OFFF BCN 2007 coming soon!
From May 10th to 12th 2007, Barcelona’s CCCB will be the scene of a congregation of important names from the national and international design and digital creation scenes. OFFF BCN 2007 (http://www.offf.ws/bcn) is a forum that embraces post-digital creation, -music, conferences, design, performance, installations- and seeks to provide a safe haven for the less accommodating elements of the art and music scene in this country. OFFF is an enthusiastic celebration of a new visual culture. And in November of this year, OFFF NY will take place for the first time in the Big Apple’s Tribeca Performing Arts Center.
John Maeda and Takagi Masakatsu defend simplicity at OFFF BCN 2007
After six editions, OFFF has consolidated its position as one of the European events of reference for cutting edge software art and digital design. A precursor for cross-media events in Barcelona, with a multidisciplinary content, the festival programme has always encouraged artistic risk-taking and sound experimentation to converge and interrelate. Its stages have hosted digital artists, creators of film credits, graphic and web designers, experimental electronic musicians and motion graphics studios.
OFFF'BCN 2007 returns to CCCB from 10-12 May with Re:Fresh, the most ideological offering in the history of the festival, inviting us to rethink the most fundamental concepts. John Maeda, the founding figure of interaction design, visits OFFF for the first time to speak about his fight for simplicity. Futurefarmers, the team led by Amy Franchescini, will address their transformation from a sought-after design studio to a collective of artists that offers sustainable experimental solutions changing our relation with the environment. Along with them, legendary talents like Neville Brody and renovators of the graphic medium such as James Victore will explore the political dimensions of design and its capacity to influence on the world.
The recent revolutions in urban art will be another of the important items discussed in the festival through the participation of Wooster Collective, the preeminent online observatory of the global street art scene, and the outstanding Graffiti Research Lab, a New York R&D unit that is changing street aesthetics with cheap technology and open knowledge. Graffiti Research Lab, one of the emerging collectives in the international new media scene, will be giving an urban guerrilla tactics workshop in collaboration with art production centre Hangar. Digital Designers Erik Natzke and Graphic Designer and Illustrator Scott Hansen will be the other protagonists of the program of workshops at OFFF 2007.
The main stage of the festival will be offering sophisticated audiovisual experiences like the exciting pictorial world of musician and digital video artist Takagi Masakatsu, a rising star of the live global AV scene. Plus, on a rare occasion halfway between talk and performance, iconic sound artist Alva Noto (Carsten Nicolai) will present, together with his associates from Raster Noton, Frank Bretschneider and Olaf Bender, a journey through the visual aspects of the mythical Berlin label they founded in 1999. Zachary Lieberman, one of the most internationally renowned interactive artists of the moment, will premiere a surprising new live show in collaboration with Theo Watson telling the story of a never-ending line on a screen.
Reinventing itself, OFFF proposes new formats and dynamics; we'll have virtual Stefan Sagmeister, in his office, coming in the shape of a Documentary/Interview made and produced by Offfilms presented for the first time and exclusively for this festival.
We will also feature a debate on the influence of motion graphics in media with the most important agencies in this field: Buck, Stephen Price, editor and founder of Stash Magazine, Justin Cone, founder and editor of Motiongrapher.com and Carlos El Asmar, Creative Director of ABC.
And, as is the case every year, OFFF presents the best collectives and teams working in the Web and on the screen: Universal Everything, the multidisciplinary project of ex-Designer's Republic Matt Pyke; Californians Stamen, expanding the possibilities of design for Web 2.0; the creative collaboration of famed Motion Graphics studio Motion Theory and software artist Josh Nimoy; Mario Klingemann, one of the modern masters of Flash; The Barbarian Group, the latest project of Robert Hodgin, one of our favourite artisans of code; Onionlab, Bestiario and No-Domain, perhaps the most prominent of young Spanish collectives; Promsite, the project created in 2004 by Cdmon and Anibal de la Fuente (Planilandia) aiming to be the first hosting sponsor in Spain and many more.
OFFF BCN 2007 opens its doors to a deluge of 80 international artists and theorists from different creative fields. These are just some of them: John Maeda, Hillman Curtis, Joshua Davis, Mario Klingemann, Zachary Lieberman, Justin Cone, Takagi Masakatsu…
