Exploring innovative digital music, art and research which investigates the impact of networking technology on musical creation and performance practice, Network Music Festival presents cutting edge musical performances, workshops and discussions.

The Network Music Festival took place 2012-2014 at the heart of Birmingham’s (UK) creative community. Responding to the move to online music making during the 2020 global pandemic and with increasing concern in artistic communities about the climate emergency, the festival is returning for a global fourth edition, which will take place entirely online 15-18th July 2020.

The main theme for 2020 is communities near and far. As many people find themselves socially distant, the importance of community is not diminished, but rather transformed. People rely on sound to bridge physical gaps, from singing or applauding out their windows, to connecting with others online.  Our connections, then, are either intensely local, or virtually borderless. We stay in touch with friends and neighbours, but also find that collaborating across the world is not harder than collaborating across town. In this year’s festival, we want to celebrate and strengthen the musical communities people have built with networking tools, as well as exploring the aesthetics, performance practice and technologies around topics such as web-streaming, multi-location performance, collaborative music making environments, accessible and sustainable performance practice and more. 

We’re happy to be teaming up with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) funded MIMIC project, who are developing a web platform for the artistic exploration of musical machine intelligence, for a special concert of new works developed with MIMIC tools.

We are also running a VR Algorave in collaboration with TOPLAP Mexico who pioneered the VR format in 2020. 

Network Musical Festival will build on past success bringing together communities of artists and researchers through the festival events to build a global community of artists for the festival period. The festival boasts an international line-up including pioneers in the field of Network Music and new and veteran performers who are turning to network music for the first time.

Organisers: Shelly Knotts, Charles Celéste Hutchins and Holger Ballweg.

Contact: contact@networkmusicfestival.org