The Pixel Palace: Clicks or Mortar?
Tyneside Cinema and other members of the cross-artform venue network explore future of cultural spaces in the networked world.
Digital projection is turning cinemas into spaces that can support every sort of screen-based creative work, extending their usefulness far beyond simply showing films. In the future they may be transformed from ‘picture palaces’ into ‘pixel palaces’, offering a home to games players, interactive performance artists and moving image makers, supporting new forms of film storytelling and, most significantly, engaging audiences who may well be turning from passive consumers of culture into active participants in its creation.
However the digital wave is not only crashing over cinemas. Theatres, galleries and all other cultural venues are also affected, with new opportunities for building-based performance and exhibition, new demands for interactivity and engagement and pressure to break down the walls and offer online access to those who cannot or will not be physically present.
Tyneside Cinema, the oldest surviving newsreel cinema in the country and one of the UK's leading cultural venues, is using the latest digital projectors, high-speed networks, games consoles and mobile devices to help us uncover ways in which we can keep cultural spaces as relevant in the 21st century as they were in the 20th.
On 6 March 2009 Pixel Palace will host ‘Clicks or Mortar?: Designing a future for cultural venues in the digital age’, filling Tyneside Cinema for three days of exploration, exposition, conversation and critical thinking with screenings, installations, screen-based art and performances complementing a high-level debate around the role of buildings in tomorrow’s artistic practice. The programme will include a symposium, digital art installations, film screenings and events programmed by a number of partners. Please see the Clicks Or Mortar page in the menu for more information on how you can take part.
