Transmediale 2014 – afterglow
The Plastic Garden by IP Yuk-Yiu
This coming Wednesday the transmediale festival for technology-based art is opening its 5-day-program at the Hause der Kulturen der Welt. This year it’s already the 27th edition and the theme is afterglow.
“The world is finally digital but as masses of data and electronic hardware pile up, it seems to be more made out of trash than of treasure. transmediale 2014 looks at how the liberatory promises of the digital are now contrasted by data mining, mass surveillance and e-waste dumping as well as by the wasted bodies and minds produced by our constantly required attention to excessive data flows. afterglow is the diagnosis of this post-digital moment where instead of resigning into cultural conservatism we need to ask if there are means of renewal in the excess, overflow and waste of the digital afterglow?”
For me visiting the transmediale exhibition has always been an artisitic technological wonderland where I can discover things that I would have never thought about could exist, the most significant one being this mindblowing music machine reacTable that was later on used by Björk on her world tour. I’m looking forward to make equally interstering discoveries at this year’s edition. Some previews after the jump.
