VELOCITY

VELOCITY was folly's second Festival of Digital Culture: an arts festival, a celebration of digital culture, a chance to take part in workshops, activities and performances, all set in the beautifully sublime landscape around the coastal rail route between Lancaster and Barrow-in-Furness.

Building on the success of  f.city in 2006, VELOCITY tackled important issues, from exploring ideas of landscape, movement and environment to asking questions about surveillance society.

But most of all, VELOCITY was fun: a glorious exploration and celebration of the role of technology in our lives,and a chance for participation as well as inspiration.

The artistic programme represented a wide, ambitious and diverse range of projects including works that used the internet, mobile technologies, sound, performance, installation and range of experimental and interactive events.

The festival trail was book-ended by two exceptionally strong projects. V.I.P. Room, by 8gg, an artist duo from Beijing, was launched at Cornerhouse in Manchester. VIP Room was an interactive installation incorporating an outsized computer keyboard and projected imagery, where changes in sound and vision were controlled by the actions of visitors sitting on the human sized computer keys and a public performance, which went on to tour in England and internationally. Desire of Codes by Seiko Mikami from Tokyo provided the key project for the end of the line at the Dock Museum in Barrow.  This interactive and mesmerising work featured sixty wall-mounted robotic devices that tracked the movements of the visitor and the desire lines they walked by using ultrasonic and infra red sensors.  It was placed in the perfect context of the depths of the Dock Museum and due to its popularity, the exhibition was extended beyond the length of the festival.

The festival's online legacy includes ArtCast, our platform for public access to new and innovative art, exploring the creative potential of the podcasting medium, which was launched during the festival with a series specially chosen to complement the VELOCITY experience. The Forest of Imagined Beginnings, a new web-based art project by artists duo boredomresearch, commissioned for folly's digi_club, was also launched during the festival.

In total folly worked with 18 partners and 61 artists from as far afield as China, Japan and the USA.

Over 22000 people visited and took part in VELOCITY’s events, exhibitions and activities, and 100% of people asked rated the variety of events, customer care and interactive nature of the projects as good or very good.

VELOCITY drew attention to the work of folly, and was successful in acting as a key event for profile raising and attracting new audiences to art and technology: over 50% of audiences surveyed had never attended a folly event before and over 60% of the audience had travelled over 25 miles to attend. Nearly 70% of the people asked said that the festival gave them a new appreciation of what the Morecambe Bay area could offer.

Feedback from audience members included:

 ...a delight -  a real mix of aesthetics and entertainment. The whole concept of velocity is a wonderful idea...

...An excellent experience for a varied audience. I would wish to attend future events and would have much higher expectations having seen works today...

folly was delighted to be shortlisted in the "Inside Outside Online" category of the art08 awards, the annual celebration of excellence and innovation in the arts across the Northwest.

Reviewer Catherine Sadler, in an magazine, wrote about the festival: "The fascination with and pleasure in a lot of the artwork is found in the conflation and juxtaposition of the digital and the mechanical, the past and the present, and the human interaction with both. And, as with f.city, the work in Velocity successfully combines elements of seriousness and play."