Brighton Digital Festival: 1 to 28 September 2014

Brighton Digital Festival, the UK’s largest celebration of digital culture, will be returning this year with over 100 events already confirmed and many more in development. The Festival runs from 1 to 28 September, bringing together the city’s arts and digital communities through a range of exhibitions, performances, conferences, meet-ups, workshops and outdoor events, all taking place across Brighton and Hove.

Jesse Black Mooney, Brighton Digital Festival manager, said: “We are thrilled that so many creative and inspiring events have been submitted to this year’s Festival programme, with more coming in every day. Being able to offer awards through our various commissions this year has allowed us to expand our programme, but it is the local community’s enthusiasm and involvement in shaping the festival that makes Brighton Digital Festival so fantastic. This is a celebration of Brighton and Hove as well as a celebration of digital culture.”

Highlights:

Reasons to be Creative
1-3 September, 10am @ Brighton Dome

Reasons to be Creative is an affordable three-day conference for web designers and coders who are passionate about their work, and that of their peers. It is aimed at anyone with a creative mind eager to get their inspirational fix. Amongst this year’s speakers are Mr Bingo, Brendan Dawes, Kate Moross, GMUNK, Sara Blake and Lernert & Sander.

Dots
3 September, 10am @ Dukes at Komedia

Innovation happens when things are brought together in fresh ways. Ideas from outside of your field can make a profound impact when brought into step with existing practice. Dots is a brand new conference all about sharing and celebrating these innovations as well as the people behind them.

Improving Reality
4 September @ Brighton Dome Studio Theatre

Lighthouse’s digital culture conference, Improving Reality, is the Festival’s flagship opportunity for considering, debating and experiencing the relationship between design, art and technology and how a critical approach to all three can contribute to a better world. This year’s theme, ‘Visibility is a Trap’, is a response to the tension between our increasing tendency to share our daily lives on public platforms and our desire and right for privacy.

dConstruct
5 September @ Brighton Dome

dConstruct 2014 is a one-day gathering of supersmart people who will provoke, entertain, and stimulate you with their thoughts on this year’s theme of ‘Living With The Network’. You’ll hear from artists, writers, hackers and coders about surveillance, connected devices, big data, and just about everything the network touches.

Brighton SEO
11-12 September, 9am @ Brighton Dome

A free one-day conference expecting over 2,000 of Europe’s best digital marketers. It’s hands on, detailed, and it’s practical and attended by delegates from agencies, in-house marketing teams and business owners from across the UK and Europe.

Brighton Digital Marketing Festival
18 September @ Brighton Dome Corn Exchange and other venues

This year’s festival boasts a better line up than ever! With industry leading keynote speakers from SmartInsights and the Financial Times, followed by insightful workshops, there will be something for everyone to take back to the office to improve their marketing skills.

Culture exhibitions and events:

Critical Engineering
2-26 September @ Lighthouse

Berlin-based artists Julian Oliver and Danja Vasiliev present Critical Engineering. The exhibition presents sculptures and installations that offer an opportunity to explore the problems created by our increasingly technologised environment, calling for increased transparency in our technological, social and political infrastructures.

Beyond the Bright Black Edge of Nowhere
4 September 8pm, @ The Old Market

Trailer: http://vimeo.com/88730537
“This is the story of something very strange that happened in 1959 in America. What happened was so strange, in fact, that none of the people directly affected by the story have been able to tell it for over fifty years; it is a story which has become almost entirely lost.” A story told through cut ups of 1950s B-movies, promotional films and commercials with a live electronic score, live classical instruments and eight monologues.

GøL4M
23 September, 1:30pm, 6pm & 8:30pm @ Brighton Dome Corn Exchange

In a disconcerting solo performance by Matthew Morris, the dancer becomes a creature of our machine-obsessed age. With an abstract soundscape and visuals that conjure the inner workings of computers, GøL4M imagines a post-human being mutating from the relentless advance of digital technology.

The Measures Taken
26 September, 7:30pm @ The Old Market

Trailer: http://vimeo.com/75174541

Visually striking and kinetically charged, The Measures Taken created in collaboration with Alexander Whitley Dance Company and digital media artists Marshmallow Laser Feast, explores our interdependent relationship with technology. With the choreographic process rooted in the digital collaboration, the work is both a dialogue and a duet between human movement and the digital world.

Intelligent entertainment:

The Hidden Web
1-28 September @ Throughout Brighton

Intrigue and adventure awaits those who enter the hidden web, sign up online and the story begins with an email from a mysterious friend. Locate the clues hidden around Brighton and Hove, solve the puzzle and uncover a secret that will change the way you see the world forever!

Persistent Peril vs. Paul Hayes: Kalimba Song – 2014
12-14 September @ Lick Warehouse

Kalimba Song is a music video for the band NLF3 transformed into a virtual reality ‘dark ride’ installation! Made out of interlocking perspex designs, Lego track, the ‘eye-mirror’ lens, GoPro cameras, and the oculus rift virtual reality headset. The physical ride will be built out of Lego, but via the Oculus Rift you can virtually ride it, look around it and experience it as if you were on it.

There’s much, much more including family friendly events and project launches. Visit www.brightondigitalfestival.co.uk for more details.