NeMe: amber 08

Call for Interactive Installations

BIS is organizing the annual international art and new media festival in Istanbul in 7-16 November 2008. The multi-event platform will include stage performances, interactive installations, workshops, artist presentations and seminars. The theme is Inter-passive persona.

Interactivity is celebrated and enjoyed for the comfort and convenience it brings into our lives, and the aesthetic and practical possibilities it opens up for all creative activity. Efficiency, speed, fluidity, a frictionless flow of things, precision of form and an infinite multiplication of virtual possessions in the digital universe come to mind. Interactive technologies rearticulate our relations to ourselves and to others.

In today’s digitalizing world, we access closed and invisible systems that operate on a global scale via our network-connected personal computers. We take on an ever-increasing role in this network of relations that is itself based on interactive technology. Our bodily disposition and movement, consciously or unconsciously partakes in digital interactivity. We interact with machines and others as we interact with others through machines. The information produced as a result of this interaction takes on an independent life as data but continues to somehow represent our real self. On the other hand, the information as an independent existence, do not belong anymore to ourselves and become an active subject which, determines the limitations of our connection to the external world on our behalf.

Amber 08 will focus on the emerging subjectivity under the reign of the digital. Through a variety of artistic, technological and philosophical exhibits, it aims to explore and question our new persona shaped by the logic and concept of interactivity.

We are interested in installations that explore the theme of Inter-passive Persona in the here and now of the digitalizing world. However we remind you not to shy away from participating if you cannot readily link the festival theme to your work. We see the festival theme as a tool to think and work with in our larger collective effort of developing an artistic expression of technology. You, the artist alone will define what it inspires and allows.

We also encourage outdoor interactive installations all over Istanbul.

The selected works will be exhibited in exhibition section of amber’08.

As thing stand now, the festival organization will cover the installation related expenses and artists’ accommodation only. We would appreciate if you seek alternative ways of financing other expenses.

Contact

BIS organization
Ekmel Ertan
susam sokak 31/5
cihangir 34433 beyoğlu – istanbul
Turkey
phone: +90.212.2523770, + 90 532 473 89 71
fax: +90.532.4738971