10th Patchlab Digital Art Festival

Friday, October 8, 2021 - Sunday, October 10, 2021

  • Friday, October 8, 2021 - Sunday, October 10, 2021
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The tenth anniversary Patchlab Digital Art Festival is held under the banner… GAME OVER!

But worry not – the main focus is the rather obvious genre of digital media: video games. The exhibition at the Potocki Palace features The Night Journey – one of the first experimental games created by the maestro of videoart Bill Viola (USA) with the Game Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California. Visitors will be able to play games by artists including Joseph DeLappe, Lawrence Lek, Andy Kelly and the collectives Total Refusal (Austria) and Tale of Tales (Belgium). The exhibition is accompanied by online discussion panels with experts including Isabelle Arvers, Laura Palavecino and artists from the Masterskaya 15 studio in Moscow.

Celebrating the Year of Lem, marking the centenary of the author’s birth, Patchlab presents its Lemosphere. The special stream includes the interactive project Messages to the Posthuman Earth by the British collective Anagram, exploring Stanisław Lem’s answer to the question posed by the US Department of Energy: how should we warn future generations on locations of nuclear waste? He suggested encoding the information in tree DNA… The project is implemented jointly with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Warsaw and will be launched at the Jagiellonian University’s Botanical Garden; pairs of visitors experience sounds with elements of augmented reality. Citylights in the Old Town comprise the urban game E-LEM-ENTS inspired by Ijon Tichy’s adventures from The Star Diaries, while the audiovisual project Infinite Couplet shown on PLAY KRAKÓW has been prepared by the Iranian artist Ali Phi with the Arsenal Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto.

GAME OVER is also an urgent appeal for a shift in the relationship between humankind and our planet at the time when the ongoing pandemic and extreme weather stand at odds with the old belief in our dominion over nature. The motif resounds in the audiovisual concert subassemblies by the Japanese artist Ryoichi Kurokawa. The spectacular performance is shown on the final day of the festival during a special evening at the Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology, which also features a performance by Tatsuru Arai’s sound compositions exploring the nature of the universe.

And that’s just a selection of events from the extensive programme of this year’s Patchlab. The festival presents works by over thirty artists from many countries all over the globe. Hevre hosts live audiovisual performances by artists from Toronto, Budapest and Vienna and animations awarded at the Ars Electronica festival in Linz. A selection of events will be available online, as will be the workshops led by the Kissinger Twins – winners of the Webby Awards – and Weronika Lewandowska, author of the VR Noccc acclaimed at the Sundance Film Festival.

SES ALSO interview with Patchlab founders: [CLICK]

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