Frequency Festival: Art, AI, and Government Funding
Frequency Festival celebrates digital culture and provides a platform to local and international artists that are innovatively using technology in their artistic practice. Juniper was invited up to Lincoln in England, the festival’s home, for the 2023 kick-off.
It was really exciting to see the extent to which the festival integrated into the city - art installations were everywhere - in bookstores, historical city areas, and within the University of Lincoln’s Brayford Campus. It made the city feel public, accessible, and interactive in a new way, like you’re on vacation in your own town.
Within St Mary le Wigford Church, artist Maria Mavropoulou exhibited “A self-portrait of an algorithm”, a project led by her mission to understand how human-fed data views itself. Mavropoulou prompted OpenAI's software to generate a self-portrait of the algorithm. Her anthropomorphic findings deepen our understanding of AI, unveiling how it perceives itself, pictured below.
“A self-portrait of an algorithm” by Maria Mavropoulou; photographed by Saloni Jaisingh
She wasn’t the only one to harness the powers of AI in tandem with their creative process; Tim Murray-Browne utilised AI StyleGAN within his installation, “DIFFEOMORPHISM”. Lincoln’s St. Marks Shopping Centre was transformed to house his immersive work that invites viewers to sit down (comfy bean bags provided) and watch the 61-minute loop of latent space: what the AI program associates with the data of 25,000 of Murray-Browne’s photos. Spanning across three screens, “DIFFEOMORPHISM” offers an abstract and vivid glimpse into the realm of AI and its associations.
While I was speaking to the artist, he expanded on his relationship with AI; it has enabled him with an avenue to explore his education in Computer Science with his experience as an artist. It has called for him to reflect on the connection between person vs. system - the longer he has worked with the software, the more he has developed an intuitive relationship with AI.
“DIFFEOMORPHISM” by Tim Murray-Browne; photographed by Saloni Jaisingh
It was really interesting to see how artists are using AI to further our understanding of AI, which is especially important . Outside of AI, VR, laser-light displays, and robots were also in abundance at the festival. The full 2023 programme can be explored here.
Frequency Festival was funded by the Arts Council of England (ACE), which is funded by taxpayer money. ACE’s investment strategy is set out by their “Let’s Create” plan which outlines the Council’s funding intentions spanning 2020-2030. A large part of this plan is dedicated towards ensuring that everyone has access to arts and culture throughout England, regardless of location.
I had the chance to speak with Darren Henley, the Chief Executive of the Arts Council of England. I asked Henley how ACE ensures that their funding opportunities are available to a diverse group of people while they are targeting diverse geographic locations.
Henley said that “it’s really important that we have a strong capital city, it’s worth saying… My view is that when people have different life experiences, different backgrounds, different creative journeys, different geographies, and they come together, that’s when you get really interesting creativity…”
Henley continued to place an emphasis on creating a presence of art in education. He said, “To me, a good education has three pillars to it. Some people will talk a lot about numeracy and literacy, I think they’re both really important. We want people to be numerate and literate, but creativity is the third pillar. I think for young people, everybody, we want them to have that creativity in their lives when they’re going through a learning experience, but then also just when you’re walking down the street. That’s what I love about here… I talk about tripping over art, and they are literally tripping over art in the street, and that’s fantastic…we want everybody to have the opportunity to sit at the table to make decisions in this country, and we need to make sure that their creativity is built and invested in and that their creative ideas are given values as well.”
Eight giant, inflatable monsters have been installed on top of rooftops throughout the city as part of the “Inflatable Monster” project for Frequency Festival by Luke Egan, Pete Hamilton, and Terry Rook. Early in the day I heard that people were complaining that the monsters were a waste of their taxpayer money. A while later, I overheard two adult men saying talking about how cool the monsters were. Later that evening, I saw a family walking their dogs and pointing out these monsters to each other, saying “that’s another one”. I spoke to the mother and she said that her family has specifically “come out on a walk just to look at the monsters and count them.”
Ultimately, art is subjective, and, naturally, the opinions on funding surrounding art will also be so. What I can say with confidence is that Frequency Festival has done an incredible job opening up the city so that locals and tourists can interact with Lincoln in a unique way, strengthening the culture and providing a spotlight to artists in the digital space.
Sign up to get updates about the future of Frequency Festival here.