alongside the London Design Festival, the 2011 edition enables a network of satellite events spreading across different London boroughs and links with other European cities such as Madrid (Twin Gallery) and Brussels & The Hague (Todays Art). Selected venues include the Whitechapel Gallery, Rich Mix, Netil House, Arcola Tent, XOYO and Space Studios. The festival programme also connects east and west London thorough a link with the V&A Digital Design.

Gathering artists, creative coders, new media technologists, designers, architects, professionals, musicians, researchers and academics, some of the key names are: Tom Uglow (Google Creative Labs), Marius Watz, Filip Visnjic (Creative Applications), Man Bartlett, Daito Manabe, Moritz Stefaner, Keiichi Matsuda, James Alliban, Pantha Du Prince, Jon Hopkins, Jacaszek and Kangding Ray.

“The digital revolution is over” Negroponte for WIRED, 1998 Weekend.

This year’s programme addresses the transition from a digital to a post-digital culture, that looks beneath technology at how human behaviours such as collaboration, participation and interaction have redefined the creative practice and society itself, and at how the physical boundaries between reality and online are being blurred.

Alpha-ville incorporates the first London Symposium on Post-digital Culture, festival director Estela Oliva comments, “this year we are joining the discourse about a post-digital age. The festival and more specifically the symposium will provide a forum to exchange knowledge and inspire discussions about the future of digital culture.”

Four interconnecting strands run through the format of the festival: Innovation, Live, Screening and Exchange, offering a range of activities that aim to unlock people’s creativity.

Innovation: Friday 23rd - Sunday 25th September
Netil House, V&A, Space Studios and the streets of Hackney
Dynamic environments featuring works created with new media through participation, collaboration and interaction. It will features data visualisation, social media and kinect based art, digital fabrication, augmented reality, html5 experiments, open frameworks and more.

Live: Thursday 22nd - Sunday 25th
XOYO, Rich Mix and other venues
Presenting a selection of live electronic music, sound experiments and audio-visual performances. Over 20 musicians and visual artists presenting purely live shows.
 

Screening: Friday 23rd - Sunday 25th
A showcase of the latest digital film-making trends including short film, animation and
documentaries. Screenings curated by Alpha-ville and guest curators including Athens Video Art Festival, Unit 15’s Bartlett School of Architecture and Paul Purgas.

Exchange: Friday 23rd - Sunday 25th
A series of events and a one-day symposium bringing together thinkers, professionals, researchers and creatives from the technology, design, media and cultural sectors. The first Alpha-ville Symposium covers topics around the creative use of the public space, mobile learning, the role of the new artist, challenges to archive digital content and open source

PROGRAMME HIGHLIGHTS
Alpha-ville commissions
“Cell” by James Alliban and Keiichi Matsuda
As identity becomes a broadcasted commodity, our constructed personae enmesh and define us. cell is an interactive installation that exposes our virtual reflections, luminous clones that replicate the body movement of visitors to the space. Personal data mined from internet profiles is randomly tagged onto these bodies, revealing the second self while simultaneously allowing us escape from it.
“Networked Cities” by Fabian Neuhaus, UCL Centre for Advanced Spacial Analysis.
Animated real-time data visualisation piece based on the geo-located tweets collected for 4
different European cities: London, Brussels, The Hague and Ljubljana. The aim is to analyse how users behave when they connect to social media and how the activity is distributed in the locations.

Post-digital Culture Symposium Speakers
Filip Visnjic - Architect, Lecturer and Founder of Creative Applications Network.Net
Tom Uglow - Director of Creative Labs Europe, Google
Helen Hockx-Yu - Web Archiving Programme Manager at the British Library
Patrick Hussey - Digital Director at Arts & Business
James Alliban - Augmented Reality Specialist and Founder of Augmatic
Keiichi Matsuda, designer and film-maker
Ben Fawkes - Audio Content Manager at Soundcloud

Innovation
Daito Manabe, JP
Aaron Koblin, US (Google), selection of works
Moritz Sefaner, DE, ‘Better life index’
Man Bartlett, US, installation & performance
Marius Watz, NO, digital fabrication webinar
Modul8 workshop and installation
V4 Lab, exploring and creating reactive/interactive projects using vvvv language.
Soundcloud Clinic, hand-on insights into co-creation and sharing music and audio.
Social Innovation Lab: Alpha-ville will invite developers, designers, creatives and thinkers to work on a data set and come up with a workable solution of a common issue raised publicly.
Supported by Culture Hack Day.
Plus outdoor interactive installations in the Borough of Hackney by blablabLAB (ES)

Live music and audio-visual
Pantha Du Prince, Rough Trade, DE (Live)
Jon Hopkins, Live AV, Domino Records, UK (Live AV)
Kangding Ray, Live AV, Raster Noton, DE (Live AV)
Jacasezk, Gosthly, PL (Live)
Svarte Greiner, Miasmah, NO (Live AV)
Illum Sphere, Tectonic, UK (Live AV)
Truss, Perc Trax, UK (Live)
Emptyset, Tectonic, UK (Live AV, London Premiere). The project investigates the sonic potential of experimental bass driven music, reflecting upon the legacy of dub, techno and sound system culture whilst integrating aspects of feedback and minimalism. Emptyset have recently debuted their live AV show at Mutek festival in Canada and their Alpha-ville show will be a special collaboration with designers Clayton Welham and Sam WIlliams.

Screening
Press Pause Play, a documentary about the hopes and fears of the digital culture. Premiered at
SXSW, this documentary contains interviews with some of the world’s most influential creators
such us Moby and Apparat.
Bartlett’s Unit 15 film showcase
Selected works of students from one of the most cutting edge design units at Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL). Unit 15 specialises in the use of film, CGI, animation and motion graphics to explore and investigate new forms of architecture.
International short film competition
Alpha-ville Festival presents the awards and screening of the finalists of the 2011 film
competition in collaboration with Vimeo.
Alpha-ville Screening Programme
Online programme available in Mubi.com

Alpha-ville is a not for profit organisation exploring the intersection between arts,
technology and culture. The organisation aims to promote access, understanding and
enjoyment of digital culture. Since its inception in 2009, both previous editions of the
festival have sold out. Last year the festival gathered over 1000 attendees in a 2-day event.