MADATAC PROGRAM
Curated by Iury Lech 

來自西班牙馬德里當代數位媒體藝術節節目 (MADATAC International Festival of Contemporary Audio-Visual & New Media Art Technologies), 將帶來6件精選作品，並呼應主題以疫「藝」境 / DilemmART 出發，呈現困境中的藝術和藝術家們在疫情困境中的狀態。

藝術家 / 作品：

1. Albert Merino, “Bestiario” (Bestiary), Spain, 05’ 15” , 2018

Bestiario (Bestiary)
In Bestiary we observe a great city where all human presence is solely an architectural and symbolic reminiscence. We associate these symbols and the landscape urban necessarily to a human presence, but now this is emphasized precisely for its absence. However, this space is not empty, but it is inhabited by the ‘other’ by the beasts. Apocalyptic echoes suddenly appear in our heads, as if it were a postwar landscape or the result of a collapse, images that resonate familiar to us through the imaginary of cinema or the mass media. However, what we see is life, without any sign of destruction, the life that it takes other forms and establishes a continuity. This substitution of the human leads us to the question about the relationship with the other, with what is alien to us, with the ‘beast’. Nature is no longer a contained element, and now flows into human space evoking also the possibility of its finitude.

Albert Merino (Barcelona 1979) is a video artist. Graduated in Fine Arts from the Universities of Barcelona and the KHB, and ‘Meisterschuler’ from the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee, he has also been an artist member of the ’Academie de France in Madrid. He uses video as a vehicle for his work, developing a wide visual imaginary with which he intervenes and transforms everyday life. His language often borders on absurdity and irony. He has made various collaborations with artists and theater groups, including his work with La Fura dels Baus. His work has been shown in institutions and museums such as ‚La Casa Encendida ',‚ Arts Santa Mónica', ‚Palais de Tokyo ', Academie de France (Paris), Songwom Art Center (Seoul), MEIAC (Badajoz), MOCA (Taipei ), or the Nam June Paik Art Center (South Korea) among others. He has participated in a large number of international festivals, where he has been recognized with several international awards such as' First Prize for Video Art, Astillero Video Art Contest '(2015),' First Prize for Videoakt 03 Biennal de Vidaoarte '(2013)' MADATAC Award for Best Video Art Work '(2012)' 1st prize LUMEN-EX minimaciones' (2011), first prize in the video art category at the Close-up Vallarta festivals (2012), Sassari Film Festival (2013) and BCN Visual Sound (2011 and 2014). In his career, it is worth highlighting the individual exhibitions in the Trapezio space (Madrid), the Chapel of the pronillo (Santander), the IMA space or his participation in group exhibitions at the C1 (Berlin), the Alter- native Loop Space in Seoul, the Galleria Boccanera, Trento, Sant Andreu Contemporani, Los Angeles Art Fair, Beijing Art Fair, Art Basel Hong Kong or the biennials of Wroclaw, Poland or Cerveira. (Portugal).


2. Marta di Francesco, Sybil, UK, 02′ 30″, 2020

Sybil
Sibyl explores the self-fulfilling prophecy of prediction. As machine learning allows artificial intelligence to make faster, better predictions, Sibyl performs a repetitive dance in which every movement starts and ends in the same way, representing the looping mirroring of AI predictability. Sibyl was created by merging volumetric capture techniques, video processing and StyleGAN, in which a model has been trained based on a large data set of similar images, in order to obtain a not-so surprising similarity with the original data set. The intent and intervention are present and necessary not only at the beginning of the process, but at the end of it, through a meticulous and laborious digital but yet manual controlled frame by frame process.The post GAN intervention is key to the piece, a generated work that is obtained through a “prediction” of the initial intent, by selecting a specifically restricted data model, that would generate seemingly looking results. In times of an obsession with predictions and hindsight one wonders whether it is more important to learn to ask better questions, instead of relegating the role of imagination to the unreal and to fantasy, instead of pre programming answers from machines, that regurgitate predictable outputs with no out-stretched lingering to the infinite. The capacity to number and limit reality into data is hardening the borders with dreaming, vanishing, wishing and imagining, creating a time space vacuum, in which a mirror is reflected in another mirror, swallowing itself in an eternal void.  

Marta Di Francesco is a London based artist, exploring new aesthetics, merging poetics with code. She investigates digital identity and its fragmentation, exploring and questioning it through digital bleed, time displacement, video processing, and the sculptural quality of time in volumetric aesthetics. Through her practice she is preoccupied with the right to time and time consciousness as a form of resistance. She merges a conceptual, critical approach with a search for metaphysical correspondences between the self and the metaverse, writing and creating radical pieces which inhabit and cross over poetry and code. 


3. Ryan Cherewaty, Memory of Death’s Dream, Canada, 15’ 06”, 2018

Memory of Death’s Dream
Memory of Death’s Dream is an animated film about the future of human consciousness seen from the perspective of artificial intelligence. The main character undertakes a journey of self-fulfilling prophecy. After finally achieving the self-consciousness they deeply desire to understand the meaning of their existence, they threaten the existence of the world they inhabit. Throughout their journey, they find several kinds of reminders of the human race in the form of in stories, rituals and objects. These reminders are formulated from data that is stored in remaining cloud databases. They mistakenly worship these databases as gods. 

Ryan Cherewaty is a media artist from Toronto, Canada, currently based in Rotterdam. He works mainly in video, CGI and installation. His work is informed by the potential provided by technology in its possibility for celebrating and critiquing contemporary experience. Inspired by the rich contradictions that technology presents, he engages with the relationship of digital media to individual consciousness and social and cultural memory, and how this ecology affects our physical reality. Persistent themes include the paradoxes of modernity, tech as myth and magic, and the dissolving boundaries between the virtual and the real. 


4. Antonello Matarazzo Politik, Italy, 02′ 08″ , 2017

Politik
101 dead insects between immobility and transformation. The polis of insects in an interconnected world before the internet. The kinetic dimension of the video leads the author to show us the metamorphoses that take place before our eyes. We are faced with an immediate and living metaphor of nature which, inexorably, takes its course by constantly transforming matter. But let us try rather to read Politik not as an allegory of death, but of life.

Antonello Matarazzo, exponent of Medialism, is a painter, director and video artist. His videos have been welcomed in many Italian and foreign film festivals (Mostra Cinematografica di Vene-zia, Festival Cinéma Méditerranéen Montpellier, Torino Film Festival, Festival des Cinémas Diffé-rents de Paris, Locarno ecc.), some of them, like Mostra Int.le del Nuovo Cinema di Pesaro and Festival Internacional de Cine de Mar del Plata have proposed retrospectives of his work. In 2013 the Signes de Nuit Festivalin Paris focused a Regard Specifiqueon him. The link between his painting, video and video installations is his tendency to the exploration of introspective and anthropological aspects. This is the reason why his videos are shown as an educational tool in several Universities, like Brera and Cambridge. His work was showed in the editions 53° and 54° of the Venice Biennale.


5. Collectif Triangle, (Matthew Schoen, Nathalie Vanderveken, Carmen Jaci), Assemblages, Netherlands,
    04’ 46', 2021  

Assemblages is a collaborative video work where mechanical systems interplay with organic structures. The visual content was entirely rendered with 3D software, and was based on sculptures, drawings and visual concepts from both Matthew Schoen and Nathalie Vanderveken. Their respective outputs result in contrasting pairs of mechanical objects and organic elements, which playfully juxtapose to an electronic soundtrack created by Carmen Jaci. This piece seeks to deconstruct an aesthetic traditionally found in advertising by repurposing media such as 3D animation and electronic music production techniques, in order to create an abstract universe. Assemblages incorporates stylistic elements of motion design such as bright colours, fluid camera transitions, and fast-paced editing, albeit over a longer duration than what is typically found in commercial motion design production, hence allowing a non-conventional narrative to emerge. 

The work of Canadien artist and composer Matthew Schoen extends towards various media such as video, installation, and electroacoustic music. A desire to renew audience experience while blurring the lines between music, sound art and visual arts has accompanied his recent creative process. Thus, he has presented his works by means of live audiovisual performances, installations, video screenings, and immersive sound diffusion. He is a regular contributor to Montreal's AKOUSMA festival as well as participating in the local Code d'accès concert series. He was also recently featured at the San Francisco Tape Music Festival, the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival and the International Symposium on Electronic Art in Vancouver (ISEA). He has previously collaborated with dance and theater productions and is a founding member of Montreal's Soundwich concert series, promoting young talent in experimental music. He completed his postgraduate studies in Electroacoustic Composition at the Montreal Music Conservatory under composer Louis Dufort. 


6. Hernando Urrutia,  “Transgression - A Post-Human Vision” , Portugal, 02’ 00”, 2021 

“Transgression - A Post-Human Vision”
It is the posthuman view of transgression. Where different transgressions are placed in the way of visualizing ourselves in environments from the digital field, as future conditions of the human being and their connection with interfaces. Allowing a view from the transgression of the borders between man / machine, time / space and life / death, with new ways of creating communication codes by forging new visualizations of the environment, such as artificial and virtual landscapes. It is the accompaniment of each individual, which obviously leads us to the process of identification and control of each being, which can become a means of censorship in the future, losing the autonomy and freedom of each individual. Transgression of the field of laboratory creations, which endanger the lives of human beings, such as biological weapons that end up being just as lethal as physical weapons, such as bombs that end up killing without distinction, throwing death everywhere. Transgression of beings created from biological and cybernetic experiments, such as computerized prostheses, where it is postulated that the biologically manipulated human body is altered to face the future "Underground", underground "world, as a post-evolutionist strategy. 

Hernando Urrutia (1964)
Multidisciplinary Artist, Researcher, Designer, Curator and Cultural Manager, of Basque roots and Portuguese nationality. Candidate for the Doctorate in Digital Media-Art of the Department of Sciences and Technology - University "do Algarve" / University "Aberta" - Portugal, Collaborating Researcher at CIAC (Center for Research in Arts and Communication) - Portugal, Visiting Researcher at M-ITI (Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute) - Portugal. He has studied Visual Arts, Graphic Design, Advanced Studies in Media-Digital Art, PhD in Media-Digital Art. His artistic practice spans various areas, with an emphasis on video art, video installation, gif, digital art, installation, sound art, in the context of technology and contemporary art.