ArtFutura 2008
Souls&Machines
October 23 – 26 / Mercat de les Flors, Barcelona
July – Septiember / Museo Nacional Reina Sofía, Madrid
FuturaCircuit: Alicante, Cádiz, Gijón, Madrid, Murcia, Palma de Mallorca, Valladolid, Vigo, Zaragoza
Hanson Robotics . Ocean Quigley, Bestiario . Program Collective . Evru . Fallon . Erich Berger . Anne Brotot . Dvein . Sam Chen
The festival dedicates a substantial part of its programming to the exhibition “Souls&Machines,” presented at the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid that same year and curated by Montxo Algora and José Luis de Vicente.
The exhibition showcases the work of 17 artists, including Theo Jansen, Paul Friedlander, Daniel Rozin, Sachiko Kodama, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Evru, John Maeda, Daniel Canogar, Chico MacMurtrie, and David Byrne, and it is a landmark in the history of digital art, receiving over 450,000 visits.
The computer goes beyond industrial machines. Its capacity to process information and its ubiquity have made it present in practically all aspects of our lives. An industrial machine mechanically repeats the same function. However, the virtuality of the computer makes both its codes and functions unlimited.
ArtFutura 2008 presents the three-dimensional film “Children of Water” and “Splash” in Barcelona. Within the conference program, the talk by the collective Bestiario stands out, along with the presence of Kevin Carpenter from Hanson Robotics, the company dedicated to creating human-like robots.
During his presentation, Carpenter introduces Julio, the anthropomorphic robot capable of displaying emotions, who is part of “Souls&Machines,” singing a recording by David Byrne.
Héctor Ayuso from OFFF, for his part, introduces Fallon UK, a communication group aiming to become the most creative agency in the world.
In the audiovisual section, ArtFutura 2008 exclusively premieres “The Pixar Story” in Spain.
The program also includes the documentary “Souls&Machines,” the film “The Net” by Lutz Dammbeck, a special feature on the French school Supinfocom, and a retrospective of Satoshi Tomioka (curated by Carolina López) alongside “Playing Columbine” by Danny Ledonne.
“Souls&Machines” aims to map out the main strategies and conceptual directions that today shape the vast and hybrid territory of new media. Through spaces such as robotics, software art, tools for social web, information visualization, and biotechnologies, we encounter concerns such as the new dimensions of identity, intimacy, and control in the networked society, the transformation of notions of ownership and collaboration, and the fascination with replicating the mechanisms of life and intelligence.
José Luis de Vicente
The works in the exhibition “Souls&Machines” highlight a variety of themes and approaches that have contributed to shaping the history of new media art over the decades. More importantly, these works explore aesthetic issues that transcend the challenges of engineering and pose questions about the cultural impact of the technologies we create.
Christiane Paul
Why is it that we need new stimuli to feel in a new way? The present constantly demands new ways of feeling from us. To imply that we are alive. It is the vital impulse that drives us to generate new forms and new experiences. To apprehend reality in a broader way. More real. Because in the end, that is what we are: souls yearning for new experiences and new emotions.
Montxo Algora
