Alex Mattar deejayed at Club SAW recently as part of the Electric Fields Music and Media Arts Festival.
Technology nerds beware, art kids are stepping on your turf. They have abandoned their brushes and pencils, in favour of digital paint and wireless technology, and last week their art took over the city.
This month, art collective Artengine teamed up with SAW Video to host the third annual Electric Fields festival. The festival, which ran Nov. 13 to 16, showcases visual and musical electronic art at venues around the city including Centretown’s Babylon Night Club.
Artengine took over direction of this year’s festival after the founder, Jason St. Laurent, moved to Toronto. Artengine promises it will be bigger and better than ever before. It will represent a step up for the collective, as in the past its programming has generally been on a smaller scale.
According to Ryan Stec, Artengine’s artistic director, the festival has been so successful that it has grown beyond initial funding. The festival has been revamped, and is three times bigger than previous years, but still embodies the character of former years.
“The festival is in a similar vein to previous years,” says Stec. “There’s just a lot more of it.”
The growth of the festival is partly due to the increasing interest in electronic art. Artists and attendees are making the trek from across the country and abroad to participate. Ran Yang, a part time artist, came from Montreal to attend the festival. She says the art media showcase inspires her.
“It never occurred to me that technology could be used to make [visual] art,” says Yang. “It was something I’d never seen before."
Stec says that people are hungry for art involving technology. He attributes this need to the fact that younger generations grew up surrounded by new technology, and are now finding ways to express themselves with it. Stec says there is a need to nurture this emerging phenomenon in Canada.
Reversed Engineered, an exhibit by Alexandre Castonguay and Mathieu Bouchard, that was planned by the Carleton University Art Gallery two years ago and scheduled for the same week as the festival, was added to the program.
Sandra Dyk, curator of the exhibit, says that digital art has a growing future in the art industry.
“You only have to think of the continuing and explosive growth of the internet,” says Dyk.
“Artists have been and will continue to think of new and innovative ways to use the internet in the making of art. And that’s only one facet of digital art.”
Electric Fields ended Saturday with a party at Club SAW featuring artists BEARWitness, Chris Rockwell, DJ Frame, Jackson 2Bears, NDN, and Radio Radio.