Connexion
Presentation of the 10th Edition
After taking 2 years to convince Mutek Montreal, Mutek Barcelona was eventually launched as the first unique satellite of the International Digital Arts festival based in Europe in 2009. 10 years later, they provide Spain with one of the main references in audiovisual performance and digital arts in the format of a 4-day festival, with a wide variety of shows and venues.
Nonotak studio ‘Zero Point Two’
Nonotak studio, formed of two young creatives, Noemi Schipfer (FR) and the architect musician Takami Nakamoto (JP). They work together to create experimental audiovisual light installations that mesmerize audiences. At Roca Gallery, Takami explained how they project blue light onto yellow fibre optics in order to create the purest possible visible white light in an audiovisual experience. Usually the installation is covered from above, but on this occasion, they were so surprised by the way it combined with the venue that they left it uncovered, allowing us to experience the installation in a whole new light, literally.
Microfeel ‘Fractal Synethesia’
Microfeel (ES/AR) well known on the local scene as multimedia artist Sebastian Seifert, dazzled us with his latest project ‘FRACTAL SYNESTHESIA.’ Sebastian leaves audiences looking for the visual artist only to discover that Microfeel is a one man band, where Sebastian simultaneously projects and performs in an extremely colourful, psychedelic live A/V show. This year he gave it more energy than ever, making it pretty tricky to photograph the artist still in any moment. His performance filled the room with energy.
Article by Hayley Cantor
Photos by Hayley Cantor (AKA VJ AYL) and Groovycosta
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Audiovisual City met up with L’Aubaine and interviewed her.
This is how it went down.
The article about L’Aubaine is here.
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Refik Anadol is a media artist and director born in Istanbul, Turkey in 1985. Currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. He is a lecturer and visiting researcher in UCLA’s Department of Design Media Arts.
He is working in the fields of site-specific public art with parametric data sculpture approach and live audio/visual performance with immersive installation approach, particularly his works explore the space among digital and physical entities by creating a hybrid relationship between architecture and media arts with machine intelligence.
He holds a master of fine arts degree from the University of California, Los Angeles in Media Arts, master of fine arts degree from Istanbul Bilgi University in Visual Communication Design as well as bachelors of arts degree with summa cum laude in Photography and Video. Co-founder and Creative director at Antilop.
As a media artist, designer and spatial thinker, Refik Anadol is intrigued by the ways in which the transformation of the subject of contemporary culture requires rethinking of the new aesthetic, technique and dynamic perception of space. Anadol builds his works on the nomadic subject’s reaction to and interactions with unconventional spatial orientations with data and machine intelligence. Embedding media arts into architecture, he questions the possibility of a post-digital architectural future in which there are no more non-digital realities.
He invites the viewers to visualize alternative realities by presenting them the possibility of re-defining the functionalities of both interior and exterior architectural formations. Anadol’s work suggests that all spaces and facades have potentials to be utilized as the media artists’ canvases.
LINK BOX
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‘We live in an Ocean of Air’ is a virtual reality experience where the invisible connection between plant and human is revealed through breath. It was created by Marshmallow Laser Feast.
What happens is that the cutting-edge technology illuminates the invisible connections between the human and nature world. What you’ll see when the installation starts, is the giant Sequoia tree. You’re being transported into a world that’ll leave your jaw on the ground and eyes wide open- wanting to capture every detail you’re seeing. And as time passes, the scenery changes as well.
Breathe in and out and you’ll see you’re right in the installation. The color changes and you can even move it around as you breathe out. It’s done with breath and heart sensors that are tracking your real-time breathing and essentially put it in the virtual reality. Making it even more immersive than it already was.
It’s a magical world you’re stepping into and time will feel as none-existant.
The installation will embolden you to reflect on the reality that we, as human beings, aren’t the only thing on this planet. We share our planet with other organisms and it’ll make you cerebrate about the responsibility that we carry. And reflect on our dependence.
It is a great experience and it stays in your mind even when it’s over. Overwhelming and impressive! We need more installations like this.
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Audiovisual City went to a VJ London meeting and interviewed three different VJ’s: Mowgli, Marta, and Pete.
AVC: Can you tell us something about yourself?
Mowgli: My first job out of school was DJ, I literally left school and I started working in a club fulltime as a DJ. One day I went to see my friend’s band play -they’re kind of a post-rock band- and he asked me after the gig what I thought about it and I thought it was great but it was quite boring to look at them. There was no frontman, and there’s no singer. They all just looked at the floor. They needed some visuals. And he said to me, “You do them”. And that was my first VJ’ing gig. That’s how I got into VJ’ing.
I mean, I’ve done visuals before but I never even thought it was a thing. I was just doing visuals with light projections but there was no VJ’ing. It was just ‘I’m putting a light projector in a club’. From there on I started to get into the VJ thing and I started doing visuals more and more. I started doing like corporate stuff and then I started coming to VJ London.
Suddenly it expanded and I realized that there were more and more people what I was doing and that it had a name. From there, in 2008, they did a VJ competition at the London International Music Show. Which happens every year. I was selected as one of the eight finalists of Europe for that. I didn’t win but it was a big thing at the time.
I played at the Big Chill festival. I play loads of festivals. Moving on from the VJ’ing, I started doing audiovisual performances. Which is what I do mostly nowadays. But I also started doing more interactive stuff. I had an award-winning installation at Burning Man, in 2011.
Marta: I’m a visual artist/ designer with a passion for performing arts. My artistic development has been initially shaped at The High School of Fine Arts in Krakow and later I mastered my skills in studying graphic design at the Pedagogical University of Krakow. I’ve got over 8 years of experience of creating video projections, mappings and LED installations for various music, arts, and events related projects. I’ve worked as a VJ at cyclical gigs in Krakow and London. During that time I collaborated with many musicians and artists from all around the world and I was a resident VJ at Prince of Wales, London.
Pete: I don’t think I consider myself a VJ anymore because I rarely do VJ’ing anymore for other people. I still love the culture and I believe that it’s something very important in my life, however, the last gig I did was like a half year ago in Brighton. It was a commercial gig and I completely hated it. Because basically, it was… I kind of forgot how the commercial part of VJ’ing looked like, so I was being asked to just show the logos. And people kept coming over to me that it was the wrong logo but they didn’t even bother me to give it to me before.
So I would say that a lot of stuff in my life happened because of the VJ’ing, but I don’t consider myself a VJ anymore.
AVC: What drew you into the AV culture?
Mowgli: I’ve always liked doing creative things but I’ve never had an agenda. I was never like ‘I wanna pursue that’. I’ve always been very open. So most of the things I’ve done, I’ve done because something’s happened. Something’s taken me down that road. But it wasn’t really a conscious thing most of the time. So getting a DJ job straight out of school, that was a complete coincidence. Like I used to go to this club with a friend of mine in Madrid, and it was a very niche club at that point in time. And then one day a DJ who worked there came over to us and said, “You two have got most of the records that we play here, right?” And we were like, “Yea, yea”. She told me that she wanted to go on a holiday but needed to find a replacement. She asked us to take over and we did. And she was never taken back by the club.
We basically stole her job. She gave us her job and then it was never given back to. But I never went out looking for that. It just happened. It’s the same with like doing VJ’ing. A friend of mine said, “Oh, you do it”. And then I was like, “Oh yea, I’ll do it”. And from then on, I mean that was the start really. With my friend saying that I should do it and then me getting more and more interested in it. And looking more into it and learning more things. Developing in that direction. And very involved in that use of technology.
Marta: In 2010, when I was living and studying in Krakow, I went to Jonsi’s concert during the Sacrum Profanum Festival. I didn’t expect that event to set a new direction in my life, I didn’t even plan to go there, it was very last minute, my friend gave me a spare ticket. I liked the concert a lot and I was absolutely amazed by the visual part of the show. Projection, lights, music and space, everything together was combined perfectly and it was a beautiful experience. I was so moved and inspired that at that moment I decided this is what I want to do in my life. In a very short time, I quit my job and I booked my first gig where I was going to do live visuals. It went pretty good and since then I worked as a VJ. I had a few other jobs in the meantime, but I never gave up my passion. I was lucky to meet many great people and we’ve done some awesome shows together. Three years ago I moved to London. I found the company that designed Jonsi’s live show that I saw in Krakow 8 years ago. It’s 59 Productions and another amazing part of this story is that now I work there.
Pete: Well, the thing is the VJ’ing is one thing and the audiovisual culture is some other thing. They’re not the same thing. They’re interconnected however, there are slight differences. Because for me it’s kind of the natural way of progressing from a purely visual side. Whilst to try to do audiovisual performances with people. Because I realized this is a powerful way of making people feel something.
However, my visual adventure started in coding. I was a programmer and I did graphics before it even was a thing and a name. I made the demos in 1996… 1998, I was sixteen back then. So that was my whole root of digital creativity. That’s where everything stems from. Because it kind of converted into the audiovisual performance group. They were playing the ambient music and I was playing the graphics. So my roots were actually in programming.
At the moment I mostly work as a creative developer. And I try to focus my activity on VR because I believe that is the next step forward. Because this is something that is the next level. You can not only the audio but also the visuals and movements, that gives you a very powerful storytelling opportunity.
AVC: What about your current and future projects?
Mowgli: I tend not to think about the future. As I said, I just go along and do things and keep evolving and suddenly… I’m easily distracted. I have millions of projects that I never finish. Like, I start something feeling excited, but halfway through I get excited by something else and pause the first one. And then sometimes I do go back to the previous things but not really finish them but utilize whatever state they’re in and doing something completely different. I recycle my stuff.
The thing I’ve been working on most in the last couple of years is an audiovisual synthesizer. Which sounds great but in reality it’s a mini-controller that’s mapped to both able in Live and Resolume. But I don’t need to look at the computer screen. It’s basically like a really big mini-controller with loads of sliders and stuff. And using that, I do audiovisual performances which are always improvised. It’s got generative visuals. And generative audio in a way. It’s about the interface. You just fiddle with the knobs and create visuals and audio at the same time. And I’ve been doing that for a while. So I’m starting to think I need to do a newer version of that. I got lots of ideas on how to make it better and whatever, so that’s one thing.
On the other side, I’m also getting more interested in doing just sound performances with no visuals. Because I’ve been getting more and more into them… I don’t want to call it music and call myself a musician. I don’t have enough musical training. I like making sounds.
It’s all just an exploration. Sometimes the stuff you stumble on and make is really bad and other times it’ll be really good. You just gotta roll with it.
Marta: Before joining 59 Productions I was working as a freelancer, mostly for music-related events, a huge part of that was live electronic music. My visuals were characterized by multiple dissolving and interfusing layers. With time, my work got more minimalistic and monochromatic.
I’m interested in creating interactive installations and audiovisual artworks that allows an audience to be a part of the performance, to experience sound, lights, and projections surrounding them. In order to achieve that I play with dimensions and visual perception, make projection seem 3-dimensional. I design shapes to project onto them or I use object and surfaces already existing in the space. My shows were never 100% planned, there was always lots of space for improvisation.
Currently, I am a part of a design team at 59 Productions– a company of artists creating video design for stage and live events. I assist with artwork and animation content for the show. Since joining 5 months ago I’ve worked on a variety of theatre, exhibition and VR projects, including an exhibition for Imperial War Museum in London, VR artwork ‘Nothing to be Written’ and ‘Deep Field’- a film inspired by the Hubble Space Telescope discovery. Most recently I was working on ‘Black and White’- a theatrical show produced by JACC in Kuwait. It was a great opportunity for me to get to know more about a narrative type of visual arts.
I’m looking forward to taking up new design challenges.
Pete: At the moment I’ve done some commercial projects for different companies. However, I have been getting more involved in tech. Because the big part of the whole audiovisual immersive business is knowing how to deal with tech. How to make tech do what you want them to do.
I found it really interesting to do this for a commercial purpose and reuse to my personal projects. So this year, because of my own personal circumstances, I was mostly focusing on commercial projects which might not have been that interesting. But one of the things I did this year that I want to continue with next year is an audiovisual look machine. That’s a project I’ve been doing for the last two-three years and with different people. We’re playing some events as well.
Hopefully, I’m going to reach a state where I go from software working progress and turn it into a hardware working instrument. And the other project is basically I want to explore more of the new technology with VR. With a new headset that’s cheap enough for people to buy it.
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French digital artist, Mathieu Le Sourd (Maotik) focuses his work on the creation of immersive multimedia environments and generative visuals. His work has recently been presented in various festivals around the world, such as Mutek Festival, Live Cinema in Rio, Signal Festival in Prague, the British Film Institute in London and ARS Electronica in Linz.
As the lead of Moment Factory’s interactive team in 2011, Le Sourd produced several large-scale projects including a multimedia experience in the new terminal at Los Angeles International Airport as well as the visuals for Nine Inch Nails’ world tour. In 2013, he produced the critically-acclaimed immersive multimedia performance DROMOS, which was presented at the SATosphere in Montreal as part of Mutek festival.
Always in search of new challenges, Le Sourd designs his own visual tools; generating animations from algorithms and creating 3D worlds to transform perceptions of space. He collaborates with musicians, sound artists, and scientists in order to continue his research into the relationship between art, science, and technology.
LINK BOX
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ROMA
FOTONICA from photon, historically as light, from Greek φωτός (photòs), is a festival that investigates art forms related to the light element, in particular, digital light. PHOTONICA wants to be a new project in a field where Rome has always been a reference, but today it suffers from the lack of an international event: the Audio Visual Arts.
PHOTONICA wants to be a project of the newborn roman network of organizations active in contemporary video audio to build a program that represents the various forms of expression:
Audio Video Performances
Video Mappings
Light Installations
DJ-VJ Sets
NetArt
Workshops
Lectures
FOTONICA is produced by Flyer communication, which in 2004 created the LPM Live Performers Meeting, the largest event in the industry. He came to his 18th edition, of which 11 in Rome and the others, thanks to the support of the European Community, Xalapa, Minsk, Mexico City, Cape Town, Eindhoven and Amsterdam. Since 2004, LPM has hosted more than 4600 artists, 2625 performances, workshops and showcases, with 72 participating countries and more than 1,500,000 visitors.
LINK BOX
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HONG KONG
Microwave Festival began in 1996 as an annual video art festival of the local video art institution Videotage. As technology progressed and became more accessible, video art slowly evolved to involve other media; thus Microwave began to embrace the wider range of new media art. As the first and only art festival in Hong Kong dedicated to new media art, Microwave has steadily grown into a well-established festival that brings cutting-edge works to provoke thought in the technological hub every year.
In its 10th anniversary, Microwave Festival celebrated by becoming an independent organization, completed with a re-branding by design partner Milkxhake and a strengthened curatorial and working team. Microwave then continues the hard work to inspire Hong Kong and the rest of the world with pioneering media artworks selected to suit themes relevant to the society today, while also avidly supporting the exchange and dialogue between artists, professionals, and the general public.
They envision that through the Microwave network, Hong Kong artists will be introduced to international institutions and curators, working as a platform and gateway for them to develop their art and skills. Apart from the grand annual festival, Microwave also endeavors to nurture a rising local new media arts community, organizing various programmes such as educational workshops, seminars, forums, and exhibitions.
LINK BOX
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NONOTAK studio is the collaboration between the illustrator Noemi Schipfer and the architect musician Takami Nakamoto. Commissioned by the Architect Bigoni-Mortemard to create a mural in the lobby of a public housing building in Paris, NONOTAK was created in late 2011.
In early 2013, they start to work on light and sound installations, creating an ethereal, immersive and dreamlike environment meant to envelop the viewer, capitalizing on Takami Nakamoto’s approach of space & sound, and Noemi Schipfer’s experience in kinetic visual.
They presented their first audiovisual installation at the Mapping Festival in May 2013. In summer 2013, NONOTAK comes up with a performance, LATE SPECULATION, where they are the creators and contents of the project.
nonotakstudio@gmail.com
LINK BOX
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Onionlab is a multidisciplinary studio. They create interactive products and experiences, motion design movies and audiovisual shows for companies that want to be related to technology, design, and art. Their works are based on the aesthetic attention to detail and the technical innovation.
Starting from graphic concepts and detailed ideas, they get lost in the development and find themselves again at the resolution. They usually make use of the power of scripting and the seduction of music and sound design. They are interested in learning in each project, that’s why they invest many hours researching. They like collaborations.
Music is a source of inspiration for them, and it is often the starting point of their work. VR (virtual reality) experiences, projection mapping, stage design, and music videos are some of the formats through which we relate to music.
To celebrate the bicentenary of the Prado Museum, on November 24th, 2018, Onionlab projected a video mapping organized by the events agency Ciudadano Kien on the facade of the building. The video mapping transformed the inert facade of the building into something organic thus creating an immersive visual journey of lights, shadows, and optical illusions.
LINK BOX
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Nick Verstand (1984) is a contemporary artist exploring human behavior and perception through spatial audiovisual compositions. His autonomous installations and live performances investigate the materialization of internal emotional experiences and are created through collaborative design processes aimed at breaking down social boundaries.
The resulting intuitive experiences, co-creations of artist and audience, generate a hypnotizing environment for the subconscious mind.
Nick has exhibited and performed at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Dutch Design Week, Art Central Hong Kong, SXSW and collaborated with artists such as Fatima Yamaha, Joep Beving and Suzanne Ciani. Dezeen selected his project AURA as one of the top 10 art installations of 2017, alongside Olafur Eliasson, Ai Weiwei, and Anish Kapoor.
studio@nickverstand.com
LINK BOX
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A fond believer of the concept of Homo Ludens, Daan’s interactional works are always based on the expressive potential of the spectator. The audiovisual elements within such a piece are used as a means to achieve a new kind of social experience.
Other pieces strive to be perceptual explorations. Light, sound & kinetics flood the senses, to see what remains.
His work has been shown at renown art places such as the Stedelijk Museum, but it can just as well be found in public space or at techno parties. His work has been shown at venues in Amsterdam, London, São paulo, Monaco, Paris, Berlin, Ghent, Warsaw, Ljubljana and Bucharest. He has received grants and prizes from the Dutch Institute for Media Arts, Stroom, the Foundation for Visual Arts and the City of The Hague.
LINK BOX
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Mowgli has been passionate about all things creative since a very young age. He’s always painted and made things and he had the fortune of having DJ as his first ever job after finishing school. Mowgli graduated in Scientific and Natural History Illustration in 1996, a field in which he worked on a freelance basis for a short time.
Since then he had worked using a vast range of media. He completed an apprenticeship in the ancient crafts of Cordoban and Guadameci in 1997 after which he worked for Arte 2 on interior design projects incorporating the craft while also co-founding MIX, a Madrid based workshop and shop specialized in the upcycling of furniture and decorative objects, an endeavor that was way ahead of its time as the term “upcycling” wasn’t even in use then.
Mowgli started Vjing in 2004 alongside the band Detwiije, this led to more VJ gigs and visual creation for world-class artists and festivals including Above & Beyond, Astrix, Roisin Murphy, Infected Mushroom and Greg Wilson. He was classed amongst the top 8 European VJs in 2008 at the London International Music Show.
Soon after and as a natural progression from Vjing, Mowgli developed an interest in audiovisual performance which he’s been developing since 2010 when the show MAYA was created with producer Silverio Funk. It was premiered at the BFI Southbank as part of Dark Fibre and has since been performed at several venues in London and Rome. During this time he also developed a piece for the Musion holographic projection system which was screened at Kinetika Art Fair in London.
Throughout his career, he’s been involved in organizing and promoting various music and arts events including Stylistik, Sound on Vision, The Nozzle and AV Depot while also being a director of VJ London, a community-focused monthly event dedicated to the diffusion of audiovisual and technology based art forms.
LINK BOX
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Ouchhh is a creative new media studio with expertise in AI, data paintings, data sculpture, and public art. The studio integrates art, science, and technology in every work they create. A multidisciplinary creative hub focused on new media platforms, offering direction and art direction and also producing video mapping projections.
Skilled in animation, design, illustration, 3D, 2D, interactivity, interaction, and live-action -and seamlessly combining some or all of these- OUCHHH considers each project as a challenge and takes a fresh and unique approach to each other. They have an office in Istanbul, and partnerships in L.A., Vienna, Barcelona, Paris, and Berlin.
The studio has created the “POETIC AI” Solo Exhibition at Atelier des Lumières, it’s a world’s largest AI exhibition which will last for 6 months. It uses 50K pixels and in total 136 projectors, 1 million people visited the exhibition in 7 months.
The studio worked with many brands such as Google, Cern, Nike, Wired, their collaborators transcend all industries and all continents. Their works have received multiple accolades and awards in the international arena. Ouchhh has been featured at Ars Electronica 4 times and will be attending for the 5th time this year.
They became Istanbul’s first new media agency to win Reddot design awards, German Design Award, 10th Annual IDA Awards (The International Design Awards) and ADC Awards ( The Art Directors Club), in addition to an Honorable Mention from the City University of Hong Kong.
LINK BOX
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Marta Radecka is a visual artist, VJ, surface pattern designer, graphic designer and an illustrator. Her artistic development has been initially shaped in an Art College and later she mastered my skills studying graphic design at university.
Marta creates video projections, mappings and LED installations for audiovisual performances, concerts or live DJ sets. She is a VJ at recurring gigs in Krakow and London. For her the starting point of any creative concept is always music.
She uses her own drawings, graphics and animations to design unique loops. Her artistic creations are characterised by multiple dissolving and intertwining layers and monochrome colour palette. Her live shows are never 100% planned; there is always lots of space for improvisation. She was born in Poland, currently live in London.
mrtrdck@gmail.com
LINK BOX
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Covarrubias received a Bachelor of Music Composition degree in 2006 from the National School of Music at the UNAM in Mexico City. She earned a Master’s degree in Musicology, Creation, and Society in 2010 from the University of Paris 8 (France), where she specialized in Computer-assisted composition and Ethnomusicology.In 2016, she received a Ph.D. degree in Esthetics, Science and Technology of the Arts from the University of Paris 8.
Sabina has also studied and trained to program with languages such as Java and C++, among others, at the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico. She studied “Mastering Techniques” at Berklee Music College. Today she is an associated researcher of the CICM (Centre d’Informatique et Création Musicale), Paris, France; besides, she is part of the SNCA program (Art Creators National System) from Mexico, for this program, she is composing acousmatic, octophonic music, financed by FONCA.
Her works encompass a wide array of genres, which have been shown in highly renowned concert halls and festivals in Mexico, the United States, and France. Performances of her compositions have taken place in the International Festival for Women in Art in the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City and in the International Forum of New Music Manuel Enríquez in Mexico City.
LINK BOX
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L’Aubaine (Laurie Bender) VJ, a visual artist from Geneva-based in London.
L’Aubaine started performing live visuals in 2005 while studying a master in Digital Arts in Barcelona. From her study, she got interested in real-time performances and exploring different forms of narrative.
All elements she uses in her work are self-produced, mixing different techniques, analog and digital, as hand-drawn animations, 2D and 3D animations, graphical elements, photography, and videos. Her creations have that handmade feel, imperfect, bold and very colorful. Laurie crafted her unique style over the years by superimposing layers, interlinking shapes, and colors, mixing elements from different techniques in an unusual and elegant way.
Her VJ sets are evolving compositions, audio-reactive, created live and flowing with the crowd and the music. Each set never look the same, she shares emotions, playfulness and she feels like a painter and his canvas. She is since 2015, part of VJ London, organizing monthly meet-up & showcase and bigger events with interactive installations and AV performances with artists based in the London area and international.
LINK BOX
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AV Link Jam / BYOB was organized by Crux, the hub for learning, experimenting, collaborating and entertaining, on Thursday, November 15th, 2018. It was their second edition and free for everyone who wanted to join.
When you entered the space, it all seemed very open and chill. People were drinking beer, talking to each other, walking around and admiring the people’s work. Almost every wall had a beamer projection on it. It was very diverse which made it refreshing. You weren’t looking at the same thing at every wall. Every minute it’d change so even if you’d be watching the same projection, you wouldn’t look at a video that was on a loop.
Because it was a free event, the genuinely passionate artists show up. It looked like a community, people know each other and talk about the same topic. When you would talk to the artists about their projection, you could see the fierce enthusiasm they had for it.
The soundtrack worked really well with the atmosphere. Many different things were going on at the same time but the music helped to keep you focused.
All and all, it was quite mesmerizing and hypnotic. It kept your eyes stuck on the all the projects you were seeing. It all moved fast, had bright colors, and had recurring movements. It’s a very fun night where you can chat and check out new and different artists. A good concept!
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GDÁNSK, 13 December 2018
‘Interference’ literally means meddling, intervention, disturbance.
Interference Festival 2018 – 5th Festival of Visual Communication, it’s a one-of-a-kind event in the Pomeranian District which the main target is to popularize visual arts. The festival is focused on international short visual forms’ overview and on the Contest ‘Freedom of Form’ which the main aim is to emerge the best artists in categories Found Footage, Music Video, Creative Advertising Piece, and Experimental Short Visual Form
Visuals, music videos, teasers, creative advertising forms, jingles and video art, experiments on the border of art – that is what you’ll see during one of the most interesting events of the kind in Central Europe. Interference Festival equals a new, unconventional form of the open-minded festival in which one the most important aim is to discover and to look for the best video avant-garde artists.
Last but not least, there is VJ Battle coming during which the best 8 Vjs will compete on the screen. The main festival points during the fifth edition of the festival will be at the Academy of Fine Arts, Pionowa Gallery, and the Gdańsk Shakespeare Theatre.
Interference
Gdańsk, Poland
info@interferencefestival.com
LINK BOX
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Audiovisual City interviews: Post Bellum, one of the artists at SIGNAL festival.
I studied art and architecture at The Technical University in Liberec. Students of my generation were influenced by conceptual artist Stanislav Zippe. Maybe for this reason, I try to combine architecture and multimedia in my work. Therefore, we have established two platforms that work in synergy Kolmo.eu and Loom on the Moon.com
We have recently worked on an audiovisual representation of historical topics for various museums and installations. We find challenging to use contemporary visual language to speak about events and moments in our distant and recent history. It is not our only focus, yet it is a territory we have been exploring for a couple years now. We do not look in the past scenes as into the hermetic events which do not have any correlation with lives we have today. We rather pick out those which do have relevance to today in our view.
Memory of the Nations is the organization focused on collecting of testimonies. It is a wide archive (7000 people recorded up to date) of subjective views on past events. The phenomenon of subjectivity was very attractive to us as it’s in contradiction with mainstream explanation of history. We, in collaboration with Pink productions (coauthors of the exhibition), have tried to avoid black and white viewpoint, therefore, we have focused on situations in which the human rights or human dignity were most violated. In those darkest places we could find bravery, humanity, and characters with strong moral principles.
We feel that everyone is tired by straightforward information oriented rhetoric, for that reason we have split the installation into two main parts. Almost like the two halves of the brain, one-half emotional and subconscious and the other narrative and rational.
It was challenging to cover such a long historical period of 100 years so we highlighted two totalitarian periods our nation underwent during this time. It is important for us to keep these past atrophies on the display so the public could be on guard when politics start to go wrong. Somehow the recent rise of populists and post fact demagogues in the world makes us believe that such an ambition is more relevant than ever.
When I returned back to the Czech Republic from Netherlands where I had lived for 5 years, I noticed that Prague scene around film, animation, and multimedia is full of skilled people who were great to work with. For that reason, I have been trying to promote this field abroad. It is fun to work with these people on some projects in Singapore or Hong Kong or elsewhere and bring our sensitivity, skills, and improvisation to the table.
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SIGNAL festival invited us to come to the festival in Prague which was on the 11th until the 14th of October, 2018. We are very grateful to have been invited and that they have taken such good care of us.
SIGNAL is a relatively young festival but made a huge impact on the audiovisual culture since the very beginning. It has a great offer of video mapping, interactive installations, and generative art. The last edition attracted around 600.000 people.
Every year, SIGNAL puts together an audiovisual journey across the beautiful backdrop that is the city of Prague. It gives the chance to locals and international visitors to really discover the city under a new light.
This is what we saw during our visit.
Event feature here.
Rococo is a totem made of 124 projectors shooting light beams. As soon as viewers step in, they are bombarded by powerful audiovisual inputs transforming the beautiful ‘Colloredo-Mansfeld Palace’ in an ever-changing space. The surrounding soundtrack makes you progressively forget where you are, bringing you in a captivating trance as you stare at the beams.
An impressive use of video mapping projection to document amongst the darkest moments in the last one hundred years of European history. Avoiding the spectacularization, ‘Memory of the Nation‘ enthralled the viewers, thanks to clever use of real video and audio footage
3dsense offered an impressive projection with two synchronized screens. It showed a creatively put and well-thought-out black hole’s gravitational field in the universe. That mixed with an intense soundtrack displayed a complex unity that immerses you into the piece.
A wonderful piece of interaction design, where the users had the chance to create their own lighting performance by the simple motion of their hands. Highly involving and easy to approach. It created an instant connection with the audience and the art.
_STROY is a multi-creative studio based in the Czech Republic. In their pioneering project, they combine graffiti with video mapping and sound art. Aesthetically astounding and captivating, they’re taking video mapping to a whole new level.
Quite new to the scene, the AV collective Hotaru Visual Guerrilla managed to capture the viewers’ senses from the first instant. An amazing 3D video mapping, dragging us in a future world where microorganism, bioforms, breathes and expands from the façade of the surrounding space. A must-see in the audiovisual culture.
Hyperbinary proposed a very mature and cutting-edge video mapping made of pure lights. The building Kooperative has been animated from the inside instead of being projected on it using LED strips. A thoughtful investigation about how particles are set in motion and spread across the space creating energy. The result is a calm and monumental wave.
On the Church of St. Ludmila Ruestungsschmie.de delivered a video mapping masterpiece, empowered by a stunning sound design. Every single element of the façade comes alive under the audiovisual thunderstorm. Our senses are constantly tickled and moved restlessly following the projective narrative across the service.
‘Watch 2,1/18’ is an ambitious and innovative art piece picturing a dystopian future under constant surveillance. The immersive installation used moving lights across the Vinohrady square to track the viewers. Microphones recorded their sounds to eventually combine them with an eerie soundtrack. No matter where you moved, you were always watched.
Simona Chládková & Matyáš Skalický
Simona and Matyáš are two students of ‘the Czech Technical University’. They created an LED interactive gateway connecting the train station to their university. Enjoyable and effective. We hope to see more from these young and upcoming artists.
Struny Signalu
Organik triggers an intense dialogue between new media, art, music, and architecture, in the beautiful Salvator church. The gothic constructive elements are gradually revealed and enhanced by the moving lights, while the compelling music from the organ surrounds the viewers. Our senses are fully absorbed in this powerful audiovisual symphony.
Future Ruins, a beautifully crafted video mapping dialoguing with the LED installations which decomposes the architectural elements of the Neo-Romanesque church of St. Cyril and Methodius.
Ruins of a dystopian future lie upon us and come back to life through the use of lights and video mapping.
An interactive installation with mirrors following the viewers, bouncing their reflection across the space together with the beautiful decorations of the ‘Mirror Chapel’.
A buoyant interactive piece immediately connects with the audience of all ages and backgrounds.
An interactive simulation that shows the sea life under a microscope. It’s a never-ending generative art project.
Richard Loskot and UAII studio
An interesting representation of the natural elements using new media. A piece with stormy clouds made of foam, lights, and sounds.
An overall high quality and several innovative art pieces, setting new trends and standards in audiovisual culture. Congratulations to the organizers and see you next year!
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Audiovisual City went to SIGNAL festival and interviewed the founder and CEO of the festival: Martin Posta.
This is how it all went down.
The article about our time at SIGNAL is here.
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MELBOURNE, 22 November – 08 December 2018
Liquid Architecture is an Australian organization for artists working with sound. LA investigates the sounds themselves, but also the ideas communicated about, and the meaning of, sound and listening.
For this program, they are collaborating with artists who work at the intersection of theory and live performance. These artists use various strategies to extend vegetal thinking into sound and listening, from guided walks, talks, readings and lecture performances to experimental music, installation, herbalist pedagogy, and folk songs.
This program, Why Listen, proceeds from these questions as it attempts to open up the act of listening in social, scientific and political space. It is an inquiry into both the consensus constructing communication—and, indeed, creating communicators—and an attentiveness to the vitality of voices beyond the conceptual.
Liquid Architecture
Melbourne
LINK BOX
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Audiovisual City went to SIGNAL festival and interviewed four artists: _STROY, XYZ, Hyperbinary, and Simona Chládková.
This is how it all went down.
The article about our time at SIGNAL is here.
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We look forward to visual treats at Barcelona’s ever-growing digital arts festival, Mira. Hosted at the old fabric factory in the Sant Andreu district of Barcelona, Fabra i Coats is the venue of dreams for many festival goers and organisers. Each year, we’ve seen the gradual addition of a full dome experience, more and more live visual performances and installations, with this year including an impressive new media art exhibition to get the old brain cogs turning. Let’s leave the work to speak for itself. We present you with our summary of our Mira experience of the Friday night at the festival in form of a photographic journey through new media art time and space…
Mira Dome by Adidas Originals
“Extraordinary Alien” by Fatima Al Aqdiri & Transforma
The Search for (Modern) Pleasure (Exhibition, various artists)
Keiken, Nati Cerutti, AGF Hydra, Suzanah Pettigrew and George Jasper Stone: Digital Pleasures
Visual orgasms – Faith Holland
Filip Custic – Cuadro Virtual
Esmay Wagemans – New Humanity
Carlos Sáez – Hardware Fetish
Field – Scan I-IV Collection courtesy of Sedition
Tangerine Dream (Live A/V)
Interactive lighting system using Cinema 4D – 3D sound room by Tigrelab
Call super (DJ set) with Natalia Stuyk (VJ Set)
All photos copyright Hayley Cantor
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BERLIN, 31 January – 03 February 2019
Transmediale is a Berlin-based festival and year-round project that draws out new connections between art, culture, and technology. It considers technology as being more than the digital world and the cultural as being more than what emerges from within institutionalized fields of production.
The formats of the festival change from year to year as Transmediale tries to foreground the intrinsic link between transdisciplinary thinking and cultural practice.
The 31st edition of the festival, directed by Kristoffer Gansing for the seventh time, aims to take stock of current affairs in order to understand if and how things could be different. Its participants will seek possible new ways of resisting and deconstructing the alarming development of digital populism, the radicalization of net culture, and the new culture wars.
(Post)digital culture today seems to support hate-mongering, racist and neo-colonial powers rather than provide an emancipatory alternative. Transmediale is therefore actively seeking out self-critical discussions of topics otherwise rarely addressed at digital culture events—such as contemporary imbalances of class, gender, and race—within a variety of curatorial formats and modes of knowledge exchange.
Transmediale
Klosterstraße 68
D – 10179 Berlin
info@transmediale.de
LINK BOX
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AMSTERDAM, 21-24 February 2019
Sonic Acts was founded in 1994. Over the years, it has established itself as a thematic festival with a strong focus on contemporary and historical developments at the intersections of art, technology, music, and science.
Each festival edition explores the chosen theme by means of an international conference, a wide range of concerts and performances, exhibitions and screenings, and embraces a broad spectrum of fields, practices, and disciplines.
Sonic Acts has developed into an organization for the research, development, and production of works at the intersection of art, science, and theory. It also commissions and co-produces new works, often in collaboration with international festivals, arts organizations, funders, and other partners.
Recent projects include the three-year art, research & commissioning project Dark Ecology, predominantly taking place in the Arctic region, and its globally touring programme Vertical Cinema.
Sonic Acts
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
info@sonicacts.com
LINK BOX
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ROMA, 20-23 September 2018
Four festival days in which machines, arts, and technology melt together in order to spread new messages and new perspectives, proposing a new imaginary, breaking down the borders between the medium and the content, manipulating images and using different approaches to make the final content that is clearly relied on the artists’ improvisation and ability.
Eight countries involved, live cinema performances, screenings and workshops for a festival that reflects the spirit of our era in which technology has totally invaded every aspect of our lives: “Live Cinema Festival”, the international event focused on the most innovative performances of live audiovisual shows.
To enrich the program of the event, since September 20 a four days lasting workshop – for a total of 8 hours – will start. It will be focused on this new technique in the artistic-performative context and it will be held by Emanuele Tarducci, Architect and Interaction Designer who lives and works in Rome, teacher at RUFA Design University and Visual Artist. The workshop aims to give the technical and technological tools to make an audiovisual Live Cinema performance.
Live Cinema Festival
Teatro Quarticciolo
Via Castellaneta 10, Roma
info@livecinemafestival.com
LINK BOX
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HELSINKI, 9-15 April 2018
In April the eight AAVE (Alternative AudioVisual Event) brings in live cinema performances, experimental films, video art, documentaries and installations for your eyes, ears and other senses. It shines on the screens, stages and exhibition venues in Helsinki.
The theme of the year 2018 is hauntology, haunting through media, memory, and matter.
They introduce the theme via live cinema performances, screenings, exhibitions, and a seminar. In their main screening series, they will show the short works by the legendary pioneer of Japanese experimental documentary film, video art and avant-garde film Matsumoto Toshio and our qualified live cinema guest artists performances and surprising moving image works will light up the program with tempting, otherworldly shine.
AAVE Festival
Helsinki, Finland
aavefestival@gmail.com
LINK BOX
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MONTREAL, June 26 – July 1, 2018
The International Digital Art Festival ELEKTRA has been working since 1999 to discover the diversity of performance practices, including audiovisual and robotics.
ELEKTRA is an organism diffuser of works artists that combine art and new technologies while registering in aesthetics current research and experimentation.
The International Digital Art Biennial (BIAN) takes place every two years. This major exhibition on issues combining visual arts and digital mobilizes, in a joint action, actors in the field of arts and new technologies.
As a cultural institution focused on digital technologies and digital arts, and raising questions about the effects of digital technologies and the digital arts, they thought it’s important to act as a leader in eco-responsibility and in all our organization.
Elektra
Montreal, Canada
info@elektramontreal.ca
LINK BOX
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Collanews 