Media Facades Europe Festival27 August – 3 October 2010
FACT hosts first Media Facades Europe Festival in Liverpool. Sites including the FACT building, RopeWalks Square, BBC Big Screen and North Liverpool. Media Facades is a brand new a European-wide public realm festival connecting seven European cities: Berlin, Brussels, Helsinki, Budapest, Linz, Madrid and Liverpool.
In Liverpool, the festival is hosted and programmed by FACT. The organisation has commissioned a series of specially developed interactive screenings/art projects, including splattered SMS projections and giant animated dancing characters inspired by the people of Liverpool.
Exploiting the creative and cultural communication possibilities of urban screens, which are usually dominated by commercial content and news, the programme will be broadcast in public spaces. Turning the city’s surfaces, walls and buildings into giant urban screens, the programme allows passers-by to become creative agents by interacting with what they see.
Broadcast jointly across the host cities, the interactive screening events will connect the people of Liverpool with their neighbours across the continent, offering people a chance to see and share stories and ideas.
The programme in Liverpool includes:
SMS Slingshot, RopeWalks Square, Liverpool and Berlin, 27 August, 9.00pm – 10.30pm
Developed by VR Urban, this project enables local people in Liverpool and Berlin to communicate in real-time via an urban screen. Using a special handheld device, passers catapult their typed messages onto buildings in Ropewalks, creating a multi-coloured collage of splattered stories. In Liverpool, young people from FACT’s Freehand group will be facilitating lively public debate using the devices.
Julius Popp, FACT façade, launching 03 September at dusk
Launching a brand new permanent screen on the front of the FACT building, artist/technologist Julius Popp has been commissioned to create a new piece that uses‘falling’ text. Bit.Code (screen version) is a project made for low-resolution screens, where scrolling black and white pixels pause at regular intervals to display frequently used key words taken from recent web feeds of current news sites. The work forms a part of the artist’s ‘Bit’ series, creating visuals metaphors for how information online is presented or created.
Giants of the Hoods, RopeWalks Square, time and date tbc
In residence at FACT during August, the Giant team of Finnish artists, media designers and technologists will be working with local people to create visual characters that represent their neighbourhood. Using special animation techniques and puppetry technologies, the characters will be projected large-scale onto RopeWalks Square where they will brought to life for a dance battle.
tenantspin/Helsinki Residency, BBC Big Screen, times and dates tbc
tenantspin travelled to Helsinki with two residents from the Anfield/Breckfield district of Liverpool to take part in a creative cultural exchange. The resulting films – created by and starring residents of the two cities – are gently humorous explorations of citizenship and identity in the two cities. They will be screened back-to-back on the BBC Big Screen during the festival.
Livecoding Performance, rear of FACT building, 03 September, 9.00pm – 10.30pm
A chance to watch a computer programmer write text-based code, live in front of audiences that is turned into music. The code will be projected onto the back off FACT’s rear facade and played out of FACT’s sound system. This will be followed by a live radio stream from Austria’s Ars Electronica, the world’s biggest new media festival, accompanied by the work of two local video jockeys.
More projects will run throughout the Media Facades Festival period. Visit www.fact.co.uk for more information.
SMS Slingshot project