Onedotzero Adventures in Motion to focus on ‘post-digital’

Onedotzero’s annual digital festival, Adventures in Motion, returns to London this September with a focus on ‘post-digitalism’. This year the show will look beyond its digital remit to examine the overlap – and conflict – between traditional hand-crafted and digital design.

Taking place over five days at BFI Southbank, SE1, the festival programme features more than 200 films, exhibitions and installations.

Shane Walter, chief executive and creative director of Onedotzero, observes ‘a return to the hand-crafted in digital design’, but describes digital design as ‘an enabler’ for hand-crafted ideas. He suggests that a symbiosis between the hand-crafted and digital exists, and sees the two as influencing each other. He also talks about the importance of ‘convergence’ – groups working on the same project across several platforms.

Every year, Walter commissions a new identity for the festival. On this occasion, advertising agency Wieden & Kennedy is working with illustrator Karsten Schmidt to create a live ‘augmented reality’ identity (pictured), which will update in real time over the course of the festival.

David Bruno, from Wieden & Kennedy’s creative services, says, ‘We know that there’s a huge following online – people blogging and tweeting – so we looked at how we can aggregate this, considering convergence and collaboration.’

To create the identity, ‘ribbons’ of information taken from blogs and social networking sites will be drawn together to create ‘yarns’ of text – with each source represented by a different colour – forming the words in ‘Onedotzero’ on screens at the event.

‘It’s ever-changing and live. They’re keen to keep the same font, but there’s a lot of flexibility within that,’ adds Bruno. Visitors will be able to engage further with the identity, changing its form, though the consultancy and Schmidt are still working out the details of how this will work.

The festival programme will include children’s event Onedotzero Sprites, for which consultancy Squidsoup’s Glowing Pathfinder Bug project will allow children to interact with a sandpit installation. ‘They can part the sand to find “bugs” underneath, which keep morphing and changing in response to the children’s movements. It’s physical and digital,’ says Walter.

The Interactive Music Video Lounge will attempt to blur the boundaries between artist and audience in a display that Walter promises will allow visitors to ‘explore augmented reality by putting themselves inside it. It’s looking at moving image more than screening’. Visitors will be able to edit and create music videos, which can be shared online.

One of the festival’s film sections, Craftwork, will look at the work of designs that take a hand-crafted approach to new technologies and will include the work of Johnny Kelly, winner of this year’s Jerwood Moving Image prize.

Screening programmes will include Extended Play 09, which will explore visual storytelling, and J-star 09, which will examine Japanese film.

Other shows will include Terrain 09, showing real and virtual filmed landscapes, and Citystates 09, which will look at urban living.

Onedotzero will run at BFI Southbank from 9-13 September.

ONEDOTZERO ADVENTURES IN MOTION

• Onedotzero travels to 35 cities a year
• Established in 1996, the festival is now in its 13th year
• Feature films that will show at the London festival include Mary and Max, an Academy Award-winning animated ‘clayography’ picture by Adam Elliot
• Audio-visual installations have been commissioned, but are yet to be announced