published 28.4.11 |  comments (0) |  post a comment

Written by Paul Ratner

What if all of us were mere projections elaborately executed by advanced machines? What art can best speak to a life full of bits and bytes and an often-ungraspable stream of changes in what it means to be a modern human?

You have a chance to explore such existential tingles at the “9 Trajectories” Exhibit put on by the first-ever graduating students from the BA (Hons) Prague College’s Fine Art in Experimental Media Program. The exhibit is carving its niche in the time-space continuum from the 18 to 22nd of May (13:00 - 20:00) at the Trafačka Hall (Kurta Kondráda 1, Prague 9 - Metro B to “Palmovka”, then Tram 24/3/8 to “Ocelářská”). The Vernissage is on May 18th at 19:00. If you now parse the directional information you were just given, you can see how pervasive the use of representational symbols is in our every action. The nine young media artists from Prague College will help you keep pondering that and how traditional fine arts and experimental media practices have been incorporating the digitalization of our world. The program focuses on new artistic possibilities that have been developed around traditional fine arts, interactivity, net.art, and web cinema. The audience has become “participant” and it’s time to participate.
 
The works presented are from students completing a third year of the BA (Hons) degree. The third year allows students to expand on their skills by creating larger, more intricate projects as well as figuring out what they can “offer to the larger society”.  The larger society can now chime in on the offerings from artists like Jakub Grosz from the Czech Republic. Jakub is inspired by “relativity of perception” and is interested in “creating experience in interactive systems”. His installation “Inside Out” gave the audience an experience of interacting with a semi-transparent structure and projection of real-time video tracking and computer vision systems in contemporary media society. For the “9 Trajectories” exhibit, he is creating an “intimate experience for participants, who will be encouraged to play with their perception of themselves and their bodies.”

Peter Marenčík from Slovakia is interested in live video interaction and video mapping.  For the exhibit, he is experimenting with “Generative Art,” which is basically a “creation of 3D objects and projection of 2D images on top, creating illusion of ‘digital clothing’ for objects in space.”  

Peter Le Couteur from the UK is concerned “about the way story structures influence our lives, and the idea that “human communication is broken”.  He is showcasing a narrative installation of an autopsy being carried out on the corpse of a self-aware encyclopedia.

Jamie Fisher from Canada is presenting large-scale portraits of vacant expressions onto which will be briefly projected very intense expressions, like “flashes of emotions on an essentially emotionless face”.

Other works include Yevgeniya Drovossekova’s (Kazakhstan) performance art piece with video projections, actors and dancers as well as Tereza Průšková’s (CR) work with patterns developped with objects from the past like for example large compositon with audio tapes and their progressive disparition as useless or unreadable medium and exploration of her interest in how street art interacts with its environment. Tihana Valent (Croatia) interactively explores space via smaller installations using a range of different materials such as paper, plaster, plexiglass, wool, cloth and found objects. She has also experimented with video and drawing. And Jamba Mulimbwe, a young Angolan, seeks to exploit the new forms of storytelling such as 3D animation, films, and painting in order to promote African culture.

More Final Shows

Prague College’s School of Art and Design also presents a few other shows by its graduates.  From May 19th to the 26th, the AF BKK gallery (Podkovarska 674/2, Praha 9) will host work by BA (Hons) Graphic Design students.  The faces of the artists will combined into one face, “symbolizing the element of individuality of each artist as well as the unity of the whole group”.

Two more shows are coming in June. One is by the students of the HND Graphic Design program, which focuses on practical skills in design, drawing techniques, corporate identity and multimedia.

Another presentation will be from the HND Interactive Media students. That industry-oriented program prepares students for work in fields like computer graphics, media and animation.

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