Optronica set to switch on

A swathe of designers and multimedia specialists will feature in the audio-visual festival Optronica, which opens at venues across central London tomorrow.

In partnership with the British Film Institute, organisers Addictive TV will host a series of live visual music events at the Imax cinema, Waterloo, the National Film Theatre and the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London’s West End.

The line-up includes designers like D&AD award nominee Trevor Jackson, as well as Nick Franglen and Fred Deakin of Lemonjelly and founder of design group Airside.

The programme incorporates elements of cinema, graphics, illustration and live music performance, as well as digital interactivity.

UK film director Peter Greenaway is to unveil custom-built VJ software, with a touch-screen display interface, while Spanish Music Technology Group is to showcase its interactive visual music synthesiser game Reactable for the first time in the UK.

The festival will also feature a series of lectures plus light and colour installations by VJs Coldcut and Headspace. The Imax cinema at London’s Waterloo has been transformed into a performance venue with a stage that uses the cinema’s big screens especially for the festival.

Branding for Optronica this year is based on graphics and illustrations by Giles Thacker and has been applied to a variety of media, including Web, print and promotional materials.

Festival director and Addictive TV partner Graham Daniels says, ‘AV performance is something that gets overlooked by other digital arts festivals, while it forms only part of music festivals. Optronica is focused on just AV artists so that it can be recognised as a blossoming field and a movement in its own right.’

First held in 2005, Optronica has already sold out of tickets for this year. It runs until Sunday 18 March. See www.optronica.org for details.