PATCHLAB FESTIVAL: Krakow, 23-25 October 2020

Patchlab Digital Art Festival is an annual audiovisual event showcasing digital art created with the latest technologies and new media.

The theme of the 2020 edition is CONNECTED. It explores the implications of the digital revolution we are undergoing in our lives due to the pandemic. The head-spinning rise of the internet based communication during the last months is still quite hard to grasp.

The internet was created originally as an effective and immediate form of communication. With the evolution of social media platforms, the world wide web is now a primary channel to express our emotions.

Audiovisual artists can help us understand the fast-changing environment we live in by visualizing the Nietzsche’s unsaid. Anything that is too complex for a total comprehension can be grasped by living the artistic experience.

Immersive installations, interactive artwork and live performance communicate complex statements through sensorial experience, giving us the chance to digest information slowly, at our own pace. Generative art as an antidote to the overwhelming data dump we experience everyday.

Due to the uncertainty of in-person attendance, the organizers are planning the audiovisual event through virtual platforms. It will be therefore accessible to a wider audience through the experimental use of new technologies.

Patchlab will present art projects online and via AR (augmented reality). There will be experimental computer animations presented in the virtual cinema, remotely accessible workshops and also a dystopian multi-person computer game allowing the exploration of a post-apocalyptic New York. There will also be AV NIGHT, during which we will see unique audiovisual projects in 360° format.

OPEN CALL – DEADLINE: 30th of July 2020

All audiovisual artists are invited to submit their project proposals for this year’s program to be implemented online in an unexpected way.

Proposals can only be submitted via the online form.

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June 2020 TOP 5 Engagement

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KEEP YOURSELF CLEAN Exhibition: Online

Virtual Reality and gaming tools are rapidly becoming the essential vehicles of expressions for audiovisual artists during the Covid-19 imposed restrictions on public events.

We know, we know: no virtual experience can substitute the actual audiovisual event. But that is not the point. The point is experimenting and evolving beyond boundaries accordingly to the contingencies we face in a particular given time.


Audiovisual art as every form of art expression is driven by the tools available, the internal factors such as time and budget, and the external ones, such as venue restrictions or the total lack of them.

Now a lot of digital artists are facing the same problem and they are responding in different ways. The Russian audiovisual art collective VOLNA decided to turn their first solo exhibition: KEEP YOURSELF CLEAN into a virtual reality experience using Unreal Engine.

The video gaming tool is being widely use in audiovisual art and virtual events. It allows you to simulate real-time scenes and lighting effects.  Exhibition visitors are invited to immerse themselves in the surroundings of each installation and can move freely in the room and choose any observation point.

The following works were reconstructed for the exhibition: the audiovisual installations NEUBAU (2016), Powerline (2017) and Rotor (2018), the light installation Octave (2018), the installation Vague (2019), and two kinetic light installations, Duel (2019) and Nymphéas (2020).

Despite the site-specific nature of the works, the overarching artistic principle behind all of them is the search for a universal language of pure forms. These forms, which correspond to the abstract subjects of the installations, are refined during an extensive detailing process, minimalist in their expressiveness and often even have a functional nature.

The eight installations generate intimate spaces where the viewers sits in contemplation of the structural semiotic elements that compose them: light, sound, movement. Each room triggers different emotions slowly revealing themselves while we explore the space and embrace its unique atmosphere.

The primary expressive element in VOLNA’s work is light and its various characteristics, its interaction with space, as well as its movement, the rhythm of chiaroscuro and the way chiaroscuro scenarios unfold in relation to time. Some works include synchronized sound, created to interact closely with the light’s dramaturgy.  

The virtual exhibition space itself is hetero-topic and at the same time proportional to the original exhibition locations. The model exhibits displayed inside it are as close as possible to their real prototypes and preserve the original structural details, including the nature of the lighting and scenarios behind each of the live installations.

The original sound design and ambient sound environments are reproduced, and each work’s context and theme are discussed in an accompanying text.

In conclusion the exhibition Keep Yourself Clean attempts to embrace all the real and virtual layers of information that make up each of the works, and then let the works themselves become the determinants of perception.

Each of the contexts will “re-sort” in the virtual world, rethink and obey the laws of perception, and each work, in turn, will become an experience of sensory contemplation.

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ATHENS DIGITAL ARTS FESTIVAL: 10 July – 10 September 2020 ONLINE

ADAF is an audiovisual event constantly evolving along with the new creative trends and breakthroughs within the digital arts, without loosing the core vision of its foundation days.

Every year the organisers finetune their artistic program through their open call for audiovisual artists, to keep themselves up to date with the ever-evolving new media art landscape.

From the initial focus on video art, installations and live performances they have been widening their program up to include Virtual Reality experiences (VR), Web Art, Video Games and more.

The Athens Digital Arts Festival has been founded in 2005 and it is the pioneer longest living institution in Greece dedicated to audiovisual culture and digital arts. This year, as other audiovisual events, ADAF is responding to the Covid19 crisis with resilience and creativity.

Their 16th edition ADAF ONLINE| TECHNOTRIBALISM will be accessible to everyone through the internet. More than 5,500 audiovisual art proposals from 100 countries around the world are the source for the ADAF 2020 program selection.

The 2020 year theme reflects upon our primitive status in the foundations of the new hyper-informational world, where the data-flux is absorbing the entire existence reaching the status of God.

Is technology serving us or we are serving the data-totem by providing our more sensible information, giving up our privacy for a greater good?

Algorithms, already present everywhere in the digital realm, are reading us better than ourselves, better than our friends and siblings and in the name of  optimization of our virtual experience, we are gradually letting them make decisions for us, filter our perceptions predict our behavior, our bio metrics, our emotions.

All manifestations of culture can now be experienced on a digitized basis, translated to a language (code, DNA) and stored for everyone who possess it to experience regardless the circumstances. Markets and Money are transfiguring into intangible algorithmic byproducts. Everything to serve the information flow.

Close your eyes and connect to your data-doppelganger your mirrored algorithmic self to your digital footprint. You are part of techno-tribalism, you are part of ADAF 2020.

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About Kusmos Live by Kuflex Lab

During these tough and uncertain times it has been inspiring to see so many audiovisual artists and events coming up with tools and formats to overcome the quarantine restrictions and social distancing.

A few weeks back the guys from Kuflex Lab reached out to showcase their latest tool that stands out among all the virtual/hybrid solutions we have seen so far. Kusmos Live allows to turn online concerts into interactive digital shows. Pretty neat uh?

Let’s dive in and explore how it works. Down to the nitty-nerdy-gritty Kusmos is a custom VJ software written on openFrameworks + VDMX5 + Syphon.

In spring 2020 Kuflex studio began an experimental project Kusmos Live. The purpose of the experiment was to upgrade the Kusmos system in order to create a interactive online home shows.

In 2018-2019 the Russian audiovisual studio experimented with the innovative tool together with SILA SVETA studio on the Therr Maitz concert, Caprices Festival 2018, Nina Kraviz experimental performance at Coachella 2019.

OK, really cool but how exactly does interactivity work? We gave some feedback to Kuflex lab with a few tricky questions to better understand the whole potential of this new audiovisual tool.

KUFLEX: The Tracker program receives depth-sensor data, calibrates a point cloud as we need it (we can rotate the cloud, cut off everything you don’t need keeping only the data of the artist oneself and merge point clouds from two sensors) and sends it to the renderer (UE4 scene).

Scene functions build a 3D model using the data provided by the Tracker and then we can layer all kinds of features with effects on the model and also transform and distort it according to the artistic concept. We also captured video from the laptop’s webcam and sometimes showed its picture. 3D scene acting as the artist surrounding, a set of virtual cameras for capturing from different viewpoints and visual effects were set up in advance in the Unreal Engine. Then the OBS program captures the video of the launched scene and sends it to the video streaming server.

During our second live experiment we tested some new features for the viewers interactive communication with the stream. While Leksha (Smolensk, Russia) was playing his ambient-set, a VJ (Moscow, Russia) was controlling visual effects with the use of commands via YouTube chat in real-time mode. Our team has implemented this function between the concerts and decided not to tell the viewers about it.

During the stream, noticing weird messages in the chat, some of the viewers started to realize that they could not only send a message to the chat but to even affect visualization. In the end the concert has turned into a digital quest. Some viewers picked up effect control by sending particular commands to the chat. We have yet to comprehend how to develop this function in the future.

 AVC: We think it’s a really interesting and innovative project responding to the challenges of the pandemic. In terms of appeal for VJs there is the risk of potentially being extremely limited for the audiovisual artists creativity, and the aesthetic I guess would always be the same.

It would be key for the tool to have a wider range of possibilities of customization for the artists otherwise they might get tired soon. I guess they all want to leave their unique mark in the scene.

KUFLEX: Kusmos is a universal software tool, with the possibility of variability of visual and interactive solutions. As a rule, our team creates a virtual stage specifically for the performance of the musician. Of course, we want to upgrade the program creating a database with different scenes, effects. In this case, the user will be able to construct the scene himself and combine the effects for his live/stream. 

AVC: It’s a bit unusual to keep promoting the idea of “God is DJ”. Is the DJ persona so relevant the viewer wants to watch during the entire show in a virtual environment?

KUFLEX: Regarding Kusmos Live project, the Kuflex team is collaborating with various musicians. We wanted to support the performers. So this approach determined the emphasis on the figure of the musician on the virtual stage, under whose musical personality, sound we come up with a visual solution. We do not just shoot a video with a musician, as is often done in broadcasts, but create a digital avatar that changes depending on the script, music and VJ control.

At the same time, Kusmos Live is primarily a show, a kind of mix of live performance, a computer game and fantastic movie. The virtual camera can fly through digital space, we can switch to different visual elements of the scene and include additional visual effects to the music.

We try to achieve the effect of real interaction with the viewer as well. Our team is developing a function of interaction through chat – viewers’ comments fall into the scene, they can affect the content through certain chat commands. But Kusmos can be used by artists of other genres. In the near future we want to try to create a dance performance. Now we are discussing this idea with one Russian choreographer.

We will explore the topic of distances – where physical space ends, digital begins, the relationship of body and sound. Both dance and music will take place in live format.

Technically, the performer will find himself in different areas of camera scanning, on the screen we will observe how his digital avatar changes. Again, it will all be like shooting a movie in one shot and in real time!

AVC: We truly appreciate the viewers becoming active, participating and communicating with the stream. That creates a collective experience. Could people really tell if this was a live performance or not? It feels like the interaction should be more meaningful somehow, with a bigger impact to the overall audiovisual artwork.

KUFLEX: Our team worked on a concert from different cities. We thought about how best to organise remote control of virtual cameras and effects. And suddenly our creative director had an idea to manage content through Youtube chat. During the broadcast, he wrote commands like cam1 (switching camera 1), stars ( the star effect was launched).

We intentionally did not talk about this function in advance to get the quest. As a result, some viewers guessed and began to help in managing the scene. We explore different possibilities about other ways of interaction.

In the future we want to create a client application for connecting to the broadcast via a mobile phone, desktop PC screen or VR. We intend to develop Kusmos as an art tool. Our team believes in a power of collective interaction. We want to give a palette of visual solutions, effects. Let’s all together create beauty here and now! This idea is a sincere inspiration for us. 

AVC:  We would like to know more about how the collaboration you have done with Leksha where the viewers were controlling visual effects with the use of commands via YouTube chat in real-time mode.” How does the input of data modify the visuals? is it like a live coding or common human language and how it is related to the VR software?

KUFLEX: Usually in an offline format, we work like this: musicians play music, and VJ manages visual content live using MIDI controllers. Some effects are linked to the amplitude of the sound. But in a situation where we did not have the opportunity to be onsite will all team, we decided to make control through chat commands.

We wrote a special function for our software that receives data from chat on YouTube using the Google API. We came up with several commands, for example: cam1, cam2, skin1, skin2, electric noise, lasers and the like. And when someone in the chat wrote one of these words, then a certain visual effect or a corresponding camera was included in our program.

In general, we have an idea to expand the number of commands and their appearance, so that it looks more like live coding. For example, add numerical arguments to the commands, which will additionally specify the parameters of a particular visual effect.

As for virtual reality, we have plans to create our own application for viewers who can watch live broadcasts using VR devices, thus more deeply immersing themselves in the atmosphere of the digital scene and additionally receive personal effects. 

 AVC: Fascinating this idea of “universal tool” for content in real time and interactive show. We think it’s important now to dig more into the idea of how it can involve more people in the creative process. It opens new ways of investigation on how to make every audiovisual experience unique, not only in terms of the aesthetics of the piece but also regarding the narrative.

KUFLEX: Yes, this is the main object of research for us. Usually, a limited number of people can come to the offline exhibition. So we want to overcome any space frames. With Kusmos we don’t have any restrictions online! We can find ourselves in amazing digital worlds that are impossible in the physical world.

Now that Kuflex Lab and its creation Kusmos entered our radar we will most definitely keep following their progression, as always supporting innovation and creativity in the audiovisual art world.

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INFINITE SPACE – Miami Artech House: 13 June – 6 September 2020

We have put feelers out fetching information about audiovisual events happening in physical spaces, to understand how venues and organisers are coping with the social distancing guidelines.

A lot has been happening virtually since the Covid 19 outbreak but very few actual events have taken place with plenty of cancellations, endangering the already fragile audiovisual culture ecosystem.

Well, Miami Artech House is kicking off with a bang, showcasing the art exhibition of one of the most recognized audiovisual artists worldwide: Refik Anadol.

Refik Anadol immersive installations allow us to leap into an universe of data, featuring a matrix that swallows everything around until there is nothing left outside of it.

His overwhelming data sculptures foresee a post-digital architectural future in which there are no more non-digital realities. A world where man and machine are embedded within each other.

Infinite Space is the first major retrospective of the work of award-winning, Los-Angeles-based, Turkish-born artist Refik Anadol. The immersive data installation invites visitors to open their senses to the endless transformation and infinite possibilities at the intersection of man and machine.

One of the greatest eighteenth-century English artists William Blake famously said, “if the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is – infinite.”  Infinite Space is a collection of works that revisits Blake’s statement and seeks to cleanse the doors of perception with the tools available to twenty-first-century artists.

The exhibition explores memories and dreams through the mind of a machine by using data sets ranging from human memories, photographs of Mars, cultural archives and sea surface activity as data sculptures and digital paintings.

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SHARJAH LIGHT FESTIVAL: 05 -15 February 2020

Sharjah Light Festival illuminates the Emirate once a year showcasing local talent and internationally renowned audiovisual artists.

The audiovisual event features eye-opening displays of colors, images and lights inspired by a variety of subjects such as beauty, science, creativity and knowledge. 

The yearly festival attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors and takes them on a tour of cultural heights, music, artistic ingenuity and technical skills. Projection mapping artworks and lighting installations illuminate the beautiful architecture of Sharjah.

The festival fuses all the components of beauty, art, culture, education, innovation and higher thinking into one glorious event. 

It includes rich programmes, grouped into clusters based on up to 20 locations with new highlights every year showcase the architectural splendour of Sharjah and the beauty of its buildings.

Utilising creative and innovative light technology and specifically curated music, the architectural landmarks of the emirate, such as Al Noor mosque, Al Hisn Fort, Sharjah University City Campus as well as others can literally be seen in a new light.

Many of the designs are poetic and inspired by local culture, stories and traditions or incorporate nature and space, some are based on more modern art and design, all are beautiful and thought provoking.

The Sharjah Light Festival extends to the east coast towns of Dibba, Khorfakkan and Kalba. The 2019 edition featured well known artists and curators such as Larent Langlois, Cindy Lo, Studio Halpeji and Group F

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SubtitleNEXT Version 5.6 features new Smart Text Assist

New Smart Text Assist in SubtitleNEXT provides efficiency for text editing and live subtitling For immediate release – 16 June 2020, Sofia, Bulgaria  – PBT EU is delighted to announce the release of SubtitleNEXT Version 5.6, with the focus on a brand new centralised Smart Text Assist feature designed for editing and live subtitling scenarios.  ...

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SMPTE Hollywood Section Launches “Ask a Hollywood Expert”

New webinar series offers behind-the-scenes career advice from the entertainment industry’s brightest young minds. LOS ANGELES —  SMPTE Hollywood has launched a new webinar series aimed at young people interested in behind-the-scenes careers in the entertainment industry. Titled Ask a Hollywood Expert, the series features successful, young professionals, across a range of technical disciplines including ...

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May 2020 TOP 5 Engagement

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What digital did next: Digital Arts and Social Distancing

How digital arts can unlock value and opportunity in a socially distanced cultural sector?

Marco Savo from Audiovisual City and Kate Rolfe from The Revels Office have never met in person. Theirs is a true digital relationship born of the pandemic.

Cultural consultants who met over Zoom to explore where their world’s crossed-over, and how their mix of experience could help artists, freelancers, and the arts sector as a whole to combat this unsettling time.

Audiovisual City is a digital magazine that promotes and supports audiovisual artists and events worldwide. Connecting hundreds of digital artists from across the world, it is the go-to place for inspiration and information when it comes to the application of digital technologies in artistic expression.

The Revels Office is a cultural consultancy who specialises in finding new revenue for the arts, advising organisations on commercial opportunities and uniting them with funding partners who value the unique, high quality content that only the cultural sector can produce. Together with a network of consultants -The Catalyst Network – the team at The Revels Office manage a range of projects at the intersection between arts and commerce.

Together with a multi-disciplinary group of experts who all have touch-points with digital arts experiences, Audiovisual City and The Revels Office ran a workshop to explore what role digital arts projects could play in the future of arts organisations.

At a time when the sector is anxiously remodelling their core operations to survive months of low visitor numbers, reduced income through established business lines, and a new, uneasy socially distanced experience, we wanted to investigate what untapped value digital arts might offer.

We share with you here a summary of our findings, designed to inspire you at a critical time, to offer valuable ideas to consider in your re-modelling plans, and to decipher the role that digital can play in a sector based almost entirely on live and tangible experiences…

Case Study: Enjambre Cellular

Developed by Mónica Rikić, Enjambre Celular is a project created and designed specifically for the Medialab-Prado interactive façade.

It is a collective strategy game in which different levels and challenges must be overcome, based on the idea of a labyrinth. Controlled externally by passers-by, Enjambre Celular offers an example of a pandemic-proof artistic installation.

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Case Study: Distances

Developed by Scenocosme, In this installation, two people in two separate physical spaces are filmed in real time by two devices.

They are invited to have contact virtually within the same image, bringing them together face to face. The head-to-head image created by the software is trying to constantly reduce the proxemic distance between the two people, creating unique and ephemeral meetings with the other and making a connection even when physically apart.

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Digital art vs digital design.

To make informed choices about the use of digital, it is important to understand the distinction of digital art as an artform in its own right, and digital design as a tool for engagement.

Put simply – do you need to move your live content online for commercial, audience or safety reasons, or do you want to create a new interpretation of your content that will explore your stories in an entirely new way? Neither choice is right or wrong, but it will impact the outcomes you achieve, as well as the process you go through.

“The importance of concept is key; you must start with your concept and then chose the technology to match”

Hayley Cantor

What digital art and digital design have in common is their ability to bridge between traditional cultural content and modern, digitally aware audiences, and allow people to fully interact with the arts.

No solution is quicker for overcoming an image of being elitist, static or uninteresting than a digital initiative, so long as it is done well, has a clear purpose and audience, and so long as it incorporates some kind of live and/or unique element that ensures the digital is not simply a mimic of the live experience.

While digital design is fantastic for bringing to life educational and historic content, and is arguably simpler for translating to an online platform, where digital arts stands out is in the sensorial, emotive experience that they can create, lasting longer in people’s memories and creating a sense of community and harmony even if you encounter the art alone.

Digital arts is the perfect solution for a hybrid cultural offering, connecting those experiencing it online and those there in person, allowing for smaller, safer groups to pass through it without losing the commercial, social and artistic benefits of scale.

Case Study: Virtual Archive.

Virtual Archive is a 3D, computer-generated environment open to interactive exploration by single users.

Via a VR headset, the user flies through a 3D data-point cloud formed, visualizing more than 1,700,000 documents present in SALT Research archive collections. Refik Anadol’s installation was displayed as an extension to the artist’s Archive Dreaming project.

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Case Study: Natural History Museum of Valparaisa.

In the Introductory Room at Natural History Museum of Valparaíso, Chile, visitors meet an installation of naturalistic illustrations of flora and fauna of the region, highlighting the work of Claudio Gay among others.

Developed by Delight Lab, this project was realised in partnership with the SUMO design and museum office for DIBAM.

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It’s time to set the price.

The price we have paid for the vast amounts of thrilling, comforting and informative digital content that has been dispersed throughout the global lock-down, is the expectation that digital means free.

Digital comes with development costs, artist costs and new software and/or infrastructure requirements, among other operational demands. Digital content is by no means free to create, and so why is it presented as free to consume? There are two ways of looking at this dilemma.

• Option 1 is to embrace the non-financial value that going digital presents: reaching new and much larger audiences, collecting insightful data, offering educational and social benefits, and adopting new methods in storytelling and human connection.

In this way there is still value, there are no barriers to audiences engaging with you, and you can use data and reach to collaborate with new funding partners, upsell products and services, and request donations wherever possible.

In this way we have seen a really positive response during the pandemic, with culture-lovers willingly paying for online experiences, seeing this as a charitable donation to save something they love rather than a charge for valuable entertainment. However this has not yet translated into a consistent approach that audiences and funders recognise, or indeed made up the huge gap in revenue that arts organisations face.

• Option 2 is to revaluate and recommunicate the value of the digital experience, and set up platforms that give organisations the option to charge.

Given the high value outlined by option 1, it seems reasonable that – just like the expectation to pay for the cinema or a gig – you will have to pay to participate in digital cultural experiences. This transactional view may not sit well alongside arts experiences that are traditionally free, such as museum-entry, but this demonstrates the opportunity presented by digital arts as opposed to digital design; by creating a new experience on a new platform, arts organisations can create something of value to their audiences (and new ones), one which better warrants a participation charge.

Ultimately this is an argument of supply and demand, but what we endorse is a collective reassessment of how and when to charge for digital experiences, thereby protecting arts organisations and artists from giving away valuable content for free, especially when for a time this might be one of their only viable sources of revenue.

Case Study: Fulldome Festival

The oldest full dome projection festival has been held virtually for the first time this year due to the pandemic, charging a ticket price for the online experience. A courageous decision from the organisers who decided to go full steam ahead, offering a 360 view of the festival using VR headsets.

Case Study: Mutek San Francisco, Nexus Experience

Mutek is one of the top audiovisual events worldwide, born in Montreal and then expanded through an international network. The San Francisco edition has been online this year with their ‘Nexus Experience’, hosting live AV performers on two stages, offering digital galleries, online workshops, and ‘viewing party’ film screenings. The event was free and open to donations, with 100% of the festival proceeds going directly to the artists.

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Demystifying the digital process (and budget).

Digital arts experiences are impactful and memorable no matter what their size, from single exhibition displays through to city-wide festivals. While they can be huge and expensive, often a digital intervention is as cost-effective as a live experience due to the flexibility of the format, recouping investment costs over a far longer lifespan.

For those who want to consider digital as part of their future plans, digital arts producer Steph Clarke shares some considerations:

• Once a digital installation, artwork or exhibition is installed, it can often run 24/7 with minimal staffing and low running costs. Not only can this make valuable budget savings, it also accommodates far higher audience numbers over time, and can easily be adapted to allow for social distancing measures.

• Digital works can easily have their content re-purposed to suit different objectives. Content can be refreshed regularly to suit seasonality, adapted for VIP or stakeholder events, and used for advertising purposes if required.

• It is relatively easy to scale digital work depending upon size of venue or audience size, meaning this approach can be considered for a variety of projects, places and budgets.

• Digital can be used to extend and enhance audience engagement before and after the event/exhibition itself, through engagement online and via apps, creating more touchpoints with your intended audience and opportunities to capture insights and data.

• By digitalising the content for a digital installation, you are simultaneously archiving it too, preserving it for future generations and achieving important cost-savings.

• Given the huge range of digital formats available – apps, projection, light shows, VR, AR – there will always be a format suitable for your budget, timescale and objectives.

Case Study: 400 Conejos.

As part of the Bahidora 2018 festival, Medusa Lab created a unique experience for Ache Producciones and its client: Mezcal 400 conejos.

Attendees received a complimentary drink of mezcal prior entering the dome, and once inside they discovered the mezcal making process through an immersive, colour-filled experience using animations and 360 video.

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Case Study: Pinata Tweet.

Piñata was a project made by MID for +Castro agency and the SAKE production company. The piñatas were installed as part of a collaboration with Trident Senses at Benicàssim International Festival.

The interactive piñatas are controlled via Twitter messages sent by the audience. Every tweet contained #TridentSensesPinata, which activated a device that inflated the piñata. As messages accumulated, eventually the piñata exploded over the audience!

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Audiovisual City and The Revels Office plan to now work together.

We aim to connect arts organisations with digital artists and commercial partners, creating inspirational and viable projects in a time of pandemic.

Together we will champion the skills, value and authenticity that digital art and digital tools can bring those looking to find new audiences and new revenue. Get in touch to discuss how these ideas could be applied to your own organisation – hello@therevelsoffice.co.uk

This article was written by Kate Rolfe from The Revels Office and Marco Savo from Audiovisual City with contributions from Hayley Cantor (Audiovisual City Creative Director, Multidisciplinary Graphic Designer and VJ), Sean Carroll (Business Improvement Project Manager), Nicola Casperson (Brand Marketing, Events and Place-Making Consultant), Steph Clarke (Digital Arts Producer), Marta Minguell Colomé (New Media Artist, VJ and Photographer), Amy O’Brien (Events Producer), and Mónica Rikic (New Media Artist). Collectively our experience includes roles at the National Gallery, Natural History Museum, Secret Cinema, Battersea Power Station, Westfields, and London’s Philharmonia Orchestra.

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BODY (UN)MUTE: 28–29 May 2020 ONLINE

ONLINE, 28 – 29 May 2020

BODY (UN)MUTE: A two-day online festival that looks into the rituals of dancing and masking in times of social distancing.

As we slide into the new normal or la nueva normalidad it is inevitable that the AV world will experience a considerable amount of visibility during the pandemic as technology plays an important part in everything that we do. A surge of online events, meetings and live streams now fill up our diaries like they are going out of fashion and meeting up with your mates down the pub for a pint after work is so 2019.

Enter the evolution of user generated entertainment platforms like Twitch, which now boasts 17.5 million average daily visitors. Resident Advisor has invented its own virtual island Streamland where all virtual events that have been successfully submitted to RA exist. And MelodyVR brings the artist even closer to the fan through some very high spec virtual reality streaming experiences. Did somebody say Zoom quiz? 

The drive for innovation and exploration in the world of audiovisual art and culture is again on the rise, opening up in new forms. Which leads me onto the question about interdisciplinary artists and institutions who challenge the status quo and dare to oppose the mainstream. Where are they and what is their artistic response to the pandemic? 

I give you BODY (UN)MUTE. A two-day online festival curated by Bogomir Doringer hosted by ICK Dans Amsterdam that looks into the rituals of dancing and masking in times of social distancing. The audiovisual event will deliver a programme of workshops, talks and performances from all corners of new media, dance and conceptual art. But how can these rituals take place in an online space?

“Technology has been around forever, but most people are not familiar with the basics of streaming. Porn channels and video gaming platforms are way ahead of time and up until now artists haven’t really engaged with it, which makes it harder to get a certain quality that produces something more than just a Zoom call. I have been following the ritual of masking since 9/11 with my project Faceless – Re-inventing Privacy Through Subversive Media Strategies. What is the role of this in contemporary times? BODY (UN)MUTE is a physical representation of Faceless and my art exhibition Dance Of Urgency, which explores how dance and ritual rise in times of personal and collective crises, and how it can empower individuals and groups. In amongst a global pandemic both these ideas live together and that is why I want to explore this space with new media artists”

– Bogomir Doringer

Jeremy Bailey

Some highlights come in the form of Famous New Media Artist Jeremy Bailey who wants you to join his Augmented Reality Makeover Party where step-by-step you can learn how to perfect your own Augmented Reality (AR) digital mask and alter ego. Transgress and queer-up your identity, become a drag unicorn or whatever else you can imagine! 

Rosa Menkman

Rosa Menkman, an art theorist and visual artist specialising in glitch art and resolution theory, will screen her work Pique Nique pour les Inconnues :: The CHORUS VERSION (2019-2020). The video looks at various unknown women whose images are linked to the history of image processing. While these women seem to be able to prolong their existence for as long as the (digital) realms will copy and reuse them, most of them have lost their name and identity.

Keren Rosenberg

Live performance comes in the form of Keren Rosenberg and Nicola Cavalazzi, who will present an audiovisual art installation which explores our social obsession in self-exposure through the use of modern technology. Together they will question what it means to perform in front of a camera – where does the body finish and the screen start? 

Dr. Kelina Gotman

Dr. Kelina Gotman talks about how Choreomania, the manic crave for dance, is not just a bi-product of lockdown. Choreographer Emio Greco will elaborate on the Pizzica, a dance from his native ground in Puglia that was danced to heal yourself from the bite of a poisonous spider. And Shanghai Radio will close the two day event giving us an insight into how creativity, music and online streaming kept the Chinese creative community connected during the lockdown. 

In a reaction to the pandemic tickets for the event are based on the principles of donation, which provides the public freedom to support the hard work and dedication from all the artists involved.

Let the body unmute. 

BODY (UN)MUTE in collaboration with ICK Dans Amsterdam
Online Tickets available through the event website.

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MUTEK SF: NEXUS Experience

ONLINE, 23 – 24 May 2020

A digital gathering organized by Mutek San Francisco with NEXUS Experience.

The audiovisual event celebrates world-famous digital culture, experimental electronic music and films. It debuts online this year to respond to the current restriction on public events

MUTEK SF – NEXUS Experience is free to join. Donations are welcome as all proceedings will go directly to the artists.

The online festival has worldwide support from the international MUTEK network.

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SubtitleNEXT chosen by University of Warsaw for live subtitling courses –

Copyright University of Warsaw   20 May 2020, Warsaw, Poland  – IABM-member PBT EU is pleased to confirm that the Department of Interpreting Studies and Audio-visual Translation (ISAT), as part of the University of Warsaw’s Institute of Applied Linguistics – selected SubtitleNEXT for their subtitling courses. The Institute of Applied Linguists at the University of ...

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April 2020 TOP 5 Engagement

Here are the TOP 5 most engaged posts for Apr 2020.

Unsound: 4 – 11 October 2020 KRAKOW

Krakow, 4 – 11 October 2020

Unsound focuses on a broad swath of contemporary music — emerging, experimental, and left-field — whose sweep doesn’t follow typical genre constraints. Influential around the world, it has developed a reputation for identifying innovative scenes and radical sounds.

It’s a platform for an exchange of artistic ideas for musicians, visual artists, curators, journalists, record label owners and booking agents from every continent.  

The theme for Unsound 2020 is Intermission. Meaning a break in a performance or production, here it also refers to the rupture caused by COVID-19, a period starkly separating before from after. The word therefore embodies multiple, and somehow contradictory, forces.

The audiovisual event takes place every year at a number of venues across Kraków, regular events also take place in New York, Adelaide, Toronto, and London. Between 2016 and 2018, Unsound also produced eleven festivals in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus, part of a long history of working with curators and artists in the post-Soviet region. 

As well as spotlighting emerging artists, Unsound also commissions new shows and encourages trans-border collaborations, adapts and re-imagines abandoned spaces for concerts and club nights, manages cutting-edge artists, and is known for its sound-inspired Ephemera perfume project.

Krakow, Poland

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FullDome Festival

Jena, May 13 – 16 2020 – EDITION IN STREAMING

The FullDome Festival is the oldest and only fulldome festival with an unbroken continuity. With about 800 contributions from 30 nations and more than 500 visitors per year, the audiovisual event is most probably the biggest international festival of its kind.

Visitors do not only see and evaluate a great variety of international fulldome films, they meet professional, student and independent producers and take part in paper sessions, workshops, diverse presentations and expert talks. Festival curators, an international jury and the festival directors evaluate the submitted works and select the most interesting and innovative productions for the festival from these submissions and determine the works for one of the festival’s awards.

A core mission of the FullDome Festival has always been to encourage students to stretch the envelope of what’s possible in the dome. It is amazing to see completely new approaches to the medium at each festival. Many are really creative, some even can compete with professional works. For most students, the FullDome Festival not only offers an introduction to the medium, it is often the only way to present, and is one of the few public venues.

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L.E.V. Festival

Gijon, September 10 –  13 2020

L.E.V. (Laboratorio de Electrónica Visual) is a platform specialized in the production and promotion of electronic sound creations, and its relationship with visual arts. It was a European pioneer in this field, and since more than 13 years ago, it tries to converge the natural synergy between image and sound, and the new artistic trends, making special emphasis on live actions.

LEV develops the L.E.V. Festival (in Gijón) and specific, de-localized shows called LEVents. Through both proceedings, the platform reaches its goal: to provide an eclectic, panoramic vision of the current state of creation and all its connections, in an ever-evolving environment.

That is why LEV focuses its work both on international artists that are leaders in audiovisual creativity and local artists, both pioneers and new talents.

L.E.V. is a co-production between the Principado de Asturias Government, the Gijón City Council and LABoral Art and Industrial Creation Centre and it was designed and conceived by the Asturian collective Datatrón. The festival honors by its acronym to Lev Thermen (Russian scientist father of the present-day synthesizers).

Laboral, Camino de los Prados 121,

Gijon, Spain

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Genius Loci Weimar

04 – 06 September 2020, Weimar

MAKE WALLS TALK!

The international GENIUS LOCI WEIMAR Festival for audiovisual projections was launched in 2012 as part of the ‘Weimar Summer’ initiative.

Optimally located in this city of poets, musicians and thinkers, as well as the birthplace of the Bauhaus movement, the festival has become an important cultural event for Thuringia, and is now in its ninth edition.

Through the technique of videomapping, Genius Loci Weimar redefines historical buildings and renders history and architecture as tangible for visitors. Every year, three new buildings and structures in and around the city of Weimar are chosen to become a part of the competition and festival.

The winning concept submissions, which must be in a medial narrative form, expressed at the highest technical level through the art of projection mapping, are developed and produced for one of the selected competition facades. Alongside the classic projections, an additional facade represents an interface with the media architecture in the form of a permanent installation. 

2020 is set to be a significant year for Germany, with jubilees and anniversaries that could hardly be more contrasting. The “Year of Music 2020” is celebrating Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Liszt and numerous other composers whose great works could not have been created without the acclaim and support that they enjoyed in Germany.

For this year’s edition of the festival, GLW is expressly encouraging makers of short films, motion graphic artists and video and film artists of all backgrounds and genres to apply for the selected locations through the medium of their disparate visual aesthetics, animation techniques and narrative concepts.

MXPerience gUG / Goetheplatz 9b / D-99423 Weimar

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Ross’ Ultritouch Can Help Blend Your Smart Phone With DashBoard’s PanelBuilder

  It’s fascinating to witness how much technology has progressed, particularly in the area of smartphones and the creative applications that can be applied in producing the type of visual content a viewer would normally see come from a camera or computer. Today, pretty much any professional working in the broadcast industry can create amazing ...

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FIBER Festival

Amsterdam, 24 – 27 September 2020

FIBER Festival is an Amsterdam based festival for audio-visual art, digital culture and electronic music.

With the program – which consists of multi-sensory art, performances and in-depth lectures – FIBER presents emerging art practices that offer alternative perspectives on our 21st century society.

With the festival theme of Instability the festival explores new ways of adapting to an age of planetary and societal changes. What opportunities are open to artistic making and thinking to contribute to this transformation?

Our living environment is often presented to us as stable and unquestionable. Landscapes, borders and technological infrastructures are considered static entities. Yet current crises now force us to transform the way we relate to our ecological surroundings. Extreme weather, droughts, wildfires and viruses are forces of nature that tear apart our modern way of living with far-reaching consequences.

The festival aims to seek artistic narratives, skills and sensibilities to prepare us for an alternative life in a period of uncertainty and radical instability.

FIBER Festival

Amsterdam, Netherlands

info@fiberfestival.nl

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CLASH Online Exposition & Stream

The audiovisual culture is adapting to this worldwide situation with innovative ideas of how to show the artwork done to the public online.

We can see this reflected in the Clash Online Exposition, an alternative to the present festival that was supposed to take place the 10 & 11 of April. They offer the possibility to attend to the festival from your living room with an online expo and (live) stream program.

The link of the streaming : https://clashclashclash.nl/expo/

Here is the program:

16:00 | Edwin van der Heide

16:15 | Heleen Blanken

16:30 |Tobylikesmilk

16:45 | PHOLE ( live from OOST)

17:15 | Matteo Myderwyk

17:45 | FUNC (Live from OOST)

18:15 | c/a

This program inlcudes the artists below and some others that will sort out an inspiring plan for this afternoon allowing us to enjoy of the different online experiences.

Edwin van der Heide describes himself as an artist, composer and researcher in the field of sound, space and interaction. He extends musical composition and musical language into spatial, interactive and interdisciplinary directions. His work comprises installations, performances and environments. The audience is placed in the middle of the work and challenged to actively explore, interact and relate themselves to the artwork.

Heleen Blanken is a visual artist living and working in Amsterdam. She works across the media cinematography, photography and installation art. Her art is deeply influenced by the complexity of the separation between humanity and the natural environment. She explores the different layers of our aesthetic perception of the natural world.

TobyLikesMilk was founded by Phoenix , a multimedia performer and writer, alongside the coreographer Katy Higgins to create artworks discussing topics like queer culture, identity and safe spaces. Their work is thought provoking and innovative, drawing on their own life experiences to catch the viewers focus in an unapologetically loud and provocative fashion.

Matteo Myderwyk is a classical pianist at the conservatory, Myderwyk then decided to throw away the rulebook of classical music altogether, ending up enthralled in the wonderful world of free-jazz. Making music without plan or pre-written composition gave a new creative impulse that pushed the musician’s craft to exciting new directions.

AudiovisualCity will live this experience, and we hope you join us!

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March 2020 TOP 5 Engagement

Here are the TOP 5 most engaged posts for Mar 2020.