[aha] PIXXELPOINT 2009 - ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST

[Domenico Quaranta]

PIXXELPOINT 2009 - CALL FOR APPLICATIONS
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ENTRY FORM (PDF): http://www.pixxelpoint.org/entryform2009.pdf
DEADLINE: September 30th 2009, arrival date.

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Once Upon a Time in the West

We keep on talking about “new media”, while in actually fact these  
media are anything but new. The Net is twenty years old, if we start  
counting from the advent of the Web, forty if we start from Arpanet.  
Spacewar!, the first videogame ever, is more or less the same age.  
Virtual worlds are the updated, lighter versions of a technology  
acclaimed as “the future” when Second Life programmers were still in  
diapers; social networks are the bastard sons of Fidonet. As for the  
computer, it is younger than Lord Byron, but certainly not than his  
daughter Ada.

Once upon a time there was the electronic frontier, an abandonware  
myth which was able to regenerate itself thanks to the continuous  
advance of the frontier itself. Like in space, in technological  
progress there's no ocean at the end of the trip. But, unlike the  
space race, the race to the next technology is endless, and  
endlessness is boring.

Yet, while we got used to innovation and the day-after rhetorics, we  
have never got used to the loss of the past. We look back to what was  
new yesterday and is trash today, and we feel a deep sense of  
nostalgia. Commodore 64 and 386dx. The first Apple Macintosh. Bulletin  
Board Systems. Animated gifs. Glittering images. Web buttons. Super  
Mario. Doom. Napster. Jennicam. Mosaic. ASCII art. MIDIs and MOOs. Not  
to mention VHS, vinyl, audio cassettes, cathode tubes, portable  
radios, faxes. It is the kind of nostalgia that we feel for a relative  
who died young, once the pain abates: you are left wondering what kind  
of man he would have been. Or for someone that, once grown up, does  
not live up to his or her promise. Sometimes nostalgia develops into  
historical research, and becomes media archeology. We don't look for  
the technologies that we once loved, but those we have never seen in  
action.

But in both the cases, in the artistic field this sentimental look at  
the past is producing some brand new, interesting stuff. Reviving dead  
media and obsolete technologies, retrieving and rekindling their  
aesthetics, making them do things they were never expected to do, and  
telling stories about them with other means is proving to be a sound  
artistic strategy – undoubtedly more so than “the exploration of the  
artistic potential of new media” which became the mantra of most New  
Media Art. This happens because, when you give up on the rhetorics of  
novelty, what is left on stage is the human element: the man of the  
past who domesticated the media, put his own life into them and was  
changed by them; and the man of the present, who looks back on that  
past with the same sentiment as the venerable Sergio Leone looked to  
the West.

On the occasion of its 10th Birthday, Pixxelpoint festival wants to  
explore this feeling. Clean out your attic, the folders you haven’t  
touched for years, GIF repositories, your university's warehouse, and  
the dumps of Silicon Valley – or its small-town emulators. Get your  
hands on this stuff, and send us your finds. Any media is allowed,  
apart from new!

Domenico Quaranta, curator

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Rules and conditions

1.
Pixxelpoint 2009 International New Media Art Festival will begin on  
December 4th 2009 in Nova Gorica, Slovenia in Nova Gorica City Gallery  
(Mestna galerija Nova Gorica) and it will last for eight days, until  
December 11th 2009.

2.
Competitors can choose between categories:
- New media installation (new media work that is exhibited in spatial  
arrangements)
- Computer based art (new media work that doesn’t require physical  
space, for example, programs, computer games, internet art, etc.)
- Digital print
- Video
- Other (work in traditional media - ie drawing, painting, sculpture,  
embroidery and so on - that may fit thematically or conceptually in  
the exhibition)

3.
Submissions must be sent free of charge to:
Pixxelpoint
Kulturni dom Nova Gorica
Bevkov trg 4
SI 5000 Nova Gorica
Slovenia

(Att. Blaz Erzetic)
E-mail: pixxelpoint2009 at gmail.com

Deadline is September 30th 2009, arrival date.

4.
Works can be sent on:
- CD-ROM
- DVD-ROM
- e-mail (pixxelpoint2009 at gmail.com)


Label on the media must contain the name of the author and the work.  
Every single work must be accompanied by entry form. Works submitted  
without this entry form will not be valid. In case of sending by  
email, attach scanned filled form or send it by fax to 00386 33 540  
19. Media will not be returned.

5.
There are no software and hardware limitations.

6.
Competitors agree that their work can be used for promotional purposes  
for the festival Pixxelpoint and catalogue for Pixxelpoint festival.

7.
Submitted works will be selected by the curator on the basis of  
artistic achievement. Autors whose works are admitted to the contest  
will be contacted by the oragnizers.

8.
Author guarantees the authenticity of his/her work. In case that work  
is partially or completely not competitor’s property, he/she assures  
that he has all the rights and permissions to use this work.
With this statement the author frees the festival of any  
misunderstandings regarding copyrights.

9.
Pixxelpoint will not sell artworks or copyrights of the submitted  
works. The festival is meant only as exhibition and promotion for the  
artists.

10.
All submitted works must match the given theme ‘Once Upon a Time in  
the West’ as described on this page.



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Domenico Quaranta

mob. +39 340 2392478
email. dom at domenicoquaranta.net
home. vicolo San Giorgio 18 - 25122 brescia (BS)
web. http://www.domenicoquaranta.net/

"The world we actually have does not meet my standards". Philip K. Dick