Thursday 23rd April

10 am - 1 pm
Registration.

11 am - 5 pm
Cybercircus - Database Interventions.

Our daily lives have been defined by state and corporate databases and now life itself is currently being assimilated into genetic databases.

Database Interventions is an insurrectionists workshop and event where actual sabotage of existing databases and the definition / construction of as yet non existing databases will take place.

Invited participants include:
Heath Bunting (irational.org), John Hayward (backspace.org), Keiko Suzuki (7-Eleven), Manu Luksch (backspace.org), Marcus Valentine (irational.org), Mike Stubbs (HTBA), Natalie Jeremijenko (BIT), Simon Poulter, Rachel Baker (irational.org).

Participants will present past and present actions in the domains of:
Sabotage, Grassing Up, Incrimination, Provocation, Viruses, Intimidation, Eradication, Sampling, Pornography, Spamming, Junk Mail, Auctions, Pranks, Hoaxes, Jamming.

The daily programme, including links and background information will be HERE and information boards around the Showroom Bar.

1 - 3 pm
A Guide to Opportunities for Cultural Producers in Electronic Arts.

This is an opportunity for artists and cultural producers, at all stages of their career, to make contact in person with some of the galleries and agencies in the UK who promote and produce electronic arts.

An information desk will be available throughout the festival with promotional material from a number of these organisations.

Film Programme

3.00 Free
Student shorts

Series of short experimental films made by students at the Northern Media School in Sheffield and the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne.

5.00
Digital Shorts (U)

A collection of digital shorts from across the world reflecting a diverse approach to new technology:
PHANTASMsex/schemeland (David McDowell), The Rumour of True Things (Paul Bush), Blast Site (Jon Storey), The Go, No Go Detector (Jeremy Welsh), Folds (Alicia Felberbaum), Cyber.3 (Clea Waite), Chance Encounter (Nigel Maudsley), Lindbergh, ƒ and the Trans-Rational Boy (Joshua Mosley), Hide and Seek, The Cranes and The Storm (Åslaug Krokann Berg), Stemmer (Trine Vester), Deep (Milla Moilanen), Decripplise (Sean Young, Ross Anderson, Nathan Abood), Astroturf (Ian Haig)

7.00
The Falconer (15)
UK 1998 55 mins Chris Petit, Iain Sinclair

Introduced by Dave McKean.

The Falconer, a work in progress, is a two-part story: it is the posthumous dream of an old man, a former film-maker, and also an investigation into his life as told by a young woman who may, or may not, be his daughter.

Peter Whitehead, documentary-maker and mythomaniac, has a heart-attack and dies. Or maybe he doesn't. It takes him an hour and a half to drag himself to a telephone box and he is taken to hospital. There he asks a young woman to visit him, an artist whose work he admires. He asks her to investigate his life and to make a photographic report of the facts. The visual material was digitally processed by graphic artist Dave McKean.

8 - 11 pm - The Showroom Admission Free
Lovebytes Launch Party

Farmers Manual (Mego) & PITA (Peter Rehberg) Live
with DJ Jean Shirts.

Friday 24th April

10.30 am - 1-30 pm
Sound & Space Workshop - AudioRom
at the Northern Media School (maximum 15 places - please book early)
£15 and £10 concessions. For bookings Tel. 0114 221 0393.

This artist led group will lead a practical workshop exploring the relations between sound and space and how the two can envelop each other. Participants will have the opportunity to investigate the creation of their own environments through sampling sound and visuals.

10-30 am - 5 pm
Demonstrations in The Showroom and Workstation

SSEYO (KOAN generative music package)
MAX (Midi / Multimedia authoring package by Opcode)
Greyworld, AudioRom, Rolf Gehlhaar

1 pm - Panel Discussion
The Corporate Aesthetic and Commercial Tactics

Heath Bunting (irational.org), Pauline van Mourik Broeckman (MUTE/Skyscraper), AntiRom, Tim Schofield and Bruno Martelli (ShoeVegas), Ian Anderson (The Designers Republic)
Chair: Helen Sloan

This panel will examine how artists working in a commercial enviroment have adapted their art work to accomodate corporatisation and in turn how their art work has impacted on the fields such as advertising and design. Taking a diverse range of views, discussion will focus on working in a corporate environment, to the politics of the Millennium Dome, to activism through corporate websites and the appropriation of corporate techniques to make new work.

3 pm - Panel Discussion
The Random Element - Interactive Audio and Participation

Tim Cole (SSEYO and KOAN), Andrew Shoben (Greyworld), Andre Ktori and Simon Schofield (AudioRom), Rolf Gehlhaar, Mark Fell (Premium Leisure), Andi Freeman (Earshot) Chair: Sean Cubitt

Interactive sound in multimedia is currently at the cutting edge of research into electronic art. This discussion will focus on the different approaches and systems that can be made to interactive sound and on the potential for multiple authorship in this arena. The panel represents people from all backgrounds and approaches such as generative sound, semi-authored music, site specific sound and pirate radio.

Film Programme

5.00
Sonic Acts (from Stockhausen to Squarepusher)(cert tbc)
The Netherlands 1998 60 mins Frank Scheffer

Using interviews, music fragments and archive footage, the film provides a picture of developments in electronic music seen in a historic perspective. The starting point is that the dividing line between serious electronic music and pop is fading and there is clearly a cross-over.

PLUS

Wood Technology in the Design of Structure
USA 1997 9 mins Eric Henry

Nova Expresso
USA 1997 4 mins Rick Morris & Marianne Angelo

6.30
Bannedwagon (18)

An exclusive Lovebytes compilation of choice, sometimes controversial video cuts that push the boundaries of the pop music promo. A mixture of beautiful concepts, technical excellence, marketing mechanics and depravity - be warned.

The final programme is to be confirmed but should include:
Therapy? Diane, Aphex Twin Come to Daddy, LFO Tied Up, Jimi Tenor Take Me Baby, 16 Horsepower Black Soul Choir, Auteurs Back with the Killer Again, 12 Rounds A Pleasant Smell, Manic Street Preachers Everything Must Go, Autechre Second Bad Vibel, The Prodigy - Smack My Bitch Up, Goldie - Temper Temper, His Name is Alive - Are we still Married and Can't Go Wrong Without You, Massive Attack - Karma Coma and Bjork - I Miss You.

Saturday 25th April

10.30 - Presentation
Cybercircus

Heath Bunting (Irational.org), John Hayward (Backspace.org), Keiko Suzuki (7-Eleven), Manu Luksch (Backspace.org), Marcus Valentine (Irational.org), Natalie Jeremijenko (BIT), Simon Poulter (Hyperphilately), Rachel Baker (Irational.org).

Participants will present past and present actions in the domains of:
Sabotage, Grassing Up, Incrimination, Provocation, Viruses, Intimidation, Eradication, Sampling, Pornography, Spamming, Junk Mail, Auctions, Pranks, Hoaxes, Jamming.

1 pm - Panel Discussion
Public Art and Electronic Media

Julian Opie or Helen Cadwallader (BAA), Susan Collins, Lulu Quinn and Housewatch, Nicola Stephenson (Photo98), Gillian Dyson (Hull Time Based Arts), Stefan Korn (Stormy Waters)
Chair: Helen Sloan

Presenting a series of practical public art projects involving electronic media, this panel will identify the issues both conceptual and practical surrounding the production of public art involving technology. The projects surveyed are diverse ranging from big budget permanent projects to smallscale web projects. Public art has been a significant feature of Photo98 and a number of projects from the year will be discussed.

3 pm
Inhabiting Metropolis

A survey of some of the work to emerge from the website commissions through Channel, the national networking organisation run through ARTEC. Peter Ride, formerly Arts Programme Co-ordinator at ARTEC, will demonstrate and talk about some of the pieces and the ideas behind the commissions.

Film Programme

5.00
Make Me Think - Bruce Nauman (cert tbc)
Germany 1997 68 mins Heinz Peter Schwerfel

Bruce Nauman is regarded as one of the most influential living artists. His work is often aggressive, regularly noisy and always challenging. Nauman uses an enormous range of techniques, including film, video, neon, sculpture and performance art. The subjects of his work are taken from everyday life and often involve violence, sex and death.

Nauman is only occasionally seen in the film, in previously unseen video material, when he rehearses with performers for a multi-monitor installation.

7.00
The Way of the Weed (cert tbc)
Belgium 1997 83 mins Anne Quirijnen, An-Marie Lambrechts, Peter Missotten

'When asked which book he would like to save, Salvador Dali replied: Locus Solus by Raymond Roussel. This book describes the theory of anti-gravitation and freezing, the only two strategies for survival of the human race. The Way of the Weed is somewhere in between anti-gravitation and freezing. It is a quest in the desert for new life forms in the guise of an old experiment. The Way of the Weed invites one to look clinically, free of the usual eroticism of bodies in dance films; a science-fiction experiment that forces the viewer to look at a moving body without the need to receive dramatic information.

10.00pm
Lovebytes Party at NY SUSHI
The Music Factory, London Road, Sheffield 0114 279 9022
Get in with a delegate pass for £5 otherwise £8 / £7 UB40 / £6 members

Featuring: David Holmes. Anti Rom. The Old Skool: Stuart Simpson, Christopher Bibby, Danny 4Play. Flex Recordings: L Double, Kenny Ken.

NY SUSHI represent all forms of forward looking music; drum'n'bass, hip-hop, techno, big beat and nu brit house. Its a weekly Saturday Club Night that takes its style influences from West Coast USA to Manga Madness. Performance artists, giant Playstations, neoprint sticker machines, slide shows, Gangsta B-Movies and Godzilla extravaganzas! With an interior done in the main part by The Designers Republic, NY SUSHI gives us a peek into the future.

1.00pm - 11.00pm
Test 1
Kelham Island Industrial Museum, Alma Street, Sheffield
Admission £15 or £6 to Lovebytes Delegate Pass Holders (see booking info).

Tickets for Test 1 are on sale through record shops from the end of March. Book early!

Senti present Test 1, a festival of music and film.
A combination of live artists and djs will be taking part many of whom will be performing exclusive sets written especially for the Test 1 festival.

The festival takes over Kelham Island Industrial Museum and will include and audio visual theatre and an open air courtyard, where guests can worships the dj's, prop up the bar and stuff their face.

Live acts to include Autechre, Tortoise, Surgeon and Mick Harris (Scorn), Sonic Boom, Turn On, To Rococo Rot, Isotope, Jim O'Rourke, Radioboy (Wishmountain) and Farmers Manual. DJs: Strictly Kev (Ninjatune), Andrea Parker (Mowax), Boards of Canada, Disjecta, Russel Haswell, Chantal (Warp), Rob Hall, Andy Mattocks, Fear of a Crap Planet, Mike Williamson (Skam) and many more.