Splice Festival was a co-created audio-visual performing arts festival that was established in 2016. It was established as a partnership between a group of AV artists from the media arts community in London, Pete Thornton from More Eyes, Graham Daniels, and Francoise Lamy from Addictive TV,  along with VJ Joe Catchpole and event producer Jelica Običan.

The festival ran for three years between 2016 and 2018 and focused on the promotion and education around live audio-visual performing arts.  It was the UK partner to AV Node, which brought together 13 art and technology festivals across 12 European countries to promote and support the work of emerging audio-visual artists.

Splice Festival was created to bring together the audio-visual arts community and to encourage the open exchange of ideas and knowledge around the creative practice of audio-visual performing arts. Over its three years, it showcased around 60 groundbreaking live audio-visual performances from both emerging and established artists from the UK and across the EU.

Splice Festival received a small annual grant from the Creative Europe program and was supported by a series of project grants by the Arts Council England, but was largely run by volunteers and the passion of the creative team behind its inception.

At its core, the festival’s program explored the overlapping fields of audio-visual art and culture through live cinema, audio-visual remix, and VJing alongside other related installations and performative work. This included digital theatre works, projection mapping, animation, visual music, generative software works, work developed through creative coding, a range of experimental music, and work that combined old and new technology in engaging ways to explore the relationship between sound and image.

A core part of the festival each year was its educational program that featured a range of creative workshops, talks, panel discussions, and networking events, along with a program for young people that featured hands-on audio-visual play sessions with School Of Noise, and live performances aimed at families.

Splice Festival’s visual identity was designed by The Light Surgeons’ creative director Christopher Thomas Allen. This identity evolved, was remixed and developed in collaboration with the festival team, and used across various platforms on the web, in print, and in motion graphic idents,

Christopher Thomas Allen also led a team of filmmakers and photographers documenting the festival’s performances, workshops, and talks over the three years. In 2017 Allen edited a short documentary from some of this material that included excerpts from various live performances that year and interviews with some of the leading figures in the field of audio-visual performing arts.

Each year the festival’s identity was explored through a different motion graphics design, each created in collaboration with different moving image artists, composers, and sound designers.

Splice 17 Short Documenary film

Directed by Christopher Thomas Allen
Camera: Christopher Thomas Allen, Pierre Bouvier Patron,
Blanca Regina, Luke Redmond & Nik Eagland
Assistant Editor Oli Bolland
Graphic Design by Alessia Arcuri
Animation & Sound Design by Tim Cowie

Splice 18 trailer

Graphic Design by Alessia Arcuri
Edit by Christopher Thomas Allen
Motion Graphics by Colin Evoy Sebestyen
Music & Sound Design by Tim Cowie

Splice 17 Documentary film

Edit by Christopher Thomas Allen
Graphic Design by Alessia Arcuri
Motion Graphics by Tim Cowie
Music by Tim Cowie

Splice 16 teaser

Graphic Design & Edit by Christopher Thomas Allen
Motion Graphics by Tim Cowie
Music by Tim Cowie

Many more performances, talks and videos can be viewed on:

>> Splice Festival Youtube Channel <<

Festival Credits:

Venue PARTNERS:

Rich Mix
Ikectik
Stour Space
Red Gallery
Genesis Cinema

Educational PARTNERS:

Goldsmiths University of London
University of the Arts London
Madmapper
Resolume
Vidvox

TECH PARTNERS:

Insight Lighting
QED Productions
Hark

Funders:

Arts Council England
Creative Europe
Splice Productions
AVnode