Talks

2:00pm — 2:20pm

Tom Higham is an experienced arts professional based in the UK. He is a producer, project manager, curator, and consultant. He is also the Creative Director of Mediale, an international media arts festival which celebrates York as the UK’s first UNESCO Creative City of Media Arts.

2:20pm — 2:40pm

Luís Fernandes is the artistic director of Semibreve Festival, since 2011, and gnration, a space for creation, performance and exhibition within the domain of contemporary music and the relationship between art and technology, since 2014. He was part of the application committee of the Braga UNESCO Creative City for the Media Arts (2015-2017) and is the responsible for the artistic coordination of the project. He was also guest lecturer at Berklee College of Music – Valencia, Elektra – Festival d’arts numériques (Montreal), Serralves Foundation, Off the page – The Wire, Universidade Católica Portuguesa and Escola Superior de Música e Artes do Espetáculo (Porto).

2:40pm — 3:00pm

Kristina Maurer is a producer and exhibition developer at the Ars Electronica Center. As executive producer, she develops exhibitions in cooperation with the artistic director, the education and cultural mediation department, as well as exhibition designers and architects, she produces exhibitions collaboratively with universities and scientific associates such as the European Space Agency, MIT Media Lab’s Tangible Media Group, and Linz Art University, and works closely with artists whose practice is situated at the nexus of art, science and technology.

3:00pm — 3:20pm

With a deep interest in community building, visual, and technological culture, Cléo develops educational programming at InterAccess, a gallery and production studio dedicated to emerging new media practices. She fosters a community of artists working at the intersection of art and technology and supports the development of Vector Festival, an annual media arts event dedicated to showcasing experimental art works that engage critically with digital technologies.

3:40pm — 4:00pm

Flavien Théry was born in Paris in 1973. He has a degree from the Ecole Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs of Strasbourg. Flavien Théry lives and works in Rennes, France, since 2000. After a career in the design sector, today his main field of research is in lineage with cinetic, op art and the contemporary practices using new media. Focusing on the relation between art and science, he questions the nature of reality and more specifically of light.

4:00pm — 4:20pm

François Quévillon holds a Master’s degree in Visual and Media Arts from UQAM (Montréal).He develops an interdisciplinary practice through installation, video, photography, sound and digital technologies. His work explores phenomena of the world and perception by the implementation of processes sensitive to their fluctuations and to the interference of contextual elements. Engaging both scientific observation and a contemplative state of mind, his pieces propose ambiguous experiences through which the ungraspable manifests itself. 

4:20pm — 4:40pm

Barthélemy Antoine-Lœff is a visual artist whose creations of optical and digital artworks, sometimes interactive, often immersive, express dreamlike worlds crossed by a contemplative and ecological relationship of nature and elements. The artist creates spaces for sharing his feelings about the “forces” of the world: dreams, energies, materials, technologies. Refusing to place himself in the field of the Kantian sublime, he positions himself at the place of wonder and infantile craze, as if to claim the part of the dream that we develop as a child and which remains forever our “desiring motor” throughout our life. (Nicolas Rosette)

4:40pm — 5:00pm

At the crossroads of art and engineering, Fragmentin’s work questions the impact of the digital on everyday life by investigating these technologies disposition towards control and opacity. Influenced by the likes of Alain Damasio, Eric Sadin and James Bridle, Fragmentin’s installations posit chance, randomness and the unexpected as remedies to control. Through installation, interaction and performance, the studio’s artworks demystify complex systems and reveal the tension between technology and environment. Since its foundation in 2014, the trio has notably been awarded with the Collide Pro Helvetia Award 2015 as well as the Pax Art Award from the HeK (Basel) in 2018.