SIGHTSONIC 2001, York's second Inter-national Festival of Digital Arts, is not only challenging the boundaries of the new digital world but also cramming in as many events as possible into three days.

From Friday (19th) until Sunday (21st), arts, business, the York community, the university, schools and the city council join together in a celebration of the "new art of today and tomorrow", presenting interactive computer workshops; exhibitions; installations; music; video; performance; debate; and a revolutionary on-line festival.

York City Art Gallery, City Screen, the National Railway Museum, National Centre for Early Music, York St John College, Gateway Caf, Borders, Yortime, Impressions Gallery, six church bell towers and any number of computer terminals will be the locations for events with names as diverse as Bong! Smack!, Mouth, SkyHigh, Loco Synchronous, Found Sound, Winter Sea and Sonimation Plus.

Given the density of events this weekend, it is good news that one festival feature will run not for three days but six weeks. Sensory Perception, at Impressions Gallery in Castlegate, brings together the work of three installation artists, Susan Trangmar, Ambrose Field, right, and Owen Roberts, from tomorrow until December 8.

Each artist takes as their starting point one or more of the senses and translates memories into a sight or sound experience.

Trangmar's installation of 48 cables and 600 light bulbs, Ariadne's Dream, concerns the porous and tactile qualities of light, her piece being inspired by the Greek myth of Ariadne.

Roberts's Hydrotherapy 81 sound installation comprises two glass water tanks, one filled with audio speakers, the other containing a video screen, and incorporates sound and images presented through water to explore the artist's personal experience of drowning and being brought back to life at the age of three.

Field, from the cutting edge of the University of York music department, contributes Aquaduct 0, a sound installation a year in the making. In the words of the Impressions press release, this piece "penetrates our mind and stimulates our memory with waves of sound to build up aural landscapes of our own imagining".

In layman's terms, Field has filled one of the gallery rooms with sound sensors, described by the artist as the "Tweeter Forest". He uses a high-performance computer system to monitor, observe and record the movements and actions of visitors to this sonic woodland, and while backs are turned, new sounds, such as a sea storm or the noise of an ice desert, start to fill the spaces newly left behind. Gradually, from twin speakers in the Tweeter Forest, the room is showered with sound.

Explain yourself, Ambrose. "First of all, it's interactive. It watches you and it feeds on people's movements, so it's like a musical Big Brother," he says.

"Whereas for Colourscape in the Museum Gardens, I used pre-written material, this is more on the edge as it's written on the move, so the installation hopefully will never be the same from day to day."

Ambrose says the installation has an in-built intelligence too, working to a set of rules that ensures a "kind of musicality at all times rather than just being nonsense".

"And it's kid proof," promises Ambrose, with glee in his voice. "If children start waving continually at the sensors, the computer will ignore them after a while: just like parents."

He welcomes the inter-active advance of the digital arts. "If you're an audio artist you have to work that little bit harder to attract attention, so inter-active work is a way forward, and I like that as I don't like things to be cold and static."

Sound thinking, indeed.

For more information on the SightSonic festival, consult www.sightsonic.com