Festival presents ‘next ecology’
ISTANBUL- Hürriyet Daily News
The exhibition organized as part of the International Amber Art and Technology Festival displays works by artists from various countries.
The International Amber Art and Technology Festival, the largest event in the field of arts and technology in Turkey, opened its doors to its interactive exhibition and symposiums in Istanbul on Nov. 4.
The fifth edition of the festival, organized by the Amber Platform in collaboration with Anadolu University in the Central Anatolian province of Eskişehir and Istanbul’s Beyoğlu Municipality, is a platform for exhibitions, workshops, artist presentations and seminars. Taking ecology as a conceptual framework, this year’s theme of the festival is “Next Ecology.” Proposing to reconsider all kinds of relations that people establish with their natural and artificial environment and the living areas that they create, the event questions what the “next ecology” for a better life in the intersection of arts and technology will be, according to organizers.
“We have changed our environments and ourselves, but we have not understood the change that we have caused nor have we acknowledged the overall results and effects of these changes. Today we need to reconsider all the paradigms we rely on: nature, bodies, economics, politics, environment, and communication to name a few. In sum, we need a new framework,” according to the festival’s website.
Around its theme, the festival brings together participants with interactive artistic works created by artists who use new technologies as a means of expression. In one exhibit, visitors can touch a cloud with the work of Ioannis Michalous. In another, carbondioxide produced by plants in a fanus gives life to virtual micro-organisms in Sasa Spacal’s work.
The festival started Nov. 3 at the Yapı Industry Center (YEM) Fulya building with the presentation of participating artists and continued on Nov. 4 with the opening of the exhibition at the additional building of Tütün Depot and a symposium titled “Ecology of Social-Networked Art” at the Kadir Has University Cibali Hall.
The exhibition, displaying works by artists from the Netherlands, France, Italy, Greece, Germany, Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, the United States, Slovenia and Turkey, will continue until Nov. 13.
There will also be various workshops for 10 days at the Beyoğlu Municipality Youth Center. The workshops will be organized in different levels from Flash to processing VVVV and from programming languages like Pure Data to typography.
Also, the Amber Conference, which aims to become a base for research and discussion in the triangle of science, new technologies and art, will be organized for the third time between Nov. 10 and 13, according to organizers.
The conference will start with film screenings and continue with workshops, courses, talks and presentations within the framework of the “Next Ecology” at the Istanbul Modern Movie Theater