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Tag: Fak’ugesi Beats Lab

  • Music and Technology at Fak’ugesi Festival

    Now in its 4th year, the Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival is a celebration of technology, creativity, collaboration and innovation from across the African continent. The festival includes a range of seminars, talks, exhibitions, workshops, hack-a- thons, films, artists, games, innovation riots and music. With highlights including the Fak’ugesi Conference, Making Weekend as well as Fak’ugesi Beat, a new curatorial partnership with WeHeartBeat that focuses on beats, music and technology.

    The Fak’ugesi Beats program is multifaceted and includes the week-long Fak’ugesi Beats Lab workshop, the curation of panels at the Fak’ugesi Conference and the Fak’ugesi Beats Bloc Party which sees the festival outcomes come to life. Red Bull Studios Johannesburg at the Tshimologong Precinct will play host to the workshop which includes Soulection’s Hannah Faith, videographer Foxy Neela, French Soulection beatmaker Evil Needle, Swiss beatmaker Melodinsfonie, alongside the local Mante Ribane and the Dear Ribane collective working on a collaborative piece the result of which will be showcased at the Block Party and also see the work pressed to vinyl.

    Two of the panels at the Fak’ugesi Conference will be examining the influence of technology on music. ‘Future Beats’ features Joe Kay, founder of Soulection and pioneer of the Future Beats sound, Evil Needle and trap jazz pioneer Masego. The conversation will look at how the digital age as influenced new genres in music and what this means for musicians and artists as a whole. The second panel discussion ‘Sonic Visions’ will be an examination examination of collaboration between film, design and music. With a panel that features singer Nonku Phiri & Rendani Nemakhavhani who collaborated together on a music film, Foxy Neela, Hannah Faith, Mahaneela Choudhury-Reid of WeAreInBloom, and Benoit Hicke of the French F.A.M.E Festival the aim is to have a playful conversation that engages with the audience.

    The Free Workshop Program at the Making Weekend allows the public to gain hands on experience in areas from programming and creating gaming controllers, to robotics and music & film. Led by French/American artist Yann Seznec, the workshop ‘Room to Play’ explores the world of DIY musical controllers and instruments. Making use of everyday objects the workshop will challenge attendees to reimagine what a an instrument is and placing limitations on its function thus challenging the design strategy of commercial controllers. “How do you make a digital instrument that’s more difficult to play? And then thus what kind of questions does that open up?” asks Yann Seznec.

    According to Seznec DIY musical controllers and instruments have had a large impact on the performance of electronic music. “It means that you can do electronic music performances that are more meaningful to an audience. One of the big changes in electronic music in the last 10/15 years was that everything could be done on a laptop. With the downside of it being pretty uninteresting. I think what’s nice about DIY instruments is that it brings new methods of performance to the world,” notes Seznec.

    The Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival will culminate with the Fak’ugesi Beats Bloc Party which will feature the outcomes of the festival’s various collaborations as well as a selection of some of the finest local and international artists including Masego, Joe Kay, MNDSGN, Melodiesinfonie, Evil Needle, Hannah Faith, Nonku Phiri, Christian Tiger School and Petite Noir. “We’re trying to setup an international beat festival and present artists that we feel are making headway internationally and deserve platforms and deserve to be heard. So we feel like we’ve put together a really beautiful lineup,” says Dominique Soma of WeHeartBeat. “We’ve worked with artists that apply the traditional analog way of music making in terms of playing traditional instruments but then creating it in a digital space or through a digital process,” she adds.

    Unique on the continent in its offering, the Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival highlights the importance of the cross-over between culture, creativity and technology in Africa. With the addition of Fak’ugesi Beats the festival is examining the relationship between music and technology and this program will expand over the coming years. “We’re still looking to explore the relationship between the two spaces in the long term. Over the next few years you will see that crossover coming to life a little bit more,” notes Dominique Soma.

  • A GUIDE FOR FAK’UGESI AFRICAN DIGITAL INNOVATION FESTIVAL 2017

    “Iba nesbindi ne-Technology” | “Be Tech Brave”

    For the fourth time in succession the Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival runs from the 6th until the 16th of September in Johannesburg’s Braamfontein. The Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation has once more conceived to offer an interactive space for creative intercommunions amongst Africans all over the continent. Launched as a “celebration of digital technology, art and culture”, the festival is intended to embolden its audience to reconsider their eyes for digital technology on the one hand, as well as a way to expand their creative and cultural working procedures with(in) digital innovations on the other hand.

    Using the “Upgrade To Brave” theme, Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation 2017 embodies a ten day long festival platform – located in Braamfontein’s recently envisioned tech hub Tshimologong on Juta Street – for inter artistic exchange between creative minds of different directions to (re)create an innovative collaboration of artful creativity and sustainable technology. In the course of this, it proposes numerous events around exhibitions and installations, workshops and talks, performances and parties. Employing favoured events of the previous years, this year’s Fak’ugesi entrenches furthermore new inspiring projects.

    The Fak’ugesi Digital African Residency (from the 14th of August until the 16th of September) annually hosts young digital artists all over the African continent as its residents. Supported by its partner Pro Helvetia Johannesburg with the ANT Fund, it invites creative individuals to exhibit their work and participate in further events like workshops and talks in order to both explore and represent the Festival’s theme through professional eyes. This year’s residents are Komborarai Chapfika and Dananayi Muwanijwe both from Zimbabwe and Julia Hanjo from Namibia.

    In partnership with British Council ConnectZA, Fak’ugesi Festival inhabits a Digital Africa Exhibition, running from the 8th until the 16th of September. Aimed to emphasizes the relevance of digital arts through over the African Continent, it focuses on New Media and Technology Art made by Africans for Africans.

    Likewise as a first, Fak’ugesi 2017 adds the one-day long Fak’ugesi Conference (14th of September – 9am until 5pm) as an inherent part of its program. On the basis of the thematic framework “The Future of Creative Innovation and Technology” the conference – led by diverse professionals of technical and digital innovation spheres – majors on relevant questions of the development of artistic and technological transdisciplinary in Africa, in order to prioritize the importance of collaborative work even across national and vocational borders.

    Intended as a thematic access to the Festival’s theme, The Making Weekend, taking place from the 8th to the 10th of September, allures the visitors to practically experience the thrilling diversity of technological innovations through offering a variegated workshop program such as ‘Making A Talking Roboter’ (8th of September – 10am until 12pm) with IBM Research Africa, which – as the name suggests – encounters to create a pronunciation skilled Robot. Including ‘DIY Game Controllers’ (9th of September – 10am until 3pm) with Bear Season teaching to design individual controllers of various materials. Conclusively, The Making Weekend’s aim is to improve already technically accomplished skills as well as to help (yet) non-technical user to delve deeper in technological features.

    In addition, Fak’ugesi 2017 includes its annual Market Hack (9th of September – 10am until 4:30pm), as one of its favourites event. The Market Hack – in cooperation with South African Maker Collective and Accenture Liquid Labs – is a daylong annexation of Braamfontein’s popular Neighborgoods Market – connected with various playful activities and games around electronic and digital applications.

    As a further project, Fak’ugesi 2017 presents – once again in partnership with British Council’s ConnectZA – ColabNowNow, a collaborative project aimed to combine different digital works to an interdisciplinary level. Proceeding from the 6th until the 16th of September, ColabNowNow engages 10 artist as well as 5 digital storytellers, picked from diverse African states from the East, South and West and the United Kingdom, to flourish inter artistic networking connections.

    Fak’ugesi Beats Lab (7th until 16th of September) – as a weeklong boot camp curated by Weheartbeat – builds a space for various artistic minds of technological, musical and filmic spheres to cooperatively work together in order to amalgamate unique developments and creations. As a clou, all upcoming results will be seen at the Fak’ugesi’s final event, Fak’ugesi Beats Bloc Party on the 16th of September, which embodies the crowning glory of those 10 days, supported by both national and international musical highlights such as Masego, Nonku Phiri, Petite Noir and much more.

    Moreover, from the 13th to the 16th of September, Fak’ugesi features A MAZE. Since 2012 in cooperation with Goethe Institute Johannesburg connects both international and national developers, entrepreneurs and artist of the gaming and playful media sector. A MAZE functions as a networking platform for gamers all over the world to connect through various projects around the thematic framework of virtual reality, such as digital installations, game designs and much more.

    Since 2014 Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival, founded by Prof Christo Doherty and Tegan Bristow from WITS Digital Arts including Prof Barry Dwolatzky from the Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE), initially  created a platform to mobilize Braamfontein’s Tshimologong Innovation Precinct. Nowadays this has since evolved to celebrate the relevance of technological innovation and creativity by and for Africa’s youth. Harnessing a foundation that births a platform for future African digital innovative leaders to explore and leave their footprint in the world of technology. According to its name – Fak’ugesi” – a Zulu expression for “put on the electricity” let’s put the future development of Africa’s technological front into Africans hands, let’s turn on the young minds.

    For further information about the Festival in detail check out their website.