Globe-M: Cyberfest 2013 – article

Arts house The Wye has brought the Cyberfest new media art event over from Russia: five days of exciting art/sound installations, performances, workshops, lectures, screening and concerts – check out the programme!! Cyberfest 2013: Time & Place kicks off on Wednesday, 13th November, at 8pm – and all events are free (yay!).

And here is the globe-M article on Cyberfest 2013, freshly posted: Cyber//Art. I visited the exhibitions in The Wye on Wednesday and completely fell in love with “Aesthetics of Decay: Design for Dying Electronics”, a multimedia installation by Disney Nasa Borg which can be seen on The Wye’s ground floor. My favourites on the second floor exhibition room include “Movie Mincer” by Sergey Teterin – a metal meat mincer connected to a laptop and beamer; when you turn the handle you can screen a silent movie film clip (George Méliès’ “A Trip to the Moon” from 1902!). When the handle pauses, the film stops.

I also loved Anna Frants’ “Socks Snapper”, a collection of different socks scattered on the floor (the socks are filled with little light bulbs) and “Made in Ancient Greece”, a classic urn mounted on a pedestal. Several small beamers project a film clip of a running figure onto the vase – a great visual effect; it looks like a classic Greek urn decorated with figures and myths that you might see in any Antiquities Museum. Only in Frants’ artwork, the figures on the urn are moving.

“Protozoa III” from Anton Chumak and “Om” from Andrii Link (“Om” is five black cubes that are moving around on the floor) were also impressive (“Protozoa III” especially startled me when I first came into the room!), as was “Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow” by Elena Gubanova and Ivan Govorkov: three grey busts whose heads are wrapped in plastic bags – and they are breathing, the plastic material over the mouths and noses goes in and out; very life-like and more than a bit frightening. But definitely memorable.