Abandon Normal Devices. Manchester's digital art festival launches.

Peripatetic digital art and film festival Abandon Normal Devices kicks off this weekend with a simultaneous launch at Cornerhouse and FACT. It’s around for one weekend only, but if you miss it, fear not: it’s off on tour around the North West but returns for a grand finale in Manchester in August. In the meantime, we asked festival producer Gaby Jenks to tell us all about a festival otherwise known as AND, and she talks here about strange commissions, breaking boundaries and, er, swans.

If you are in Manchester this weekend, check out the premiere of AL & AL’s Alan Turing-inspired film, The Creator, or Andrew Kotting’s two-men-in-a-pedalo documentary, Swandown. Friday also sees the launch of a exhibition by the LA-based artist Stanya Kahn. It’s Cool, I’m Good taps into the current trend for documentary fiction – her surreal and darkly comic videos often feature intimate portraits of the characters she creates, some of them clearly made-up (clue: they’re puppets), others unnervingly realistic. We’ll be reviewing Kahn’s exhibition on the site next week. It’s Cool, I’m Good, Cornerhouse, 23 June-16 September 2012, free.