(Too much) sound and vision in Newcastle

Welcome to AV Festival 10, the biennial international Festival of electronic arts, taking place from 5-14 March 2010. The Festival theme is energy: a universal force that connects, transforms and renews life. Exploring energy from scientific, technological, environmental and spiritual perspectives we present work that resonates across NewcastleGateshead, Sunderland, Middlesbrough, and beyond.

Or so it says on the AV festival’s website.

Festival brochures and festival descriptions are always as far removed from reality as you can get.

For me it meant turning up in Newcastle for the afternoon having no idea it was taking place.

Walking down the Quayside after visiting Jane Evelyn Atwood’s charming Women in Prison exhibition at the Side Gallery my dad noticed two girls huddled round a small table inside a dark doorway that was once the entrance to Tyne Bridge lift.

Houses in the huge support stanchion on the Newcastle side of the river, these two students were actually makeshift invigilators to a sound installation inside the Tyne Bridge’s stone-clad iron girders.

It was one of those stumbled-upon discoveries that you never forget.

It was freezing inside the North Tower doorway, dripping with water from high above, damp everywhere. The red box on the table six inches in front of the students was a heater. It’s mid-march but they needed it.

All the time we can hear a low humming noise. The girls said get up there. They said my four-year-old son might get scared by the noise upstairs. My mam was too scared to go up.

Three generations of Cook went upstairs. The stairway opened out into a huge dark hangar space. Several pairs of speakers continued with the humming noise. They call this art? In Newcastle? How do they get away with it?

My son Teddy loved it. He asked if there was a Scooby-Doo ghost in the dark corner. We were about to go and investigate when the sound stopped. I was enjoying that. So was Teddy.

But he wasn’t enjoying it anymore when, suddenly, crackling sound bursts through the speakers. Too loud. ‘I’m a bit scared,’ says Teddy with his hands over his ears. Time to go.

He told the girls what he thought. I’m not sure if they turned it down. I hope they didn’t catch hypothermia. The installation was called Space Against Itself by Will Schrimshaw.

Equally enjoyable, ten minutes later was Jenny Holzer’s electro vocubularic displays over two floors at the Baltic.

Very sparse, very shop window, very dazzling. While I do wonder how an artist gets themselves into a position to sell 50-odd LED signs flickering assorted words at high speed to gallery curators as an artwork, I was impressed with the beautiful colours.

Teddy Cook loved it too. I would have bought him the book if, like everything else in the Baltic shop, it was hideously over-priced. And I had already purchased a Jimmy Forsyth and two Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen photobooks at the Side Gallery.

PICTURED: Documentary evidence of the sound installation inside the Tyne Bridge's North Tower: the girls, Teddy enjoying it, Teddy not enjoying it, Teddy in the Baltic (though this photograph me have to be removed if the Baltic authorities get in touch).

Martin's Parr'd

Martin Parr opened his Parrworld and Luxury exhibitions at the brilliant Baltic in Gateshead in October 2009.

If photographer's are famous then Parr is undoubtedly the most famous in Britain and one the most well-known in the whole wide world. Not bad for someone who lives in his own little world of irony, wryness and kitsch.

Parrworld is an exhibition of Parr's own memorabilia collection, from ultra-rare photography books and prints to tea trays and Osama Bin Laden watches.

I was at the opening night. This was the second talk of Parr's I have attended.

Like the first at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2007, Parr came across as luke-warm understated speaker who is not really one for engaging with his audience during the Q&A's.

Even when I asked him to sign a copy of his new book I could only get a couple of sentences out of him (I mentioned Middlesborugh photographer Ian Macdonald whose work is in Parrword, Parr agreed that Macdonald was talented).

But it is fascinating to get an insight into what makes his photography work. He has ideas, often about ordinary subjects, but he puts the effort in to produce the results.

And he admitted he quite likes controversy surrounding his work. He's had a fair bit in his time. It hasn't done him any harm.

The Luxury photographs are fantastic, but if you're after a lesson in the history of photography there is no better place to start than through Parr's own collection. Worth the entry fee alone to see the 911 rugs.

Parrworld runs until January 17 2010 at The Baltic. And entry is free, by the way.