New media artists Līga Spunde, Līga Vēliņa, Alvis Misjuns and Lauris Taube will participate in the festival with augmented reality artworks in different parts of the city, thematically paying attention to both the knowledge of Valmiera’s urban environment and aspects of cultural history. They are works of art in a public space that, with the help of digital technology, create an interaction with the surroundings and allow you to see the city in a completely different light.
Kontiņa explained that the idea of the festival came from the desire to make technology and multimedia more democratic and to show the public how diverse and actually simple they can be used on a daily basis.
“The desire was to reduce the barriers, fears and obstacles that virtual or augmented reality seems to be something very far away, but in fact it is right here around us.
With different art forms, cultural experiences, we can show it, experience it, and then when it comes into our everyday life, as a user, we don’t fear it anymore, because we’ve had a cultural experience where we’ve realized – yes, this is what we have around,” said the curator of the festival.
Artist Līga Vēliņa revealed that she became interested in multimedia while studying new media art in Liepaja and studying visual communication at the Art Academy. Currently, Vēliņa is studying for a doctorate, has focused on technology research and emphasized that technology has become an extension of human reality, formed by, for example, smart devices that we use on a daily basis.
“It’s a challenge for artists at the festival. We have Līga, which has a lot of experience with various technologies, but there are artists who work in more traditional forms every day.
The festival becomes a platform for experiments and the search for something new.
It’s not just technology, but also new collaborations, because there are artists who are traditionally visual artists, but the multimedia festival allows them to work with sound for the first time,” revealed Kontiņa.
Multimedia, by its form and essence, is an interdisciplinary union of different genres, so it allows artists to express themselves in many different ways, explained the curator of the festival.
Association “Orbīta” (Semjons Hanins, Artūrs Punte, Vladimirs Svetlovs, Sergejs Timofeevs) has created a dialogic light installation in the urban environment “Parādības pīdīvs” especially for the festival, which will be a multimedia performance of objects played out by two incorrectly positioned cars that talk to each other.
“We will have a text-based installation, two machines that we perceive as actors performing our play. This is, on the one hand, related to our previous theater experience and understanding of acting – the less acting, the better for the text. Therefore, in our opinion, cars are best suited for performing texts, they simply exchange phrases, they do not imagine anything, they are as we created them,” said Punte, the representative of “Orbita”.
The installation “Next to the Phenomena” is based on a text created by all four representatives of the association in the co-writing method.
“Media art does not always mean the most modern, you can take a very old medium and discover some new properties in it.
Until now, we worked with radios or with analog technologies,” explained Punte.
The artist Linda Vēliņa will create an augmented reality work in the Bachelor Park, where she will play with the number eight as a sign of infinity and create eight sculptures, which will be a tribute to the eight bachelors who once created the park. “The most interesting part is that these sculptures also act as a musical instrument, each sculpture has its own sound that overlaps with each other. The viewer can play a musical instrument in augmented reality,” revealed the artist. The sculptures made by Velina will be experienced only digitally, through smart devices.
Kontiņa said that within the framework of the festival, guided tours will also be organized, which will take those interested to different works of art and at the same time introduce and explain the works created in multimedia.
Multimedia artist Mārtiņš Dāboliņš and composer Jaikinas Pusons (Jachin Pousson) installation with performance elements “Teleempathy” will allow you to look into real-time brain processes. For three days – from February 29 to March 2 – in the former swimming pool of Valmiera Pārgauja State Gymnasium, the artists will subject themselves to 27 different experiences with the aim of finding out whether the emotions we show with facial expressions are the same as we feel inside. The audience will be able to watch performances and projections with the brain activity of both artists in real time.
This year, the festival also created a special art and education program for young people, within the framework of which five new works were created, which talk about current topics in multimedia language – nature protection, body freedom, generational conflicts, etc. “We started this project with the aim of finding out what these topics are, which young wants to experience culture. We had a loud call whether young people need culture at all and whether they are looking for it. In the spring of last year, several topics crystallized in several meetings, including nature protection, generational conflicts, as well as more personal issues,” revealed Kontiņa. Several works have been created within the framework of the festival, which will touch on these topical topics for young people.
2024-02-20 14:03:24
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