What is Pixel Palace

Pixel Palace is the digital media arts programme of the Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, funded by Northern Rock Foundation and Arts Council England.

Our mission is to bring as many people as possible together to experience, enjoy and engage with the past, present and future of cinema and the Pixel Palace programme extends and delivers this mission by working with new media artists, technologists, curators and audiences to not only reflect upon cinema’s past, but also its expanded present and all-pervasive future. 

“There is a confusion of reality and illusion in the modern world… We have no need of entering a movie theatre to experience cinema; life itself is just like a movie”

 (K.Brougher, 2008)

 “The rapid adoption of digital projection in the UK specialised cinema sector and the power of social networks to engage the public as co-curators is turning cinemas into cultural spaces that can support every sort of screen-based creative work, extending their usefulness far beyond showing films”.

(Bill Thompson)

Why Pixel Palace?

After Tyneside Cinema reopened in May 2008, following its restoration and refurbishment project we immediately set about an artistic programme that aimed to try to undo what had just been built and challenge what the building was capable of.   

The programme, curated by Ed Carter (Arts and Music Producer) culminated in a highly successful two day conference and digital arts programme at the cinema called “Clicks or Mortar?” which sought to explore the role of physical cultural spaces in an increasingly online virtual world.

One of the programme’s instigators, the noted IT journalist Bill Thompson, wrote:

“The first wave of the Web 2.0 revolution crashed over the media industry, transforming newspapers, magazines and broadcasters into more or less competent outposts of the online world, transforming their business models from making money out of pushing content to scratching a living as collaborators in the ongoing public conversation and turning the former audience into participant observers in the media ecosystem."

The arts are next in line, and cinema is in the vanguard of the change. The buildings that currently serve as cinemas, where films are shown in large, darkened rooms with one shiny wall, are destined to occupy a different space in the artistic ecosystem, just as the niche available to printed newspapers has shifted in response to the emergence of the Web.

As shown by our own recent experience, the rapid adoption of digital projection in the UK specialised cinema sector, the emergence of exciting and lucrative alternative content (such as NT Live and Metropolitan Opera) and the power of social networks to engage the public as co-curators is turning cinemas into cultural spaces that can support every sort of screen-based creative work, extending their usefulness far beyond showing films.

In the future we believe that cinema’s may offer a home to games players, interactive performance artists and moving image makers, support new forms of storytelling and, most significantly, engage new audiences who may well be turning from passive consumers of screen culture into active participants in its creation”.

Bill also coined the term ‘Pixel Palace’ to describe the Tyneside’s experiments with digital media arts.

You can enjoy examples from the programme in our archive  including the great Peter Greenaway explaining forcefully why cinemas like the Tyneside should be shut down immediately for the sake of film.

In 2010 we were fortunate to receive funding from the Northern Rock Foundation and Arts Council England to reignite the Pixel Palace experiments and appointed Dominic Smith to lead the project.

In 2011 the project won a place in the Arts Council England’s new National Portfolio, providing regular funds for a three year period to enable us to run an ongoing programme of digital media arts activity at the cinema for the very first time.