Italian version
.art
24.12.02 VideA_02, no_profit vj culture in Barcelona.
Barcelona once again confirms itself as the "capital" of multimedia electronic creation and, pushed by the sparkling audiovisual scene which characterise it, nourished by international meetings, especially Sonar, gives birth to new expositional platforms. In this context is VideA, a two days long festival dedicated to audiovisual works and new technologies, which takes place on December 20 and 21, in the seventeenth-century Cupula de Venus (but at night it will move to a "secret place"). Having reached its third edition, VideA is one of the few festivals totally dedicated to the emerging a/v culture. With the motto no_sponsor_no_profit, VideA was conceived by Telenoika, a cultural association in Barcelona which draws its inspiration from the concept, elaborated by Roy Ascott, of telenoia. Telenoia has substituted the paranoia of the individualistic society in the telematic culture. The vjing presented (Slidemedia, Rotok, Videotone, -electric violence+) is primarily based on a performatory interaction between vj and dj: an audiovisual relationship created at the very moment of the live performance, like the mutual understanding between players of different instruments, and fundamentally sustained by the rythmic schemes and the practices of sampling, repetition and loop. The festival, however, has got other interesting aspects. Among the participants there are, for instance, Mia Makela and Pedro Soler's fiftyfifty, a collective with the purpose of exploring and divulging the limits of digital creation. And Pedro Soler was one of the members of the Softarama program committee, the most innovatory section of the latest Sonar. The program of VideA also includes the showing of social and political criticism videos (guerrilla news network, indymedia.org), paying particular attention to the voices coming from Latin America (Honduras, Argentina). Also, it's worth pointing out the participation of two emerging names in the italian landscape of videoart and audiovisual experimentation: Elastic, from Rome, who will present three videoinstallations, and Otolab, from Milan, who will present "quartetto.swf", the visual techno-concert for four laptops, winner of the Italian Live Media Contest.
Lavinia Garulli