| Domenico Quaranta on Sat, 28 Nov 2009 21:00:41 +0100 (CET) |
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| <nettime-ann> PIXXELPOINT 2009 – Once Upon a Time in the West |
. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE PIXXELPOINT 2009 â 10th International New Media Art Festival Once Upon a Time in the West December 4 â 11, 2009 Nova Gorica (SI) â Gorizia (IT) Curator: Domenico Quaranta Organization: Kulturni dom Nova Gorica Partners: Associazione Lucide, Gorizia DAMS Gorizia, Università di Udine Zavod Kinoatelje Istituto italiano per la cultura in Slovenia, Ljubljana Ambasciata Olandese in Slovenia Fondazione Cassa di risparmio di GoriziaKulturni Dom Nova Gorica (Slovenia) is proud to announce the 10th edition of the International New Media Art Festival Pixxelpoint, that will open at the Mestna galerija Nova Gorica on December 4, 2009, at 8.00 PM. The festival will take place from December 4 to December 11, 2009, and will have two venues: the Mestna Galerija Nova Gorica, every day from 9.00 AM to 7.00 PM; and the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Gorizia (Via Carducci 2, Gorizia), every day from 2.00 to 7.00 PM. Furthermore, Web based works have been collected in an online gallery designed in collaboration with Club Internet (www.clubinternet.org) and proudly hosted by Padiglione Internet (www.padiglioneinternet.com) â a project by Miltos Manetas for the Venice Biennale. The online exhibition, open every day, 24/24, will be screened in the two venues of the festival as well.
Pixxelpoint, now celebrating its 10th birthday, has become an internationally established New Media Art festival, well known in Slovenia and abroad. Its primary interest is to bring information technologies and New Media Art to a broader audience, and to help new generations in developing an alternative, more âmatureâ use of the computer.
THE FESTIVAL THEME Once Upon a Time in the WestWe keep on talking about ânew mediaâ, while in actually fact these media are anything but new. The Net is twenty years old, if we start counting from the advent of the Web, forty if we start from Arpanet. Spacewar!, the first videogame ever, is more or less the same age. Virtual worlds are the updated, lighter versions of a technology acclaimed as âthe futureâ when Second Life programmers were still in diapers; social networks are the bastard sons of Fidonet. As for the computer, it is younger than Lord Byron, but certainly not than his daughter Ada.
Once upon a time there was the electronic frontier, an abandonware myth which was able to regenerate itself thanks to the continuous advance of the frontier itself. Like in space, in technological progress there's no ocean at the end of the trip. But, unlike the space race, the race to the next technology is endless, and endlessness is boring.
Yet, while we got used to innovation and the day-after rhetorics, we have never got used to the loss of the past. We look back to what was new yesterday and is trash today, and we feel a deep sense of nostalgia. Commodore 64 and 386dx. The first Apple Macintosh. Bulletin Board Systems. Animated gifs. Glittering images. Web buttons. Super Mario. Doom. Napster. Jennicam. Mosaic. ASCII art. MIDIs and MOOs. Not to mention VHS, vinyl, audio cassettes, cathode tubes, portable radios, faxes. It is the kind of nostalgia that we feel for a relative who died young, once the pain abates: you are left wondering what kind of man he would have been. Or for someone that, once grown up, does not live up to his or her promise. Sometimes nostalgia develops into historical research, and becomes media archeology. We don't look for the technologies that we once loved, but those we have never seen in action.
But in both the cases, in the artistic field this sentimental look at the past is producing some brand new, interesting stuff. Reviving dead media and obsolete technologies, retrieving and rekindling their aesthetics, making them do things they were never expected to do, and telling stories about them with other means is proving to be a sound artistic strategy â undoubtedly more so than âthe exploration of the artistic potential of new mediaâ which became the mantra of most New Media Art. This happens because, when you give up on the rhetorics of novelty, what is left on stage is the human element: the man of the past who domesticated the media, put his own life into them and was changed by them; and the man of the present, who looks back on that past with the same sentiment as the venerable Sergio Leone looked to the West.
Indeed in spaghetti westerns, as in this show, nostalgia is just a minimal part of the whole thing. The decision to use obsolete media reveals can be act of cultural resistance against the present and this marketing strategy, as well as proprietary software and hardware; a way to make something new with old means; the resiult of the choice to work withing a defined set of constraints. In some cases, it is the juicy fruit of a steampunk imagination; iIn other cases, looking back to the history of the media goes hand in hand with looking back to your own personal history.
Dr. Domenico Quaranta (1978, http://domenicoquaranta.com) is a contemporary art critic and curator who lives and works in Brescia, Italy. He focused his research on the impact of the current techno- social developments on the arts, with a specific interest in art in networked spaces, from the Internet to virtual worlds. As an art critic, he is a regular contributor to Flash Art magazine; his essays, reviews and interviews appeared in many magazines, newspapers and web portals. His first book titled, NET ART 1994-1998: La vicenda di Ãdaâweb was published in 2004; he also co-edited, together with Matteo Bittanti, the book GameScenes. Art in the Age of Videogames (Milan, October 2006) and contributed to a number of books and publications. He curated and co-curated a number of exhibitions, including: Connessioni Leggendarie. Net.art 1995-2005 (Milan 2005); GameScenes (Turin 2005); Radical Software (Turin 2006); Holy Fire. Art of the Digital Age (Bruxelles 2008); For Godâs Sake! (Nova Gorica, 2008); RE:akt! | Reconstruction, Re-enactment, Re-reporting (Bucharest â Ljubljana - Rijeka 2009); Expanded Box (ARCO Art Fair, Madrid 2009); Hyperlucid (Prague Biennal, Prague 2009). He lectures internationally and teaches âNet Artâ at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan.
EXHIBITING ARTISTS: AIDS-3D (Germany): Forever Heath Death, 2009 Mats Andren & Anders Carlsson (Sweden): HT Gold, 2008 Michael Bell Smith (USA): Grid Panic, 2006 David Blackmore (UK): Cracked LCDs, 2009 Ian Bogost (USA): Guru meditation, 2009BridA / Tom KerÅevan, Sendi Mango, Jurij Pavlica (Slovenia): Nanoplot, 2009
Wayne Clements (UK): The Best and Worst of Possible Worlds, 2009 Vuk ÄosiÄ (Slovenia): ASCII sculpture, 2009 Chris Coy (USA): Chariots of Mortal Combat Fire, 2007 Florian Cramer (The Netherlands): Floppy Films, 2009 Olle Essvik (Sweden): Devices, 2007 â 2008 Vladimir Frelih (Croatia): Katalogue, 1998 â 2000 Darko Fritz (Croatia): Home, 2002 â 2009 James Houston (UK): Big Ideas (Don't Get Any), 2008 IOcose (Italy): Floppytrip, 2009 Tom Jennings (USA): Alan Turing made flat, 2000 Oliver LariÄ (Germany): 787 Cliparts, 2006 Les Liens Invisibles (Italy): Never Ending Happy End, 2008 Olia Lialina (Germany): Animated Gif Model, 2005 Paul Matosic (UK): Deconstructed New Technology, 1995 â ongoing Eilis McDonald (Ireland): Lo-fi Wi-fi, 2008 Rosa Menkman (The Netherlands): Happy Birthday Goto80, 2009 Rafael Rozendaal (The Netherlands): RGB, 2002 Thatisaworkaround (Greece): The Enemy Agent and You II, 2009 Thisgasthing (Italy): CABOTRONIUM, 2009 Eugenio Tisselli (Spain): Childhood Games, 1984 â 2009 Tonylight (Italy): Space LED, 2009 UBERMORGEN.COM (Austria): Black 'n white, 2000 â 2009 Harm Van Den Dorpel (The Netherlands): Bison.gif, 2008Windows Media Players (UK): Graphic Interchange Series: Victorian Device, 2009
Math Wrath: While Playing Astro Grover in 1989 FOR THE FULL PROGRAM, CHECK OUT: http://www.pixxelpoint.org MORE INFOS: http://www.pixxelmusic.com http://domenicoquaranta.com PRESS: IMAGES 1 (zip, 8.1 MB) - http://domenicoquaranta.com/public/PRESS/PX09_press_pack1.zip IMAGES 2 (zip, 8.2 MB) - http://domenicoquaranta.com/public/PRESS/PX09_press_pack2.zip --- Domenico Quaranta web. http://domenicoquaranta.com/ email. info@domenicoquaranta.com mob. +39 340 2392478 skype. dom_40 _______________________________________________ nettime-ann mailing list nettime-ann@nettime.org http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-ann