Category: New Media

The international sound-art festival, held every two years at the ARS Art Factory, will showcase sonic creations by various artists. The festival aims to introduce and promote sonic culture through a variety of exhibitions and live performances. The exhibitions, held in three spaces simultaneously, will feature interactive, participatory, perceptual, site-specific, and conceptual pieces.

Artists

Participants in the sound art exhibition of 2023:
Therese Frisk (SE), Kaisa Maasik & Gerda Nurk (EE), Kat Austen (DE/GB), Katrin Enni (EE), Madlen Hirtentreu (EE), Mari-Liis Rebane, Jaanika Arum & Helen Västrik (EE), Taavi Suisalu (EE)

Performing artists:
Sabotanic Garden (FI), Yuri Landmann (NL), Simonas Nekrošius (LT), THRVS (Matthias Kampf, AT), Sister Clara (IT), Katrin Enni (EE), SSSS (Sten Saarits ja Sven Sosnitski, EE), Mari-Liis Rebane, Jaanika Arum & Helen Västrik (EE), Erik Alalooga (EE), Janno Bergmann (EE)

Programme

Sound Art Exhibition 11 – 18.02.2023. Every day 13:00 – 19:00

Friday 10.02
Sound Art Exhibition opening at 18:00 (Exhibition will remain open 10 – 18.02.2023)
Opening performance/installation at studio 98 by Erik Alalooga & Janno Bergmann

Tuesday 15.02 / Performance night vol. 1
Sister Clara (PT/DE) – ARS Project Space

Friday 17.02 / Performance night vol. 2
SSSS (EE) – Studio 98
Helen Västrik (EE), Jaanika Arum (EE), Mari-Liis Rebane (EE) – ARS Project Space
Katrin Enni (EE) – Studio 53
Simonas Nekrošius (LT) – Studio 98
After event at Burgerbox: Katja Adrikova (EE)

Saturday 18.02 / Performance night vol. 3
Yuri Landmann (NL) – Studio 98
THRVS (Matthias Kampf, AT) – Studio 98
Erik Alalooga (EE) – Studio 53
Sabotanic Garden (FI) – Studio 98
After event at Burgerbox

Organisers: Erik Alalooga, Sten Saarits
Graphic design: Kert Viiart
Installation assist: Ian Simon Märjama

The Festival is supported by Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Artists’ Association, ARS Art Factory

‘It’s Lonely in the Metaverse’
Egle Ehtjen, Kelli Gedvil, Kristen Rästas, Sten Saarits
11.11.–11.12.2022
Rapla County Centre for Contemporary Art 

Four artists will create an audiovisual participatory exhibition in the hall of the Rapla County Centre for Contemporary Art, exploring the soul of the ‘metaverse’, a recently popular medium that uses various spatial and virtual reality technologies. Platforms for virtual worlds are a hot topic both in the crypto world and, increasingly, in the ‘normal world’, through ‘fear-of-missing-out’ advertising campaigns promising new social, investment and entertainment environments on the internet. Behind the exaggerated promises of the future, however, today’s meta-worlds besides their edgy commercial undertones are lonely, not that interactive, and full of digital gambling and collective tokens. ‘It’s Lonely in the Metaverse’ is the interpretation by the four artists of the significant contrast between the advertising hurricane and the virtual landscapes that fall into its shadow.

Graphic design: Henri Kutsar

The artists would like to thank: Markus Tiitus, Alexei Gordin, Ian-Simon Märjama, Hendo Kidron, Leegi Kiis, Marek Gedvil, Tiina Vändre, Laura Suur, Anna-Liisa Männik, Ingrid Algma, Ingrid Kääramees, Linda Zupping, Jüri Ruut, Mirko Känd, Erko Ever, Kristjan Koskor, Anni Koskor, Katarina Koskor, Ander Koskor, Kennet Lekko, Estonian Academy of Arts

The exhibition remains open until 11th of December, Tue–Sun 3–6pm.

This exhibition is funded by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

Location: Rapla County Centre for Contemporary Art. Tallinna st 3b (3rd floor of Espak building), Rapla

Kaisa Maasik’s new solo exhibition The Human Sponge in the Age of Screens is open from Thursday, November 3, 2022 at the ARS Showroom Gallery. The new project dealing with the susceptibility of children and the way kids mimic everything they see and hear, brings together video footage filmed by kids themselves. The exhibition will remain open until November 29.

Something that the gathered material has in common is its influences from mass media, the mainstream film and music industry. From the 2000’s onwards, filming equipment like video, web, digital and phone cameras became more affordable. Ever since then, kids have had a way to record different re-enactments of what they see on screens. The artist adds: “The endless creativity, sincerity and enthusiasm of children in the work is amazing, but it’s clouded by the violence in most of the scenes. When mirroring their surroundings, kids have a way of showing us what society is like in general.”

Graphic design by Nora Pelšs

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and the Estonian Artists’ Association.

3.–29.11.2022
Mon–Fri 12–18, free entry
NB! The exhibition is exceptionally open on two Saturdays: 19.11 & 26.11 at 13–16
ARS Showroom gallery
ARS Art Factory
Pärnu mnt 154
11317 Tallinn
www.arsfactory.ee

More info:
Kaisa Maasik
kaisamaasik@gmail.com
5396 2524
https://fb.me/e/9IVyk3ha4

“Sancho Panza, from a different vantage point, divides the world into those, like himself, who were born to sleep and those, like his master, who were born to watch.” Jonathan Crary, “24/7. Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep” (2013), p. 26.

Now open in Vent Space: “A Practice for Surrender” by Tõnis Jürgens.

A stage set for sleep. A butaforic space and light installation, evoking false insights, the liminality and artificiality of slumber, and crabs’ eyes.

The exhibition is part of Jürgens’ ongoing artistic research project at the art & design department of the doctoral school of EKA, dealing with sleep surveillance and digital trash.

Open from 20.–30.09.

Every day at 1–7 pm.

Graphic design: Laura Merendi

Thanks kindly to: Aadu Lambot, Hans-Gunter Lock, Joosep Ehasalu, Kulla Laas, Liisi Kõuhkna, Nabeel Imtiaz

Supported by: Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Academy of Arts

Tõnis Jürgens (b. 1989) is a projectionist, writer, and void enthusiast. He holds a bachelor’s degree in culture theory from Tallinn University and a master’s in new media from the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA). Further, he’s spent a year studying at the Academy of Arts, Architecture & Design in Prague (UMPRUM).

Sten Saarits’ solo exhibition ‘Petrified’ open at Vaal Gallery.  The exhibition is curated by Eva Mustonen and remains open until 10th of September, Tue–Fri 12–6pm, Sat 12–4pm.

‘Petrified’ centers around the sense of detachment from the world and oneself, using familiar architectural forms from the city streets. Inside the exhibition space is created a backdrop of a nighttime cityscape, where the common feelings of this time and age such as anxiety and fear of the unknown are revealed in a new light.
The stillness of the night is a good time for gathering your thoughts, but it is also the time when illuminated screens and artificial lights compete most brutally for our attention.
The video and photo installations of the exhibition are defined by a continuous but aimless movement, where the characters in the videos or the motion mechanisms of the works themselves have succumbed to the endless loop.
The inability to turn around or to actively intervene in one’s surroundings brings attention to irrelevant details, where it falls into the folds of perception, like the blind but all-seeing eye. 

Sten Saarits (b 1987) is an interdisciplinary artist who works mainly with time based media. Saarits’ art practice, which emphasizes repetitions of themes and situations, is characterized by a drive to turn mental spaces into material landscapes to depict the states of mind, typical for the daily grind in a modern society, in a new form. Saarits has studied sound art (MA) and installation and sculpture (BA) in Estonian Academy of Arts. During the years of 2013–2014 he studied in the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, where his curriculum focused on sound art, performance and film. Saarits has shown his work in Estonia, Austria, Sweden, Finland, Netherlands, Denmark, France and Lithuania.

www.stensaarits.ee

Graphic design: Kert Viiart

EKA New Media has been enlisted as an educational partner in this years Pixelache festival online event #Burn_Slow

Events are starting this Friday and Saturday with #Burn_Slow, a series of talks and workshops organized by Liepaja University MP Lab. These events are free and specially made for students. Students varying from Fine Art to Design are welcome, as well as others interested. 

“Burn_Slow: Nordic-Baltic Sound and Radio Art for Mental Well-being” is an international audio art project which unites sound artists and art students from Nordic-Baltic region exploring mental ecology in times of crisis and social seclusion, via online lectures, skill-sharing, discussion and innovative networked audio performances.

Website

Facebook event

YouTube live stream for artist talks and discussion

Application form for attending workshops

Portfolio Café is structured around one-on-one meetings that take place between local and international fine arts and design professionals and graduate students. Each meeting takes place about 50 minutes. During Portfolio Café sessions students introduce themselves and their work, and experts share their observations, provide recommendations ask, questions etc. After the first scheduled conversation student moves on to the next selected expert they have signed up for.
All Portfolio Café meetings are in English.

Portfolio Café is a collaborative project between the Faculty of Fine Arts and Faculty of Design.

Registration:
Portfolio Café invites all fine art and design students from the MA level to participate. The spots are limited and participants will be chosen according to the provided portfolios. The reviews are considered as part of the studies and you may receive credits for participating (3 ECTS).

To apply, please fill our this registration form before April 12, 2021 and upload your portfolio.

Find detailed information about our experts in the registration form.

Portfolio Café is supported by the European Regional Development Fund.

Composing the Sublime: Rituals in Electroacoustic Music
Can electroacoustic music concerts become places of ritual?

Open lecture on Monday, 9.03. at 16:00, room A302

In this talk, Yiorgis Sakellariou (GR) will explore this question that marked the beginning of an analytical and practical research of the social existence of electroacoustic music and the sublime experience of acousmatic listening.

The research expands the framework of sonic arts and suggests methods for further theoretical interrogation and artistic practice. Having taken a qualitative methodological approach, the research drew inspiration from ethnomusicological and anthropological contexts and used digital sound technology to embody the evocative and transcendental atmosphere of religious rituals in electroacoustic music concerts.

The artistic outcomes (published compositions and public performances) focus on the communal experience of listening and the communication between composer, audiences, performance spaces and the rest of the physical and supernatural world.

Yiorgis Sakellariou is a composer of experimental and electroacoustic music. Since 2003, he has been active internationally being responsible for solo and collaboration albums, having composed music for short films and theatrical performances, leading workshops and ceaselessly performing his music around the globe.

His practice focuses on the communal experience of listening and the communication between composer, audiences, performance spaces and the rest of the physical and supernatural world. He only performs in absolute darkness, fostering an all-inclusive and profoundly submerging sonic experience.

He completed his PhD at Coventry University (April 2018). His research drew inspiration from ethnomusicological and anthropological contexts and explored the sonic symbolism and socio-aesthetic settings in ecstatic religious rituals in relation to field recording, electroacoustic composition and acousmatic performance.

Yiorgis Sakellariou is a member of the Athenian Contemporary Music Research Centre, the Hellenic Electroacoustic Music Composers Association and the Lithuanian Composers Union. Since 2004 he has curated the label Echomusic. He is currently a lecturer at VDU and an assistant lecturer at LMTA.

https://mechaorga.wordpress.com/

On this Wednesday, 16th October at 4 PM in room A501 takes place the 7th Open Seminar of the Faculty of Fine Arts. This time we are visited by Canadian multimedia artist Tyler Tekatch. The seminar will be held in English.

Hamilton-based artist Tyler Tekatch creates work in film, video and installation that explores perception and the religious imagination. Influenced by Canadian filmmaker/artists such as Michael Snow, Joyce Wieland, Jack Chambers and Bruce Elder, Tekatch takes an experimental approach to media. He has expanded his practice to combine film and video with emerging technologies, such as projection mapping and interactivity. He has held two solo exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Hamilton and the Ottawa Art Gallery, and has screened films at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, the Canadian National Film Board, and internationally.

https://tytekatch.com

From 1 February the exhibition “Ocean Botlights” by Taavi Suisalu will be open at the Tallinn City Gallery. Suisalu, who tackles the relationship between people and technology, here explores light – simultaneously a giver of life and a conveyer of information, spreading out in a web of rays the breadth of a hair at the bottom of the oceans, where no other light can reach. The exhibition is curated by Siim Preiman.

The exhibition will open on Thursday, 31 January at 6pm and will remain open until 31 March.

Taavi Suisalu (b. 1982) is an artist, who seems to be constantly flickering between different times, simultaneously looking into the ancient past and the future just out of reach. It seems that this tension between eras is an activating force in his work. At the exhibition “Ocean Botlights”, light is what brings together the ancient and the modern, simultaneously one of the prerequisites for life on Earth as well as the conveyer of information along the super-fast fibre optic cables that cover the world like a spider’s web.

“Light is not just a condition necessary for life, but the infrastructure of our information society also relies on it – the internet relies in large part on the relay of information in the form of light along fibre optic cables. Along with productivity, cheapness and user-friendliness, the internet has helped the mass growth of information and communication technology (ICT) in society. As a result, almost all important products and services in first-world countries depend on ICTs,” Oliver Laas writes in the accompanying booklet.

The installations on show at the exhibition bring together the characteristics of light both ancient and new. Suisalu seems to be trying to capture continuity in his work and is searching for something with a longer perspective. “Although how people behave and think acclimatises to new technologies quickly, the changes in sensations, physiology and mentality are more long-term,” he writes in the accompanying text. It seems that Suisalu is striving towards such a level of standardisation that would allow us to overcome the seemingly accelerating and unstoppable fervour for technological development.

Taavi Suisalu activates peripheral areas using technology, sound and performance based art as tools for an intriguing coming together. His work is inspired by the way contemporary society relates to technology and its influence on how a social being behaves, senses and thinks. In his work, he also connects cultural phenomena with contemporary cultural practices and approaches that are more traditional. His recent solo-exhibitions include “Landscapes and Portraits” (Hobusepea Gallery, 2017) and “I Am NOT Sitting in a Room” (Draakoni Gallery, 2015).

We would like to thank: Estonian Cultural Endowment, Estonian Ministry of Culture, Estonian Artists’ Association, Veinisõber, AkzoNobel, WRO Art Center, EMAP / EMARE, Creative Europe, Tartu Valgus, KOOR Wood, Kadri Toom, Indrek Tali, Mihkel Säre, Tõnu Narro, John Grzinich

Tallinn City Gallery (Harju 13) is open Wednesday till Sunday 12–7pm. Entrance is free.