The possibilities within live performance are changing. New media technologies offer a revolutionary expansion in how we can create and present performances.

This seminar is an opportunity for creative artists (both performance and visual), academics, directors, funders and students to explore the outer limits of technology and performance. In a unique cross discipline, multi-media environment, you have the chance to absorb a variety of perspectives: sonic art, VJing, mixed reality, digital production, scenography, hi and lo tech.
Here is a chance to fact-find, stretch your imagination and contribute to the debate about current and future practice. There will be opportunities to meet delegates to exchange ideas and contacts over coffee, lunch and a pay bar at the close of the event.

Experimental visuals collective Yeast will create a special "play area" for delegates and Holger Zschenderlein will provide a workshop in sonic art during the lunch break.
Re:visions is the opening event of visions, the festival of visual performance, promoted by the University of Brighton. The festival runs from 24 October - 2 November with a programme of UK premieres by international companies, commissions, exhibitions and street shows.

The User’s Guide Series
As part of the series of publications on contemporary performance practice, Anthony Dean, Head of School of Community and Performing Arts at King Alfred's College, Winchester, will publish texts and discussions drawn from the re:visions seminar. The publication will be available to delegates at a reduced price.

Re:visions speakers:

Dominic Shellard, Head of Drama & Reader in English Literature at the University of Sheffield will chair. His recent publications include British Theatre Since the War; British Theatre in the 1950s and The Drama of Kenneth Tynan, to be published by Yale next year. He was chief rapporteur at Theatre 2001.

Andy Lavender is a Senior Lecturer at the Central School of Speech and Drama and Course Leader of the MA Advanced Theatre Practice course. Writing includes Hamlet in Pieces: Shakespeare Reworked: Peter Brook, Robert Lepage, Robert Wilson and chapters on new theatre and performance in Maria Delgado and Caridad Svich (eds.), Theatre in Crisis?: Performance Manifestos for a New Century. He is the artistic director of the theatre/performance company Lightwork, and has directed devised and mixed-media performances including London/My Lover (ICA) in association with the London International Mime Festival.

Andy will offer a brief overview of some recurring fascinations in the use of film and video in live performance. Referencing Erwin Piscator, the Wooster Group, Robert Lepage, Diller & Scofidio and dumb type, he will focus on ways in which film/video-in-performance is adept at dealing with (or pleasurably complicating) categories such as: Authenticity / Inner landscapes / Presence / History / Virtuality.

Holger Zschenderlein, Senior Lecturer in Digital Music, University of Brighton. Holgar has created music for film and TV (including collaborations with Brian Eno and U2), designed sound for theatre, multimedia and video installation and compositions for dance. His credits on award-winning projects include the British Animation Award in 1998. He will discuss creative Applications of Audio Technologies.

Matt Adams, founder member of Blast Theory, explores the company’s mixed reality work ranging from their infamous Kidnap abduction event to their experiments with Virtual Reality in their Desert Rain interactive performance. He will talk about the group's collaboration with the Mixed Reality Lab at the University of Nottingham including recent work using wireless devices, online games and television.

Blast Theory create new media work, performances and installations combining virtual environments, web casts, live interventions, interactivity and risk to interrogate the relationship between popular culture and social and political realities. Blast Theory has been nominated for an Interactive Arts BAFTA.

Andrew Chetty, Head of New Media at Institute of Contemporary Arts. Andrew is Director of NOW Festival in Nottingham, an inter-disciplinary arts and technology festival; and futuresonic, a Manchester based production company that organises one of the UK's leading large scale electronic music and audiovisual art festivals. futuresonic commissions new work, tours artists internationally and creates one off club nights in a variety of art, non- art and found spaces. He has just started Plan B, a new digital production company, which is co-developing a fashion and wearable technology exhibition at Magna Science Centre in Rotherham and at the Science Museum in London. Other clients include filmmaker Kenneth Anger, Char Davis and Digit.

Andrew will make a presentation with another leading producer, David Metcrafe from Forma. Forma works within the technology/performance field addressing the merging of tradition, performance, dance and technology.

Nick Hillel and Marc Silver, Directors of Yeast, a network fusing digital video with other arts, politics and self-expressions. Yeast make a presentation about the experimental and political visuals they create world-wide for clubs, festivals and art galleries. They have designed visual art for The Big Chill, Michael Nyman and Nitin Sawhney and conceived, shot and edited critically acclaimed documentaries for Channel 4 and BBC TV.

Jasmine Fitter, Random Dance's Education Officer, will give a presentation on Random's use of technologies such as computer animation and webcasting in their workshop programme and their performance works for children. Jasmine Fitter trained at London Contemporary Dance School and she performed in Random Dance: The Children’s Project.

Alex Shelton, visual artist and scenographer, will focus on the use of technologies in the process of constructing performance, and how it has affected this process. Through an examination of her own practice, Alex explores the intervention of both hi and low technology in the form of lighting, video, sound and digital software in the context of devising a performance.

Alex’s work ranges from explorations of the interface between the artist, the artist's process and technology through installation work to collaborative projects such as Triptychos, the hybrid outcome of a devising process between visual artist, musician and performer. Her theatre-based work, has included Ingeneous, a dance piece in collaboration with a choreographer and a scientist. She lectures in New Technologies at King Alfred’s College, Winchester.

Robert Ayers is Artistic Director and Professor of the Contemporary Arts at the Nottingham Trent University, home to the Powerhouse performance studio, the Bonington Gallery, the Live Art Archive, and the Digital Research Unit. He is project champion for the Nottingham Future Factory project and a founding curator of the Body Limits project, an international residency programme for the development of new body-centred work.

This winter, Robert will undertake a research residency at Franklin Furnace in New York City, attempting to comprehend the current relationship between physical and digital forms of live art as demonstrated by Franklin Furnace’s programmes. His video presentation will look forward to this research and feature contributions from Franklin Furnace's Martha Wilson and Tiffany Ludwig, and Brooklyn-based artist Ricardo Miranda Zuniga.

Re: visions Booking form
1. Tell us your contact details (please photocopy this form for any further delegates)
Name
Job title
Organisation
Address
Email
Phone
Fax

The University of Brighton is accessible for wheelchair users. A vegetarian lunch will be served. Please let us know of any access or dietary requirements of which we should be aware

2. Select the number of places you wish to book and the correct rate
Early bird rate! Book before Friday 13 September and receive a £5 discount on all tickets except Student fees.

I would like to book ……places(s) as follows:
_ £30 Standard fee _ £25 Early Bird rate
_ £20 to Total Theatre Network Members (if you are not yet a member but would like to join call: 0207 729 7944) _ £15 Early Bird rate
_ £10 to Students - no Early Bird rate available

I enclose a cheque made payable to the University of Brighton for £
I require an invoice and my purchase order number is

3. Please return this booking form with your cheque (made payable to the University of Brighton) or purchase order by Friday 11 October to:

Debbie Park, visions, University of Brighton, Grand Parade, Brighton, UK, BN2 0JY tel: 01273 643194 fax: 01273 643038 email: visions.fest@brighton.ac.uk

2. Confirmation
You should receive confirmation of your booking within 14 working days. A delegates’ pack including a map will also be sent to you.

Terms & Conditions
1. Delegates will receive 100% refund of monies paid if visions receives written notification of cancellation up to one month prior to the event
2. No refund can be offered for cancellations within one month of the event but the booking can be transferred to another person.