Born Digital
Vector Festival, 2018
Now in its sixth year, Vector Festival showcases experimental new media art across a series of events that include exhibitions, performances, workshops, discussion panels, and screenings, curated by Katie Micak and Martin Zeilinger.
For 5 days, 32 artists and curators participated in our multi-venue programming, which included:
2 exhibitions
1 GIF installation
2 screenings
2 panel discussions
1 evening of live performance
1 workshop
EXHIBITION:
BORN DIGITAL
July 12 – August 18, 2018 at InterAccess
Artists: Adam Basanta, A.M. Darke, Joseph DeLappe, Judith Doyle, Ann Hirsch, Chris Kerich, LuYang
Expanding on the festival theme, Vector Festival 2018’s flagship exhibition features performative artist positions that explore how human connections are framed by ‘the digital’ and how they are dictated by technological apparatuses. The new and historical works presented in the exhibition include wide-ranging experiments with medium and form, and include video installation, kinetic sculpture, social media investigations, and paper-based art, among others.
With a focus on the diverse and varied ways in which media art engages with the births, deaths, pasts, and futures of the digital, Born Digital asks how translations and interjections of bodies between physical and digital spaces inform relationships with others, the machine, and the self. What might it mean to witness the birth of a new technology, or to be ‘born digital’? How does the term ‘digital native’ function in relation to this? How do artists adopt, advance, hack, or dismantle digital technologies to critically reflect on their meanings and implications? What comes after the digital, how do post-humanist, post-digital, and post-Internet artistic perspectives inflect these questions?
PERFORMANCE AND SCREENINGS:
INNER WORKINGS
Performances at 918 Bathurst. July 13, 2018
Adam Basanta (Montreal) will be performing Small Movements, a sound performance using tuned microphone feedback, modified amplification techniques, and kinetic elements. Collaboration between Afaq Ahmed Karadia and Adam Tindale (Toronto) explores correlations between moving bodies and improvised sound, using custom-built, sensor-based instruments. And, micha cárdenas (Santa Cruz) presents a speculative telematic mixed-reality performance, Becoming Dragon, in which the “Real Life Experience” requirement transgender people must satisfy before qualifying for Gender Confirmation Surgery is replaced by a yearlong, virtual “Second Life Experience” leading towards Species Reassignment Surgery.
WORDS BEFORE ALL ELSE: ORAL HISTORIES IN THE DIGITAL AGE
Screening at Jackman Hall, Art Gallery of Ontario. July 14, 2018
Artists: Zacharias Kunuk, Mary Kunuk, Zack Khalil + Adam Shingwak Khalil, Trevino L. Brings Plenty Elizabeth LaPensée, Skawennati, Doug Smarch Jr.
What happens when traditional stories are envisioned digitally? In an era where the physical blends into the digital, what is the (a)/(e)ffect on oral transmissions of knowledge, art, ideas, and cultural material from one generation to another? What is lost in a society that does not acknowledge specific types of histories? How have digital technologies transformed traditional storytelling? These works make use of experimental forms of computer animation to work through these questions.
ART ON THE SCREENS
Screening at Celebration Square, Mississauga. July 16, 2018
Artists: David Blandy, Clive Holden, Susanna Flock, Nadine Lessio
Vector's off-site screening intervenes critically and provocatively in this spectacular public space by presenting a range of video works exploring networked technologies- oscillation between the instructional, the cautionary, the speculative, and the meditative.
OFFSITE/ ONLINE EXHIBITIONS | PANELS / TALKS| WORKSHOPS
OFFSITE
Exhibition at The Brandscape. July 13-15, 2018
Ecstasy//Normal 002, by Tobias Williams, is an animation which came out of a body of work exploring the designs used for ecstasy pills sold on the black market. The imagery used to mark these drugs represent a unique form of semiotic communication and aesthetic choices which are derived from a combination of networked cultures and the illicit nature of the drug trade. These forces come together to create a unique underground ecosystem for design, free of the limitations of copyright which runs parallel to global consumerism. Research for this project was conducted by studying pill designs from online pill testing websites and social media platforms.
LOCAL HOST
Online Exhibition. July 12 - August 18, 2018
Works by: Sarah Friend, Soo Jin Rho, Timo Kahlen, Dina Kelberman, Amanda Low
For the second year Vector Festival includes a web-based exhibition in which participating artists experiment with new and emerging exhibition formats. Many of the works included reinterpret established ‘offline’ forms of artistic expression for new online contexts. As such, exhibited works include durational pieces, experimental games, concrete poetry, interactive sound works, moving images, and experimental narrative.
INNER WORKINGS PANEL
Vtape. July 14, 2018
Panelists: micha cárdenas,Afaq Ahmed Karadia, Nadine Lessio, Adam Tindale
Vector artists in conversation on performing with and through technology. Moderated by Katie Micak.
ARTIST TALKS & DISCUSSION
InterAccess. July 15, 2018.
Talks by: Judith Doyle, Chris Kerich, Amanda Low, Tobias Williams
Mini lectures to learn about the artists’ projects, practices, and ideas behind the selected works in Born Digital.
INTRO TO REALITY CAPTURE FOR VIRTUAL PLACES
Workshop at InterAccess led by Hector Centeno. July 14, 2018
An introductory workshop to the concepts, techniques and production pipelines involved in the creation of alternative virtual places (AR/VR) through the capturing and transformation of reality. The principles and basic techniques of photogrammetry, photorealistic texturing, volumetric video and theory of spatial audio capture will be covered, and an overview on how to quickly bring them all together into a game engine in order to build virtual spaces.
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