ISEA2018, ‘The Motherboard of all Festivals’, is offering a Durban city-wide showcase of exhibitions, events, installations, walks, and a global conference on new media art – all talking to the theme of ‘Intersections’.
ISEA2018 is the 24th International Symposium on Electronic Art and comes to Durban from 23 to 30 June 2018. ISEA2018 is the first ISEA to be held in the African sub-continent.
Hosted in venues across Durban, it will incorporate the fifth iteration of the Durban University of Technology Digital Festival (DigiFest) and Innovate Durban’s 2018 Innovation Festival (IF Durban) in a strategy to build a local partnership and legacy.
ISEA2018 is a festival in two parts – an academic symposium at DUT City Campus (25-27 June 2018) comprising peer-reviewed papers, panels and keynote presentations for delegates travelling from around the world; and then dozens of events on the cultural programme (23 – 30 June) and public workshops (22 – 24 June).
Digital artists, science cross-over
To the uninitiated, the public cultural component of ISEA2018 is an intense and lively 10-day festival featuring prominent digital artists, comprising an array of interesting, brave, fun, innovative and insightful happenings.
The works combine existing art forms (illustration, design, dance, fashion, architecture, photography, film and music), re-invented and re-considered to make them interesting and relevant in a new-media, technologically-savvy world. In most instances there is a cross-over with science; sometimes with a research component.
Virtual reality-based art
Expect virtual reality-based art viewed only through a tablet or smart-phone; tiny solar-panelled robots; large-scale building projections; electronic jazz performed to a silent film about dinosaurs; underwater sound-scapes; imagining the Zambian space race; digital artworks; app-guided walking tours; video installations on the beach and animated wire art.
Partner venues are DUT City Campus; KZNSA Gallery; Durban Art Gallery; Denis Hurley Centre; Emmanuel Cathedral; BAT Centre; Bond Shed; Green Hub; Warwick Junction; Treasure Island; uShaka Marine World; KCap; Bulwer Park and Durban City Hall.
Most events are open to the public, are family-friendly and free of charge.
ISEA2018 culminates on Saturday, 30 June 2018, with the ninth edition of Interpret Durban taking over the Durban City Hall – inside and out from 6pm. The space will be re-imagined by a team of artists from all over the world. The centrepiece will be the main hall which will become a dancefloor.
Creative collaboration
“ISEA2018, Digifest05, IF Durban’s theme, ‘Intersections’, brings new audiences, academics, and practitioners together. It positions creative technological innovation as an activist engagement into public space and allows for creative collaboration between artists, artisans, designers, technologists, entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists and inventors. ‘Intersections’ brings together projects networks and programmes that not only push the local debate on art, science and technology collaboration but builds a national network of practice and collaboration,” explains ISEA2018 artistic director and The Trinity Session director, Marcus Neustetter.
“The city-wide cultural programme includes artist interventions, site-specific workshops, talks in alternative spaces, thematic exhibitions and activation tours. This will culminate in a series of engagements through the Technology, Innovation and Design Expo (TIDE) and Interpret Durban,” he said.
Local ISEA2018, Digifest05, IF Durban partners are Durban University of Technology’s Faculty of Arts and Design, Innovate Durban, eThekwini Municipality, Durban KwaZulu-Natal Convention Bureau and The Trinity Session.
What: ISEA2018, Digifest05, IF Durban
Where: Durban, South Africa
When: 23 – 30 June 2018
ISEA2018: https://www.facebook.com/ISEA2018Durban/
Facebook: @intersectionsdurban
Instagram: @intersectionsdurban
WS
