“ZEITGEIST, FROM DIGITAL TO POST DIGITAL”

We are all digital

The digital revolution has changed culture, society and business models, driving a fundamental shift in how humans live, communicate and interact. Today digital is everywhere, it means everything. Digital is not new anymore, it has become part of our everyday life without many of us even noticing it. Our culture has fully integrated digital and the internet to the extent that the majority of the rich (or maybe not so rich) countries have access to smartphones and fast broadband connections.

Entering the post-digital age

With this year’s theme, Alpha-ville wants to address the transition from a digital to a post-digital culture, that looks beneath technology at how human behaviours such as collaboration, participation and interaction have redefined the creative practice and society itself, and at how the physical boundaries between reality and online are being blurred. Alpha-ville joins the discourse about post-digital initiated in 1998 by visionary, thinker and founder of the MIT Media Lab, Nicholas Negroponte who pushed the edges of information to predict the future of our culture.

Today, people have started to look beyond digital to think about post-digital and what it means to be in an interactive, collaborative, participatory and hybrid era. In this context, Tom Uglow, Director of Creative Labs at Google notes, “The idea that digital is something new and transformative is now quite old. So the question for most creatives is not about going digital – it’s about making it feel less digital, about making participation and interaction feel post-digital; making the tech less techy.”

The festival and more specifically the symposium will provide a forum to exchange knowledge and inspire discussions about the humanisation of digital technologies and about the future of digital culture. During 4 days Alpha-ville will create environments where visitors will experience the cross over between digital and analogue, between technology and art, between science and culture.

Our aim is to showcase, document and make known the work of creative coders, designers, architects, artists, researchers and professionals who explore the frontiers of technology, art, computing, philosophy, technology and media. The festival also provides a platform whereby participants and festival goers can exchange ideas, discover new trends and network at the London event.

The term post-digital encompasses new conceptual models, behaviours, and practices that will be examined throughout the festival.

“I am interested in looking beneath the technology itself at how we communicate with other human beings, and how that is changing as a result of social networking,” Man Bartlett, New Media Artist.