Silicon Fen is a three-year programme of digital art works exploring themes of landscape and technological innovation in relation to the history and geography of the East Anglian Fenland. The programme, called Silicon Fen, was named after the nickname this flat stretch of East Anglia acquired after the first wave of new technology companies began congregating in the hinterland of Cambridge. 
Silicon Fen by Stephen Hughes |
The Norwich School of Art and Design and Film and Video Umbrella will be commissioning seven new art works, each of them produced in partnership with galleries located in or around the Fenland region. The three-year programme is launched on Thursday 27 May 2004, with three new online pieces by Stephen Hughes, Susan Collins and tnwk (Things Not Worth Keeping or cris cheek and Kirsten Lavers). The artworks which can be accessed via the Silicon Fen website, will explore the contemporary changes in society by contrasting the haunting, empty landscapes of the Fens with images of a wired-up, networked future generated by its increasing technological development. 
A dyke in Silicon Fen, by Stephen Hughes |
It will compare the new centres of innovation at the science parks in Cambridgeshire to the technological marvel of its day - the system of sluices, dykes and ditches, constructed by Dutch architect Cornelius Vermuyden, to drain and protect the vast agricultural basin of the Fens. Silicon Fen explores how this area of East Anglia is now being bisected by an information infrastructure of high-speed networks and broadband links that rivals that earlier system of canals and ditches for ambition, scope and intricacy. Through the use of digital photography, video, multimedia installations and websites, the artists can draw parallels with the past and the future to capture the many changing facets of this unique part of the world. Silicon Fen is launched on Thursday 27 May 2004, at the Norwich School of Art and Design. Silicon Fen will be on tour at the King's Lynn Art Centre from 18 September until 30 October, 2004. | 
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