The exciting 8th edition of the Durban University of Technology’s (DUT’s) Arts and Design Digital Festival (DigiFest08) and 7th Annual Postgraduate Research Conference officially began on Tuesday, 19 October 2021 via Microsoft Teams.
Both hosted by the Faculty of Arts and Design (FoAD), the events will run virtually until today, Thursday 21 October 2021. The festival aims to stimulate collaborative practices (creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship) in art, design, and technology.
Further, the festival’s objectives are to interrogate the transformative vision of the future in arts and design fields and to demonstrate the economic significance of digital skills and technologies.
DigiFest 2021 also features 48 virtual exhibitions by developing and established artists from DUT, as well as other artists from South Africa, America, the United Kingdom, the Mediterranean and Asia.
During her official welcome and opening address, FoAD’s Executive Dean, Professor Runette Kruger said DigiFest was introduced as a platform where the global academic community can come together and share ideas of innovation, entrepreneurship and where creatives can dream of a glittering future.
She relayed that this year’s event themed: UNMASKED symbolises the participants taking off their masks and using their experiences during the pandemic to unleash creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship to solve problems after the pandemic.
“This event aims to create an atmosphere of unity in all respects, using the unmasked message to break the boundaries created during the pandemic,” she said.
She added that the next coming days will be a transformative experience to first time attenders and is sure to set young minds into the right direction in the world of Arts and Design.
“The Faculty of Arts and Design is using this platform to showcase that DUT is at an industry leading level of content creation and innovation. The future of Arts and Design is in the hands of the participants of DigiFest, and this opportunity will be a great way for those who were alone with their ideas during the pandemic to be free to share the knowledge with all who seek it,” she said.
DUT’s Director of Technology Transfer & Innovation and CEO of Global Health Biotech, Professor Keo Motaung, gave an inspiring keynote address on how to turn a research project into a start-up or spin-off company.
Drawing from her own academic and entrepreneurial experiences, she illustrated the key differentiating attributes of start-up and spin-off companies by comparing the trajectory toward the establishment
Prof Motaung applies the ‘Einstein’ mantra in her approach to business ideation and considers it the best way to refine a tailored service offering for any problem that seeks a well-researched business solution. She also lists having a dream as the single most important feature of anybody who intends to pursue a business venture, identifying a link between passionate interest in a particular field of expertise and its projected success as a commercial product.
On matters related to institutions, Prof Motaung highlighted the importance of being supported by one’s school in the pursuit of turning research into any business by acting as a synapse for organic supportive structures to form.
“This starts with celebrating and encouraging higher level students to birth concepts aimed at commerce and not simply publishing. The institution also has the power to facilitate a bridge between budding inventors and patent holders, to the pool of economically empowered entities seeking young thinkers to fund. For the former to thrive, the school also needs to grant innovators more ownership of their ideas and fairer deals in the conversation around IP,” she said.
Prof Motaung’ s parting sentiments to researchers is to consider making a business out of their study, and to spend as much time as they can be getting to know their future customer.
This was preceded by a robust panel discussion on the new possibilities of digital festivals due to the pandemic. The panel consisted of Dillion Phiri (Curator of Fak’ugesi Festival), Ismail Mahomed (Director for the Centre for Creative Arts UKZN), Aurelia Albert (Founder and CEO for Innovate Durban), Richard Perez (Founding Director of the Hasso Plattner School of Design Thinking at the UCT), Jen Snowball (Professor of Economics at Rhodes University), with DUT moderator Dr René A. Smith, who is no stranger to driving conversations around the promotion of creative endeavours and the advancement of digitally integrated cultural experiences.
Prof Snowball shed light on the surveyed responses by new online audiences, with particular focus on a general dissatisfaction with online versions of existing festival. Her research shows that audiences who migrated online with their favourite festival experience found it far less immersive, and unable to provide the peripheral pleasures that physical attendance did, like social connection with fellow enthusiasts and the tactile participation it provided. These shortcomings, in her hypothesis, contribute to low sales in the virtual arena, added to existing struggles to monetise creativity. Next on the bill was UKZN’s Mahomed who recounted the experience of salvaging the Time of The Writer Festival, which was scheduled to begin in the week South Africa was shut down for the first time in response to COVID-19. Mahomed’s virtual migration strategy was aimed at audience retention by using the most accessible platforms available whilst presenting creative events in a format that generates appetite to the wider online consumer market.
Other notable nuggets on the topics of data and design were imparted to guests by Albert and Perez. Albert shared how virtual attendance and participation analytics allowed for more precise tracking of progress and milestones in the context of hosting an online competition earlier this year.
Perez outlined the processes involved with design as an easy four step journey, in which one first explores the problem and makes sense of it before one develops a solution and trials it. He mentioned that this flow can be looped and repeated as a design process is being refined.
Another visual feast on Day One included the first of its kind experience, a multimedia visual creation presented as a 60-degree virtual reality music video that becomes an interactive experience for the viewer, and the viewer becomes the message. The dynamic presenters of the Asikhule Sonke – Grow as One: A transdisciplinary immersion using 360° virtual reality, 360-degree music video was Dr Diana Moodley, Robin Gengan and Niresh Singh (Faculty of Arts and Design, DUT).
The presentation was a breakdown of the music video, which Dr Moodley describes as the unique nature of the video and explains all the efforts it took to create an innovation in science, creativity and technology into a powerfully impactful medium for socio-political awareness.
“This work offers a unique experience that immerses the viewer as the co-creator of the virtually augmented emotional experience, the viewer is the essence of the message,” she said.
This video is available on YouTube and is an interactive experience for the viewer but for those who want to fully immerse in the video for a full VR experience, there is a virtual reality headset available in at DUT City campus gallery that gives the full experience of the music video.
Day Two had an array of diverse exhibitions, kicking off with the keynote address by Dr Rene Smith who is the DigiFest Ideator and Creator. Her topic of discussion was on Journeying beyond intersections – The story of an Arts and Design Digital Festival.
Day Three had the DUT’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor (DVC) Research, Innovation and Engagement Professor Sibusiso Moyo delivered her keynote address on SDG Institutionalisation, Equality and Opportunity: Lateral Thoughts.
Other exciting panel discussion topics that formed part of the festival were on the intersection between journalism and social media in the coverage of the recent civil unrest in KZN, Eye Tracking – From Affect to Concept or get a glimpse of DUT’s first Zoom Theatre.
Go to https://digifest.dut.ac.za/virtual-exhibition/, each day of the programme is being livestreamed to YouTube.
DAY 1 – 19 OCT 2021 https://youtu.be/6rjeHQwGezo
DAY 2 – 20 OCT 2021 https://youtu.be/_gFyii5YEiw
DAY 3 – 21 OCT 2021 https://youtu.be/G43sApfEf7g
Pictured (top left to right)
Dillion Phiri (Curator of Fak’ugesi Festival).
Ismail Mahomed (Director for the Centre for Creative Arts UKZN).
Aurelia Albert (Founder and CEO for Innovate Durban).
Pictured (bottom left to right)
Richard Perez (Founding Director of the Hasso Plattner School of Design Thinking at the UCT).
Jen Snowball (Professor of Economics at Rhodes University).
Dr René A. Smith
Ande Msomi, Blessing Xaba, Waheeda Peters
