Vector Festival is a participatory and community-oriented initiative dedicated to showcasing experimental new media art that draws on digital game technologies and wide-ranging creative media practices. Presenting exhibitions, screenings, performances, lectures, and workshops, Vector Festival is organized by InterAccess in Toronto, Canada, and acts as a critical bridge between emergent digital platforms and new media art practices. The festival organizers are particularly interested in featuring artworks that critically explore the artistic use of emerging digital technologies.
Each year, a substantial number of exhibited works are drawn from an international open call. Vector Festival curators Katie Micak and Martin Zeilinger therefore invite submissions of artworks to the festival’s 2019 program, which will include a feature exhibition at InterAccess throughout July and August, along with offsite screenings, performances, workshops and digital projects. The festival will take place July 11-14, 2019. Please note that Vector Festival does not charge submission fees to artists applying to participate.
The curators are seeking works for the following programs:
Flagship Exhibition
Artworks including interactive installations, experimental game mods, sculptural work, screen-based work, sound art, etc.
Online Projects
Web-based projects and digital artworks that can be presented online, including experimental interactive and time-based digital projects.
Festival Screening
Experimental film/video/machinima works.
Performance
Performance-based proposals including sound art, live coding, chipmusic, A/V performances, including telematic performances and interventions in virtual and public spaces.
GIFs
Animated GIFs intended for presentation on public screens.
SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS
• Project description (as a separate pdf), including:
◦ Documentation, maximum five images and one video. (Preferably, the proposal will include links to online images or streamable video; as an alternative, images/video can be attached as zip file).
◦ Detailed description of technical requirements (please outline materials provided by the artist and materials required from the exhibiting venue).
◦ Please indicate at the top of the project description if there is a thematic, conceptual, or historical connection to the Toronto region, or if you have a biographic connection to the area.
• Artist biography and statement (1 page maximum as a separate pdf)
• Current CV (3 pages maximum as a separate pdf)
Please note that submissions that do not follow the required submission format may be rejected.
Send your submissions by February 01, 2019 (midnight EST) to vector@interaccess.org. Please format the subject line as follows: Vector 2019 submission / <Festival component> / <Artist name> / <Title of submitted work>. Attachments should not exceed 15MB.
All artists selected for participation will receive artist fees, as well as support to apply for external funding.
About Vector Festival
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. The festival was founded in 2013 as the “Vector Game Art & New Media Festival” by an independent group of artists and curators: Skot Deeming, Clint Enns, Christine Kim, and Katie Micak, who were later joined by Diana Poulsen and Martin Zeilinger. From the start Vector Festival was unique in its inclusion of game-based work alongside new media disciplines. In 2015, Vector Festival announced that longtime presenting partner InterAccess would take over responsibility for the festival as part of its regular programming, with members of the original organizing team, Skot Deeming and Martin Zeilinger, returning as festival curators. Originally held in February, since its fourth iteration Vector Festival takes place during the summer months to encourage participatory public events and outdoor interventions.
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
The facility is not accessible. There are five steps up to the main entrance, which has double doors. Once inside all facilities are on the same level. There is a single-user washroom inside the unit.
For more information contact:
Festival Curators, Katie Micak and Martin Zeilinger
vector@interaccess.org
