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WELCOME

8th - 14th November Across the City of Dundee

Scotland’s only festival dedicated to showcasing digital art, brings you an eye-opening range of digital and electronic art from Japan, China, Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan all across the city of Dundee from the 8th to 14th November.

This year NEoN Festival (North East of North) looks to Asia and is bringing to the UK internationally renowned artists including Ei Wada, TaeYoon Choi, Eric Siu, Shu Lea Cheang, performance duo Usaginingen and artist group IDPW, many of whom have not presented their work in Scotland before. Also showing work and participating in exhibitions, Pecha Kucha talks, an academic mini symposium, and hands-on workshops are artists Yin-Ju Chen, Ah-bin Shim, Manny Ling and Jung In Jung. A screening programme, including outdoor projections by Internet-famous artists Young Hae Chang Heavy Industries, and a new work about Chinese bitcoin mining by UBERMORGEN, will additionally include work by a range of Japanese and Chinese artists working today including Mineo Aayamaguchi, Akiko Hada, Sun Xun, Xin Ding, Michelle Lee Proksell, Lang Tu, Wang Xin, Lulu Li and Ophelia S. Chan.

Asia – home to two-thirds of the world’s population – has given us K-pop (Gangnam Style, the world’s most watched music video), Godzilla, the Sony Walkman, and the father of media art, Nam June Paik. There is extraordinary richness in its contemporary digital artistic practice. Japan has imbued art with the idea of wabi-sabi, of accepting flux and impermanence, which fits well with digital art, that is constantly changing in response to its media and context. Japan has also given us the idea of kawaii, or cuteness, which figures in our relationship to our technological devices. Japanese popular culture dominates the West’s views of the East’s aesthetics, but NEoN seeks to dive deeper and cast a wider net across northern Asia to consider other nations’ digital creativity, including device art, sound, installation art, design, games, moving image, animation, net art and performance.

NEoN Festival will examine the origins and current understandings of digital arts practice in Asia, against the backdrop of our assumptions about its cultural motifs and traditions. The events and exhibitions will allow audiences in Dundee to compare the handmade and machine made, to look at the processes of making in the context of strong cultural influences, and to ask what concerns do we share as creative practitioners in a globally-interlinked digital environment?

Sarah Cook, one of the curators on the NEoN committee, said: “I can’t wait to see how Dundee transforms into an extraordinary site of some of the coolest and smartest new media art from such a wide range of international practitioners. Every day of the festival o�ers a special opportunity to have your eyes opened to creative practices using technology. We have as our mascot Touchy, who can only see when you join in and hold his hand. NEoN Festival invites you to hold its hand to see what’s going on on the other side of the planet.”

2 Ah-Bin Shim

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EVENT DETAILS

8th - 13th November Preview 8th November, 2pm-4pm

Hannah Maclurie Centre Abertay University, Bell Street, DD1 1HG

This event is free

Venue: Hannah Maclure Centre Where: Abertay University, Bell Street, DD1 1HG When: Preview on Sunday 8th November, 2pm-4pm. Continues to  Friday 12th February 2016 Time: Gallery opening times 10am-5pm, Mon - Fri

For NEoN Digital Arts Festival Seoul-based artist Ah-Bin Shim has been commissioned to create a new work that develops her ‘You & I’ series. The Exhibition preview, Sunday 8th 2pm - 4pm, launches the festival programme.

Ah-Bin Shim’s work explores conflict, both conceptually and in its materiality. Her multi-modal installations raise questions regarding the nature of life by giving symbolic representation to the inner conflicts and dilemmas of humans. Shim’s playful yet profound installations examine desire, solitude, friction and futility. Handmade structural static forms are interwoven with animated digital sculptures and films in a juxtaposition that seeks to reflect conceptual meaning. Ah-Bin Shim’s ideas are expressed in a straightforward, objective and unequivocal way supported by a minimalist and simplified aesthetic, allowing her to cut straight to the heart of the subject and concentrate on frank and forthright expression. Amidst the simplification and candidness, flickers of humour arise; a conscious ironic stance towards the heavy seriousness of the subject.

Shim originally studied in Dundee, gaining her BFA in Time Based Art and her MSc in Electronic Imaging at Duncan of Jordan-stone College of Art and Design from 2000-2004.

Chinese Coin Ubermorgen NEoN Shorts Screen Asia

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EVENT DETAILS

9th November7pm- 9am

Drouthy’s Basement142 Perth Road, DD1 4JW

In a very special evening event NEoN is screening a curated selection of film and video works from Asian artists in Drouthy’s new event space. Ranging from animation, to puppetry, to digitally glitched short form works, the programme includes a 3D masterpiece by Sun Xun (China) and a rare presentation of Shu Lea Cheang’s LoveMe2030.

Artists include: Sun Xun, Shu Lea Cheang, Yin-Ju Chen, Wing Xin, Ding Xin, Michelle Proksell, Lang Tu, Lulu Li, Ophilia S. Chan.

Venue: Drouthy’s BasementWhere: 142 Perth Road, DD1 4JWWhen: Monday 9th NovemberTime: 7pm – 9pm

This event is free but booking is essential. Visit www.northeastofnorth.com

NEoN Digital Haikubot

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EVENT DETAILS

8th - 14th November All day, every day

NOMAS projects 9a Ward Road, DD1 1LP

Venue: NOMAS projectsWhere: 9a Ward Road, DD1 1LPWhen: Sunday 8th – 14th NovemberTime: All day every day during the festival

This event is free

As part of this year’s Dundee Literary Festival (21-25 October) and inspired by the New York Times Haiku project we worked with Albert Elwin to create NEoN’s own HaikuBot. Haiku are a form of Japanese poetry comprised of three phrases of 5, 7, and 5 syllables each. NEoN’s HaikuBot generates haiku by trawling through news stories in The Courier online and it shares them over Twitter. The best of these serendipitous digital haiku are presented in the windows of NOMAS projects for the duration of the festival, in the form of prints produced by Dr Manny Ling. Manny is a UK based designer and head of the International Research Centre for Calligraphy.

So, So, Soulful Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries

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EVENT DETAILS

14th November 4.30pm – 6.30pm

Groucho’s – Exterior Wall 132 Nethergate, DD1 4ED

NEoN Festival is thrilled to present, for one night only, a projection of So, So Soulful (2006-2015) by Seoul based artist group Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries. The work (16 mins 49s, looped) will be shown on the side wall of Groucho's and be visible from the pavement outside Folk Cafe.

So, So Soulful is a stream of consciousness story about being in one place and wanting very much to be in another. Come get into the groove with this cinematic love story.

YHCHI create work which synchronizes original text and music soundtracks, combining storytelling with animation. Their work, created and shown in over 26 languages and released online using flash since the early days of the web (1999), has been shown around the world at some of the major art institutions in the world, including Tate, London, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Whitney Museum and New Museum, New York. Young-hae Chang (Korea) and Marc Voge (United States), the two principals of YHCHI, were recent Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Creative Arts Fellows.

Venue: Groucho’s – Exterior WallWhere: 132 Nethergate, DD1 4EDWhen: Saturday 14th NovemberTime: 4.30pm – 6.30pm

This event is free

Pecha Kucha

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EVENT DETAILS

10th November7pm- 10pm

Bonar Hall, Tay Square, DD1 1PB

Ah-Bin Shim (Seoul, Korea)

Eric Siu (Hong Kong)

Shu Lea Cheang (Paris and Taiwan)

Taeyoon Choi (New York and Seoul)

During North East of North Asia we have an edition of Dundee’s much loved Pecha Kucha night. NEoN teams up with Creative Dundee to bring four international artists to Dundee to tell you, in 20 slides and 7 minutes, about their work and lives. As part of NEoN, Ah-Bin Shim is showing her installation design work in an exhibition at Hannah Maclure Centre; Eric Siu is presenting his robotic performance work with the Dundee Science Festival; Shu Lea Cheang is showing her video work as part of the screening night; and Taeyoon Choi is running a handmade computing workshop.

This event is free, but booking is essential. Visit www.northeastofnorth.com

Venue:  Bonar Hall Where: Tay Square, DD1 1PB When: Tuesday 10th November

Time: 7pm – 10pm

Touchy: the Human Camera Eric Siu

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EVENT DETAILS

11th November 4pm- 6pm

Visual Research Centre, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Nethergate

In partnership with Dundee Science Festival, and as part of this year’s international focus on light-technologies, NEoN brings you ‘Touchy: the human camera’. Hong Kong artist and creative practitioner Eric Siu has conceived a tactile camera known as ‘touchy’. The touch-driven device is an interactive technological piece which serves as an actualized phenomenological social interaction experiment, dividing its wearer from the world, keeping them in the dark until they receive the touch of another human being. In this performance and talk by Eric Siu he demonstrates his wearable experiment with the help of the audience.

Eric Siu has been described as one of Hong Kong’s most accomplished new media artists. His interactive media projects demonstrate his thorough knowledge of the technical aspects of digital media, as well as his ability to deconstruct digital images in ways that are both enlightening and amusing. He works across animation, device art, and kinetic art. Eric received a diploma in digital media studies at Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education in 2001, a BA at the School of Creative Media of the City University of Hong Kong in 2005, and an MFA from the Department of Design Media Arts at UCLA in 2010. He is currently based in Tokyo and works as a creative director for Great Works Tokyo advertising agency a�er working as a resident artist at the Ishikawa Oku Laboratory of the University of Tokyo for 2 years. ‘Touchy’ received the first prize from the WRO 2013, 15th International Media Art Biennale, Wroclaw, Poland.

Venue: Dundee Science CentreWhere: Greenmarket, Dundee DD1 4QPWhen: Wednesday 11th NovemberTime: Artist talk 4pm followed by 5pm performance

This event is free but booking is essential - book here

Workshop Wednesday Drop in Sessions

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EVENT DETAILS

11th November 3pm – 7pm

Unit 6, Vision Building 20 Greenmarket, DD1 4QP

NEoN has programmed a skill-sharing day for all ages as part of the festival, where artists and creative practitioners will guide you through key aspects of their practice and share their knowledge and processes. Wednesday 11 November is also international Pocky Day, so expect some chocolate biscuit snacks!

Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon - Drop in Drop-in on a communal updating of Wikipedia entries on subjects related to contemporary art, digital art, and Asian art, including adding new articles or translating existing ones about new media artists. The wikipedia entry on Korean art, for instance, currently mentions little more recent than 1960 and the page ‘Art in Hong Kong’ doesn’t even exist! Training and guidance will be provided. This edit-a-thon is based on the popular International art+feminism edit-a-thon which takes place annually in March, in which Dundee was a founding partner.

This event is supported by the AHRC Digital Transformations Theme Leader Fellowship and is organised in relation to #AcBookWeek, 9-16 November 2015, a celebration of the diversity, innovation and influence of academic books.

Mindful Movement - Drop in Stretch and get yourself away from your computer screen with some gentle exercises delivered by Nilupul Foundation.

Physical Internet Jam - Drop in In preparation for the Internet Yamichi on 14th November local games developers and artists from dundeemakerspace will be bringing the playful world of the Internet into the physical world. Join them to explore and make ideas come to life such as twitter top trumps, facebookopoly or flipbook GIFs.

Pixel Weaving - Drop in8bit and 16bit tablet weaving with local weaver Andrew Kieran. Tablet weaving, or card weaving, is a method of weaving strong, narrow, decorative bands. This DIY method is cheap and simple yet the range of possible patterns is immense. To celebrate the Internet Yamichi we will be weaving our favourite 2D sprites. Whether space invaders or Mario come and have a go at this fun and accessible cra�.

Venue: Unit 6, Vision BuildingWhere: 20 Greenmarket, DD1 4QPWhen: Wednesday 11 NovemberTime: 3pm – 7pm

This event is free

Workshop Wednesday Taeyoon Choi & Ei Wada

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EVENT DETAILS

11th November 5pm – 7pm

Unit 6, Vision Building 20 Greenmarket, DD1 4QP

Venue: Unit 6, Vision BuildingWhere: 20th Greenmarket, DD1 4QP When: Wednesday 11th November

Time: 3pm – 7pm

£5 refundable reservation fee, see www.northeastofnorth.com for more information

Handmade Computer - Taeyoon Choi (Korea) £5 refundable reservation fee

Artist Taeyoon Choi is one of the co-founders of school for poetic computation in New York, exploring the intersections of code, design, hardware and theory, focusing especially on artistic intervention. Their motto is: more poetry, less demo. In this exploratory workshop you will be able to build your own 1bit computer, and understand electronics and computer science by demystifying computational technology. Taeyoon will playfully ask us to consider what it would be like if our computers were handcra�ed with love, much like the early home-brew computers from the 60s, but for today’s needs. What kind of hardware and so�ware will we be able to create by manual labour in the future? And can this alternative vision help us understand our relationship with everyday technology? What can we do with very little computational power?

Border Shirtsizer - Ei Wada (Japan) - 5pm - 7pm £5 refundable reservation fee Artist Ei Wada will lead a workshop in creating music using black & white stripped t-shirts. Make your own Boarder Shirtsizer and play. Ei Wada o�en uses old electric and electronic instruments, such as open reel recorders, and computers to create multiple instrument performance arrangements and installations. His exhibition for NEoN Festival is on view at CentreSpace, Visual Research Centre in the DCA.

Sounds from Stripes Ei Wada

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EVENT DETAILS

12th - 14th November Preview 12th November, 7pm - 9pm

VRC at the DCA Nethergate, DD1 4ED

UK Premiere of new work by Japanese artist Ei Wada, commissioned for NEoN. Ei Wada uses old electric instruments and computers to create multiple instrument performance arrangements and installations. His work is performative, engaging and very immersive. The installations are authentic home-made systems – wires, old TVs, hacked videocassettes – and exemplify a strong DIY aesthetic. O�en loud and abstract, his re-contextualised and modified technologies have the ability to mesmerize a crowd.

Ei Wada lives and works in Tokyo. Besides using old open reel recorders as instrument to perform with Open Reel Ensemble, he also constructed the one-man performance installation Braun Tube Jazz Band, made of Braun Tube Monitors. His activities involve performances in Germany, Austria, France, Spain, Italy, Turkey, Korea and several other countries.

The exhibition opening will include a live performance.

Supported by New Media Scotland’s Alt-w Fund with investment from Creative Scotland.

Venue: Visual Research Centre, DCA Where: Nethergate, DD1 4EDWhen: Preview 12th November, 7pm - 9pm Continues to 5th 2015Time: 7pm – 9pm

At these following times until 5th DecemberMonday – 10am – 6pmTuesday – 10am – 6pm

Wednesday – 10am – 6pmThursday– 10am – 8pm

Friday – 10am – 6pmSaturday – 10am – 4pm

Sunday – 10am – 2pm

This event is free but booking for the preview is essential. Visit www.northeastofnorth.com

Mini-symposium Rethinking Art's Digital Futures

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EVENT DETAILS

13th November 10am- 4pm

Chamber East Panmure Street, DD1 1EP

Ah-bin Shim (Korea) - ArtistEric Siu (Hong Kong/Toyko) - ArtistJung In Jung (Korea) - Sound artist/performerShu Lea Cheang (Taiwan/Paris) - ArtistUsaginingen (Shin & Emi Hirai) (Japan/Berlin) - performersProf. Jon Rogers (UK) - professor of creative technologiesMat Fleming (UK) - filmmaker and artistDr. Charlotte Frost (UK and Hong Kong) - art historian and theoristDr Manny Ling (UK) - director of International Research Centre for CalligraphyChaired by Dr. Sarah Cook & Karin De Wild

The NEoN Festival mini-symposium this year is focused on the intersection of tradition and cra� with the digital transformation of art and design. Artists participating in the festival will reflect on their own processes, demonstrating influences of ways of working from the disparate and shared heritage practices of the North East of North Asia including Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, China and South Korea. While the West o�en looks to the East for visions of the future in the form of science fiction or new intelligent robotic gadgets it is also in the east where tradition is more keenly understood and practiced, with NEoN festival featuring works in hand drawn animation, shadow puppetry, and poetry. How do artists and designers sustain their inherited traditional practices in a time of digital transformation - with audiences ever-shortening attention spans, networked memory, and a reliance on mediated digital assets to tell the story for us? Our global interconnectedness means we are influenced as much by what is going on on the other side of the globe as by what is happening in their own neighbourhood. This symposium will address how cultural influence a�ects making, how artistic traditions mutate, while shining a critical light on the practices of artists and designers working within a digitally transformed worldview.

Venue: Chamber East Where: Panmure Street, DD1 1EPWhen: Friday 13th NovemberTime: 10pm – 4pm

This event is free but booking is essential. Visit www.northeastofnorth.com

Supported by the AHRC Digital Transformations Theme Leader Fellowship

Screenings and Karaoke Yuck ’n Yum

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EVENT DETAILS

13th November 7pm- 10pm

Roseangle Arts Café 132 Perth Rd, DD1 4JW

Venue: Roseangle Arts Café Where: 132 Perth Rd, DD1 4JW

When: Friday 13th November Time: 7pm – 10pm

This event is free, but booking is essential. Visit www.northeastofnorth.com

Scottish curatorial collective Yuck ’n Yum have become known for their Annual General Karaoke event, in which all the karaoke videos are made by the participants. For this event, not only will some of the best ones from previous years be reprised, and new ones created inspired by Asian culture, but Yuck ‘n Yum will also select the best of bilibili.com - a Chinese video sharing site obsessed with creating live Internet memes (think of YouTube, but only populated with anime, manga and characters from video games).

Flea Market Internet Yami-ichi

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EVENT DETAILS

14th November 2pm- 6pm

Bonar Hall Tay Square, DD1 1PB

In response to the call sent out in October, creatives across Scotland are busy making stu  to buy, sell and trade at Dundee’s first Internet Yami-ichi (or Black Market) put together in partnership with Dundeemakerspace. Led by Toyko-based artists group IDPW (I.D. Password, a ectionately known as "I pass", a loose collective of 10-some members famous for making the "Whatever Button" which won the "New Face" award at the 17th Japan Media Arts Festival in 2012), the Yami-ichi is a flea market for buying and selling ‘internet-ish’ stu  - materialising the internet’s goods and services in real space.

It's up to you to interpret the “-ish” part, past items sold have included glitch embroidery, apps rejected by Apple, Internet Panties, Internet flavoured tea, lost memes and actual SPAM mail. The word ‘Yami’ has a double meaning, both ‘dark’ and addicted to, so if you’re addicted to the internet, this market is for you.

Venue: Bonar Hall Where: Tay Square, DD1 1PBWhen: Saturday 14th NovemberTime: 2pm – 6pm

This event is free

Traveling to Utopia Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries

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EVENT DETAILS

8th November 4.30pm – 6.30pm

Groucho’s – Exterior Wall 132 Nethergate, DD1 4ED

This event is free

NEoN Festival is thrilled to present, for one night only, a projection of Traveling to Utopia: With a Brief History of the Technology (2006) by Seoul based artist group Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries. The work (3 mins 50s, looped) will be shown on the side wall of Groucho's and be visible from the pavement outside Folk Cafe.

Traveling to Utopia is a kind of sci-fi parable about technology and growing up in an age of digital transformation. Come reflect on your own techno-coming of age with us.

YHCHI create work which synchronizes original text and music soundtracks, combining storytelling with animation. Their work, created and shown in over 26 languages and released online using flash since the early days of the web (1999), has been shown around the world at some of the major art institutions in the world, including Tate, London, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Whitney Museum and New Museum, New York. Young-hae Chang (Korea) and Marc Voge (United States), the two principals of YHCHI, were recent Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Creative Arts Fellows.

Venue: Groucho's – exterior wallWhere: 132 Nethergate, DD1 4EDWhen: Sunday 8th NovemberTime: 4.30pm – 6.30pm

Chinese Coin Ubermorgen

TIME8 (Sunday) - 13 (Friday)

EVENT DETAILS

LOCATIONHannah Maclure Centre CinemaBell Street, DD1 1HG

For NEoN Festival, Vienna-based artist group UBERMORGEN are making a brand new video installation, following on from their long-term research into digital economies in China. More than ten years ago UBERMORGEN began investigating Chinese ‘gold farming’ - wherein labourers play games such as ‘World of Warcra ’ day and night to gain in-game currency, equipment, and leveled-up characters, which are then sold to American and European gamers via eBay. NEoN presented UBERMORGEN’s work 'Chinese Gold' at DARE this past summer introducing Dundee to their influential art practice, and is now commissioning a new work, ‘Chinese Coin’, in which the artists explore crypto-currencies.

In China, making money using manual human labour in videogames is being increasingly replaced by large, machine-driven crypto-currency mining ventures created to generate Bitcoins. No one really knows the true identity of the person (or group of people) who invented Bitcoin - a truly decentralised virtual currency - known only as Satoshi Nakamoto. Working with video footage they have taken from a Bitcoin generating factory, UBERMORGEN are creating a loud, immersive view onto a site not o en seen and about which very little is known, where power has been devolved to a few humans - the owners and the on-site mining engineers - and to very large numbers of highly specialized custom-built computers.

UBERMORGEN is an artist duo registered in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Bulgaria. Hans Bernhard and Maria Haas (aka lizvlx) founded it in 1995. Their open-ended investigations focus on the concept of corporate and governmental authority, power structures, and institu-tional and individual responsibility. Influenced by Dada and the Viennese Actionists, UBERMORGEN's 'digital actionism' utilizes modern technologies and performance-based strategies to devise multi-layered, flexible narratives.

Venue: Hannah Maclure Centre CinemaWhere: Abertay University, Bell Street, DD1 1HGPreview: Sunday 8th November, 2pm - 4pm When: Continues until Friday 13th November 2015Installtion opening times 2pm - 4pm, Mon - Fri

This event is free but booking for the preview is essential www.northeastofnortheats.com

NEoN Finalé Video Garden

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EVENT DETAILS

14th November8pm- 12 am

Bonar Hall Tay Square, DD1 1PB

Venue: Bonar Hall Where: Tay Square

Preview: Saturday 14th November When: 8pm- 12 am

This event is free

Video Garden plants supplied by Turiff’s Garden Centre, Broughty Ferry, Dundee

In a nod to the work of the father of media art, Korean-American artist Nam June Paik, NEoN playfully adapts the idea of Paik’s famous ‘TV Garden’ into NEoN’s own video garden showcasing work from the Rewind Artists Film and Video project selected by DJCAD Media Archivist Adam Lockhart. Short form electronic art works – abstract, innovative, rich in pattern and sound, some of which were commissioned for broadcast on television as early music videos – by Japanese artists Mineo Aayamaguchi and Akiko Hada are included.

Extending the video garden, and considering the technology industry in Asia as both producer and recycler of our electronic components, NEoN is working with Shu Lea Cheang to install, for one night only, her digital documentaries about electronic device recycling centres in Lagos and Hong Kong, as part of the ‘Bodies of Planned Obsolescence: Digital performance and the global politics of electronic waste' research project.

NEoN Finalé Usaginingen

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EVENT DETAILS

14th November 9pm- 10pm

Bonar Hall Tay Square, DD1 1PB

Venue: Bonar Hall Where: Tay Square, DD1 1PB

When: Saturday 14th November Time: 9pm- 10 pm

This event is free, but booking is essential. Visit www.northeastofnorth.com

NEoN is thrilled to bring to Dundee Japanese audio-visual performance duo Usaginingen (Shin and Emi Hirai) based in Berlin, Germany for a night of live electronic music, audio visuals and kinetics. They play a self-made analogue visual machine called TA-CO and a music instrument called Shibaki. The TA-CO has a camera, a layered animation table, rotating drum, water-basins, coloured ink, beads, mirrors, prisms and hand cra�s. The Music instrument SHIBAKI is a kind of percussion kit, connected to a MIDI controller and to a string instrument. These are played together to produce surprising real-time visuals sound tracked by a live percussion score.

Part of the Finale evening starting at 8pm with NEoN’s Video Garden and NEoN's resident DJ RHL

www.northeastofnorth.com