Danila Frants, MINECRAFT: CREEPER GO BOOM!, Workshop for Children
The original program Minecraft is a game made by Notch and Mojang that consists of blocks making up a 3D world. Its initial purpose was to have the player build a shelter and survive against monsters, but players now use Minecraft’s 3D blocks to create art – architecture, huge statues, and more. When Multiplayer appeared, people started using Minecraft to create things that Notch had never anticipated by building on each other’s ideas. The presentation will be hosted at matcatsmp.com, one of the servers to embrace user-made mods that have changed Minecraft entirely. This specific server is a perfect replica of а real-life society including an economic system, which requires logic to participate in. The presentation will feature a virtual art exhibition.
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Dorit Chrysler, THEREMIN, lecture,
Invented 1919 by Russian electrophysicist Lev Sergeyevich Termen, the Theremin generates sound without being touched. Notoriously hard to play, it is one of the first electronic musical instruments that inspired the creation of synthesizers in future generations. This lecture will be given by Dorit Chrysler, who is called “Theremin Queen”. Not only she is one of the most famous Theremin players, she also composes music for this extraordinary instrument.
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Dmitry Bulatov, «SCIENCE ART AND THE TECHNOLOGICAL UNCONSCIOUS», lecture
Even though science and technology today are traditionally recognized as tools dependent on practical and utilitarian considerations, in reality the motifs underlying technological progress are far from being that straightforward. Before these tools and techniques get braided into the fabric of social life, logical propositions which lie in their base, born by our rational faculties, will have to come through complex labyrinths of the psyche. To what degree are the discourse and contexts of contemporary technological art dependent on the anthropological matrix traditionally binding together beliefs and rituals, the real and the imaginary, subject and object? Focusing on the artworks created with the help of the most state-of-the-art means offered by the 21st century—robotics, IT, biomedicine, and nanotechnology—Dmitry Bulatov, the curator of the National Center for Contemporary Arts (Kaliningrad Branch, Russia) attempts to disclose the origins of modern technological myth, which insists on the everlasting value of efficiency, control, technical development, and economic expansion.
James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau, Afterlife, ongoing since 2009.
Dmitry Bulatov,«EVOLUTION HAUTE COUTURE: ART AND SCIENCE IN THE POSTBIOLOGICAL AGE», video screening
In the context of the video screening the National Centre for Contemporary Arts (Kaliningrad Branch, Russia) presents a part of the collection of documentaries about artworks recently created using the latest 21st Century technologies: ALife, robotics, bio and genetic engineering, etc.
Stelarc,Walking Head, 2007 (fragment from a film)
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Fred Forest, THE TRADERS BALL, Presentation
The artist Fred Forest, famous pioneer of contemporary art, will talk about his life and art and present his project “The Traders Ball”. Almost everybody knows by now that the global ECONOMIC CRISIS is not merely an effect of the normal workings of the free market, but the inevitable result of calculated FINANCIAL OPERATIONS on a massive scale, undertaken by powerful banking institutions, which out of a pure spirit of philanthropy and generosity, have brought entire nations to the brink of bankruptcy, in pursuit of the wellbeing of the people of the world. With his trademark over-the-top irony, Forest launched this project sharing his point of view on the financial crisis.
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Sophie Lavaud, ACTIVE MATRIX, Master Class
Sophie Lavaud presents her artwork Active Matrix, which is an immersive interactive installation that allows the audience to wander freely inside an existing painting, modeled in 3D. It explores the idea of “Augmented Paintings” where the viewer is allowed to modify the composition in real time. This work has been based first on Kandinsky’s painting “Yellow-Red-Blue” and then on his projects for “another” theater as an “abstract scene”. The idea is to promote a sensory, emotional and innovative experience of feeling present in the world created by the painter, live in and be part of it by moving the virtual painting into different states according to the participants’ actions and gestures.
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Michael J. Schumacher Phill Niblock, APPROACHES TO MULTI-CHANNEL SOUND, lecture
Schumacher and Niblock will talk about the challenges and rewards of presenting to an unsuspecting public the virtues of sound as «art», an object-less experience within a strongly visually biased context. They will discuss this from the point of view of both presenter and artist, looking at historical precedents, at how composers and audiences respond to architectural space, and at the role of technology. There will be a question and answer session.
