New technological tools, new vernacular, ubiquitous computing, bits, bots, artificial intelligence, cloud infrastructures, algorithms, data, software, hardware, virtual and augmented realities, coding, sharing, networking, usernames, passwords. These are among the elements that define our existence in the digital sphere.
The digital sphere is a space in constant flux. Computer and web interfaces, devices and applications that we use keep changing and changing us. Since the early 60s, artists and creative communities have been experimenting with new technologies made available, showcasing the potential of digital media to articulate the novelty and the socio-cultural conditions of each era. Nowadays, the distinction between digital and analogue seems to be largely obsolete, as we are rapidly moving towards a continuously growing interconnected reality coordinated by machines, algorithms and a global system of infrastructures. The new normality of digitalisation of everyday life has influenced the artistic practice of many artists worldwide. For the younger generations of artists, the digitalisation of everyday experience has inevitably become the starting point of their art process, thinking and making.
Artists and creatives working at the intersection of art and technology express the multifaceted aspects of technological innovation in different ways raising awareness and creating new narratives about our techno future. Τhe proliferation of technological devices and their impact in our lives, the new aesthetic possibilities wrought by new media and technologies, the recent data and privacy debate as well as the debate about big data, the open source tools for art making and the omnipresence of the Internet, digital applications and social platforms, have all affected the way we look and experience art in the digital age. Artistic practices offer us an understanding of how things are and may be in the future, while opening up new worlds for reflecting, imagining and reinventing our reality.
In this edition, we have curated a visual path that showcases different approaches towards art and technology by international artists. Through this itinerary of different art projects, we are looking at how art can be a catalyst for articulating new concepts of the real, how it can reveal elements of technology largely unseen by its very users, and how it can help us shape our perception of the present time. By making use of different media, the art projects presented in this edition manifest the implications of technology in the public realm, explore our relationship with technology and expand the aesthetic language.
We would like to thank all artists who contributed to the realisation of this edition, and we hope that their work will function as a tool for reflection and redefinition of our relationship with technology.
Katerina Gkoutziouli, Curator, Ubiquitous Artworks section
Katerina Gkoutziouli is a curator, researcher and project manager based in Athens, Greece. She holds an MA in Visual Culture from the University of Westminster, London (2009) and a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Athens (2007). She has worked as a curator, researcher, mentor, cultural consultant and project manager in public institutions and cultural organisations, such as the Athens School of Fine Arts, the Goethe Institute in Athens, the Athens Digital Arts Festival, the Municipality of Athens, the Athens Development and Destination Management Agency, the Benaki Museum, among others. She has curated a variety of exhibitions, workshops and collaborative projects with international artists and curators for different institutions as well as independently. She has published essays and articles for art editions and online media on issues related to digital art and culture and the regeneration of public spaces through culture. In 2020, she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to conduct research in the U.S.