Diriyah Art Futures’ Emerging New Media Artists Programme

The center is dedicated to advancing the field of new media and digital arts by providing emerging artists with access to cutting-edge professional equipment, a production budget, as well as a wide range of multidisciplinary learning opportunities, which include theoretical, conceptual, and technical learning opportunities and personal mentorship by prominent international digital artists.

Topics

• The first three months of the academic year will be a series of thematic and conceptual explorations offered by artists and theorists through seminars, lectures, screenings and workshops. Thematic topics will include:
  • Nature, Human and Non-Human
    • In the era of the Anthropocene and in light of the upheavals affecting our environment, the separation that Western society has wreaked with the non-human world is being called into question.
  • Nature, Climate, Environment and Societal Transformation
    • What role does art, particularly digital art, play in all of the current transitions in energy, society, climate, and ecology?
  • The body and technological transformations of living beings
    • From the digital body to the cyborg, effects of digital technologies on corporality and bodily representations. Understanding of the body and its relationship with self, others or its environment with or through technology.
  • Migration, Post-colonialism and a critique of capitalism
    • Critique of a capitalism in crisis through the consequences we are observing today, both from an environmental and migratory point of view.
  • Mapping Memory, the relationships between digital practices and the archive
    • The use or constitution of archives by artists (especially artists from the Arab world) has intensified thanks to the potential to be found in new digital tools and uses of such tools
  • Internet and the post-internet era
    • Post-Internet art sometimes takes its inspiration from the Internet Art movement, but goes beyond and questions the notions of network, immaterial and material concepts. It questions the increase in connectivity, information overload or so-called concepts of community.
  • Global Modern and Contemporary Art and Arabic Regionalism
    • Reviews on the digital arts related histories of modern and contemporary art, and an additional focus on contemporary art practice from the MENA region and through the lens of the Arab region.

Program Details

• In the following six months, as emerging artists in the programme you will receive personalised mentorship from prominent artists, while you produce your artwork using the technologies offered by the Diriyah Art Futures labs. You will have access to cutting-edge technologies such as advanced audio-visual, immersive reality, coding, sensing, machine learning and spatial audio-visual environments. The artwork you produce will be exhibited with Diriyah at Futures as a final curated and juried outcome of the one-year programme.
  • Reality and Artificial Reality: an invitation to explore the intersection between the physical and virtual worlds, within a range of technical engagements from immersive worlds to bio or synthetic material. Questions in this track include how virtual spaces embed themselves in corporality or how virtual spaces engage non-visual sensory experiences? Lastly, the topic explores how artists can subvert this reality using technologies that currently impact human engagement.
  • Sound and Cinema Creation: an invitation to examine the ways in which artists push the boundaries of cinema, archive and documentary. A key question is how artists can expand the cinematic and spatial sound experience through digital means, installation or new cinematic immersive experiences. Additionally, the topic explores how artists envision an expansive and narrative-led digital encounter
  • Humans and Artificial Intelligence: an invitation to examine the intersection of humans and machines, with a particular emphasis on the role of artists within this framework. This track focuses on computational creativity, code, machine learning & AI (image, text, speech), robotics, code art, interactivity, and living in data. A key question that arises within this topic is what role artists can play in offering a unique perspective on the social and technical events that are reshaping our era and the different perspectives on the issue of new intelligences.

Who is this for?

• Diriyah Art Futures emerging artists programme attracts emerging creative practitioners from all over the world, with a focus on those from the Middle East and North Africa.
• Applicants should be 35 years or younger, at graduate or postgraduate completion stage and have experience in developing and creating digital and new media art.
• Applicants can expect at Diriyah Art Futures an accessible space with exhibitions, screenings and dedicated technical labs for professional creation and innovative digital development.
• The centre will host throughout the year prestigious artists and international institutions engaged in new media and technology arts.
• The candidates must be able to provide proof of:
  • A levels or High School completion (or recognized equivalent) and 4 to 5 years of study validated by a diploma or degree;
  • A levels or High School completion (or recognized equivalent) and 7 years of artistic or professional experience.
  • Exhibition and practice experience in new media and technology arts.

For more information, visit Diriyah Art Futures.