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04.03.03 Metapod digital arts festival.
On February 27 opened in Birmingham (UK) the third Metapod digital arts festival, which brings in this city the works commissioned by the BitParts FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) of Liverpool. Among the exhibited works are: 'The Intimator', a sound sculpture by Herwig Weiser, formed by an array of glass tubes containing magnetic substances dynamically manipulated through sound sources fished from the Internet; 'Internet Exploder', an interactive installation by Group 7 which, according to the urls typed in by the user, lays a page on top of the others blackening the screen and posing conceptual doubts on our ways of collecting and processing the information 'T(oy)ime Machine', by Darryl Georgiou, a new/old media installation where an array of old interfaces (hand levers, buttons, etc.) brings to memory fragments of television characters, sounds, objects and soundtracks from the past; 'Flatlanders', by Lewis Paul, a video whose filming techniques are coupled with those of the BMX bycicles fans, with technically considerable results; 'I, Robot (Phase 2)', by James Coupe & Hedley Roberts, an installation of collaborative and autonomous robots which interact with the visitors through terminals, trying to comprehend the world around them from a human viewpoint; 'Dead Media?', by the group Funding Pending, a work recycling an archive of 1000 obsolete videotapes covering a thirty years period. Among the musical performances, the one by Brian Duffy (together with Kaffe Matthews) stands out. He's a local musician who plays his Modified Toy Orchestra, made of abandoned toys from the Eighties and Nineties, wired and modified so as to become tiny electronic musical instruments. Completing the festival are workshops and seminaries involving the artists.