The 404 International Festival of Art and Technology, born in the city of Rosario, Argentina, in 2004, being the oldest festival of its kind. It is an independent non-profit project whose main objective is to democratize culture, spreading artistic productions that unite Art with Technology. The annual continuity of 404 and its experiences around the world consolidated it as the first Argentine festival of Art and Technology.
404’s particularity lies in being an itinerant initiative, having been presented in forty four cultural centers, universities and public places in eleven countries around the world: Argentina, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Belgium, Austria, Taiwan, Russia, Colombia, Japan and the United States.
Focus - March 19 - 2 pm
404 Festival
Gina Valenti was born in Buenos Aires in 1981 and lives in Rosario, Argentina.
As an artist, professor, writer, composer, international curator and artistic director, for more than 20 years she has specialized in New Media Art.
She holds a degree in Fine Arts and works as a Full Professor in the specialty of “Technodigital Artistic Production II” and “Projects I” at the Faculty of Humanities and Arts at the National University of Rosario. She’s currently finishing her PhD Thesis in Sciences of Education (U.N.R.).
Since 2004, she is the creator and Director of the “404 International Festival of Art and Technology”, an independent non-profit project that is the oldest festival in Argentina of its kind.
MediaDemic On Tour 2021:
Johatsu (Evaporated People) / Éric Filion / 2020 / CAN / 11’18
Tormented by the shame of a lost job, failed marriage, or mounting debt, thousands of Japanese citizens have reportedly started leaving behind their formal identities and seeking refuge in the anonymous, off-the-grid world. This is the story of a Johatsu spirit returning for a vision of its past life. Sound design by Michael Trommer.
Occurrences Of Questionable Significance / Dave Lojek / 2020 / GER / 8’59
When forest animals invade our cities, the world is in disarray. Office fox Fiona struggles with her phone addiction. Will she succumb to it? Temperamental bunny Barbara only gives her stag sugar daddy Nestor his special massage, after he dines her and plays the big spender. This obscure short pinpoints postmodern tropes of consumerism, eroticism, and art with an homage to the theater stage and references to literature. The film uses a fantasy language and needs no subtitles.
Compost n.1 / Citron | Lunardi / 2020 / ITA / 4‘
“Compost n.1” is a part of an artistic project that combine science, video art and digital sculpting and is inspired by the recent studies of Donna Haraway on the concept of Chtulucene: not a post human world but a human compost world characterized by a continuous process of composition and decomposition. This change of perspective is urgent especially against the backdrop of the ongoing pandemic, it is necessary – to use Donna Haraway’s words – “to stay with the trouble” in this infected time and deal with kinship systems among various species. In particular, this video shows a panorama populated by symbiotic assemblages, infected surviving and migrant collaborative beings – artificial intelligences biofabricated – that wallow in a liminal environment between natural and artificial, between mineral and organic in which humanity has reduced itself to a crystalline form.
Three Breaths in Empty Space / Bret Battey / 2019 / ENG / 14’21
Three Breaths in Empty Space is a contemplative audiovisual installation for two-screen-wide projection and quadrophonic sound.
The work is also an homage to the composer Maurice Ravel, with the overall harmonic character derived from the opening of his piano work Ondine (1908). Additional spectral effects were applied to recorded excerpts of Ondine, plus renditions of slowed melodic fragments from the work arise at the peak of each of the three “breaths” in the video loop.
Recitative / Shir Handelsman / 2019 / ISR / 4’59
An opera singer stands on a lifted platform, singing a Martyr’s wish for redemption. A counterpoint between the human voice and mechanical sounds of machinery moving up and down. The music, taken from one of J.S Bach’s cantatas, is the Recitative Movement which describes the ascension of Christ and expresses the desire to become one with god.