That’s my luck! I haven’t left Europe for ages because there’s always oemthing exciting going on here. Last week i booked a ticket to spend a few days on the US West Coast in March and today i’ve just learned about LifeLife – AV Festival 06. The event is in early March and explores the relationship between digital and biological life. The programme is very tempting and i’m sorry to miss it. Worse for me is that it takes place in one of my favourite places in the UK: Northumbria.

Highlights of AV Festival 06:

Kenneth Rinaldo (creator of Augmented Fish Reality) will install at the Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens 25 large spider-like sculptures (The Autotelematic Spider Bots) which will interact with the public (video).

An orchestra of robots will play a new work by Suguru Goto. The robots consist of one which plays a snare drum, one which kicks a base drum, one which strikes cymbal, one which strikes a gong with the head, and one which passes the air with pipes adapting the mechanism of a woodwind instrument.

The World Premiere of The Marching Plague by Critical Art Ensemble. The work was shot in Stornoway, Scotland, and centres on the recreation of sea trials conducted by the UK government in the 1950s as part of a programme of bio weapons research, in order to critique the history and contemporary biowarfare. Steve Kurtz will be in Newcastle to take part in a Q&A after the screening.

Anthony McCall will produce his first-ever site specific exhibition, Swell, a 50ft horizontal projection inspired by the wave action of the North East coastal landscape and the Roker Lighthouse.

All that plus, a 2-day Symposium, organic outdoor projections by Marius Watz (check the universal digest machine and generator.x), a new work by Richard Fenwick, an audio visual concert by Michael Nyman, Ryoji Ikeda’s audiovisual work C4i, plus a new composition, etc.