The streets of Lincoln are set to come alive with digital culture for eight days as part of Frequency Festival. From Friday, October 21st to Saturday, October 29th there will be a number of activities in various city locations as well as sculptures, installations and interactive street art.
Barry Hale, one of the directors of the festival, said he was delighted to be a part of something in Lincolnshire as he hasn’t had the opportunity to work here before: “Although we are an original arts organisation funded by the arts council for 14 years, we’ve barely done anything over in Lincolnshire and we thought this was a great chance to start building relationships here.”
Hale sees potential in the festival and will hopefully be bringing it back in 2013 if it’s a success this year. “The plan is to do it every other year. And the reason for doing it every other year is because we want to use the years in between to tour some of the work to another part of the region,” he said.
It’s not every day that you get to work with people you admire, but Luke Jerram’s work has always stood out for Hale and he was more than happy when Jerram agreed to include some of his latest work in the festival.
The pieces that Jerram has made are glass sculptures of various viruses that are deadly to the human race.
“I’m colour blind so I’ve got a natural interest in visual perception and if you look through newspapers and magazines, you’ll see images of viruses and they’re often these brightly coloured objects. Because I’m colour blind, I suppose I’m suspicious of colour and investigating it further, it turns out that viruses don’t have colour,” Jerram explained.
He added: “The public believe that viruses are these brightly coloured things but they’re not because they’re transparent. Our main HIV sculpture makes you think of representation of viruses in the media and my sculptures are transparent glass.”
Jerram’s work is known worldwide, with one of his favourite pieces being “Play Me, I’m Yours” which involved placing pianos all over the globe for members of the public to play on and enjoy. Hale is keen to get this done in Lincoln when the festival hopeully returns in 2013.
The festival will be based at the university, Drill Hall, Usher Gallery and Collection museum as well as on the high-street. If you can’t make it to the festival, some of the pieces will be staying in Lincoln a little bit longer and you will be able to see them at The Usher Gallery.
Most events are free to attend and just need to be booked in advance. Some events and workshops do have to be paid for. More details about prices and for a full list of events, visit the Frequency Festival website.