The 15th edition of the CYNETART festival for computer-based art is very much characterised by the essence of the Festspielhaus Hellerau that opened 100 years ago.
Between November 16th and 26th 2011 the building designed by Heinrich Tessenow especially for the proclaimed “Body Liberation“ movement will be transformed into a space laboratory where cultural, artistic and academic as well as technological dimensions of contemporary and future body perception can be experienced. Visitors are invited to explore various experimental setups at the interface between naturalness and artificiality and thus to experience their corporeality in new and different ways.
The transdisciplinary symposium “Body Innovations“ will deal with cross connections between scientific, medical, media and cultural developments in conceptions, and in the re-construction of the human body. Hereby, the CYNETART festival 2011 ties in with Dresden’s tradition of innovation that reaches from the Festspielhaus Hellerau through the Dresden expressionist artist group “Die Brücke” and the “Glass Man” at the Deutsches Hygiene Museum to the laboratories of today’s research institutions. It’a all about experience and perception of space & body & movement in relation to digital innovation. It’s about getting involved, creating and developing. It’s like to spend some time in an augmented world, somewhere between now and the future. A space, which is meant to be shaped by you.
Interactive Spheres:
During this year’s CYNETART festival, both the theoretical and the practical ECAS period one leading concept: Festival as Lab, will evolve into a next level, where it materialises itself as an actual physical experimental space. The general idea of Festival as Lab in the most consequent way. During more than a week Festspielhaus Hellerau will become a laboratory space, focused on various performances, workshops and presentations. It will involve the audience through out a fully immersive approach, where the human body is in the centre of attention. Space perception by movement combined with cutting-edge digital technology leads artists such as Anke Eckardt, who is the current ECAS artist in residence. Her installation BETWEEN I YOU I AND I ME explores ways how sound reinforced by specific visual effects shapes space and influences the body.
The ECAS winning commissions 2011 is the brand new project C.H.E.T. (Collective Hedonistic Environment Toolkit) by Intolight, a Dresden based creative agency. Following up first field-tests during a workshop at the FutureEverything festival, C.H.E.T.’s world premiere is the highlight concluding this year’s CYNETART edition. This interactive multi-user environment investigates collective creativity and creates an open platform to engage the audience to participate. Renowned and upcoming electronic music composers, like Jacob Korn, who runs the record label Uncanny Valley and who performs in venues such as Berghain (Berlin) or at Sonar Festival (Barcelona), will meet and collaborate. Moving your body to interactive deep electronic sounds could be the most intensive club night you ever experienced.
Immersive Projections:
Space is a crucial component of Recombinant Media Labs’ project CineChamber. The innovative, intermodal and mobile platform explores an architecturally staged “Gesamtkunstwerk”, where video meets light, and sound in a three-dimensional laboratory space. CynetArt is delighted to be able to show the premiere of new live modules by Andrey Kiritchenko and v4w.enko (Eugen Vashchenko) as well as Ulf Langheinrich. The presentation will be structured in three blocs and include compositions by renowned artists such as Ryoichi Kurokawa, Semiconductor, Fennesz & Lillevan, SIGNAL, Biosphere, Robert Henke & Tarik Barri among others.
World Premiere:
A brand new ECAS commission by Kimchi & Chips, UK and Korea based artists, will shape and sculpture the sound by transforming it into site-specific, dynamic light-objects.
Collaborative Space:
Further, various artists and collectives like Robert Wechsler, A.P.P.I.A. Lab, Klaus Nicolai will look into Body-Mind-Relations in a theoretical context as well as by presenting various artistic approaches, which connect dance performances with digital innovations.
Data Visualisation:
Vibrator is an interactive artwork created by Prokop Bartonicek. This data visualisation device incarnates the beauty of CYNETART 2011 _ Seite 2 von 8 stand: 21. Oct 2011 information streamings. The beauty in that case is beauty we perceive in the digital space. “The beauty of feelings, ideas and curves of bodies” as the artist describes it himself. With the idea of beauty there is the notion of pleasure coming along. An association that drives the expedition/research for digital definition of beauty to pornography. The Vibrator is connected to world’s busiest porn server, that stimulates its activity. A fully sensual experience.
Special Guest:
We’re delighted to be able to announce the special guest of this year’s festival edition who is the A/V legend Ulf Langheinrich, a long-term collaborator of Kurt Hentschläger. Langheinrich is going to joint the CineChamber guard and compose a module together with Dresden based DS-X.org. Be there, when art-history will be written.