Music Of Our Time

Various venues, Friday, February 5, to Friday, February 19, various times and prices

THE forward-looking music programme takes time out from its usual Brighton Fringe slot to explore the music of jazz saxophonist, pianist and mathematician Milton Babbitt.

Opening the mini-season is a free film screening at Brighton Unitarian Church, in New Road, on Friday, February 5 at 2pm and 7.30pm. Portrait Of A Serial Composer by director Robert Hilferty, and former Babbitt student Laura Karpman, explores the composer of “difficult” music who died in 2011.

St Nicholas Church hosts a Milton Babbitt Discovery Concert on Friday, February 12, from 7.30pm. Tickets cost £10, with under 25s free.

Herding Hemingway’s Cats

Otherplace At The Basement, Kensington Street, Friday, February 12, 7.30pm, £8/£6

HAVING dissed the scientific advances of the Victorians in Brighton Science Festival 2015, presenters and sisters Dr Kat and Helen Arney return to explore the mysteries of DNA.

Helen visits The Old Market, in Upper Market Street, Hove, on Thursday, February 18, as part of the scientific trio Festival Of The Spoken Nerd’s collaboration with chap-hopper Professor Elemental. Starts 8pm, tickets £12/£10.

And Kat Arney is part of Level Up Human on Wednesday, February 17, see below for more details.

Inside “Inside Out”

Otherplace At The Basement on Tuesday, February 16, from 7.30pm, tickets £6/£3.

DISNEY Pixar’s latest movie outing saw five emotions in a teenager’s head get personified by the voice talents of Amy Poehler, Mindy Kaling, Bill Hader and Phyllis Smith.

Psychologists from the University Of Sussex will explore whether there are only five emotions in our heads, or as Dr Tiffany Watt-Smith claims more than 150. And also on the agenda are some of the other ideas explored in the film, ranging from core memories to earworms.

Level Up Human

Sallis Benney Theatre, Grand Parade, Brighton, Wednesday, February 17, 8pm, £8/£6

A LIVE science podcast from Caged Monkeys host Robin Ince with Simon Watt, Kat Arney and Jules Howard discussing human advancement and enhancement.

Level Up Human explores why we think nature has got lazy and needs a helping hand – be it through gene splicing or plastic surgery.

Volks Railway And The Daddy Long Legs

St Peter’s Hall, West Street, Shoreham, Friday, February 19, 7.30pm, £3/£2

ONE of the strangest creations in Brighton’s history was Magnus Volk’s Daddy Long Legs, which looks like it belongs in an H G Wells novel.

This talk explores Volks’ electric railways and the history of this grand folly.

The New Immortals

Phoenix Brighton, Waterloo Place, Brighton, Saturday, February 20, to Sunday, March 20, open Wed to Sun, 11am to 5pm, free

ARTIST Judith Alder’s exhibition explores mortality and the desire to live forever in a series of interconnected spaces.

Look out for a Saturday Lab events on February 20 and February 27 as the artist is joined by scientists from the Brighton Centre For Regenerative Medicine for a series of talks.

Why Facebook Won’t Get You Any More Friends

Sallis Benney Theatre, Grand Parade, Brighton, Wednesday, February 24, 7.30pm, £6/£3

AS the T-shirt says Facebook friends aren’t real friends.

And for all those who claim to have thousands of contacts across the world Robin Dunbar, professor of evolutionary psychology at Oxford University, has a bit of a wake-up call, as he believes the maximum number anyone can have as friends is 150 people.

Find out how he got to that figure through anthropological, psychological and archaeological means at this one-off talk.

The Murder Manual

Sallis Benney Theatre, Grand Parade, Brighton, Friday, February 26, 7.30pm, £6/£3

CRIME writer PD Viner questions senior detectives from Sussex police as they deal with a bloody homicide.

Big Science Weekend

Sallis Benney Theatre, Grand Parade, Brighton, Saturday, February 27, and Sunday, February 28, from 9.30am, day tickets £9/£6 exhibitions free

ALWAYS the culmination of Brighton Science Festival, the city is taken over by scientific experiments and discussions for the final weekend – with the central focus as the Sallis Benney Theatre.

The talks include explorations of artificial intelligence and the nanoworld, finding out how memories are created and looking into the many poisons in the fiction of crime writer Agatha Christie.

Plus there are talks about the use of psychedelic drugs in medicine, a light-hearted exploration of the science of cancer, Martin Stevens looking into nature’s cheats and how our own neurons can trick us.

Throughout the weekend there are exhibitions and demonstrations including a chance to train a snail on Saturday and a mass experiment led by Dr Paul Graham from the University Of Sussex.

On Saturday evening Darren Baskill from the University of Sussex, Brad Gross of Blast Science and the Brighton Science Festival director Richard Robinson host a talk about mankind’s investigations into space. Tickets cost £6/£3 for the talk which starts at 7.30pm.

Outside the Sallis Benney is a cycle ride along the seafront on a 1:billion scale replica of the solar system, a Sunday Assembly at St Andrew’s Church with science writer Steve Parker, and Rosie Wilby exploring the science of sex at The Dukebox Theatre on Saturday, February 27, from 7pm, tickets £8/£6.

For more information about the Brighton Science Festival programme visit www.brightonscience.com