[aha] PIXXELPOINT 2009 – Once Upon a Time in the West

[Domenico Quaranta]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


PIXXELPOINT 2009 – 10th International New Media Art Festival

Once Upon a Time in the West
December 4 – 11, 2009
Nova Gorica (SI) – Gorizia (IT)

Curator: Domenico Quaranta

Organization: Kulturni dom Nova Gorica

Partners:
Associazione Lucide, Gorizia
DAMS Gorizia, Università di Udine
Zavod Kinoatelje
Istituto italiano per la cultura in Slovenia, Ljubljana
Ambasciata Olandese in Slovenia
Fondazione Cassa di risparmio di Gorizia


Kulturni Dom Nova Gorica (Slovenia) is proud to announce the 10th  
edition of the International New Media Art Festival Pixxelpoint, that  
will open at the Mestna galerija Nova Gorica on December 4, 2009, at  
8.00 PM. The festival will take place from December 4 to December 11,  
2009, and will have two venues: the Mestna Galerija Nova Gorica, every  
day from 9.00 AM to 7.00 PM; and the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di  
Gorizia (Via Carducci 2, Gorizia), every day from 2.00 to 7.00 PM.  
Furthermore, Web based works have been collected in an online gallery  
designed in collaboration with Club Internet (www.clubinternet.org)  
and proudly hosted by Padiglione Internet (www.padiglioneinternet.com)  
– a project by Miltos Manetas for the Venice Biennale. The online  
exhibition, open every day, 24/24, will be screened in the two venues  
of the festival as well.

Pixxelpoint, now celebrating its 10th birthday, has become an  
internationally established New Media Art festival, well known in  
Slovenia and abroad. Its primary interest is to bring information  
technologies and New Media Art to a broader audience, and to help new  
generations in developing an alternative, more “mature” use of the  
computer.


THE FESTIVAL THEME
Once Upon a Time in the West

We keep on talking about “new media”, while in actually fact these  
media are anything but new. The Net is twenty years old, if we start  
counting from the advent of the Web, forty if we start from Arpanet.  
Spacewar!, the first videogame ever, is more or less the same age.  
Virtual worlds are the updated, lighter versions of a technology  
acclaimed as “the future” when Second Life programmers were still  
in diapers; social networks are the bastard sons of Fidonet. As for  
the computer, it is younger than Lord Byron, but certainly not than  
his daughter Ada.

Once upon a time there was the electronic frontier, an abandonware  
myth which was able to regenerate itself thanks to the continuous  
advance of the frontier itself. Like in space, in technological  
progress there's no ocean at the end of the trip. But, unlike the  
space race, the race to the next technology is endless, and  
endlessness is boring.

Yet, while we got used to innovation and the day-after rhetorics, we  
have never got used to the loss of the past. We look back to what was  
new yesterday and is trash today, and we feel a deep sense of  
nostalgia. Commodore 64 and 386dx. The first Apple Macintosh. Bulletin  
Board Systems. Animated gifs. Glittering images. Web buttons. Super  
Mario. Doom. Napster. Jennicam. Mosaic. ASCII art. MIDIs and MOOs. Not  
to mention VHS, vinyl, audio cassettes, cathode tubes, portable  
radios, faxes. It is the kind of nostalgia that we feel for a relative  
who died young, once the pain abates: you are left wondering what kind  
of man he would have been. Or for someone that, once grown up, does  
not live up to his or her promise. Sometimes nostalgia develops into  
historical research, and becomes media archeology. We don't look for  
the technologies that we once loved, but those we have never seen in  
action.

But in both the cases, in the artistic field this sentimental look at  
the past is producing some brand new, interesting stuff. Reviving dead  
media and obsolete technologies, retrieving and rekindling their  
aesthetics, making them do things they were never expected to do, and  
telling stories about them with other means is proving to be a sound  
artistic strategy – undoubtedly more so than “the exploration of  
the artistic potential of new media” which became the mantra of most  
New Media Art. This happens because, when you give up on the rhetorics  
of novelty, what is left on stage is the human element: the man of the  
past who domesticated the media, put his own life into them and was  
changed by them; and the man of the present, who looks back on that  
past with the same sentiment as the venerable Sergio Leone looked to  
the West.

Indeed in spaghetti westerns, as in this show, nostalgia is just a  
minimal part of the whole thing. The decision to use obsolete media  
reveals can be act of cultural resistance against the present and this  
marketing strategy, as well as proprietary software and hardware; a  
way to make something new with old means; the resiult of the choice to  
work withing a defined set of constraints. In some cases, it is the  
juicy fruit of a steampunk imagination; iIn other cases, looking back  
to the history of the media goes hand in hand with looking back to  
your own personal history.


Dr. Domenico Quaranta (1978, http://domenicoquaranta.com) is a  
contemporary art critic and curator who lives and works in Brescia,  
Italy. He focused his research on the impact of the current techno- 
social developments on the arts, with a specific interest in art in  
networked spaces, from the Internet to virtual worlds. As an art  
critic, he is a regular contributor to Flash Art magazine; his essays,  
reviews and interviews appeared in many magazines, newspapers and web  
portals. His first book titled, NET ART 1994-1998: La vicenda di  
Äda’web was published in 2004; he also co-edited, together with  
Matteo Bittanti, the book GameScenes. Art in the Age of Videogames  
(Milan, October 2006) and contributed to a number of books and  
publications.
He curated and co-curated a number of exhibitions, including:  
Connessioni Leggendarie. Net.art 1995-2005 (Milan 2005); GameScenes  
(Turin 2005); Radical Software (Turin 2006); Holy Fire. Art of the  
Digital Age (Bruxelles 2008); For God’s Sake! (Nova Gorica, 2008);  
RE:akt! | Reconstruction, Re-enactment, Re-reporting (Bucharest –  
Ljubljana - Rijeka 2009); Expanded Box (ARCO Art Fair, Madrid 2009);  
Hyperlucid (Prague Biennal, Prague 2009). He lectures internationally  
and teaches “Net Art” at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in  
Milan.


EXHIBITING ARTISTS:

AIDS-3D (Germany): Forever Heath Death, 2009
Mats Andren & Anders Carlsson (Sweden): HT Gold, 2008
Michael Bell Smith (USA): Grid Panic, 2006
David Blackmore (UK): Cracked LCDs, 2009
Ian Bogost (USA): Guru meditation, 2009
BridA / Tom Kerševan, Sendi Mango, Jurij Pavlica (Slovenia): Nanoplot,  
2009
Wayne Clements (UK): The Best and Worst of Possible Worlds, 2009
Vuk Ćosić (Slovenia): ASCII sculpture, 2009
Chris Coy (USA): Chariots of Mortal Combat Fire, 2007
Florian Cramer (The Netherlands): Floppy Films, 2009
Olle Essvik (Sweden): Devices, 2007 – 2008
Vladimir Frelih (Croatia): Katalogue, 1998 – 2000
Darko Fritz (Croatia): Home, 2002 – 2009
James Houston (UK): Big Ideas (Don't Get Any), 2008
IOcose (Italy): Floppytrip, 2009
Tom Jennings (USA): Alan Turing made flat, 2000
Oliver Larić (Germany): 787 Cliparts, 2006
Les Liens Invisibles (Italy): Never Ending Happy End, 2008
Olia Lialina (Germany): Animated Gif Model, 2005
Paul Matosic (UK): Deconstructed New Technology, 1995 – ongoing
Eilis McDonald (Ireland): Lo-fi Wi-fi, 2008
Rosa Menkman (The Netherlands): Happy Birthday Goto80, 2009
Rafael Rozendaal (The Netherlands): RGB, 2002
Thatisaworkaround (Greece): The Enemy Agent and You II, 2009
Thisgasthing (Italy): CABOTRONIUM, 2009
Eugenio Tisselli (Spain): Childhood Games, 1984 – 2009
Tonylight (Italy): Space LED, 2009
UBERMORGEN.COM (Austria): Black 'n white, 2000 – 2009
Harm Van Den Dorpel (The Netherlands): Bison.gif, 2008
Windows Media Players (UK): Graphic Interchange Series: Victorian  
Device, 2009
Math Wrath: While Playing Astro Grover in 1989


FOR THE FULL PROGRAM, CHECK OUT:

http://www.pixxelpoint.org

MORE INFOS:

http://www.pixxelmusic.com

http://domenicoquaranta.com

PRESS:

IMAGES 1 (zip, 8.1 MB) - http://domenicoquaranta.com/public/PRESS/PX09_press_pack1.zip

IMAGES 2 (zip, 8.2 MB) - http://domenicoquaranta.com/public/PRESS/PX09_press_pack2.zip


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Domenico Quaranta

web. http://domenicoquaranta.com/
email. info at domenicoquaranta.com
mob. +39 340 2392478
skype. dom_40