DigiFest 2020 – Synergy
The 7th edition of DUT’s Faculty of Arts and Design Digital Festival (DigiFest’20) will be held as a virtual event from 4th to 6th November 2020.
This event, themed, “synergy”, will allow participants to discuss, showcase and celebrate cutting-edge projects, ideas and educational activities resulting from interdisciplinary collaborations and practices across art, design and technology.
Synergy, according to Cambridge Dictionary (2020), is the interaction or combined action of two or more things to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects. From this basic definition, the event will interrogate synergy from interdisciplinary, creative and innovative perspectives. These will involve exploring practices that reflect harmonious interaction/merge of two or more discipline-specific skills, approaches, mediums, and techniques; with emphasis on the importance and role of digital technology in the practices.
Aim
The aim of DigiFest 2020 is to promote collaborative practices (creativity, innovation and interdisciplinarity) across art, design and technology
Objectives
- To showcase and facilitate creative projects that incorporate interdisciplinary skills and digital technologies
- To interrogate the transformative vision of the future in arts and design fields
- To demonstrate the economic significance of digital skills and technologies
Activities: Below are the activities lined-up for this year’s event
We opened a call for submission of intended contributions that align with this year’s theme “Synergy” and/or the special focus “Innovative response to COVID-19 and beyond.” Contributions are welcomed across all disciplines from DUT students and staff, other institutions and industry. Below are the activities we are accepting contributions for:
Plenary Sessions/TalkFest
We have invited guest speakers and panellists (internally and externally) to talk on relevant topics
Workshop
There will be a workshop on Virtual Reality (VR) for interested students in the faculty. The expected outcome of the workshop is that participants (students) will be able to apply the skills in their semester/year projects, and such projects can be exhibited at subsequent DigiFest.
Demonstration/Installation
This will be in collaboration with some departments in the faculty that wish to showcase creative projects in the form of demonstrations and installations. These will be live-streamed on DigiFest YouTube platform.
Virtual Exhibition
This virtual exhibition (using virtual gallery) will showcase and celebrate creative projects that align with the event theme (synergy) and/or the special focus “Innovative response to COVID-19 and beyond.” Exhibitors includes DUT students and staff, other institutions and industry in and outside South Africa.
Dr Folasayo E. Olalere
DigiFest 2020 Manager - Folasayo Enoch Olalere is a trans-disciplinary designer, researcher and educator. He is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Visual Communication Design at DUT. He received a PhD in Product Design from the Universiti Malaysia Kelantan (UMK). He is a recipient of several academic and innovative awards, which includes Malaysian International Scholarship 2014-2016, Malaysia; Gold Medallist at ITEX’15, Malaysia; UMK Excellent Postgraduate Researcher’s Award 2016; KMIC International Champion 2017, Berlin Germany; NDHRN Emerging Scholar Award 2018, Philadelphia, USA. His main research interests are the links between contemporary design, design process and indigenous knowledge system (IKS). He recently received Y2 NRF rating effective from January 2021.