Image by Carlotta Piccini, working with Omnidrive, Krakow earlier this month. All photos courtesy Patch.
Sometimes it’s what’s at the margins of the event circuit that’s the most promising. Outside the known names and big-budget pieces, artists are experimenting with audiovisual expression, hacking together projects and improvising with light and sound.
And in Europe and other continents, this scene is increasingly expanding beyond the cities once known as hubs – beyond a Paris or even a Berlin.
That’s why I was pleased myself to participate in Patch, a festival in Krakow, Poland. In fact, riding the trains from Ostbahnhof to Krakow, talking to people my age and fifteen years younger, it was stunning to me to think how the very geography in which this city is situated has changed in my lifetime. Whatever creative energies cross paths may still be emerging. Whether it’s Poland or rural Tennessee or Indonesia, I find the digital creative landscape is evolving internationally.
And it was fitting that Patch was dubbed “audio_visual_lab” – you get the feeling in these kinds of events that people are brewing new things and new connections.
We already got a look at Kiritan Flux’s work, Shechina ex machina. Here’s a bit more of a glimpse of what was on offer, in images and a trailer-style video of the opening.
p a t c h : audio_visual_lab – vernissage 9/11/2012 from p a t c h : audio_visual_lab on Vimeo.
Possibly, a jumpgate available to Patch attendees. More likely, Space Room, interactive projection by Elektro Moon Vision.
The author inside Worm, one of the installation projects, by Polish artists Magda Pińczyńska and Wojciech Wnuk.
German artists Swen Seyerlen and Ali Künnemeyer combined mapping and Kinect in the architectural installation “Strike this pose.”
Polish VJ Emiko‘s work begins with sensual, exquisitely-shot footage.
Workshops covered open source tech, Pd, vvvv, 3D, and here myself talking Processing and Pd — all in rapid-fire formats.
My own audiovisual performance, which I have to include here not out of some sort of ego, but because organizers Elektro Moon Vision made my glasses look awesome. Thanks. And yes, it’s nice to be both artist and journalist, to get your hands dirty.
More on the exhibitions: http://patchlab.pl/program/exhibition/
And AV performances: http://patchlab.pl/program/audiovisual-nights/
http://patchlab.pl/program/av-performances/
One particular highlight for me, and artists new to me, was the Warsaw-based A/V duo IM2 and their work Ghost. Crisp music here (sometimes tending to more electro sounds, though subdued for a more ambient evening in Krakow) meets eye-popping, accelerated visuals, rapid-fire combinations of textual layers floating atop delicate droplets of fluid, like a trip inside an information-saturated eyeball. You can get a small taste from their trailer; I hope to have more with these artists soon.
And lastly, some of my own brief photographic impressions:
A cheeky installation from Koenst & Bas K & Born digital, a la Magritte. (The comically off-kilter, splotchy projection mapping wound up being terrific.)
My live rig: Processing + Pd + Liine’s Lemur for iPad.
It was a first year, but I think the beginning of something special. I hope we’ll get to know more of the artists more in depth soon here on CDM.
More:
https://www.facebook.com/PatchAudioVisualLab#