IlliGAL Blogging

AV Festival 06 is a

bi-annual international festival of digitalart, moving image, music and new media which takes place in the NorthEast of England. The second AV festival will take placeacross three cities of NewcastleGateshead, Sunderland, Middlesbroughfrom 2 - 12 March 2006.

Under the rubric Life Like, the festival will explore the interplay between technological and biological life as explored by artists. Thefestival goes beyond a mere technological exploration of life. We are interested not just in the way that silicon circuits manifestsimulations of life, or imitations of intelligence, but in the way that biological life itself has been manufactured and mutated insidelaboratories.

Genetic algorithms play an important role in the thinking that motivates the festival:

In an increasingly technologised society, we find ourselves surroundedby, and immersed in, virtual and artificial worlds. Evolutionarycomputational techniques
and genetic algorithms correlate the processesof the computer with the processes
we observe in biology. Digitaltechnology has allowed for entire environments to
be modelled within thecomputer. The internet has created a culture, where
societies of userscan inhabit these synthetic environments. Games, online
communities andimmersive interactive environments have become worlds within
worlds.

See the press release at newsmediafix here, and go to the festival website here.