The idea of son et lumiere was given contemporary meaning by Volume, an interactive sculpture of light and volume in the historic setting of the V&A's John Madejski Garden. The show used bespoke software to respond to human movement. Visitors were encouraged to step inside, touch and play with energy fields. Now the designers behind the display, UVA, present an insight into the innovative processes they use to make such brilliant audio-visual experiences. They detail how they combine disciplines of art direction, production design and software engineering to create original and responsive environments. And they describe the way they fuse real and virtual worlds by mixing new and existing lighting and projection technology in unusual ways. In Volume, they joined up with Robert Del Naja (alias 3D) and co-writer Neil Davidge of Massive Attack and one point six, but they have also worked with pop musicians such as U2, Kylie and Travis. Last year, they staged the performance of Echo at Tate Modern and Mirror at the Kemistry Gallery, and they currently feature in Luminaries & Visionaries at the Kinetica Museum, where this talk takes place.

NB: on 07/03 (6pm) catch Sam Buxton as he gives at talk about his work. Luminaries & Visionaries runs till 11/03.

By now you've been regularly devouring the KF "broadbandsheet", and are thus indoctrinated with our editorial position: the primal means for architectural expression is not the building but the book! Today you are unlikely to experience with "your own eyes" architecture that you are already familiar with. We instead visit photographs and hence buildings through the eyes of others. It is thus apt that the Barbican hosts an exhibition entitled Alvar Aalto: Through The Eyes Of Shigeru Ban. What might Ban -- who is internationally renowned for his signature use of paper tube structures -- have seen in the Finnish modern master that others overlooked? We ran into Mr Ban himself rearranging Aalto's iconic nesting stools against his own designed tubular wall where we were informed that while Ban edited the works and designed the exhibition space, the idea to pair the two architects was Tomoko Sato's -- editor of the lavish Black Dog Publishing catalogue. There is a luminous and material consistency between their works -- "AaltoBan" -- such that it tends to merge across the exhibition. The exhibition as dialectic will undoubtedly prove to be inspirational; we now await Le Corbusier: Through The Eyes Of Simian Mobile Disco?

NB: runs till 13/05. While at the Barbican make sure you check out Jeppe Hein's latest playful installation, stare long and hard at Alex Hartley's installation in the entrance hall as it's guaranteed to make you feel giddy, if not dizzy, and finally encounter Edith Garcia's Contemporary Monsters in the foyer of the first floor library.

This Thursday evening the Hayward will be expanding the idea of performance and event by hosting a market style evening of live art where the audience may wander through the lower galleries, dipping in and out of lectures, a political magic show, discussions, stand-up routines and shamanic rituals. One of the highlights of the night will be a chance to see artist Marcus Coates dressed as a badger summoning animal spirits on behalf of the residents of Windborne House in Lambeth. The shamanistic seance will be the culmination of work Coates has been doing with the community, and aims to resolve particular problems they feel need to be addressed with the help of different spirit guides. Doug Fishbone will present a fast moving slide show of internet images, providing an often comic commentary which meanders through history, philosophy, politics and sexual mores. Other performances and lectures taking place throughout the night from artists Bedwyr Williams, Simon Faithfull, Becky Shaw, socialist magician Ian Saville and lifestyle gurus with offering life enhancement solutions, are all set to a live Hollywood horror movie score performed by Karin Kihlberg and Reuben Henry.

NB: this event is part of the Hayward's 100 Ideas festival, a series of multimedia events investigating and reconfiguring the role culture plays in contemporary society, which runs till 13/04. On 23/02 (7pm) catch Theodore Zeldin as he gives a lecture and a workshop on "Reinventing The Self-Portrait".

For years the Guerrilla Girls have berated the film industry in the US over the shockingly low percentage of women filmmakers (7% of films made in 2005) in the birthplace of cinema. Which makes it all the more surprising to learn that the country with the highest percentages of woman film directors is the not-generally-considered-progressive Iran. Rakhshan Bani-Etemad's (post-revolutionary Iran's most prolific female director) latest film Gilaneh concerns the effects and aftermath of military conflict on ordinary people's lives. Giving a woman's (and mother's) perspective of successive wars, the film chronicles the 15-year story of Gilaneh and her adult children, beginning in patriotic fervour with the Iran-Iraq war, and closing with the crushing inevitability of a new war, as the former aggressor Iraq becomes the target of the American invasion. Presenting war as way of crushing the modest dreams of ordinary people, the film is part of the War in Iranian Cinema season, and features director Bani-Etemad in conversation with Haleh Afshar.

NB: this screening and Q&A kicks off the Barbican's War In Iranian Cinema season which runs till 27/02.

The companion piece to Clint Eastwood's recent Flags Of Our Fathers, Letters From Iwo Jima presents the alternative Japanese perspective on the Battle Of Iwo Jima. Based on letters written by the doomed soldiers, the personal and stoic stories expel the popular myth of the blood-thirsty crazed kamikaze-type fighters and turn them into bakers, horse-mad Olympic athletes and reluctant draftees. Notably claustrophobic-feeling considering its depiction of an epic battle, the desaturated colour gives it a sepia-like historical authenticity and emphasises the dust-bowl harshness of the island (the name means "Sulphur Island" in Japanese). Ostensibly the story of the "enemy" (and not one for delicate squeamish types -- particularly those nervous about hand-grenades) the film makes it clear that the real enemy is not the other side, but the madness of war itself -- a madness that led to 26,000 grisly deaths in 40 days on a tiny, barren, former volcano. This is a war movie that is very eloquently anti-war.

NB: Letters From Iwo Jima is released in London on 23/02. Others films of note released on the same day are Bamako and Sheitan.

If you've spent the night in a decent club recently there's a fairly good chance that at some point you'll have heard a Headman production. From his own releases on labels such as Output, Gomma and Relish to his remixes of bands like Franz Ferdinand and Gossip, his stripped down disco punk tracks have been soundtracking the best dancefloors for the last few years. This Friday you get to sample the real thing as he's in London at 93 Feet East for what should prove to be a seriously hot night of filthy disco fun. In support are Chik Budo, one of the more original bands to have emerged in the recent indie / dance explosion. Avoiding the cliches so beloved of many of their peers, Chik Budo marry dissonant jazz, hardcore punk and propulsive disco rhythms to startling effect and are deservedly tipped for big things this year. In the Pink Bar mixing up electro, baile funk, Baltimore club, fidget house and no doubt some other genres sure to be freshly minted between now and the night are Nasty McQuaid, Sun Ov, Tony Poland and, celebrating the launch of his acclaimed new mixtape Cassettiquette, Wrongtom.

The young German artist Beate Gutschow has produced two intriguing new short pieces on video, entitled R#1 and R#2. The titles in themselves give little away. The images of the two works -- running water in the foreground, a collection of ruined tombs flanked by dead trees mid-frame with swaying green trees, a derelict castle and grey-blue, lowering skies in the background -- seem at first to be equally unyielding as to what exactly is going on. But it helps to know that Gutschow has used HD moving imagery to meticulously reconstruct a painting by the 17th century Dutch landscape artist Jacob van Ruisdael, called The Jewish Cemetery. And that she has built up her reconstructed video imagery from a number of different sources -- the ruined sarcophagi are those from the Jewish cemetery actually used by van Ruisdael, the dilapidated building is Corfe Castle and the trees are from the New Forest. This mirrors the way van Ruisdael himself used selected images, or locations, to create a single idealised, allegorical reality. And, like van Ruisdael's work, it conjures up a contemplative, yet eerie experience hinting strongly at the fleeting nature of all things temporal.

NB: runs till 08/04. On 24/02 (2pm) Beate Gutschow will be discussing her work and newly commissioned video works with ArtSway Director Mark Segal and Exhibitions & Education Officer Peter Bonnell (the event is free but booking is essential).

David Farr's new model Lyric continues to advance as a theatre promoting collaboration between artists as the way to make the best work. He himself as writer / director is joined by movement director Amit Lahav from physical theatre heroes Gecko, the puppeteers of Blind Summit and Asian music guru Shri to tell the Hindu epic Ramayana, focusing on the love story of Prince Rama and his Princess Sita, sundered by the demon Ravana and aided by an army of monkeys to be reunited. Perhaps the supergroup nature of this collaboration heightens expectations to be inevitably disappointed, for although there are some startling images -- the many-headed Ravana being splendidly realised by Eva Magyar and a forest of puppets -- and exemplary physical detail -- especially in the monkey-business -- the big story-defining set-pieces lack both gee-whiz impact and a knit into the weave of the whole. But Farr's own storytelling is a little wonder, marshalling the sweeps of the saga into a few hours whilst balancing the demands of the epic and comic. And the performances by Paul Sharma and Vanessa Ackerman as hero and heroine beat strongly at the heart of the piece.

NB: runs till 10/03.

Modular established themselves as label du jour in 2006 by not only masterminding the invasion staged by Aussie trio The Presets, Cut Copy and Wolfmother, but also by displaying a Kitsune-like ability to press a magic button and summon fresh, on the money indie-electro (Klaxons, New Young Pony Club). These guys have a talent pool to make rival A&R execs weep, so much so that you would have struggled to make it through the last 12 months without hearing something with Modular fingerprints on it. Little wonder then, that when Death From Above's Jesse F Keeler decided to step out of the shadows of his nimble remixes and into a debut album with MSTRKRFT, he wound up with the Modular gang. The launch of the album -- already looking like a milestone amongst those clamouring to be the heirs of Daft Punk -- would have been reason enough to brave Turnmills. Someone at Modular seems to have overlooked that, and decided to turn the night into a new-raver's wet dream. Klaxons, Gossip, Hot Chip and NYPC all have DJ spots; also on the bill proper is soon-to-be remix royalty Para One, notable for giving teeth to Daft Punk tracks, and Green Velvet, who has a tendency to sound like Erlend Oye doing disco. Line-ups rarely come this packed.

Lone Twin (Gregg Whelan and Gary Winters) have been making and showing very original and engaging performance art pieces around the world for the last nine years. A quality double act, they feed off and complement one another like a latter-day Laurel and Hardy doing action art. They have a beguilingly artless presence that gives their often complex work a humane and even charming air. For their latest show at BAC they re-enact and reflect upon the places, performances and situations that they have passed through over the course of the last nine years of travel over three continents. Not so much a greatest hits type of performance, Nine Years is a new work that looks forwards just as much as it does backwards. If it's anything like their previous works, it will be funny, elegantly structured, textually dense and rewarding viewing.

NB: runs for three nights from 23/02 till 25/02.

Vincent Cassel plays a brilliant and terrifyingly insane character in this French horror film about a group of teenagers who visit a country house in the middle of nowhere. For devotees of the imperious actor it again proves that he does his best work in French language films rather than his Hollywood output. The group first meet housekeeper Joseph (Cassel) furiously grinning like an out of control bear who subsequently greets them by lifting their entire car out of a deep rut in the road. It soon transpires that he enjoys shamanistic control over a village of Deliverance style inhabitants and when some alfresco swimming turns weird all the signals tell the group to leave. Of course they stick around for the inevitable carnage which is basically Cassel generating madness in a series of gore drenched scenes. He's probably petrifying to act with but just incredible to watch.

NB: Sheitan is released in London on 23/02. Others films of note released on the same day are Letters From Iwo Jima and Bamako.

South London's troubled eccentric Patrick Wolf seems to change record labels as often as the city he calls home and the colour of his hair. After running away to Paris in his teenage years, travelling throughout Europe doing gigs, and a stint recording in a Cornwall beach hut, he has returned to London with a shocking orange hairdo to boot. Now signed to a major label (Polydor subsidiary Loog) and with his third opus, The Magic Position, being released early next month, Patrick has been invited down to the ICA to showcase his new material. The new album's lyrical content demonstrates an exorcism of the demons that haunted his previous material, yet thankfully still retains the dramatic electronic folk flourishes that first brought him to attention. This combined with his preference for the more flamboyant outfit and an obvious talent for playing multiple instruments should make for an entertaining evening. Support for the night comes in the shape of Bishi, formerly known as the face (and DJ) of London fashionably experimental night spot Kash Point, and who has an eagerly awaited debut album, Night At The Circus, due to drop soon.

PTW architect Chris Bosse likes bubbles. Already in 2002, in the Bubble-Highrise Berlin project (with Cologne-based SMO Architektur), he was squeezing bubbles of different sizes into a volume that was then sliced into a column-free structure. A similar strategy was employed for the fascinating Watercube, or National Swimming Centre, in Beijing -- a box of steel foam (an aggregation of bubbles) draped in a super-thin ETFE skin. Bosse's Waterpavilion is a lightweight fabric construction based on the structure of the Watercube, with curves and the patterns of soap film surface tensions being derived from this most efficient subdivision of three-dimensional space. It's all very Frei Otto, and Bosse has even been hailed as the leader of "bubbleism", a title he celebrated by designing the Moet Marquee in Melbourne: a pavilion that mimics the minimal surface tension of champagne bubbles. His Tsunami Memorial project, for the victims of the seismic ocean waves that hit the shores in southern Thailand in December 2004, was yet a continuation of this ongoing interest in the genetic bubble form, which also permeated the cell-like structure of the Genetic Pavilion for the Seche Zollverein exhibition in Germany.

NB: another architectural event of note taking place on the same night but at 6:45pm and at The Gallery (70 Cowcross St., EC1) is a talk by Ken Shuttleworth, founder of Make and ex-partner of Norman Foster.

A clan of strange little creatures has taken up residence in the foyer of the Barbican's first floor library. No, contrary to what you might expect, we're not referring to the librarians, but to Edith Garcia's hybrid beasts. A small glass case houses a few ceramic specimens and numerous drawings and paintings on a neighbouring wall complement the hang. Garcia's organisms are endowed with blunt cylindrical bodies, their stunted or inexistent limbs barely showing any recognisable signs of humanity -- yet by looking closer, you'll see a winking eye, a limb reaching out for a neighbouring creature. It's in these details that one can find a soul to the artist's creations and the effect teeters on the fine line that separates the uncanny from the adorable. Although the Contemporary Monsters are rendered in a naive style and present childlike proportions and features, they remain unsmiling. What's more, the drawn trolls extend out of their frames, as if they had taken a life of their own and were coming to get you. After a good look at this installation, you might actually find comfort in the librarians.

NB: runs till 28/02. While at the Barbican make sure you check out the Shigeru Ban Alvar Aalto exhibition and Jeppe Hein's latest playful installation. Lastly don't forget to stare long and hard at Alex Hartley's installation in the entrance hall as it's guaranteed to make you feel giddy, if not dizzy.

Few could claim to have it as good as Robert Storr. After more than a decade of curating at New York's MoMA -- a period which saw major exhibitions of works by Gerhard Richter, Max Beckmann and Elizabeth Murray -- the art world's preeminent Renaissance man has taken on highly enviable roles as Dean of the Yale University School of Art and Commissioner of the 2007 Venice Biennale. As a critic and curator, Storr epitomises global thinking, taking pain to illuminate art being made outside of first-world, commercial hubs. For his upcoming discussion at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, entitled "Big Ideas -- Show & Tell", Storr will give us a taste of the internationalism he is planning for Venice -- including a series of sub-exhibitions at the Biennale's main hall of recent African, Indian and Turkish art. From a man of such taste and erudition, also expect fresh opinions on everything from the rise of blockbuster exhibitions and biennales to the recent Chinese art craze.

Meiro Koizumi's current XXX: TRILOGY exhibition consists of three new films. Sentimental Education X is a humorous pun on Star Trek and its sexist colonial attitude, which includes the Captain character waving his fingers, on which he is wearing clothes pegs with silver foil tags, at the silver mini-dress wearing Eve. Confession BoXX Platinum features a man in his vest sitting in a wooden confessional box with a silver foil tube fastened to his head. An unheard and unseen alien seems to be asking the man questions and electrocutes his hand because he does not answer correctly. Of the three films Human Opera XXX sets up the most recognisable situation: the artist, with painted silver face, is filming a man telling a sad personal story. Sitting among more homemade space ship type props the man tells a heart-wrenching story only to be constantly interrupted and humiliated by Koizumi who wants him to hold more and more ridiculous props, as he "needs something more vivid".

NB: runs till 03/03.

As one of the most highly regarded composers of his generation, so much so that the Barbican is giving him a retrospective in his 36th year (Steve Reich had to wait until he was 70!) -- Thomas Ades has really made a name for himself, not only as a composer but also as a fine conductor and pianist (he's even due to have another retrospective this year). And what bigger occasion could kick off the start of this series? Possibly the world's most highly regarded orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic under the baton of another Englishman who has risen to the top of his field: Sir Simon Rattle. Ades' specially commissioned Tevot (which will be receiving its UK premiere) will be framed with late Romantic works from Czech composers: Janacek's Sinfonietta and Dvorak's emotionally turbulent Symphony No 7.

NB: get your tickets now as it is almost sold out. This event kicks off the Barbican's Traced Overhead - The Musical World Of Thomas Ades festival which runs till 22/04.

With gun crime at an all-time high in London it's curiously prescient that American artist Christian Marclay has not only relocated here but is now presenting his new work, Crossfire, exploring the choreography of gunfire in cinema. Avant-turntablist and visual artist in equal measure, Marclay has always been fascinated by the relationship of sound, vision, music and art. Here you are thrust into a four-screen immersive environment, with guns being cocked, re-loaded, aimed and fired in a mesmeric way, where you literally stand in the crossfire of countless movie scenes, and expire in the midst of an explosive assault. Fetishistic, playful, violent and yet unsettlingly graceful, pistols, rifles and machine guns ricochet from screen to screen, with the barest glimpse of the assassin, the hit man, the killer behind the fire. Accompanying this work is a small collection of prints made from onomatopoeic comic book words, suggesting an underlying violence. Whunkkk! Kazzaaammm!

NB: runs till 10/03.

Worlds In Flux brings together the best work of the past five years from digital animators and experimental filmmakers Semiconductor. Calling their work "Sound Films" Semiconductor (UK artists Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt) marry traditional film techniques, experimental animation and sonic design to create digital land- and soundscapes, where the very structure of the landscape is defined and indeed moulded by the sounds and vice versa. Bundled together on this DVD you get the pair's inventive promo films for similarly experimental artists such as Mum and QT, alongside their own dazzling short films and animations. Best of all though are the three pieces from their time as artists in residence at NASA.

The short films Do You Think Science... and Ways of Making Sense explore the way the scientists at The Space Sciences Laboratory in Berkley view the world, the universe and themselves but it is the beautiful Brilliant Noise that steals the show. Utilising raw footage and stills of the sun patchworked together, Brilliant Noise reveals the terrifying solar maelstroms that tear apart the surface of the star, blasting vast tongues of plasma into space. Once the grainy film had been pieced together it was given out to 12 different producers, such as Cristian Vogel and Max Richter, who composed their own soundtracks for it, each finding a completely unique way of interpreting the unfolding chaos. Essential viewing if you have any interest in the converging worlds of audio and visual digital art.

To buy Worlds In Flux online click here.

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