Image above: Spruce Pines, North Carolina, Paul Dolan (2018)

OPEN CALL FOR ARTISTS & CREATIVES

Digital U: Extreme Views

 

For this year’s Digital U micro-commission, Art Gene welcomes applications from artists and creatives to exhibit projects that explore the collision of art and the environment in the digital age, selected by Digital U returning Guest Curator Alejandro Ball.

Six artists will be given the opportunity to exhibit on Art Gene’s online exhibition space Digital U-Hang. The exhibitions will be posted online between October 2019 – March 2020 and will remain online as part of Art Gene’s archive of projects.

Digital U is Art Gene’s online exhibition series. Guest Curator Alejandro Ball returns to curate Digital U: Extreme Views for the second year, to select artists and creatives whose thought-provoking work explores new or subversive ways through which to respond to environmental challenges, whether digital or natural. Work should be in a digital format, or use digital medium such as film, animation, video and sound to explore the collision of art and nature.

To apply please send:

• A statement about why this opportunity interests you (300 words)
• Artist statement (300 words)
• A portfolio of 6 images of your work

To: alejandro.ball@art-gene.co.uk

Deadline midnight 30^th September 2019

Download the full brief here: Digital U- OPEN CALL FOR ARTISTS AND CREATIVES 

 

 

THE BRIEF

“Digital U: Extreme Views will explore the collision of art and environment in the digital age. The premise of this online series follows last year’s programme by focusing on artists working between art and technology, with the investigatory twist of self-sustainability. 

 

    “Regardless of the urge to hunker back to simpler times before the Internet, technology has become a steeple of contemporary society and culture.

 

    “Today global and local governments and economy are controlled by computer systems which span the planet. Beyond this, on a personal level, the mobile smart device has become a crucial tool for the everyday, allowing a person to stay connected with their inner circle (regardless of geographical distance), and current events around the world. 

 

    “Yet despite the positive and negative impacts on the everyday, technology’s carbon footprint has expanded exponentially in connection to the rise of global multi-national corporations. Additionally, computational algorithms like block-chain and artificial intelligence programs in recent times have added to the debate around the sustainability of the electronic superhighway, due to the energy requirements and raw minerals needed for intensive computational processes, which contributes to global warming. 

 

    “Rather than raise the luddite flag of regression, Digital U: Extreme Views offers a positive future outcome, one where humanity’s computational technology finds a position of marriage with terra (nature).

 

Throughout several industries, creatives and innovators are fusing alien technologies back into the natural world in search of self-sustaining solutions. For instance, in the automotive industry and the push for eco-friendly fuels, or electrical solutions in the energy field, solar and wind power are now becoming viable answers to nuclear fusion energy.” 

 

Alejandro Ball, 2019