follylab

A contemporary take on the pantheon of Hindu gods is launching a new international digital artist residency programme at the national Creation Centre in Cumbria.

Manchester-based, Sumit Sarkar (whose work is pictured), is the first artist to benefit from the pioneering programme created by one of the UK’s leading digital arts agencies, folly, and groundbreaking arts events company, Lanternhouse International.

The latter is based at the Creation Centre in Ulverston in picturesque South Lakeland and forged a dynamic partnership with folly, its near neighbour in Lancaster, to encourage and foster the development of internationally significant digital artists via the residency scheme.

folly has announced the completion of the first edition of an important new project, the Digital Artists Handbook: www.digitalartistshandbook.org

The Digital Artists Handbook is a new, up to date, reliable and accessible source of information that introduces artists to different tools, resources and ways of working related to digital art. The touchstone of this new compendium is free/libre open source software (FLOSS) and technologies.

Building on the principles of boredomresearch's Wishing Tree, this new multi-user online environment invites you to navigate and explore a beautiful landscape. In the Forest of Imagined Beginnings there are no clear rules or objectives. It is simply an online landscape that is vulnerable to the whims and wants of the community that adopt this digital terrain as their own.

The first instance of Forest of Imagined Beginnings was exhibited at the Harris Museum & Art Gallery, 16^th March - 2^nd June 2007 in Preston as part of Digital Aesthetic 2 and has been commissioned by folly in conjunction with digi_club, an online forum for people aged between 12-16 years.

A second instance of Forest of Imagined Beginnings, for all ages is now online at http://www.enter-forest.net and was presented at Enter_Unknown Territories, 25 – 29 April 2007 in Cambridge. This instance has been supported by National Centre of Computer Animation, Bournemouth University and enter.

The third instance of the forest, for 12-16 year old digi_club members, is now online at http://www.digi.org.uk/foib

_{Image from F.O.I.B. online for Enter_Unknown Territories - at http://www.enter-forest.net}