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Scatter!

Visit the Event Page
Saturday 8 March
18:00 - 21:00 FREE
BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead

The extraordinary closing event of AV Festival 08 will feature Marko Peljhan, Nullo (Aljosa Abrahamsberg), Delray (Matthew Biederman), Brian Springer, and friends, who will conduct an audiovisual `mapping' of the radio landscape in the performance, SCATTER! As solar radio interference recedes, they will scan the night sky at different frequencies, picking up chatter from passing planes, amateur radio conversations, satellites, digital data streams and natural radio sources. These will be used to create soundscapes and large video projections.

SCATTER! is the latest in a series of outdoor events Marko Peljhan and his collaborators have created which begin at dusk as the Sun sets, and often end as late as dawn as the Sun remerges as the ascendant in the radio sky. An artist of unparalleled ambition, Marko Peljhan has worked in the Yuri Gagarin Center for Cosmonaut Training in Star City, Russia and has plans to design and launch a micro-satellite constellation. He received the Prix Ars Electronica for the work Polar, which he co-authored with Carsten Nicolai and is perhaps best known for Makrolab. His practice is deeply collaborative.

Peljhan's latest collaborative performance, SCATTER! can be experienced inside at Level 1 of BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art and in the BALTIC's Riverside Café, and outside on Baltic Square, where the sound and visuals from the performance will be visible, along with the antenna array used for the performance.

Commissioned by AV Festival 08. Co-produced by PROJEKT ATOL. Supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia. In collaboration with BALTIC.

Fri, 7 Mar 2008

 

Alternative Top TV Gala Evening!

On Friday 7 March
Tyneside Cinema at Gateshead Old Town Hall
20:30 - 22:00
£5 / £4

AV Festival 08 are handing the big screen over to the public on Friday 7th March from 8.30pm for an evening that promises to be an audiovisual delight!

So few of the '100-best' late night telly marathons seem to reflect the television that the general public really love. So AV Festival organisers created their own Alternative Top TV poll, to decide which truly brilliant British TV show to screen at this unique event.

This gala screening at the Tyneside Cinema - complete with an exclusive wine reception - will show the favourite British TV programme as voted by the general public.

The evening will be hosted by Ingrid Hagemann who previously worked in the North East as a radio presenter for 16 yrs and now hosts the 'Netball Super league' and Womens International Sport for Sky Sports. She is also Charities Ambassador for the Peoples Postcode Lottery in the UK.

An informed panel of entertaining guests will discuss the 12 nominations and say a word about their own favourite TV programmes in an informal discussion preceding the screening of the winning television show.

Guests include Andrew Dixon, Chief Executive, Newcastle Gateshead Initiative; David Haley, MD of Music Management Company Comet Music; Steve Drayton, Producer, The Afternoon Show, BBC Radio Newcastle & stand-up comedian; Barbara Gubbins, Chief Executive of the Children's Foundation; Adam Lopardo, Director, The Sponsors Club for Arts & Business; Roger Tames, Head of Sports Programmes for Nova International, formerly a presenter on ITV Tyne Tees; Michael Chaplin - TV writer of Monarch of the Glen, Dalziel and Pascoe & Wild at Heart and Mark Murray - Producer for many of Channel 4's 'Greatest 100 TV....' show programmes.

Come along for an evening of relaxed fun and laughter and to find out what the winning programme is!

The 12 nominated shows for Alternative Top TV are:

  • The Blue Planet (Natural history documentary, BBC, 2001)
  • The Buddha of Suburbia (Drama miniseries, BBC, 1993)
  • Early Doors (Sitcom, BBC, 2003)
  • Louis Theroux: When Louis met Jimmy (Documentary, BBC, 2000)
  • The Office (Mockumentary, BBC, 2001)
  • Peep Show (Sitcom, Channel 4, 2003)
  • The Power of Nightmares (Documentary, BBC, 2004)
  • The Prisoner (science-fiction drama, ITV, UK, 1967-1968)
  • Queer as Folk (Comedy drama, Channel 4, 1999)
  • Red Dwarf (Sci-fi sitcom, BBC, 1988)
  • Shameless (Comedy Drama, Channel 4, 2004)
  • Spaced (Sitcom, Channel 4, 1999)

Fri, 7 Mar 2008

 

AV Festival Wrap up Party

AV:ISION AT THE ROUND present:
RAJ PANNU (Coldcut DJ/VJ) WARM DIGITS, TOKYO ACID CRU, ARTWHORE, NAME, RETINA GLITCH, PREAMPTIVE + MORE
8pm-12am, £3
Join the AV Festival artists and crew as we wrap up this year's festival with a special wrap up party with the AV:ISION DJs and VJs at The Round Theatre, 34 Lime Street, Ouseburn
Tickets £3 from The Round (0191) 260 5605

Fri, 7 Mar 2008

The Television Will Not Be Revolutionised?

THE TV DEBATE
THE MEDIA CENTRE, ST PETER'S CAMPUS
UNIVERSITY OF SUNDERLAND
FREE
Thursday March 6 1200 – 1700 & Friday March 7 1200 - 1800

The switchover from analogue to digital broadcasting has begun. But is the much vaunted switchover really going to revolutionise television? Or is the switch to digital simply going to create a surfeit of programming which we can not possibly keep up with? How can broadcasting meet the needs of the people after switch-off? And what is the fate of regional television and public service broadcasting in a new multi-channel broadcasting environment? This two-day debate will ask these questions, as well as surveying how community media groups, and other cultural sectors are affected by the digital switchover. It will conclude by exploring how the internet and new digital technologies are emerging as new sites for broadcasting.

Places are FREE and can be reserved via the AV Festival Box Office on 0191 232 8289
A Free bus leaves Newcastle Central station at 11.10 each day returning in teh evening

Participants include:
Austin Mitchell, MP, Chairman of the Commons All-Party Media Group; John Grundy - well known writer, historian and broadcaster, UK; Graham Howell - Director, Ofcom, England;
John Askew – Regional Manager, Border, Digital UK; Andy Cooper, TV Editor, BBC North East;
Jim Knight, News Editor, ITV Tyne Tees; Bill Thompson – Digital Planet, BBC & independent journalist, UK; Patrick Collerton – television documentary maker, UK; Jaqui Devereux, Community Media Association, UK; Dave Rushton, Institute for Local Television, UK;
John Wilson – researcher, Open Spectrum, UK; Brian Springer – filmmaker & spectrum scanner, USA; Hanna Harris – researcher, Finland; Annalisa Pelizza – Telestreet TV activist, Italy; Mick Fuzz – Transmission (independent network of journalists & researchers), UK; Helen Philpot – Project Director, The Yorkshire Channel; Nicola Smythe – BBC Future Media and Technology; Eric Kluitenberg – Theorist, writer and organiser, Centre for Culture and Politics, Amsterdam

 

Debate topics:

The debate will be organised into five sessions which will explore television in a variety of different ways. The topics of the sessions are:

The Switchover
What is the switchover? When is happening? Why is it happening?

Let the People Speak!
What is the impact of digital switchover on local and regional television? What is the future of public service broadcasting in the new digital era? What is Public Service Publishing (PSP)?

Citizen Spectrum
What is the fate of the part of the electromagnetic spectrum where television broadcasting happens? Will it be auctioned off? What happens to community broadcasting?

We Want the Airwaves!
What are the motivations behind activists and artists' radical incursions into broadcasting space?

Web Futures
Is the internet the new frontier of television? If so, what are the key initiatives which are creating the context for the future of TV online

Wed, 5 Mar 2008