Beta Festival 2024

Beta, Ireland’s art and technology festival, will return for its second year in the first two weeks of November.

Co-founded and supported by The Digital Hub, Beta will host a series of events including creative exhibitions, keynote speakers, interactive workshops and an assembly centred on artificial intelligence in Dublin 8 and beyond.

Among the themes to be explore in the 2024 edition of Beta will be 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’s main exhibition, curated by Beta co-founder and director Aisling Murray and curator and Associate Professor at University of Limerick Nóra O’Murchú, features international and Irish artists, whose work will explore how technology can become a tool to resist hegemonic political orders and open new avenues for resistance.

Irish-Iraqi artist Basil Al Rawi is among those who will partake in the exhibition with his artwork House of Memory, which immerses viewers in a digital environment that reveals different image landscapes constructed from archived pictures and stories from Iraqi diaspora who hold the memories of these landscapes. This work connects to ongoing research showcasing the value of XR experiences in developing empathy.

Other participating artists include Firas Shehadeh, Jennifer Gradecki and Derek Curry, Sebastian Schmieg, Sam Levigne and Tega Brain.

Key highlights for the festival will include:

• Noire, the Unknown Life of Claudette Colvin tells the real-life story of the 15-year-old who refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in a segregated 1950’s Alabama in a near-mirror event to that of Rosa Parks, told through an immersive digital performance. Noire won the inaugural award for Best Immersive Experience at Cannes Film Festival earlier this year and the production is brought to Ireland by the Beta Festival and The Digital Hub, in association with the French Embassy and Institut Francais, and is supported by Smart Dublin. Noire will make its Irish debut at the Samuel Beckett Theatre from 7th – 10th November.
  Assembly on Art and AI will bring together AI researchers, policy makers, cultural leaders and artists to explore the impact of artificial intelligence on arts and culture and identify challenges and opportunities to fuel a rolling agenda of areas to consider when creating policy centred on AI.
• Cold Call, a call centre created by Tega Brain and Sam Lavigne that reimagines carbon offsetting, by transforming the concept of time theft – a form of resistance where employees deliberately slow productivity – into a carbon-saving strategy aimed at high-emission companies. Through the call centre, viewers are encouraged to call fossil fuel companies and distract them for as long as possible, delaying carbon-emitting activities.
• Keynote discussions by Head of London’s Serpentine Gallery Kay Watson and UN’s AI Advisory Board Abeba Birhane, encompassing AI’s potential benefits and proven risks

The festival, which is co-founded and supported by The Digital Hub, will kick off with a weekend of workshops, discussions and performances from Friday, 1 November to Sunday, 3 November, with the centrepiece exhibition and additional events at The Digital Hub running until Sunday, 17 November.

The Digital Hub and Aisling Murray are being supported in its preparations for Beta by Science Week, Ambassade de France en Irlande and Institut Francais, The Arts Council, British Council, ADAPT Research Centre, European Media Art Platform (EMAP), Creative Futures Academy, Project Arts Centre, Pallas Projects, NCAD Gallery and IMMA.

To find out more about Beta and the latest updates for this year’s festival, visit https://betafestival.ie/News, or follow Beta Festival on Instagram, LinkedIn or X.