Digital Catapult to propel Brighton Dome as 5G testbed
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Editor
| 01 May 2019

Aiming to transform audience experiences, leading UK cultural centre The Brighton Dome has partnered with Digital Catapult to launch one of the first performance and arts venues equipped with 5G technology anywhere in the UK.

Over the next year, the project between the hub centre and digital technology innovation Centre will develop new ideas for integrating 5G technology into the venues, such as live streaming performances in high quality and real time, allowing audiences — especially those that are attending events at the Brighton Festival which runs through May 2019 — to engage and interact with artists experimenting with new work enabled and delivered over 5G infrastructure.

“5G is expected to be rolled out across the UK later this year, but we’re still very much in the black and white television era of this technology,” remarked Digital Catapult CEO Jeremy Silver. “To be in with a chance of entering technicolour, we need to test the network’s capabilities and enable businesses and users to prepare for the opportunity it presents. Brighton is renowned for being a centre of creativity and increasingly technology. It is our mission at Digital Catapult to bring these two worlds together to accelerate innovation in both for the benefit of the UK economy.”

Tristan Sharps, artistic director of Brighton based performance company dreamthinkspeak, and associate artist of Brighton Dome and the Brighton Festival added: “For artists, 5G has the potential to offer a new set of tools to do things we have always dreamt about or dream up new things we could never have imagined. It provides us with new questions to explore and new forms of expression to examine those questions. Whether we create large-scale projects with progressive technologies, or intimate pieces on a bare stage in torchlight, 5G will change how our artistic work is made, seen and circulated. It will give artists and audiences a thrilling opportunity to engage with our rapidly changing world.”