Media Release: NEoN gears up for its eagerly-awaited digital curator salon event

INTERNATIONAL digital arts festival NEoN is gearing up for its digital curator salon event taking place on Thursday 14th October 2010. The location – Ross Maclean’s Ballroom, Dundee – will be revealed to ticket holders when they register to attend.

The sociable event will be hosted by Sarah Cook and Clive Gilman, both experts and highly respected within their respective fields of curation and digital art.

Discussing the event, Sarah Cook, said: “Curators are still facing a lot of the same challenges today – what is this new art? Who is making it, where do I find it, how do I install, collect or preserve it?

“Their self-definition is helped by the fact that the landscape of art exhibition has changed and become more multifaceted… Artists, as usual, are using whatever medium necessary to realise their work and curators should be responding to that, no matter what their backgrounds may be.”

The NEoN salon is designed to create a relaxing atmosphere which will facilitate in depth and inspiring conversation among participants while they enjoy great food and fine wine in sumptuous surroundings.

The discussions will be led by curator, writer and lecturer, Sarah Cook, along with artist and Director of Dundee Contemporary Arts, Clive Gilman, both of whom hold such positions of influence among their contemporaries that they will certainly inspire intellectual discussion of the issues surrounding the NEoN festival, and the wider cultural and art worlds, focusing upon the creation of digital art together with modern day curation.

Sarah Cook is a curator and writer based in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK and co-author with Beryl Graham of the book Rethinking Curating: Art After New Media (MIT Press).

She is currently a research fellow at the University of Sunderland where she co-founded and co-edits CRUMB, the online resource for curators of new media art and teaches on the MA Curating course.

In 2011 she will co-chair Rewire, the Fourth International Conference on the histories of media, science and technology in art with FACT in Liverpool. website

Clive Gillman works as an artist and is also director of Dundee Contemporary Arts.

He has a background in working with media-based arts, both as an artist and also through working on the development of the cultural infrastructure in the UK.

He has shown works internationally and most recently has developed a number of internet-based public art projects including ‘Metroscopes’, a permanent public work in the centre of Liverpool.

Register online for the free digital curation salon here: https://express.iristickets.co.uk/k?weareneon

Secret venue: Ross Maclean’s Ballroom (revealed to ticket holders upon registration)

Date: 14th October 2010

Time: 6pm – 10pm

Notes to editors:

North East of North (NEoN) is an international digital arts festival featuring moving image, performance, music and technology driven arts. The over arching curatorial theme for 2010 is Character: evaluating the abstracted or physical agent in a work of art; investigation of the fictional or psychological systems; observation of the unit of information, symbol, sound or written language.

Through this focused dimension NEoN intends to explore the notion of collaboration between visual art, information communication, media production and gaming that will expand digital development and knowledge. (www.northeastofnorth.com)

NEoN was created by Interactive Tayside (www.interactivetayside.com).

Interactive Tayside is a partnership between public, private and academic sectors to develop and promote Tayside’s digital media industry.

NEoN is sponsored by: Angus & Dundee City Council, Event Scotland, National Lottery Awards for All, The Japan Foundation, Creative City Challenge, Scottish Enterprise & the North Sea Screen Partnership.

Partners include: Interactive Tayside, Dundee Contemporary Arts Centre (DCA), Dundee City Council, The University of Abertay, Dundee College, Hungry Boy, Revolver PR, Red Pepper Events, Simultaneita & Insight Innovations.

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