Events

The exhibition will present the works of the three IFCA Student Award winners who have all been developing their own artistic expression, working method and strategy of using the digital medium. From 14th till 30th of October in Gallery Media Nox.

YAMAMAYU is a bio-acoustic sound-research project centring on the sonority of the Japanese oak silkmoth, a nocturnal moth that, between the middle and the end of the 19th century, successfully assimilated in Slovenian deciduous forests.

Private Dots and Public Clouds is based on a recording of a silent online meeting using a video conference software. During this meeting, the artists refrained from talking and tried to listen to the space that emerged out of the overlapping sounds of all our individual environments within their laptop speakers.

The recently declared COVID-19 epidemic and related measures, including restrictions of public events in Slovenia, have called for changes in this year's format of the festival programme in order to adapt to the new conditions. More information on the festival programme and dates to follow shortly.

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IFCA and Sonda Foundation are, together with TONSPUR Kunstverein Wien, taking care of, arranging and managing the TONSPUR_passage Maribor (passage / tunnel between Glavni trg and Rotovški trg) or an 8-channel sound instrument in a public space that plays music and sound compositions every day during 10:00 and 20:00 throughout the hole year.

Due to restrictive measures, this year’s edition of the International Festival of Computer Arts (IFCA) will extend over October, November and early December. The student exhibition has just been concluded in real space with the award presentation in the Media Nox gallery, and visitors are welcome to attend the first sound installation in the Tonspur Passage. Online discussions have also been launched and will take place throughout the following month as a replacement for live conferences with artists and theoreticians.

In his Cosmic Rain project, the artist Tilen Sepič analyses and visualises the phenomenon of “cosmic rays”, high-energy particles invisible to the naked eye that originate in space, mostly outside our solar system.

The 8-channel sound installation links science and art. From the viewpoint of art, the scientific investigation of vibrational signals emitted by animals (biotremology) is especially interesting because of the sonic manifestation of animal activity; through a specific organisation of a sound mass, such investigation can also extend to the field of interspecies communication.

Throughout art history, some artworks have been lucky enough to be understood not simply as art, but as useful tools, public spaces, cultural phenomena, or memes. Line Rider is one such artwork.

The project is dedicated to soft tissue engineering and developing a robot with functioning biological muscle which moves the body. On the frontiers of art that uses live materials to create new forms, these new creatures raise ontological and ethical questions about their status, new protocols of handling and question our attitude towards them.

In the framework of konS, Projekt Atol will produce and manage a mobile ecological laboratory with the working name ISOLAB 3000, which will be equipped with systems for receiving, processing and visualising data gathered by remote sensing and mobile environmental sensor networks. It will also serve as an emergency mobile environmental station.

The website tracks Moss and Brownell’s distanced, virtual-based collaboration as they develop the upcoming project Gallus Gallus Roboticus, as part of the project konS – Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art.

The Plantportation research project has been conceived as a multi-layer venture into the dimension of quantum entanglement and thereby its possible theoretical consequences and interactions, which also include quantum teleportation.

Extractor is a dystopian board game designed by Simon Denny that maps the possible dynamic of global data companies or ‘platforms’ that fight for global domination. Three game sets are available at the IFCA and can be borrowed until the end of 2020.

Using their own work Real Game Play as a departure point, Omsk Social Club will examine the use of Fiction-Theory in its unabridged living form. Exploring the modes in which terraforming life becomes not only a task of survival but also a task of crafting reality positions for better or worse in our current world and how we could collectively hack these systems to manifest imaginative living, transformative social presence and alternative landscapes before others do it for us.

Zen Flesh <> Zen Blood

Just as there are many diverse genealogies of computers, AI, algorithms or the digital, so there are many problems tearing apart our current societies, from resurgence of populism and nationalism to the lack of dialogue or commitment to reasoning or science. Janoščík attempts to connect and transcend these complexities by presenting his speculative history, developing a media theory of trauma and hijacking of the current popular culture. A few remarks about his own work and affective investment in the art school environment make a coda, an exemplification of this trauma-oriented, pharmacological and pop-philosophical approach.

Programme curator Tjaša Pogačar curated the festival’s main programme entitled Infrastructural Complex: Alter(ed) Earth that focuses on the infrastructural aspects of the relation between computer technologies and planetary ecologies.

The sound creators, vocal manipulators and music composers of HekLab, which has its home in GT22, have played and performed at many festivals in Slovenia in the last two years. The selection from the 2019/2020 archive offers us a pleasant conclusion to the 26th MFRU and heralds a peaceful leap into 2021.

The festival’s conclusion features a varied daily programme that will take place online and in the public space.

The 27th International Festival of Computer Art (IFCA) will take place in Maribor between 8 and 15 October this year.

The space of art appears expanded, however it builds itself (still) over the realities appearing as heterogeneous and being artificially tied one onto the other; which would be abolished only by a new notion of the image. While Markus Huemer through conscious following of "someone classic" again fails to achieve that, he at the same time demonstrates the modernity of new media, shows their domination, instead of blurring their effects.

Claudia Seidel

http://www.eastartmap.org/

Academy of Fine Art and Faculty of Computer and Information Science, University of Ljubljana, graduate study of Video and New Media, 05

The performer is trying to seduce the computer in order to find in it what it lacks to become an ideal partner.

A improvised musical session - 7 ladies came together for the first tirne, with different instruments into one space, for one live session, an lhour and a half long sound recording.

Because we want to ensure the best possible performance, we are looking for volunteers who will help us prepare the best edition of the festival so far! Do you accept the challenge?