Beta Festival

The Digital Hub, in partnership with Aisling Murray and with the support of Science Foundation Ireland, held the inaugural edition of BETA in November 2023 at The Digital Hub and the surrounding Liberties area of Dublin 8.

The festival returned in November 2024 for another two weeks of cutting-edge exhibitions, discussions, workshops and more spanning the material and digital, the real and the virtual, the local and the global through creative and critical practice.

Key highlights from Beta 2024 included:

• Noire, the Unknown Life of Claudette Colvin; A Cannes Film Festival winner, which tells the real-life story of 15-year-old Claudette Colvin, who refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in a segregated 1950s Alabama through an immersive digital performance using virtual reality showing the power of storytelling through technology.
• Unsettling the Algorithm: Seeds of Resistance; This international exhibition explored how digital systems and algorithms shape, influence and govern our daily lives. Curated by Aisling Murray and Nora O’ Murchú, the exhibition featured artists including Basil Al-Rawi, Tega Brain and Sam Levigne, Firas Shehadeh, and Winnie Soon and Tzu-Tung Lee among others.
• Local Artists Network; This exhibition showcased emerging Irish artists with new work from Conan McIvor and new commissions from Aisling Phelan and Cailean Finn.
• The Ethics Studio; This was a space for members of the public to engage with real ethical concerns and potential real-world impacts of new and emerging technologies developed with the festival research partner ADAPT Research Centre. It included The Bigger Picture – an exhibition of new commissions that challenged outdated tropes and offered a more grounded, realistic portrayal of AI.
• Assembly on AI and Art; A first-of-its-kind assembly which brought together leading experts in technology and culture to discuss critical areas in the arts industry that are impacted by AI and should be considered for future policy developments.
• Keynote talks were by Kay Watson, Head of Arts Technologies at London’s Serpentine Gallery and Abebe Birhane, who is a member of the United Nations Secretary-General’s AI Advisory Body and was featured in the TIME 100 Most Influential People in AI list.

Key highlights from Beta 2023 included:

• miss-communication by Joanna Walsh; Talk with Markievicz Mark1, an AI trained on the historical records of Irish women’s words, and print out a receipt of your conversation.
• Ent- by Libby Heaney; a 360-degree immersive installation taking quantum computing as both medium and subject matter.
• The Ethics Studio developed with the festival research partner ADAPT Research Centre; a space for members of the public to engage with real ethical concerns and potential real-world impacts of new and emerging technologies.
• Prompt Battle; a rambunctious live event where people competed against each other using text-to-image software from Sebastian Schmieg, Bernadette Geiger, and the Prompt Battle Team
• Dwelling by Peter Power & Leon Butler.; a new audience driven interactive performance, creating imperceptible, poetic worlds that allow the audience to pass through space, time, and memory to experience the lives of others.
• Keynote talk from Rachel O’Dwyer, nominated author of the Financial Times Best Business Book of the Year 2023 on Tokens.

For more information on Beta, visit:

Website: https://betafestival.ie/
Email: info@betafestival.ie
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