WIP Arts & Technology Festival 2024
October 18 to 27, 2024 CYENS Center of Excellence, Plateia Dimarchias 23, Nicosia, Cyprus
The Interface Cultures department is celebrating its 20th anniversary with many activities.
In addition to the kick-off of the 20th anniversary celebrations as part of the Kunstunicampus for the Ars Electronica Festival 2024, we are in Nicosia / Cyprus with students from the Interface Cultures department.
A call for proposals by the Cyens Center of Excellence in Nicosia selected two works by master students to be shown in the newly opened part of the center and presented as part of the WIP Festival 2024. The PhD students of the Critical Data research group are presening their research approaches as poster interventions in public space and PhD student Marta Beauchamp will open the WIP Festival with a performance.
Many thanks to the Austrian Embassy in Nicosia and Ambassador Dr. Susanne Bachfischer for their support!
Critical Data On Tour
This year, the PhD students of Manuela Naveau, Professor of Critical Data at the Interface Cultures department, invited the artist Vladan Joler to reflect on issues relating to the visualization of knowledge in complex contexts. The starting point for this was the outstanding work "Calculating Empires", which Vladan Joler developed together with Kate Crawford and for which the two were awarded the S+T+ARTS Grand Prize - Artistic Exploration by the European Commission in cooperation with Ars Electronica Linz. Two intensive workshop settings with Vladan Joler led to the idea that artistic research should be brought into the public space and discussed there. Five posters were created especially for Nicosia, which will hang in public spaces and invite reflection. Guided city tours are intended to draw attention to the artists' research and contextualize it in the context of Cyprus and the extraordinarily interesting political context.
Interface Culture is exhibiting…
Two students have been selected by the WIP Festival to present their work in the newly opened part of the Cyens Center. Martina Pizzigoni, an Italian student from Linz, presents a metahuman with the work (Very) Neural System and reflects on her own person as a virtual self in a time when questions about the identity of people are influenced by social media and AI systems. The young artist visualizes questions such as what my metahuman knows about me that I may have already forgotten, or what it means to have your own “artificial assistant” in an impressive interactive installation.
In collaboration with Alessia Fallica - also known as MAalex as an artistic duo - Martina Pizzigoni created the VR work I Died On Facebook, which can be seen in the entrance area of the Cyens Centre as the second interactive installation and thus presents Interface Cultures in a very prominent way as part of the festival. It is a kind of gamification of death and corresponding rituals and encourages us to think about dying in our time driven by digitalization strategies.
Further information
Critical Data Research Group
The Critical Data Research Group (Department of Interface Cultures, Kunstuni Linz) operates at the confluence of media/digital art, interactive art, interface design, and participatory practices, intersecting art, technology, and artistic research. While the group’s candidates explore different topics, they share a common focus on Critical Data, which manifests in their projects through explorations of interfaces, translations, intermediations, and sonification.
The Interface Cultures PhD group includes graduate students from the University of the Arts Linz, FHNW Basel, Zurich University of the Arts, and the Cyprus University of Technology, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Manuela Naveau.
The Critical Data Mapping workshop is held under the mentorship of Prof. Vladan Joler.
Master Students
Martina Pizzigoni martypizzi98.wixsite.com/martina-pizzigoni
Alessia Fallica fallicaalessia1998.wixsite.com
Graduate Students
Alexia Achilleos halexiaachilleos.com
Myrto Aristidou thearthub.eu/personnel/myrto-aristidou
Marta Beauchamp hwww.martabeauchamp.net
CesarEscudero Andaluz escuderoandaluz.com
Emanuel Gollob www.emanuelgollob.com
Mentors
Vladan Joler labs.rs
Manuela Naveau manuelanaveau.at, ufgonline.ufg.ac.at
WIP Arts & Technology Festival 2024
The WIP Festival is a constantly evolving series of activities and exhibitions that focus on synergies between art and technology.
WIP 2024 explores two opposing theoretical frameworks: the Symbiocene and Hyperreality. These worldviews reflect different possibilities for the future of humanity and form a philosophical dialectic within the intertwined technological and ecological crises we face. The urgency of recalibrating humanity's role in an increasingly unpredictable system demands our attention.
