CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Vector Festival 2018
Topic: Born Digital
Deadline: Saturday, December 23rd 2017 (midnight)
Now entering its sixth year, Vector Festival is a participatory and community-oriented event showcasing artistic practices that engage critically with new media and digital game technologies. Presenting works across a dynamic range of exhibitions, screenings, performances, lectures, panels, and workshops, Vector Festival acts as a critical bridge between emergent digital platforms and new media art practice. In recent years, the festival has broadened its scope to include a wider spectrum of works critically engaging with many aspects of emerging digital technologies. The festival is proud to be a participatory and community-oriented initiative organized by InterAccess in Toronto, Ont.
Since 2013, Vector Festival has developed an active presence in regional and international communities related to contemporary art and critical game cultures. Curators Martin Zeilinger and Katie Micak invite you to contribute artworks for consideration toward festival programming, which will include a feature exhibition at InterAccess throughout the month of July and August, along with off-site screenings, performances, workshops, and panels from July 12-15, 2018. Note that Vector Festival does not charge submission fees to artists applying to participate.
This iteration of the festival turns its focus on the births (and deaths) of the digital. What might it mean to witness the birth of a new technology, or to be ‘born digital’? How does the term ‘digital native’ function in relation to this? How can technologies mold or inform identity? How do artists adopt, advance, hack, or dismantle digital technologies, to critically reflect on their meanings and implications? How does analogue detritus live on in the digital? What comes after the digital, how do post-humanist, post-digital, and post-Internet artistic perspectives inflect these questions?
Invoking everything from endlessly spawning game avatars to ‘permadeath,’ from media-archeological excavations to futurological speculation, from generative digital creation to the digital purgatories of discussion boards and spam, we invite emerging and established artists from diverse perspectives and backgrounds to contribute their critical explorations of these and related concerns and interests.
The curators seek works for the following programs:
Flagship Exhibition:
Artworks (including interactive installations, experimental game mods, sculptural work, screen-based work, sound art, etc.) for the festival flagship exhibition
Online Exhibition:
Digital artworks that can be exhibited online
Festival Screening:
Film/video/machinima works for the festival screening
Performance:
Performance-based proposals (including sound art, live coding, chipmusic concerts, as well as performances and interventions in virtual and public spaces.
SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS
1. Project description and artist statement (2 pages maximum)
2. Documentation (maximum five images and one video; ideally, please provide an online streaming link)
3. Detailed description of technical requirements (please outline materials provided by the artist and materials expected from the exhibiting venue)
4. Current CV (3 pages maximum)
5. Artist biography (100 words)
Send your submissions by Saturday, December 23, 2017 at midnight to vector@interaccess.org using the subject line VECTOR 2018 SUBMISSION. Attachments should not exceed 15MB. Please indicate which program your submission falls under. All artists selected for participation will receive artist fees, as well as support to apply for external funding.
About Vector Festival
Founded in 2013, Vector Festival is a participatory and community-oriented initiative dedicated to showcasing digital games and creative media practices. Presenting works across a dynamic range of exhibitions, screenings, performances, lectures, and workshops, Vector acts as a critical bridge between emergent digital platforms and new media art practice.
About InterAccess
Founded in 1983 as Toronto Community-Videotex, InterAccess is a non-profit gallery, educational facility, production studio, and festival dedicated to emerging practices in art and technology. InterAccess’s mission is to expand the cultural significance of art and technology by fostering and supporting the full cycle of art and artistic practice through education, production, and exhibition. Annually we execute multiple exhibitions, a full curriculum of skill-building and critical theory workshops, and a broad range of discursive events that explore the impact of technology on the social, political and cultural aspects of contemporary life. Our studio space facilitates the circulation of skills and techniques required to produce the work we exhibit in our gallery space.
InterAccess Gallery Hours
Tuesday - Saturday, 11-6
Open until 8pm each Wednesday
Admission is always free
9 Ossington Ave.
Toronto, Ontario
For more information contact:
Festival Curators, Martin Zeilinger and Katie Micak
vector@interaccess.prg
