[aha] Playlist at iMAL, Bruxelles

[Domenico Quaranta]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

iMAL, Center for Digital Cultures and Technologies is proud to  
announce Playlist. Playing Games, Music, Art, an exhibition focused on  
the artistic reinvention of obsolete digital media. Produced and  
hosted by LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial (Gijón,  
Asturias) in the frame of the Mediateca Expandida, Playlist now moves  
to Brussels enriched with twelve new participants and a broader range  
of artworks.

Playing Games, Music, Art

What happens when the emotional investment you made in your old  
computers brings you back to the garret where you sent them years ago?  
When you can’t no longer suffer to work with sophisticated machines  
that, while promising you more freedom, actually force you to wear the  
straitjacket kindly designed for you by some corporate guy? When you  
decide that’s time to put your hands on the machine?

Reinventing the medium: from music to visual arts

What happens is an act of reinventing the medium. Along the Nineties,  
many artists started working on the reinvention of obsolete, digital  
as well as analogue, technologies such as vinyl’s, vintage computers,  
game platforms and alike. Hacking software, circuit-bending hardware,  
they turned “dead media” into powerful tools of artistic creation.  
Playlist is an exhibition that explores this kind of research,  
focusing on the relationship between musical research and visual  
research, in the belief that the first, rather than the latter, has  
often been the driving force in this process.

Chiptune, 8-bit punk and media arts

The core of Playlist is the exploration of the “chiptune scene”,  
spread out from the manipulation of obsolete game technologies in  
order to create new instruments to play music. The show demonstrates  
that the retro-gaming phenomenon in visual arts can be considered an  
outfit of a pretty musical phenomenon, that in a bunch of years spread  
out all over the world through festivals and clubs, occasionally  
influencing mainstream musicians; and that visual and musical research  
progressed on parallel paths, in the quest for lo-fi sounds and low- 
res aesthetics, synthetic colors and notes.
Playlist proposes artists from the chiptune scene and the media arts  
world sharing attitudes such as DIY, recycling, subversive refusal of  
programmed obsolescence, aesthetics of the glitches from electronic  
materials. On display, artworks (objects, installations, videos,  
computer-based and printed works), but also instruments, tools,  
software’s, hardware’s, records, 8-bit music, movie documentary,  
platforms and communities.

Presented artists

2 Player Productions (US), Alex Bond / Enso (US), Boogerlab (NZ), The  
C-Men (NL), Paul B. Davis (UK), James Dingle (US), Jeff Donaldson /  
noteNdo (US), Julien Ducourthial (FR), Entter (SP), Dragan Espenschied  
(DE), Gino Esposto / Micromusic.net (CH), Gijs Gieskes (NL), André  
Gonçalves (PT), Chantal Goret (BE), Goto80 (SE), Jodi (BE / NL), Mike  
Johnston / Mike in Mono (UK), Joey Mariano / Animal Style (US), Rosa  
Menkman (NL), Raquel Meyers (SP), Mikro Orchestra (PL), Don Miller /  
NO CARRIER (US), Erik Nilsson (SE), Nullsleep (US), Tristan Perich  
(US), Rabato (SP), Gebhard Sengmuller (AT), Alexei Shulgin (RU), Paul  
Slocum (US), Tonylight (IT), VjVISUALOOP (IT)

Production

Playlist is an exhibition produced by and firstly exhibited at Laboral  
Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial in Gijon (Spain) from 18.12.2009  
till 17.05.2010. The Brussels adaptation is produced by iMAL, Center  
for Digital Cultures and Technology.

Curator: Domenico Quaranta (IT)

Practical Info

Playlist, playing Games, Music, Art
June 4 - August 21, 2010
Opening the 3rd of June, 18:00 - 23:00
Open Tuesday > Saterday: 11:00 - 19:00
iMAL Center for Digital Cultures and Technology
Koolmijnenkaai 30 Quai des Charbonnages, 1080 Brussels
(metro Comte de Flandres/Graaf van Vlaanderen)

Press Folder

Press Release (pdf) - http://www.imal.org/playlist/sites/default/files/media/IMAL_PLAYLIST_pressEN.pdf
Press Images (zipped folder) - http://www.imal.org/playlist/sites/default/files/media/PLAYLIST_images.zip
Flyer (pdf) - http://www.imal.org/playlist/sites/default/files/media/Playlist_flyer_final.pdf
Poster (pdf) - http://www.imal.org/playlist/sites/default/files/media/playlist_poster.pdf

More info on www.imal.org/playlist

About iMAL, Center for Digital Cultures and Technology

iMAL (interactive Media Art Laboratory) is a non-profit association  
created in Brussels in 1999. In 2007, iMAL opened a new venue, a  
Center for Digital Cultures and Technology for the meeting of  
artistic, scientific and industrial innovations, a place dedicated to  
the contemporary artistic and cultural practices emerging from the  
fusion of computer, network and media.
iMAL is: (1) a laboratory and a research, experimentation & production  
workplace for artists in residence (2) an education center which  
organises workshops targeted to creative people (artists, designers,  
developers) under the direction of leading international artists (3)  
an art&culture center producing exhibitions (e.g. “Infiltrations  
Digitales”/2004, “Art+Game”/2006, “Holy Fire, art of the digital age”/ 
2008), concerts, performances, conferences in order to create  
critical, interdisciplinary encounters between the public, artists,  
technology, and society.

More on www.imal.org


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Domenico Quaranta

web. http://domenicoquaranta.com/
email. info at domenicoquaranta.com
mob. +39 340 2392478
skype. dom_40