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Digital Arts Leicester 2020
Interact Digital Arts has been actively supporting the Leicester digital arts community since the company was founded in 2014. We typically run exhibitions of work by local artists, curate live events and bring digital artwork of international significance to the city.
For the Digital Arts Leicester 2020 programme, we have commissioned nine Leicester-based digital artists to produce new artworks for exhibition online. We are hosting a series of online live events, curated by artists associated with the local digital arts community.
The project is supported by Arts Council England, who have supported the project as part of their COVID-19 emergency project funding, and the LCB Depot, who have generously provided a home for our various projects over the past five years.
Programme of Events
Digital Arts Leicester is part of the LCB Depot's Digital Arts Month. Please see the LCB Depot's event listing for additional information. Other partners in the month include Phoenix Leicester and Leicester University.
Tuesday 2nd June 8pm - 9pm FREE
Sean Clark: Introducing The Computer Arts Archive
Talk on Zoom about the new Leicester-based Computer Arts Archive.
(Video Recording)
Tuesday 9th June 2020 8pm - 9pm FREE
Computer Arts Society Short Talks
Six short talks by members and associates of the Computer Arts Society.
(Video Recording)
Friday 12th June 2020 7pm - 9:30pm FREE
Interact Live: Digital Arts Leicester Opening Event
The official exhibition online opening event with a tour of the exhibition, a performance from S A B O T A G E and music/visuals from Leicester's Myoptik and Birmingham's Higher Intelligence Agency.
- Exhibition Tour & Artist Talks (Video Recording)
- S A B O T A G E Live Performance (Video Recording)
- Myoptik (Video Recording)
- Higher Intelligent Agency Live DJ Set (Video Recording)
Saturday 13th June 2020 1pm - 2pm FREE
Computer Drawing with Scratch Workshop
Online workshop with Sean Clark showing how Scratch can be used to make sophisticated computer drawings. Suitable for ages 5+. Part of Cultural Quarter Earlies.
Wednesday 17th June 2020 6pm - 8pm FREE
FTP Artist Meetup - Archives
Phoenix's regular artist meeting. This month's meeting will be discussing archives.
Friday 19th June 2020 8pm - 11pm FREE
R10 Live Internet Broadcast (Video Recordiing)
Audiovisual performance featuring:
- R10 Collective - r10.uk
- Ben Eyes - www.beneyes.co.uk
- Ned Rush
- Tatsuru Arai - www.tatsuruarai.com
Saturday 20th June 2020 3pm - 6pm FREE
Acoustic Commons Broadcast
The Acoustic Commons is an emerging network of live environmental audio streams drawing attention to the unique sounds of particular places across Europe and beyond. This special live broadcast on 20th June will explore and revisit the global sounds of this year's Reveil event.
Wednesday 24th June 2020 3pm - 4pm FREE
Meet the Artists: For Curators and Organisations
Exhibition walkthrough and discussion session for curators and organisations. Invitation only. How can we continue to support digital artists in Leicester? Contact seanc@interactdigitalarts.uk if you would like to attend.
Wednesday 24th June 2020 6pm - 8pm FREE
Digital Symptoms
When the digital transformation that would take ten years happens in a month.
Organised by the College of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, University of Leicester
Friday 26th June 2020 8pm - 11pm FREE
Ceremony: Observances in Sound and Vision
This curated event features Leicester-based musicians and visual artists, with performance and discussion of new work made exclusively for Digital Arts Leicester 2020. Featuring:
- Sam Topley
- Lee Boyd-Allatson, Si Rawlinson, DACHHU Visuals
- Solidus Virgule
- More TBC
Live on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/seancuttlefish
Live on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/interactdigitalarts
Exhibition - Commissioned Artists
Nine local artists were given support to produce work during the lockdown. They were asked to develop something new, but not to worry if the work presented was still in progress. The projects reflect the wide range of digital art creation in Leicester.
Sean Carroll
I am interested in using technology to enable performance across a range of disciplines. My current work is exploring sound art and the delivery of artworks through the browser using javascript and game engines. More..
Sean Clark
In this development of my "Elements" series of generative artworks, I am continuing to explore the 128 colour palettes I first generated in November 2019. More..
Leonie DuBarry-Gurr
Conducting aesthetic experiments with a focus on the relationship between visuals and sound, I am interested in how multi-media can be employed, manipulated and transformed to illustrate or produce emotion and sentiment. More..
Jim Frize
I'm a PhD candidate based in Leicester UK. My research focuses on developing tools and strategies for sound art and music. For this project, I will investigate the use of common web-based tools. More..
Anoushka Goodwin
I am interested in how we all use the internet and our emergent technologies and I use smartphone technology and creative applications to produce affective, non-linear narrative with imagery heavily drawn from internet consumer culture. More..
Joe Moran
I am a practising artist and PhD student with a particular interest in the creation of lighted artworks that are intended to be integrated within the urban environment; my practice incorporates a variety of technology and found objects. More..
Paul Mazzitelli
I'm an Audio Visual artist and Project Manager at R10 heritage studios in Leicester. For this project, I will be focusing on artworks created with hybrid analogue/digital technology. More..Paul Rudman
I created Homo Solitaire, a mechanical animation who waits alone, watching the lockdown body-count on TV, unsure how to respond. More..
S A B O T A G E
Sabotage is a live interactive audio-visual collage that will blend fragments of sound and footage taken from International 24 hour news channels. More..
Picture Gallery
Exhibition - Guest Artists
We have invited other artists from the Leicester Digital Artists community to showcase their work here. Many have shown work in Interact Digital Arts' previous live events and at our "Interact" - Interact'14, Interact'18 and Interact'19 - exhibitions of work from local and national artists.
Mateus Domingos - Grow
I was interested in exploring a game format that engaged with the passing of time, and the experience of reading. A different line of text is displayed each minute over a 12-hour period. It should be played by reading a minute or two, leaving and returning. The numbers do correspond to some kind of order, which might lead to some clearer resolutions.
Balandino Di Donato and Victoria Curtin Rivera - Inner
Inner is an interactive sculpture that encourages the audience in reflecting on its own body awareness and the research of our identity, our inner self. The audience imprints its own inner self on the musical structure and light variations, through the interaction with the sculpture by touching heart rate sensors. The music makes the sculpture and its different materials resonate giving it a new identity.
DACHHU
DACHHU is a video artist who works with projection and live image manipulation. He works collaboratively with local audio and live performance artists as a technical specialist. His work has included video mapping buildings in Leicester's Cultural quarter, live video mixing for well-known DJs, stage and lighting design and live VR events. He is currently employed as a performance technical instructor at DMU where he has just finished studying his Masters in Digital Art.
Sam Topley
Johnny McJohnston
Johnny McJohnston is an audio-visual, digital artist living and working in Leicester. He uses programming, software, and hardware to achieve interactive art installations, audio-reactive 3D visuals, and engaging audio-visual pieces.
Leila Houston
Leila Houston is a multi-disciplinary artist currently working on the project 'Encrypted Sounds of Wellbeing.' Supported by Arts Council England, the work looks at wellbeing using Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Chart and partly, our current situation in light of the global pandemic. Leila will re-imagine and reappropriate the chart as an installation, using interactive digital technologies, recorded discussion and participatory drawing. She is currently providing online workshops with two groups at Charnwood Arts alongside Artist James Chantry - to inform the piece; there will be a sharing of thoughts, interactive digital inventions and conversation that will feed into the final work. The final installation will be exhibited later this year at Fearon Hall, as a collaboration with the groups and other participants she has worked with.
James Chantry
James Chantry is an artist and PhD candidate. His work and research focusses on; queer identity, the supernatural and technology. He explores and reveals coded meaning through archival material and literature, in particular; ghost stories, mediumship and their queer social and political considerations.
Christina Wigmore
Christina Wigmore is currently studying a textile design MA at DeMontfort University. Her work uses different light sources projected through everyday objects and woven materials to create surface pattern for textiles. This mixed media collaboration with Sean Clark takes inspiration from the skilled women weavers that made the computer looms for the 1960s Apollo spacecraft computers, and birds reclaiming nature during the 2020 lockdown. Sean's LED looms have been woven into nests of wire and tree roots with light and sound added to give the piece movement.
Interact Exhibitions @ The LCB Depot
Interact Digital Arts has been curating "physical" exhibitions at the LCB Depot in Leicester since 2014. Our schedule - pre-COVID-19 - was to hold an exhibition of national significance in June and an exhibition of work by Leicester digital artists in December.
2019
• Interact'19 - Work by local digital artists.
• CAS50 Collection 2019 - Phase Two of the Computer Arts Society Collection.
2018
• Interact'18 - Work by local digital artists.
• CAS50: Fifty Years of the Computer Arts Society - Phase One of the Computer Arts Society Collection.
2017
• Resonance: Patterns of Collection - Work by Esther Rolinson and Sean Clark.
• Cyberculture: The Beginning of the Modern World - An Exploration of 1990s Cyberculture.
2016
• A Cybernetic Ecology - Work by Sean Clark.
• Fight War Not Wars: The Art of Crass - Work by former members of the band Crass.
2015
• Computer Drawing: DP Henry and Beyond - Contemporary and historical computer drawings.
2014
• Interact'14 - Work by local and national digital artists.