ArtFutura 2009
From Virtual Reality to Social Networks
October 29th – November 1st / Arts Santa Mònica, Auditorio Imagina, Barcelona
FuturaCircuit: Alicante, Buenos Aires, Cádiz, Gijón, Granada, Madrid, Murcia, Palma de Mallorca, Segovia, Valladolid, Vigo, Zaragoza
Charlie Todd (Improv Everywhere), Carlye Archibeque (Siggraph), Tim Schafer, Fabricators, Enric Ruiz Geli (Cloud9), Multitouch-Barcelona, Digital Kitchen
In 2009, ArtFutura reaches its twentieth edition. Twenty years of existence, during which the evolution of the festival has paralleled the evolution of digital culture and the implementation of new technologies in all areas. From the dream of Virtual Reality to the explosion of the Internet and the current era of Social Networks, the festival has been a space for speculation about the role of technology in society, culture, and art.
For this special anniversary, ArtFutura creates a grand performance with Improv Everywhere, a group whose leitmotif is “to provoke scenes of chaos and joy,” and whose videos on YouTube have garnered over 500 million views. Their performances or practical jokes range from freezing 200 people at Grand Central Station in New York to staging a fictitious opening at a subway station or creating hilarious spontaneous mobs in shopping malls.
Their leader, Charlie Todd, travels to Barcelona and, together with ArtFutura, designs one of his famous “MP3 Experiments”: Through social networks, he invites those who want to participate to download an MP3 file and follow the instructions. The chosen location is the initial stretch of Las Ramblas in Barcelona. And, on the specified day and time, thousands of people gather for the first “flash mob” presented by Improv Everywhere in Spain.
Las The conferences feature the participation of Charlie Todd himself, as well as Tim Schafer, one of the great creatives in video games, Franz Fischnaller from Fabricators, the Digital Kitchen studios from New York, and Carlye Archibeque representing Siggraph.
Improv Everywhere has carried out more than 80 missions, involving thousands of supposed “agents,” resulting in countless headlines and news segments on television. Their own videos have generated over 55 million views online. However, their “insidious influence” has reached a much larger audience: There are literally hundreds of groups inspired by Improv Everywhere around the world.
Spencer Morgan
The other point of equilibrium that can be found in a forward-looking project is not the landfill of history, but the marsh of everyday life. Twenty years after its first edition, Art Futura can boast of having been at the forefront of the interconnection between technology and creation. But now the forefront is everywhere.
The future that, according to William Gibson, had already arrived but was not yet widely distributed, is announced millisecond by millisecond through the network. The Internet is like a faucet that, when opened, releases a future ready for consumption, in any home in the industrialized world, as long as one is content with a future that is very, very close.
Javier Candeira
Twenty years of the ArtFutura festival trace an itinerary that has gone from virtual reality to social networks. From the so-called Web 2.0 to massive phenomena like Facebook, they demonstrate the realization of something that has been announced for two decades: technology is socially constructed just as society is technologically sustained.
From the very moment a technology is created, there have been theorists who have predicted the death of the previous media. Film did not kill theater, nor did television kill film, and although modes of writing have changed, it is also true that the e-book has not killed the book, nor have social networks destroyed interpersonal relationships.
Pau Alsina
