Dreamy Place (formerly known as Brighton Digital Festival) is back for 2025 with another exciting – and inclusive – city-wide programme that celebrates the arts, turning familiar spaces into portals of light, data and digital storytelling.
There’s plenty to plug your brain into. Both Sides Now 10 opens the week with a punchy compilation of experimental films from the UK and Hong Kong, while Symoné’s twin projects Nullspace Motel and Highway to Infinity blur dance, live art and gaming into something hypnotic that pushes the audience to question what’s real. Over at Phoenix Art Space, Judith Ricketts’ Sensing Data: Memory in Place traces Brighton’s architecture back to its colonial past, while Play Back Forward at Hove Museum reimagines the city’s early film pioneers through new collaborations and youth-created works.
One of this year’s most fascinating talks comes from Belgian-London visual artist Marcel Top, who’ll be in conversation with Amin Yousefi of Photoworks at Post, Hove’s newest artist-led cultural space. His project, Poison Data, Kill Algorithms, digs into mass surveillance, data ethics and creative resistance, exploring how “data poisoning” could be used to fight back against the systems that watch us.
If you like your tech with a side of sensory overload, don’t miss Glitch v.3 – an immersive projection piece that shifts and warps to your touch – or Hinterlands, a mixed-reality dance experience exploring evolution and lifeforms that can survive in extreme environments. There’s also a rare behind-the-scenes Brighton Railway Station tour, uncovering normally locked spaces and hidden tunnels, and a special Oska Bright Film Festival outdoor trail, screening work by learning-disabled and autistic filmmakers across the city.
Part of Brighton’s legacy of digital art and playful provocation, Dreamy Place proves once again that the city’s imagination is very much alive – and beautifully wired.
Tues 21st – Sun 26th October; various venues and times; from free
dreamy-place.com
Photo credits: Caroline Beavon, Glitch v.3
