Digital Art and Creative Technology

Broadway experienced an explosion of new arts and digital activity in the late ‘90s. Festivals and events emerged such as the “intense download from the digital domain” Fast + Wide and, inspired by Radio 1’s residency, Electric Lounge, a celebration of electronic music and experimental visuals.

Working with Trampoline’s Radiator Festival, launched in 2000, elevated the quality of digital art being presented at Broadway. Memorable works from this period include Rona Lee’s site-specific commission Tails – my father told me, a figure suspended, spinning and falling down the glass panels by the Broadway fin and Simon Heijdens’ white silhouetted Tree swaying in the wind, dropping leaves as people passed by.

Screenplay, Broadway’s computer games festival in partnership with Nottingham Trent University emerged in 2000 from our Out of Sight Film & Television Archive Festival and was described as “bringing together players, makers, thinkers and artists.” After five editions, GameCity took over the controls.

Although work was scaled back by 2006, as attention turned to Broadway’s capital developments, the extra screens, projection in the café bar and a new glazed frontage promised greater opportunities for screen based digital arts. Digital Broadway opened with Ellie Harrison’s I’ve Been Watching You, an animated notebook documenting all 207 films she watched on shift as a part-time usher and undercover artist.