Category: project

ASTE in cooperation with researchers from the Art Research Laboratory, MPLab of Liepaja University has started work on collecting and archiving evidence of activities and art developments of the active Liepaja community of young media artists in the project “New Media Art Archive 2000-2020” and the first research results are available to the public and art researchers at https://arhivs.aste.gallery/.

The Liepāja New Media Art Archive currently contains data on the period from 2000 to 2010 – on the activities of the culture and information center K@2 in Karosta, where guest events organized by various other institutions took place – Latvian Academy of Arts student summer schools, international Cast Iron Art Festival , RIXC international conferences and symposia and many more. In 2007, the study program “New Media Art” was opened, but in 2006 the Art Research Laboratory of the Liepāja Pedagogical Academy (now – Liepāja University) was established, which continued to maintain the communication processes and infrastructure necessary for the development of media art. In Liepāja, it would not disappear even after the closing of K@2 operations in 2008. The new study program also created a unique, unprecedented study model in Latvia – interdisciplinary, collaborative and research-based digital art education, which denied the obsolete image of a lone artist – genius, and instead created a 24-hour study environment equipped for students with the latest media. technologies in which to engage in collective artistic experiments. New media art projects are too complex to be developed in excellent quality by the author alone without the help of other fields of art or science.

Since the first graduation of Liepaja University “New Media Art” in 2010, many talented young artists have entered the Latvian art environment – Andris Vētra (-8), Artis Kuprišs, Paula Vītola, Maija Demitere, Rihards Vītols, Zanda Puče, Ieva Vīksne, Andrejs Poikāns, Gustavs Lociks and others, whose creative activity is characterized by interest in scientific achievements and technological innovations, not only the inner experience of a person, and issues of interest to them are explored by artists using both aesthetic and science-inspired methods.

Diana Lelis, Anna Priedola, Pauls Vītols, Maija Demitere, Kaspars Jaudzems, Jekaterina Jevdokimova, Elza Zīverte, Elizabete Punka, Kristīne Petrovska, William Jefferson Brick, Kate Karīna Cebre and Anžela Timofejeva participated in the creation of the archive. Interpretative articles on the unique features of Liepāja’s new media art environment have been published on the archive website by media and art researchers Ilva Skulte, Maija Demitere, Anna Priedola and Kristīne Briede. The archive was created with the financial support of the target program of the State Culture Capital Fund “Creating the future cultural offer in all cultural sectors” and the informative support of the Liepaja University.

Many thanks to Kristīne Briede, Andrew Paterson, Andris Vētra, Anna Trapenciere, Rasa Šmite, etc. for sharing their time, impressions and materials, especially to art historian Santa Valivina in creating the Liepāja New Media Art Archive.

The archive will continue to be constantly updated, both with the addition of information and articles for the period up to 2010 and with the development of a new section with profiles of the most active new media artists working between 2010 and 2020 and an overview of their key works with audiovisual materials.

Please also refer to contemporaries of K@2 or the study program “New Media Art” who would like to share their memory stories, video, photo and audio materials to supplement the data repository of the Liepāja New Media Art Archive. Contact: info@mplab.lv

Archive editor: Anna Priedola

ASTE has proposed an initiative to create an archive of the development of new media art in Liepaja – a website and a database that would bring together art events, projects, performances, workshops, exhibitions and art objects created from 2000 to 2010. The initiative has received support from the program “Creating the future cultural offer in all cultural sectors” administered by the State Culture Capital Fund.

A website has been created for the project implementation – archive.aste.gallery. Project manager and main initiator Anna Priedola believes:

It is necessary to create a digitized archive of Liepāja’s new media art events in order to fill in the white pages in the history of Latvian art and facilitate media art research, making it easily accessible to anyone interested. Facilitating the acquisition of research materials will promote the discourse of the interaction between art and technology, while comments by art scholars and media theorists on works of art will promote understanding of media art in the wider community.

The aim of the archive is to compile, categorize, publish and analyze local and international media art events that took place in Liepaja in articles of media art researchers. The archive materials will be compiled by doctoral candidate Paula Vītols, MPLab manager Anna Priedola, and Diana Bočkova, analytical articles will be created by the researchers themselves and invited media and art scientists, Ilva Skulte, Maija Demitere, etc., using the collected archive materials.

Since the beginning of the 2000s, an international media art center and a community of local young artists have been established in Liepāja under the leadership of Kristīne Briede and Kalle Bjorshmark, including Aija Druvaskalne-Urdzis with her students, Rasa Šmite and Raitis Šmits in Karosta. This was a real cultural phenomenon and one of the earliest examples of community-oriented social art activism in Latvia, which initially introduced the latest media technologies to the locals in an area that was built for military purposes, isolated in Soviet times and later neglected in the 1990s. This art center hosted many innovative contemporary art forms and events with the participation of foreign and local artists, such as Transit Zero (2000), in which Rasa and Raitis Šmits started working with RFID and GPS technologies (which later brought them the prestigious ARS ELECTRONICA award for international food transit mapping and digital data visualization “the MILK project” in cooperation with Ieva Auziņa and Ester Polak).

The media art events hosted by the K@2 Media Culture Center also attracted the attention of media theorists and art scientists, which resulted in the research institution of the University of Liepaja – Art Research Laboratory (2006) and the academic study program “New Media Art” (2007), that offers a full-cycle art education, based on international and interdisciplinary cooperation and research. The study program was imagined to be the alternative of the classic art education that promotes the “artist-genius” approach.

In 2008, the cultural center K@2 was closed because it couldn’t maintain the infrastructure without the support of the municipality. However multiple international and annual art as research festivals were established in Latvia and Liepaja, for example, the international new media art week iWeek (2010 – 2019) with creative workshops and exhibitions, electronic and experimental music concerts and seminars in Liepaja and RIXC “Art and Communication” festival in Riga (in cooperation with Liepaja University), where internationally recognized media art experts participated and still participate in the conferences.

This background of creative education has prepared a new generation of Latvian media artists with a particularly strong community in Liepaja, where not only one, but several regular, international media art festivals are organised – Sound Days, Update and Open Lab – as well as exhibitions and concerts, creating cultural activities of national importance (and also by attracting international cooperation partners, publicity and funding). Liepāja has long been recognized as an internationally important media art center, as evidenced by the invitation of the curators of the most important media art festival ARS ELECTRONICA to participate in the online program of the 2020 festival.

Due to the physical distance and lack of cultural journalists, Liepāja media art activities are little analyzed in the context of art science and their documentation in the media is rather modest (mostly Liepāja University Art Research Laboratory and Electronic Art and Media Center E-LAB, and recently ASTE. Art, Science, Technology, Education – online sites and galleries). Information on the course of various art events is available, but there is a lack of reviews and analysis of specific works of art and directions. Liepāja media artists focus on researching various specific topics in art, such as sustainability and eco-art (Maija Demitere, Rihards Vītols, Anna Priedola), media archeology (Paula Vītola, Pēters Riekstiņš), sound art (Krista Dintere, Artis Kuprišs), virtual and augmented art (VR, AR, Ieva Vīksne, Līga Vēliņa), art generated by artificial intelligence (Kristaps Biters, Andrejs Poikāns), tomics that are relevant not only in national but also global context, but there is very little interest and media coverage on these examples in the art media and research.

The creation of a digital media art archive is also very necessary in the study process, especially until the Latvian Museum of Contemporary Art is established. Without a clear example of what has already been done in Latvian art, students often have a desire to “reinvent the wheel”, as well as they lack references and sources of inspiration to contextualize their artistic activity.

New Media Art Week Update will take place in Liepaja, at the Art Research Laboratory, MPLab, from November 4 to 8. This year’s theme is Update: Human. Nature. As part of the theme, the guests and participants of the week will explore the philosophical, technological, ecological and artistic aspects of contemporary human-nature relationships.

Update is an annual new media art event that, since 2008, looks at the latest trends in art and science. The weekly program includes workshops, a seminar, two exhibitions featuring a variety of international and local new media and contemporary artists.

There are 4 creative workshops open to visitors, each from Monday, November 4th to Thursday, November 7th. The workshops will be led by professor Žilvinas Lilas of the Cologne Academy of Arts, Dutch artist and cultural critic Dani Ploeger, Lithuanian photographer and curator Petras Saulėnas, Thuur Caris, a subcultural researcher and lecturer.

Workshops are available free of charge to all interested. The descriptions of the workshops and the application are available on the website: http://iweek.mplab.lv.

At the end of the week, two exhibitions will open – the first, Plastic Nature, on Friday, November 8th at 6 PM in the basement of Roma Art Hotel (Zivju street 3). Various new media artists from Latvia, Lithuania, Germany and the Netherlands will participate in the exhibition.

Second exhibition Update: Human. Nature will reflect on the results of the workshops held during the week and will be open to anyone interested on Saturday and Sunday, November 9th and 10th from 12 PM to 6 PM at the Art Research Laboratory, MPLab (Liepaja, Kurmajas pr 13).

Friday, November 8th at 1 PM there will be a seminar with various presentations and lectures on human, nature and technology interaction, Open Ideas Room (Wednesday, November 6th, 6 PM), where everyone is invited to join and share in their knowledge, experience and search for new collaborators and like-minded people in the new media arts and technologies.

Monday, November 4, (at 6 PM) and Tuesday, November 5, (at 5 PM), there will be Skill Sharing events, where various professionals and practitioners of the new media art will present their special skills and knowledge to everyone in a focused and creative way .

More about weekly events, workshop and lecture descriptions are available on the website – http://iweek.mplab.lv. For contacts, Maija Demitere (maija@mplab.lv, 29948430) and Facebook – http://fb.me/update.mplab/.

New Media Art Week Update: Human. Nature is part of the Green Revisited encountering emerging nature-cultures / green project.

Update: Human. Nature in Liepaja is organized by Art Research Laboratory, MPLab in cooperation with ASTE. Art, Science, Technology, Education, E-LAB, Center for Electronic Arts, Media and RIXC, Center for New Media Culture.

Update: Human. Nature is supported by State Culture Capital Foundation and the European Union program Creative Europe.