Beta Festival 2024

We were delighted to collaborate with BETA Festival, Ireland’s art and technology festival, for the second year in November 2024. Our activity with BETA Festival comes under British Council's Culture Connects Global Programme. Culture Connects links UK cultural professionals and organisations with their international peers and audiences by enabling connection and networking, providing intelligence, and catalysing and facilitating creative collaboration, showcasing and touring. As part of British Council Ireland's ongoing commitment to connecting UK and Ireland in culture & arts, we partnered with BETA in 2024 to support the emerging digital arts in Ireland through the inward mobility of a number of key high-level individuals involved in arts technologies in the UK. These included:

These UK practitioners attended the launch weekend of the festival, participate in the AI & Art Assembly workshop on Friday 1st November. Kay Watson also delivered a keynote on Saturday 2nd November at Day 2 of the BETA Festival Conference. Abeba Birhane, a cognitive scientist at Trinity College Dublin, who was a guest on British Council's 'Our World, Connected Podcast' also delivered a keynote at the Conference. Finally, we hosted an informal networking session on Saturday 2nd November to provide further time and space for artists and practitioners in arts technologies and digital arts to meet and connect in person. 

About BETA Festival

BETA, a festival critically engaging with technology's impact on society through a combination of creativity, debate and experimentation, returned for its second year in the first two weeks of November 2024. Taking Ireland’s role as a central node in today's wired world as a starting point, this festival showcased and celebrated Ireland’s research and artistic communities through a combination of creativity, debate and experimentation. Beta allows members of the public to engage playfully and critically with new technologies, essentially beta testing ethical issues facing society. The festival also creates a network, international platform and anchor for the community of digital artists and researchers based in Ireland by providing commissioning, upskilling, residency and mentorship opportunities as well as nurturing a creative pipeline and creating pathways for industry collaboration.

Co-founded and supported by The Digital Hub, BETA hosted a series of events including creative exhibitions, keynote speakers, interactive workshops and an assembly centred on artificial intelligence in Dublin 8 and beyond. The 2024 edition of BETA explored critical themes around the relationship between technology and power, including facial recognition technologies, the impact of AI on artists, untold histories and elevating empathy through creative technologies. The festival took place from the 1-17 November 2024 across multiple venues in Dublin including The Digital Hub, NCAD Gallery, Pallas Studios, Project Arts Centre and IMMA. Find out more about the programme and events here. 

About the 2024 UK Delegates

Keynote: Kay Watson

Kay Watson is a researcher, producer and curator working with art and advanced technologies, photography and video games. Kay is currently Head of Arts Technologies at Serpentine and a Trustee of The Photographers' Gallery, Mediale and Brighton Photo Fringe.

Mike Stubbs

Encompassing a broad range of arts and media practice, Mike Stubbs’ arts leadership, curating and advocacy has been internationally acknowledged. Stubbs has commissioned and produced over 350 exhibition programmes including White Noise for ACMI, the Nam June Paik retrospective with Tate Liverpool and Kunst Palace, Dusseldorf, for Liverpool Bienalle, Pipilotti Rist and Sk-Interfaces at FACT as part of European Culture 2008. He has curated Teching Hsieh and Krzysztof Wodiczko for Liverpool Bienalle 2010 and 2016. He founded AND (Abandon Normal Devices) and the ROOT (Running Out of Time) festivals. In 2017 he initiated and co-curated ReROOTed for Hull UK City of Culture. He is also the co-founder of EMARE, European Media Art Residency Exchange.

Nicola Triscott

Dr Nicola Triscott is a curator, researcher and writer, known for her expertise in the intersections between art, science, technology and society. She currently serves as Director/CEO of FACT Liverpool, a major UK cultural center specialising in the support and exhibition of art that embraces new technology and explores digital culture. Previously, she was the founding Director of Arts Catalyst (1994-2019), building Arts Catalyst into a renowned international arts and research organization, known for its ambitious artist commissions, exhibitions and art/science research programs. As a scholar, Nicola lectures and publishes on several art/science specialisms. She was Principal Research Fellow in Art/Science at the University of Westminster.

Nimrod Vardi

Nimrod Vardi is the Founder and Creative Director of arebyte, East London. arebyte (est. 2013) is a not-for-profit space dedicated to the exploration of the intersection between art and everything that is digital. In 2017, arebyte moved to a new and larger site, which allowed Vardi and the team to further develop arebyte’s exciting programme giving room to more ambitious commissions, new strands of operations and growing arebyte’s reputation nationally and internationally as a leading voice in the digital art landscape. Vardi is an alumnus of Sundance New Frontiers and featured on Apollo Magazine’s Art & Tech 40 Under 40 in 2021. He is also the founder and director of Arbeit Studios (est. 2010) and Spacecraft.works (est. 2018).

2023 UK Programme

Potato Internet - Caroline Sinders

Potato Internet is an experimental small-scale social network, created by Caroline Sinders and Trammell Hudson to envision the internet in times of climate emergency and the global energy crisis. When imagining alternatives for today’s toxic and extractivist online world, the common criticism often comes down to: "but they don’t scale up". But what if the future of the internet is all about scaling down? In Potato Internet, the small scale allows the artists to build a functioning social network from scratch, rethinking all layers of the system, from hardware to protocols and governance. 

Ent - Libby Heaney

Ent-, by UK artist and quantum physicist Libby Heaney, the first immersive experience using quantum computing as both medium and subject matter. The 360˚ projection Ent- takes audiences through three earthly layers of quantum experiments containing quantum hybrid lifeforms and pulsating liquid worlds filled with fantastical creatures zipping in and out of dimensions. This new presentation of Ent- pushes the rhetoric surrounding the use of quantum technologies and all it encompasses forward to a more critical space of enquiry and parody.

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