Sunderland

* Big Water – Bring your trunks to an electronic music concert, and listen in and out of the water at the Sunderland Aquatic Centre.
* Buddha Machines – Listen to a free installation as ambient music’s answer to the iPod takes root amongst the plant life in Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens.
* Heliocentric – Free moving image exhibition illustrating our relationship with the sun at the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art.
* Incandescent – Free interactive installation in the Pilgrim Pub celebrates the electric light bulb invented by Sunderland born Physicist Joseph Swan.
* Work Force – Free exhibition at the National Glass Centre of films exploring the vibrant glassmaking industry and labour from the 1970s to present day.

Middlesbrough

* A certain distance, endless light– A major FREE exhibition, and highlight of the Festival which brings together Cuban-born American artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Irish artist William McKeown at mima (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art).
* ‘Untitled’ (Strange Bird) 1993 by Felix Gonzalez-Torres – The artist’s work is installed on commercial advertising billboards in Middlesbrough, Sunderland and NewcastleGateshead.
* Silent Sound – Part classical concert, part public séance at Middlesbrough Town Hall by artists Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard, and featuring musician Jason Pierce of Spiritualized and TV’s Most Haunted parapsychologist Dr Ciarán O’Keefe.
* Energy Shorts – Two FREE screenings of moving image work on the North East’s only Big Screen, in Centre Square, Middlesbrough.

NewcastleGateshead

* Charlemagne Palestine Trilogy, 3 performances by US composer with the carillon bells at Newcastle Civic Centre, change ringing bells at two Newcastle churches, and a 6-hour work for organ at another.
* Power Game by Liliane Lijn, a late night card game and improvised art performance with cross-dressing croupiers at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead.
* English Journey Revisited with Iain Sinclair and Alan Moore, filmmaker and writer (Sinclair) and cult graphic novelist (Moore) in a unique evening of words, music and film at The Sage Gateshead.
* Sounds of Science, an evening of fantastical sonic experiments at The Sage Gateshead as artists make music using a Tesla Coil, firework sparklers, levitating gold leaf and a harp on a block of dry ice.
* Rivers, three international sound artists visited Northumberland rivers and have used these underwater recordings as a basis for a concert at The Sage Gateshead.
* artificiel, a free exhibition of dozens of oversized electric light bulbs in the darkened Great Hall at Discovery Museum, Newcastle.
* Recycled Film, are rubbish skips the film archives of our time? A series of talks, screenings, and a one-day symposium at Tyneside Cinema on the art of recycled film and reusing archive footage.
* Kenneth Anger, legendary American filmmaker and writer (Hollywood Babylon) whose fans include Martin Scorsese and Andy Warhol visits Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle.
* all art is, is rhythm, a new free group exhibition at Hatton Gallery: Great North Museum, Newcastle features harps played by wind, 16 model wind turbines, 500 paper wind vanes and a medley of soft toys.
* Will Schrimshaw: Space Against Itself, a free sound installation inside the secret world of the North Tower of the Tyne Bridge, Newcastle.