Highlight: Festival Closing Weekend
Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand,Sonolevitation, 2009. Performance at Transmediale, 2009, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. Photo © Luis Bustamante.
A weekend of events celebrating science, technology and our natural ecology in collaboration with Newcastle ScienceFest and the Environment Agency.
At Discovery Museum, you can experience an installation of dozens of audible oversized incandescent light bulbs by artificiel and meet the artists Alexandre Burton and Julien Roy. As night falls, we move over to The Sage Gateshead for the beginning of AV Festival’s closing weekend of events at the venue exploring science, sound and energy.
Sounds of Science is an evening of sonic experiments with unusual and magical sound sources. Sound is itself a form of energy, produced by vibrations as they travel through a specific medium, like a solid, liquid or gas. artificiel present their audio-visual performance POWEr using a Tesla coil, which is normally used to produce high voltage electricity. Lee Patterson brings to life the overlooked sounds in everyday objects; here he amplifies burning firework sparklers, normally enjoyed only for their light. Rhodri Davies plays an electric harp by placing it on a block of dry ice that evaporates into carbon dioxide gas. In Sonolevitation by Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand delicate slivers of gold leaf seemingly levitate in thin air, but are in fact suspended by a sound wave.
The following afternoon presents world premiere performances of three new commissions about the energy and ecology of our rivers, by Kaffe Matthews, Lee Patterson and Jana Winderen. In partnership with the Environment Agency and their current artist in residence, Laura Harrington, each artist visited Northumberland to make field recordings of its powerful rivers and indigenous species, using underwater microphones. These incredible river journeys ranged from the river Coquet, to the lesser-known river Till.
Click images below for more information about these and other associated exhibitions, talks and events.
