CHARLES HUTCHINSON reports on a York festival that will zip you into the hi-tech age of wonderment.

WELCOME to a wonderland of wizardry as art fuses with science in York this weekend for SightSonic, the city's first digital arts festival.

We may have lost our bohemian arts centre - once considered the artistic way forward in the late Sixties - and the city council's four-yearly celebration of the arts has been consigned to the memory bank.

But SightSonic could be a vision of the future.

Running from tomorrow until Sunday, SightSonic is a partnership between 30 artists, public bodies and private enterprise: a weekend-long mix of new forms of music, photography, video, installation, business and education. All events are free - always the best price to encourage interest.

The venues involved are York City Art Gallery; Impressions, the newly refurbished photographic gallery; City Screen cinema in Coney Street and the National Centre for Early Music in Walmgate; the Gateway Internet cafs in Swinegate and City Screen; the fashionable Pitcher & Piano bar in Coney Street; the Chapel Studio Theatre at the College of Ripon and York St John, and Borders bookstore in Davygate. Not forgetting On Line, in cyber space.

These names, as much as the digital arts festival itself, represent the rapidly-changing face of the arts and leisure scene in York. The aim is to demystify the new digital age. "We're living through an explosion of all things digital; in the home, the office and the entertainment industry," trumpets the SightSonic brochure.

"And while we all may know a little about computers, new types of television, e-mail and the Internet, there is so much more to the digital world - as artists at the SightSonic festival can show you.

"With its experimental music, cutting-edge video images, innovative multi-media installations and practical workshops, it's an eye-opening window into the brave new digital world."

Space prevents giving full details of the festival - please visit the website www.sightsonic.com for the complete picture - but here is a flavour of the weekend ahead.

In A Magpies Nest on Saturday at noon, pupils from Galtres School, York, will be making music by harnessing the power of digital technology to capture and transform everyday sounds, working with Duncan Chapman from Sonic Arts Network Education Department.

Dance musicians Elephant Talk, a band who explore the future horizons of sound, are holding primary school workshops through the week and performing in the Chapel Studio Theatre, Lord Mayor's Walk, on Sunday.

Digital music workshops will be held at the Gateway; Mediamix and Lovebytes TV present contemporary computer arts - audio works and digital films - by international digital artists in Screen 1 of City Screen on Sunday from 1pm to 3pm. In Movendi, Still-Moving, trapeze artist and dancer Eva Blaschke performs with double bassist and vocalist Henry Mex and real-time sound improviser and composer Paul Modler at the Chapel Studio Theatre on Sunday at 7.30pm.

At York City Art Gallery all weekend, 18 automata makers are exhibiting moving sculptures and miniature machines in the Devious Devices exhibition.

SightSonic comes under the banner of the year-long York Y2K Science Festival.

Festival partners for an event that carries Millennium Commission Lottery Project status and is forging links with the Live Art In Schools week includes: Yorkshire Arts; Science City York; the City of York Council's Performing Arts Service; the University of York; the College of Ripon and York St John; Namke (environmental electronica); the Drake Music Project; KMA Interactive Media; City Screen, York; Gateway; Impressions Gallery; Digital World Centre; Pattern Computing; Sonic Arts Network; the Lovebytes, a new technology arts organisation from Sheffield; Borders and the Pitcher & Piano.

Event manager Ben Pugh says: "Whether you are into games, art or gadgetry; music, photography or sculpture; highbrow or child's play, SightSonic has something for everyone. And we're planning another one for next year."