• Date
        May 23, 2017

        Decomposing Landscape

        Buddhaditya Chattopadhyay / India
        University of Leiden
        budhaditya.org

        We have arguably entered the Anthropocene epoch, a new geological era defined by unprecedented man-made disturbances over earth's ecologies and cultural heritages. In this era, the ecological integrity as well as traditional cultures and heritage of bucolic landscapes in the emerging economies like India are endangered due to governmental pressure for rapid growth in technological infrastructure and industrial development. In this context, multi-channel sound composition Decomposing Landscape as part of a sound and video installation is developed through extensive field recordings made at specific sites now considered Special Economic Zones, situated in the eastern part of India. The work creates a discursive auditory situation to facilitate a contemplative observation of such transitive landscapes. The work intends to delineate the transition of India from a pastoral past gearing fast towards the contemporary urban, rendered within a mode of questioning. The large-scale media art project aims to practice digital technology to mediate engendered sites in contemporary art and helps disseminate cultural values to trigger public awareness. The project not only intends to foster the capacity to preserve heritage, but also records cultural transformation of conflict- ridden sites and landscapes for public intervention and artistic transformation to address the possibility of achieving reconciliation and peace.
      • Date
        May 23, 2017

        PIXELDUST

        Jesse Drew, Glenda Drew and Spencer Mathews / USA
        University of California at Davis
        www.jessedrew.com

        In a world increasingly threatened by erosion of civil rights, environmental destruction and economic disparity, PIXELDUST presents a visual/aural display of hope, faith and resoluteness through short autobiographical texts and visual portraits from inspirational figures in world history. Participants approach a shrine/altar that triggers a visual dust storm of pixels that rise from the bottom of the screen. While the 'pixeldust' swirls, an autobiographical statement is heard/displayed from an unknown person, taken from a position of hopelessness, despair or fear expressed in that person's life. As the voice/text ends, the pixels assemble and reveal the person's identity, easily recognizable figures who clearly overwhelmed their weaknesses and made substantial contributions to our world. PIXELDUST is designed to be an “engine” built to accept public contributions of inspirational figures from all points of the world. It is designed to be a public display resource to console and give hope to people around the world who fight for peace and social justice.
      • Date
        May 23, 2017

        wake vortex

        Dejan Grba / Serbia
        New Media, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of the Arts in Belgrade; Digital Art PhD Program, Interdisciplinary Studies, University of the Arts in Belgrade
        jangrba.dyndns.org

        Wake Vortex is an ongoing series of generative videos and images built around the idea that digital raster image can be treated as a three-dimensional object and viewed not just frontally but also from any other side. This process can be understood as line-scanning of digital imagery. Viewed orthogonally from the side, the image is perceived as a one-pixel wide line, while orthogonal scanning of a stacked set of video frames creates a new set of images which can be animated, and certain combinations of source materials and scanning sides/directions produces interesting results. Wake Vortex employs (re)creativity with orthogonal scanning of the artworks and cultural artifacts which were themselves developed through various modes of innovative combinatorics. Dimensional collapse in orthogonal scanning reveals new formal values and facilitates layered observation. While visually estranged, the generated imagery retains the suggestiveness of the original so the viewer intuitively regards it analytically. In aviation and seamanship, wake vortex is often a dangerous, unpredictable turbulent trail generated by the craft's motion. In this project, it points to the complexity of the imperceptible or unregistered default values of an artwork or cultural artifact, to their unforeseen expressive, cognitive, ethical and political consequences.
      • Date
        May 23, 2017

        scars&borders 

        Mitra Azar / USA
        independent
        vimeo.com/mitraazar/collections

        Scars&Borders is an ongoing archive of images shot by the artist investigating crises locations at geographical borders from the imaginary yet real perspective metaphorically located at the buffering areas between two confining countries - where technically and symbolically there's no proper jurisdiction of a country's law over another. The political danger of this zone is underlined by their prison-state status and by the strategies of distraction enabled on site via presence of duty frees and/or touristic attractions, both responsible for anesthetizing the subversive strength of those spaces. Those borders are selected on the basis of their sociopolitical and aesthetics potential in regards to disclosing narratives in the frame of challenging political situations, and studied from the point of view of an aesthetic of crises. Thus, the praxis of the artistic research looks at borders not anymore as frozen scars but rather as virtual lines of flights, optimal for the beginning of a process of deterritorialization from a certain type of bio-political control, for example the one on the notion of human movement. Scars&Borders generates a series of site-specific works with the means of photography, filmmaking and performances at borders' areas around the globe.
      • Date
        May 23, 2017

        Wake up! the fight does not only last one day

        Johana Marcela Jimenez Orozco / Colombia
        Pontifical Javeriana University-University of Caldas
        urbansoundscapes.tumblr.com

        Since a couple of months the Colombian state has taken a little more consciousness about the need to protect one of the most vital resources for every living creature: the water, the element that most value should have for the human being, which is only 0, 4% (potable water) in the entire planet, which is, nowadays, a big part contains contamination traces, result of unconscious human actions; one of the protection measures that are being carried out in Colombia I am interested in sticking out one of them, located in Villamaría, in Gallinazo county, place where mining activities were intended and would directly affect the river and all the nearby water sources; These tasks were recently suspended for legal actions implemented by people of town. I want to highlight all these fights that have the objective to look for the wellness of everybody and I want to make a call of attention with the proposal to continue supporting this goals that make this world a better one, we want to join more people to fight with us, and partner this world with the nature enjoying all that it does for us.
      • Date
        May 23, 2017

        Scenario: Valugan  

        Melissa Dela Merced/Phillipines
        University of the Phillipines Film Institute
        melissadelamerced.com

        Scnery:Valugan is based on a video installation which attempts to bring the user into various places. My first visit to the Valugan beach is 30 years after my father's first visit to the island and he narrated the changes the island is going through. Rocks were being picked off and sold as the popularity of both the beach and island is growing. I believe there is beauty in the rocks and the sound preserves its presence in time. Instead of a parallel projection of the scenery. I have decided to project the images on the floor to give emphasis on the rocks on the shore as the images are of such. By silencing out the noise of the urban and focusing on the slow crash of the waves and distant chatter of the residents of the island. I want to bring you to the beach.
      • Date
        May 23, 2017

        Three-Dimensional

        Camilo Hermida / Colombia Universidad de Caldas
        camilohermida.weebly.com

        The video explores the construction of three-dimensional spaces and questions the generation of artificial worlds, where organic is represented by polygonal geometry. It invites the viewer to immerse themselves in environments that mutate digitally, but where evolutionary processes and transformations are modeled from reality fragments. Construction of objects are not just developed with 3D tools as visual construction, it is also generated thereafter parameters of programming which reconstruct fiction and imagination in an aleatory way.
      • Date
        May 23, 2017

        Solar Flare

        Michael Fox-Jessica Rodrigues / United Kingdom-Mexico
        University of Hull-University of Guanajuato
        jessicaariannerodriguez.wordpress.com

        A1-SolarFlare | B1-StillTransmitting | B2-Even When I'm Gone A piece in three movements inspired by the film Sunshine. The piece was made with a damaged synth, and recordings of an old family piano; The synth constantly warps like how traveling through space involves the distortion of space and time itself, and the detuned piano samples are manipulated to express more than the raw sounds can. The distorted and twisted video effects reflect and amplify these themes.
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