Dear Amboids
Been hesitating to comment on
this up till now as the Edinburgh Science Festival has been running
and I'd been wondering if certain aspects of it would serve as a
model for a new media festival. It would be great if there was an
arts festival, never mind a new media arts festival of similar
excellence.
They actually have a list of how-not-to-do-its they give to participants. These are rarely broken, but someone occasionally throws up a Powerpoint slide with 300 words on it or a chemical equation.
So it was ironic that the worst
event I've been to was at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, a
talk about 'sciart', which turned into a classic example of 'how not
to do it'. Whilst there were some interesting people there, anything
of interest they had to say was ruined. It was poorly presented,
badly convened, unplanned as well as having too much self-indulgent
rambling at the cost of audiences questions. A pity, as there was
some absolutely beautiful film of midge's swarming in a cloud of
CO2.
If the aim of a new media
festival is accessibility, which is what I'd like to see, then the
key lies in understanding target audiences and sub audiences:
specialists or the 'lay public'; adults or children etc. The events
that worked in the Science Festival were the ones where the
participants anticipated whether the audience consisted of people
wanting to be enlightened or even entertained, or of interested
parties with personal involvement and experience.
Scientists, like artists, aren't often thinking about (nor should they be) what audiences are going to make of their stuff - yet careful selection, coaching and shaping can make accessibility possible in arts festivals too, which in my experience tend to have a 'take me as you find me' attitude.
You'd have to at least try to consider each key sub audience. There are the artists -- some of whom are making work because they can't stop and some who are trying to make waves in the art world; then there are the historians, critics and curators, who have a valid role but whose language is often too arcane for anyone else to even begin to care what that role is. They in particular need to mediate their fascination and open out their world to engage the rest of us; then there are students of art, art history and new media; and not forgetting the gentlefolk who trail the National Galleries talks programme wondering what the hell it all means...
I think if you created a more widely accessible new media festival, then the opportunities for exhibitions/performances Torsten wants would increase as the local public warmed to contemporary art in general. I think the Science Festival demonstrates that this can often be done without compromising the work or its meaning.
Living in a country like Scotland (or Scittland as Lindsay calls it - she's from Candida ;-), where there are more practising artists than surgeons, I need arts 'festivals' to package things up for me otherwise I would stand little chance of accessing what all these people are doing. I miss New Visions and the Fringe Film and Video Festival, they were great places to meet other artists for one thing. Perhaps we can make such esoteric programmes sustainable by presenting them within a more accessible format???
Anyhoo - I'm beginning to commit the sin of confusing my audience with someone who gives a shit so I'll stop now.
Cavan
(PS: Most of the Science
Festival hands-on workshops are staffed, run and designed by artists,
so if they can communicate 'science' in a popular way...)
