Frequency Festival in Lincoln is a triumph of community and virtual placemaking

Frequency Festival, now in its seventh edition since its inception in 2011, embodies an endearing narration of its evolution into a bona fide case study in community and urban engagement driven by digital and new media art. On a visit to the three-day-long event in the (now) university town of Lincoln, situated at the heart of a largely rural county, a truly festive spirit that seemed to have taken over the town was immediately palpable. Lincoln City’s market and church squares—its primary public nodes—were more charged than usual, owing in part of course to the increased influx of people for the festival, but also to the fervent participation of the locals who were finding new ways to engage with and view everyday spaces. A rather direct sense of ownership for something homegrown and local that was now on display on a bigger stage but still aware of its roots—a show of, for, and by Lincoln City, was not amiss. And that is where the festival’s triumph lay, in its unmistakable sense of community and an urban transformation backed by that, even if short-lived, more than the individual artworks on display. 

Produced and presented by Threshold Studios, Frequency is modelled on exploring the potential of digital culture to breathe life into public spaces, seeing them in a new light, and fostering a more inclusive cultural experience. Naturally, that genesis manifests and is effective via the subject matter working in tandem with the specificity of the setting of Lincoln’s city centre, interspersed with medieval cathedrals, cobbled streets, and patinated gateways, along with the newer developments that have sprung up in the wake of the University of Lincoln, especially since its consolidation in 1992. This essential contrast, this juxtaposition, is what propounds the ‘cultural’ part of digital culture—now also inclusive of individual strands like artificial intelligence, digital media, virtual space, interfaces, and the lot. The proliferation of these strands under the unifying umbrella of a digital “culture” that is not only more inclusive and ubiquitous, but is also increasingly becoming an inextricable part of people’s daily lives, is what makes the festival stand out from amidst a host of conclaves and events across the UK that dwell on the proliferation of digital technology.

The festival brings together a host of cross-disciplinary digital artworks from both newer and prolific artists in the field, local and international, all driven by its theme of “emergence”. The theme itself bears dual connotations, in terms of the emergence of digital technology and its mainstay in the everyday, and in terms of the multiple urgent crises that face us today casting light on a direct interrelation and the potential of these technologies in helping decelerate these crises. Through a series of installations, exhibits, immersive experiences, and performances scattered through the city, visitors are prompted to rethink their relationship with technology and AI, to face the uncanny and esotericism of certain technological feats, to see a neighbourhood spot in new light, to ponder upon one’s coexistence with the natural environment, or to simply enjoy a day out in the city, now activated by these artworks. A constant sense of discovery underlines both the experience of the festival as well as the way we interact with these technologies. Urban space is reprogrammed to be an interface in itself. From a set of swings in the market square augmented by VR glasses, to a fascinating ‘curiosity box’ with Arduino-powered creatures placed on the top floor of a local bookshop, to inflatable monsters perched atop major buildings through the city, to a previously accessible subterranean space through the Roman Posterngate now showcasing panels of AI art, the city is both re-formed and re-claimed.

The ideas and themes around Frequency, according to the organisers, also manifest in tripartite arrangements, “seamlessly interweaving the disciplines of art, science, and philosophy,” while also being divided into three distinct ‘zones’. The first, the Discovery Zone, sought to transform the experience and urban outlook of Lincoln’s high street. The second, the Campus Zone, was touted to be the festival’s central hub and features displays from the University of Lincoln’s own pool of talent; another facet of the festival’s intrinsic involvement of the diverse fabric of Lincoln, and its hybrid identity as both a university town with a focus on liberal arts, attracting international talent, and an emerging Tier II town in the UK with an unmistakable sense of history. The third, the Twilight Zone, featured digital installations that visitors could experience after dusk, with an admittedly heavier focus on the weekend that lay ahead of the festival’s opening, leaning into the allure of digital media doubling up as attractions.

By way of their subdivisions into zones, the festival charts out a course through major offerings of the city, albeit laden with a sense of exploration. My traversal of Frequency on its opening day, marked with grey skies and drenched streets, began from the St. Mary le Wigford Church, the oldest church in Lincoln, located a few paces away from the town’s railway station, where artist Maria Mavropoulou’s A Self-Portrait of an Algorithm takes centre stage. Subverting the divinity in the act of creation through a series of AI generated portraits and animations of how AI would see itself, delightfully staged through the aisles of the church in front of the main altar and charged manifold by its setting in a Grade I listed building, Mavropoulou’s work proved to be an interesting foray into the inherent biases of AI—including how an artificial intelligence ‘saw’ itself in our image, as human. Another display wherein the superimposition of a historical edifice over digital art produced an interesting coalition was Relay by Lumo Workshop & The Network. Comprising panels of AI rendered imagery with prompts exploring ethnicity, coexistence, time, and gender, Relay too utilises the uniqueness and historical weight of its setting at the Posterngate—the original Roman entryway to the town centre—to effectively juxtapose explorative findings against time worn, physical remnants of the city. Camille Baker’s INTER/her was among the more intense experiences that the festival had to offer, with a distinctly spatial aspect. Visualised as a journey focusing on the painful aspects of womanhood, particularly post-reproductive diseases and pain experienced by women and people with female organs, the experience involved up to three people, decked with a VR headset and a haptic corset, placed inside a domed tent called the ‘Sitting Womb’. The wearable ensemble was designed to generate sensations on the lower abdomen, triggered by the stories and narrations through the VR headset. Artist Tim Murray-Browne’s Diffeomorphism, housed inside a shopping centre offset from Lincoln’s high street, was a hypnotic ‘zooming in’ from abstract to distinct and back to abstract landscapes, deploying  a combination of the artist’s own cinematics and AI’s understanding of “latent space” as seamless transitions.

Through other displays of note and the festival’s displays being mostly ticketless and free, Frequency talks of a democracy of access and decentralisation. While that is didactically read in terms of how the public engages with these works in a setting that feels ‘free’ as well, moving away from what are often conceived as the bourgeois confines of an art gallery or museum, bringing and giving the ‘show’ to the city’s streets, the biennial’s funding by the Arts Council England is part of a larger narrative and active agenda of consciously drawing away from London. Darren Henley CBE, chief executive of Arts Council England, sat down in conversation with STIR to mull over the Council’s position on this and the festival. He stated, “It’s really important that we have a strong capital city on the world stage, one that is preeminent on the international stage and will look up against New York or Milan or Paris, Rome, etc. But at the same time, across the country, it’s also quite important in terms of creating voices. My view always is that when people have different life experiences, different backgrounds, different creative journeys, different geographies, and they come together, that’s where you get really interesting creativity. If everybody comes from one route, very quickly it becomes just one idea, essentially. One of the things we want to do is for artists and young people to grow up in a place like Lincoln, to be able to study here, to be able to make their work here, and be proud of that—and then for that to be exported out. We want everybody to have the opportunity to sit at the table to be able 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 value as well.”

Expanding upon the festival as an urban interface and the integrity and identity of an artist coming through in works of this nature, he further stated, “I think a festival like this, what’s exciting about it is that it can take over a physical space. In this case, it’s taken over a city. What I’m really interested in then is narratives. I think there’s collectively, in the curation of this festival, a set of narratives that’s put together by the festival team that you have seen. But interestingly, of course, each of the individual artists have their own stories to tell. Each work has that narrative. And I think one of the things for me is, great artists always have something to say.” He continued, “Sometimes really high quality art can be sort of hidden away. What’s fascinating and exciting about it, just walking down the streets now, is that just people who are here to do their shopping are curious. They see it, they go in, and they have just a moment with an amazing artistic experience. They may find something that questions or challenges them. They may hear a point of view or see something they would never have seen before. And I think that possibility that artists have to widen the perceptions of other people’s realities—that’s what we are seeing here”.

Henley’s interest in narratives as drivers in the creation of art and as galvanisers in the community is reflective of the Council’s proactive funding of a number of similar festivals across the country, including Lumiere 2023 in Durham just this past weekend, as part of its diversified 2023-26 Investment Programme. Both cities are amongst nearly 80 designated cities and towns that are part of the Arts Council’s ‘Levelling Up for Culture’ Places, touted to receive 95 per cent more funding over the next three years with a pointed focus on growing the UK’s digital cultural network and aligning with the paradigm shift (and foreseeable shifts to come) in our evolving relationship with the digital world.¹ What surfaces from this discussion is then essentially a blueprint for community engagement and city advocacy through festivals like Frequency, and the relatively democratic currency and everyman spirit of digital media and arts—especially vis-a-vis visual arts—as the way to bring more cities like Lincoln into the fold.

References

^1.https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/creative-matters/news/bringing-creativity-and-culture-your-doorstep

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position of STIR or its Editors.)