Tag: digital arts

Creative Coding Communities

Representatives from different Creative Coding Communities discussed several aspects of organizing a local creative coding community.

Representatives came from:

Amsterdam – Berlin – Tehran – Cairo – Utrecht – and Tilburg.

Artistic Communities

Artistic practices are in a period of evolution all over the world. Universities offer new degrees, artist groups create new communities of artistic exchange and new curatorial practices shape the art field from the bottom up to the establish art world – be it in Iran, in Kenya or in Argentina. However, there are challenges that these new fields of practice encounter globally as well.

 

 
 

Input 1:
The Digital Media Art Scene in Shiraz – Mohsen Hazrati and Milad Forouzandeh

Mohsen Hazrati and Milad Forouzandeh founded Dar-al-Hokoomeh, a New Media art project in Shiraz, Iran, a year after graduating from Shiraz Art Institute with the vision of creating a space for emerging artistic practices.
Dar-al-Hokoomeh has hosted exhibitions, screenings, talks, lectures and workshops and has from its inception been at the forefront of the intersection of culture, art and technology within Iran and on an international level.
Dar-al-Hokoomeh produces New Media events that are a chronological step in continuing an Iranian tradition of exploring media ranging from film to video and sound art. Not only through the exploration of the possibilities of New Media itself but also through combining this with an underlying depth, richness and humorous wit that is uniquely Shirazi.

 
 
Input 2:
The Folder Foundation – Ali Khadivar

The Folder Foundation is based in Shiraz and was established in 2017 by Ali Khadivar, an art investor and entrepreneur. It is an art sponsorship initiative focused on supporting and promoting emerging artists who are mostly – but not exclusively – active in the field of digital and new media arts. It aims to provide them with the education and the equipment they need for further developing themselves as artists. The foundation is the first in a series of planned projects, initiatives, and organisations in order to explore artistic, social, cultural, educational, technological, and the financial possibilities and intricacies of the digital, post internet era.

 
 
Input 3:
New media art and its development in Argentina – Cristian Reynaga

The context of artistic production and theoretical research of media art in Latin America reveals that its political, economical and cultural history comes from a complex social development.
The ups and downs that new media art has faced in the last 20 years in terms of production did not allow it to be a formal discipline in the institutional scene. Most of the times, the pieces reflex about itself and how the piece works or was created, and this situation avoid the perception of non-technical spectators and broad audience.
 
 
 

 
 

Invited to this international exchange project were Berlin-based designer and theoretician Amelie Hinrichsen, Alacoque Ntome, who entered the group with a perspective as a dancer as well as light technician, Awuor Onyango, who combines poetry, artistic research practice and digital means in conceptual projects of different shapes and means, Hamburg-based choreographer, music theatre and opera director Benjamin van Bebber, Frankfurt-based choreographer and performer Else Tunemyr, Leo Hofmann, who is a Swiss-German coder, composer and performer, Jared Onyango, who is a choreographer and dancer based in Nairobi and Melisa Allela, a Nairobian digital artist, designer and teacher for interactive Media at our partner the Technical University of Kenya.

 

 

Working at Technical University of Kenya, outside Nairobi…

… and at Goethe Institut Nairobi.

The interdisciplinary artistic team started its shared process in a two-week working phase in Nairobi in March 2017 and continued the collaboration in Frankfurt just before NODE17. The exchange of the artists, the discussion of the dispositive of hope and the reflection on the different circumstances of production were central for the project.

Out of that distinctive working process the artists have created a performative installation that was first showcased in Nairobi.

The final result was presented during NODE17 as part of the exhibition and was accompanied by a series of performances during the week.

anxiety anxiety (i tried to write a poem on hope but didn’t find a title)

 

Somewhere under the rainbow we sat down and analyzed its colors till it got dark. We thought, we sang and we danced, keeping up the spirit. We looked at screens for messages of hope, we looked beyond, we said our prayers. We loitered in the sun, waited for the rain and the winds of change to come. We climbed up a hill, we faced wilderness, and blinding light of love. We got used to it. We worked on, we read, we sang and we danced. We shared our thoughts and when we parted – nothing was finished. More is to come, more is to share and if we hold on to it……*CODE HOPE-SAFE STATION*…….Ground control……there’s trouble till the robins come….plz join as much u can…

CCL Nairobi / Frankfurt Artists, 2017

 
 

About the Artists

 
 

Project Partners

 

We have to express our thankfulness to Goethe Insitut Nairobi who made this exchange possible and to the Technical University of Kenya who supported us with providing funding, space, inspiring ideas and the right ground to continue a deepening relationship with the German and Kenyan digital arts scenes.

 

 

NODE Team

 

Jeanne Charlotte Vogt

Artistic Director, Board, Managing Director

Curator, Dramaturg

jeannevogt.de