CYLAND MediaArtLab artist Alexandra Dementieva shares a video report from Artefact Expo in Leuven Belgium. Artefact is a themed exhibition and festival on contemporary visual arts, current events and societal challenges. In 2017, Artefact looks at the Act of Magic. What does magic mean today? Which role does it play as a social phenomenon? How is it used as a metaphor? And how do contemporary artists tackle the subject? From poetry to strategy, from magical object to obscure systems, from harmless distraction to manipulation: the artists in The Act of Magic investigate what enchants us today.
ROLI, the team behind innovative music instruments, recently introduced BLOCKS, the most versatile music-making system ever made. BLOCKS is a modular music studio that’s for anyone — from beginners who have never taken a music lesson to pros who want to shape sound in new ways.
You can arrange your Blocks in many configurations to create kits that are perfect for you. The Blocks connect magnetically, so you simply add more Blocks to do more things. BLOCKS is a modular music studio that you build as your skills and interests grow.
BLOCKS lets you make music naturally through intuitive gestures on a touch-sensitive playing surface. Each individual Block fits in your hand or your pocket, and they’re incredibly powerful. Just connect BLOCKS to NOISE, the free iOS app, and you have a wide array of sounds and effects to explore.
The North-Western Branch of the State Museum and Exhibition Center “ROSIZO” offers a residence fellowship for national and international artists in Kronstadt in 2017.
Goal: The fellowship aims to strengthen international relations in the field of culture and art, promote contemporary art in Russia and support contemporary art projects.
Invited to participate: Artists working in different media – photography, video art, performance, installation, easel painting and graphics, sculpture, public-art and landscape projects.
Terms: A professional artist is awarded a residency for one month or less, free transfer from the airport/railway station and back. Foreign citizens will receive an official invitation for visa. Organizers do not cover visa and transportation costs, food, working materials, long-distance telephone calls or any other expenses related to the residency and public presentation of the works. Language spoken in the residence is English. Organizers do not provide interpreters for communication outside the Residence.
Evaluation criteria: Organizers will give preference to the artists who will be focus their work on natural and historic landscape of Kronstadt and St.Petersburg and who are ready to make a public presentation of their work during the residency term.
Period of stay: up to one month from March 1 till December 31, 2017.
Application deadline: December 20, 2016.
Application: Applications accepted from artists or artistic groups by email: residence(at)ncca-spb.ru (in English or Russian). The applications will be reviewed by the Residence Board of Experts. The decision of the Board is final and is not subject to review.
The applicants will be informed about the results by email no later than January 20, 2016.
Application form, residency rules and “Frequently Asked Questions” document are free to download here:
Resonate festival – Belgrade’s leading platform for critical debate on art and technology – returns for 2017. Early bird tickets for the sixth edition of the festival taking place in Belgrade between 19th – 22nd April 2017 went on sale Monday 28th November. The festival brings together practitioners from the field of art, design and media theory to engage in critical debate on the intersections of technology and society.
Join more than 70 leading artists, designers and theorists for four days of talks, workshops, panels, live performances, and concerts. This year’s activities include eight 1-Day Workshops (free to ticket holders – Limited to 15 per workshop), highly requested four x 3-day workshops (17 – 19 April), over 20 lectures, panel discussions, screenings and A/V music performances.
Carla Gannis received the Lumen Prize 2016 Founder’s Award for the Selfie Drawings, a collection of 52 digital drawings completed over 52 weeks in which “the self” has been performed through drawing, augmented reality, and sharing on social networks. Carla spoke to CYLAND MediaArtLab founder Anna Frants about the project, modern communications and her upcoming solo video exhibition in honor of the 10th anniversary of CYFEST.
Towering installations visualize scientific data, projectors beam kaleidoscopic animations onto sculptural forms, responsive 3D-printed environments mimic life—as consumer electronics become indistinguishable from science fiction, contemporary artists and designers are prototyping fantastical futures before our very eyes. HOLO, a biannual magazine introduced by CreativeApplications.Net, is a thorough record of timely trends and paradigms, mixing long-form journalism with striking photography in premium print.
From the paradoxical nature of our impending quantum (computing)future to the enduring mystery of the Big Bang; the ideas exploredin HOLO 2 could not be any bigger – and it shows! HOLO 2 contains 236 pages of ‘emerging trajectories in art, science, and technology’.
It’s no surprise that insatiable curiosity mixed with, at times, stubborn determination yielded another beast of a magazine – at 236 pages, HOLO 2 is not only bigger than our first outing; it surpasses it in many ways! CreativeApplications.Net have never worked with so many contributors across such great distances, or dove deeper into the past to understand the present – art and science have come a little closer together again.
Have you recently run out of great music to listen? Machine learning algorithms can help with daily issues too! Acai is an open source project initialised by Berry Labs, is trying to solve the problem of The Tyranny of Choice (a.k.a “Paradox of Choice) to describe the misery of users facing over-abundant choices. In the music area, especially in the age of streaming music, this paradox becomes so significant that it affects every single piece of choice when users try to enjoy music. It’s why this project was born.
Music recommendation engines are not new to the world. However, most of them are built on music catalog and acoustic fingerprints to generate playlist by similarities on genre, pattern etc. In addition to music data, some solutions leverage social media as well such as celebrities’ posts on Twitter. Adding social media information opens a new window of methodology of determining music preferences. But they are not neutral to the foundation of music appreciation, of which the most important element is the users themselves. The social effects resulted from the social media information lead to bias in music appreciation not only due to the limitation of exposure to music pools – most of the recommended tracks may come from selected lists like Billboard – but also potentially psychological effects such as peer pressure.
At the Google Cultural Institute’s Lab, a team of Google software engineers, artists and creative coders come together to experiment at the crossroads of art and technology. They believe that through the collaboration with the cultural sector, curators and artists we can develop the best tools and technology for cultural institutions around the world. They created this space for you to explore the Google Arts & Culture Experiments. The Experiments are aimed at discovering new ways people can explore art and browse the collections of our partner museums from around the world.
Try out experiments at the crossroads of art and technology, created by artists and creative coders with Google Arts & Culture.
The selection of artworks are from Google Arts & Culture, shared by museums and archives around the world. Due to the limitation of some devices performances you should open one experiment at a time.
Gluon, a ‘workshop of the future’ that supports multidisciplinary initiatives, invites artists to submit proposals for the development and production of new work in collaboration with the Brain and Emotion Laboratory, a research group that is part of the department of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Maastricht (NL).
Gluon offers a two-month residency at the Brain and Emotion Laboratory lead by Prof. Beatrice De Gelder. The goal of the residency is to create a new artwork which integrates and/or reflects upon the innovative technological and scientific developments researched by the Brain and Emotion Laboratory.
Artists are invited to develop, in collaboration with the researchers from the Brain and Emotion Laboratory, a prototype for a new artwork. The group investigates emotion and cognition in humans. Their projects include investigations of emotion and cognition in neurologically intact participants, but also in patients with focal brain lesions, and prosopagnosia, neuropsychiatric populations such as people with schizophrenia, autism and Williams syndrome. They use behavioral methods, electrophysiology, EMG, as well as functional imaging.
Artforum, an international magazine and website specializing in contemporary art, reviews Bogotá’s leading art spaces and events including El Salón de Ocio y la Fantasía (SOFA), a place for the 10th CYFEST’s Digital Media Program. The full text of an article is available from Artforum’s website.
Left: Alarcón Criado Gallery’s Julio Criado, curator Carolina Castro, Artishock’s Alejandra Villasmil, ArteBA’s Amalia Curutchet, and Malba’s Lucrecia Palacios. Right: Artist Anna Frants, curator Leah Stuhltrager, and mapping programmer Olivia Jackson. All photos: Alex Fialho.
The 10th CYFEST opened in Bogota October 27, 2016. Its “Digital Revolution” Media Program has been accompanied by the new artwork “No. 0” from CYLAND founder and CYFEST curator Anna Frants.
At SOFA, the structural framework of “No. 0” has been built on site at Corferias prior to the event’s opening. Throughout the first two days of SOFA, the many visual components of the artwork has been placed, moved, and connected to the structural framework in a collaboration between representatives of CYLAND and visitors to SOFA. At SOFA, “No. 0” is equal parts new media art installation and social practice “intervention”.
Forecast encourages interdisciplinary exchange and public discussion on the ideas of the future. From October 1 to November 30, 2016, creative minds from anywhere in the world working in various disciplines may submit their proposals. Of these concepts, Forecast will invite 30 applicants to discuss their ideas and present them to the public at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) during the Forecast Forum from March 27 to April 1, 2017. At the end of the Forecast Forum, each of the six mentors will select one concept to accompany to its realization. The outcomes of these collaborations will be presented October 16–21, 2017, at the Forecast Festival at the HKW.
As an international platform for knowledge transfer, Forecast offers pioneers from anywhere in the world working in various disciplines the chance to work with accomplished mentors toward bringing their projects to fruition, and to present them to the public. Forecast transcends the boundaries of disciplines and genres to provide insight into creative production processes, and makes space for the questions on the minds of the next generation of trailblazers.
The first edition of Forecast 2015/2016
For each edition, Forecast selects six mentors of various disciplines who offer interested participants their expertise in specifying and realizing their pioneering project ideas. The following mentors are participating in the current edition of Forecast in 2016/2017: curator Hou Hanru (CHN), designer Heather Martin (GB), video artist Bjørn Melhus (DE/NOR), architect Philippe Rahm (CH), choreographer Richard Siegal (USA), and composer Jennifer Walshe (IRL).
KIKK 2016, an international festival of digital and creative cultures, takes place November 3‒5, 2016 in Namur, Belgium. Its interest lies in the artistic and economic implications of new technologies. The event gathers people of all backgrounds from all around the world. They are designers, scientists, makers, entrepreneurs, artists, architects, developers or musicians. They come to KIKK to tell you their personal anecdotes, to share professional experiences and innovative ideas, to present an artwork, a project or a product.
This year, through a program of conferences, exhibitions and workshops, KIKK Festival will analyze how art and science collide in contemporary culture with new waves of artists exploring the physical phenomenons of light, radio, acoustic, magnetic, water or matter waves interferences. Interfering also means to come into opposition. Numerous activists, critical designers are scrambling systems to denounce intrusive practices or policies, others condemn mass surveillance and question privacy issues. Design and economy are also concerned by the subject: a disruptive product, practice or market, can be first seen as an interference before being considered as a new model of disruptive innovation.
