The AV Festival is the UK’s largest international festival of electronic art, and features new media art, film, music, and games. As with festivals such as Ars Electronica, ISEA and DEAF, it is considered to be a new media art festival

New Media art festivals

-Hong Kong-=Austria:-Czech Republic:-Iceland:-Italy:=The Netherlands:...

The bi-annual festival takes place in the cities of Newcastle

Newcastle upon Tyne

Newcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...

/Gateshead

Gateshead

Gateshead is a town in Tyne and Wear, England and is the main settlement in the Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead. Historically a part of County Durham, it lies on the southern bank of the River Tyne opposite Newcastle upon Tyne and together they form the urban core of Tyneside...

, Sunderland and Middlesbrough

Middlesbrough

Middlesbrough is a large town situated on the south bank of the River Tees in north east England, that sits within the ceremonial county of North Yorkshire...

 in the North east of England. The 2006 festival took place in March and went for ten days across three major north coast towns of the UK with events starting at 10am and going till 2am. The 2006 and 2008 Festivals were directed by Honor Harger

Honor Harger

Honor Harger is a curator and artist from New Zealand. She has a particular interest in artistic uses of new technologies.In the mid 1990s while based in New Zealand, Honor edited the artistic publication, SPeC; co-founded sound art collective Relay, worked with radio station, Radio One and with...

 and produced by Fiona Fitzpatrick (2006) and Michelle Hirschhorn (2008). Tom Cullen directed all technical aspects of the show. The 2010 festival was directed by Rebecca Shatwell.

Themes

Since 2006, each festival has had a theme that loosely organizes the events. Festivals have had the following themes:

• 2006: Life
• 2008: Broadcast
• 2010: Energy

Events

Each festival invites and commissions new works from international artists and features world premieres. In 2006 the theme of Life brought a panopoly of international digital arts talent with works such as:

• Celestial Radio by Neil Bromwich & Zoe Walker (with a soundtrack by :zoviet*france:)
• Spine by Gina Czarnecki (new commission & World Premiere),
• Wonderland by Claire Davies (World Premiere),
• System C by Marius Watz (UK premiere),
• datamatics by Ryoji Ikeda
  Ryoji Ikeda
  Ryoji Ikeda is a Japanese sound artist who lives and works in Paris. Ikeda's music is concerned primarily with sound in a variety of "raw" states, such as sine tones and noise, often using frequencies at the edges of the range of human hearing...
  
   (new commission & World premiere),
• Who Am I? by UMAMi, Preamptive, Retina Glitch & Grainy Collective (new commission & World Premiere),
• RoboticMusic by Suguru Goto (UK premiere),
• What I Know About Stem Cells by Richard Fenwick (new commission & World premiere),
• Marching Plague by The Critical Art Ensemble
  Critical Art Ensemble
  Critical Art Ensemble is an award-winning collective of five tactical media practitioners of various specializations including computer graphics and web design, film/video, photography, text art, book art, and performance. For CAE, tactical media is situational, ephemeral, and self-terminating...
  
   (World premiere),
• The Autotelematic Spider Bots by Ken Rinaldo
  Ken Rinaldo
  Ken Rinaldo is an American artist and educator. He creates interactive art installations that explore the intersection between nature and technology...
  
   & Matt Howard (new commission & World premiere),
• Autoinducer Ph-1 (cross cultural chemistry) The Phumox Project: Andy Gracie and Brian Lee Yung Rowe (new commission & World premiere),
• Swell by Anthony McCall
  Anthony McCall
  Anthony McCall is a British-born American Avant-Garde artist, specializing in cinema/projected film.thumb|Anthony McCall at Gallery Zander , Cologne...
  
  (new commission & World premiere),
• The Remains of Disembodied Cuisine by Oron Catts & Ionat Zurr (UK Premiere),
• Artificial Worlds V.3.0 by Richard Fenwick (new commission & World Premiere),