Open call / moving images / video installation / still images experimental digital cinema / experimental photography

Collective exhibition in a Parisian gallery, March/May 2023.

This curatorial proposal wishes to explore the artistic production of visual forms from algorithms and conscious work with interfaces, in an introspective framework that seeks to identify the specificities of each creative process.

Important: This is a particular open call, because beyond the artistic quality of each project, a special look will be given to the introspective discourse of each artist, and to the link of the works with an academic research project in progress.

Further information? please write us: [email protected]

DIGITAL ALCHEMIES

Images produced by algorithms, images produced by interfaces, images that come from a capture but are sublimated by computer processing, still images, animated images, images recomposed from other images that circulate in the iconosphere. What is the place of the artist in these high-tech creative processes?

How do the artists proceed when they negotiate his artworks with the computer? What strategies can we recognize at the level of the creative processes, allowing the emergence of new images from a machine considered by some as completely determined, incapable of producing something that was not already present at the level of the code?

What about failure practices, détours, glitches, in the production of contemporary images? Can we recognize today active forms of "cool glitch", beyond the modalities proposed by Rosa Menkman [1] in 2012? Are there new creative strategies capable of producing new visual forms through the misuse or hijacking of new technological paradigms, such as AI and big data? What forms does artistic hacking take today, and what new creative potentials are associated with it?

But more especially: beyond the detorunements, the glitchs, and the practices that work with the computer "out of program", that create from occhestrated errors, can we unravel strategies of creation able to produce digital artworks without diverting the "normal" behavior of the computer. And if yes, how?

What is the relevance nowadays of the notions theorized by the cybernetics at its beginnings, in a conceptual framework that wanted to explain at the same time the machines and the living, when it comes to describe creative processes and the mechanisms working at the artworks' level? When confronted with the digital images of yesterday and today, can we see in act processes of "autopoiesis" [2], emergence or homeostasis [3], or should we rather think these notions unrelated to artistic creation? Are there "gestures of humanities" [4] taking place in the creation of images with computers, and if yes, what is their nature?

How artists consider their means of creation: algorithms, interfaces, are they simple tools? Are they environments, or "mediums" accountable of performativity? Are they "technical objects" that show a certain autonomy, an agentivity?

How do artists perceive the degree of uncertainty that resides in their computational means of creation? Is there any unforeseen in the visual results provided by a computer program? How do artists bring this unpredictability into play for creative purposes?

[1] The glitch in its capacities to problematize a process, a personal exploration or a narrative element. See, Rosa Menkman, A vernacular of file formats, an edit guide for compression design, 2012.

[2] Maturana Romesín, Humberto, and Francisco J. Varela. 1973. De máquinas y seres vivos: autopoiesis, la organización de lo vivo. 6aed. Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria : Lumen.

[3] Hayles, N. Katherine. 1999. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press.

[4] Citton, Yves. 2012. Gestes d’humanités: anthropologie sauvage de nos expériences esthétiques. Le temps des idées. Paris: Armand Colin.

Image Credits: Alexis Allemand, from the series Colorfield. OPEN CALL RULES

• This open call is addressed to artists wishing to take an introspective look at their own creative process in relation to computational tools, and who wish to share certain aspects of it.
• Selected works will be part of the exhibition "Alchimies Numériques" which will take place in a Parisian gallery, from March to May 2023.
• This open call is free and open to all artists, regardless of age, nationality or location.
• Only works in digital format (video file, image file) will be accepted.
• Unfortunately, this curatorial proposal will not be able to remunerate the selected artists.
• Artists retain the rights to their work.
• By participating in this open call, the artists acknowledge that they own 100% of the copyright of the images used in their work  ;-)
• By participating in this open call, selected artists authorize this curatorial project to exhibit their work for the duration of the exhibition, and to extract visual elements for communication purposes.
• The deadline for this open call is March 1, 2023.

HOW TO PARTICIPATE?

Please fill in the following form before March 1, 2023 https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeUrL2JEy7qWCQJVxw0ZM7jVLzlam1Q...