make art festival: in-between design

Call for submissions deadline: 31st July 2010!

The sixth edition of make art – in-between design: rediscovering collaboration in digital art – will take place in Poitiers (FR), from the 4th to the 7th of November 2010.

make art is an international festival dedicated to the integration of Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) in digital art. make art offers performances, presentations, workshops and an exhibition, focusing on the encounter between digital art and free software.

in-between design: rediscovering collaboration in digital art

Today’s market production accelerates the spread of non-critical and standardized aesthetics, by means of locked top-down distribution mechanisms and a series of tools that enforce it. At the same time new forms of methodologies inspired or powered by free software, participatory practices and peer-to-peer networks are fueling many Internet subcultures. Some of these emerging practices will lead to competitive social productions, while other will remain as pure artistic experiments.

For example, a common hypothesis is that by adopting production and distribution methods based on free software and open standards and by sharing the sources of one’s work with others, the collective knowledge base and aesthetic sensibilities can freely interact to explore uncharted, hybrid directions which no longer reflect the supremacy of a single idea. Such an assumption raises several questions:

- Does the sharing of artworks “recipes” and tools help debunk the myth of the isolated design genius?
- By leaving the possibility of ongoing development and refinement, is it possible to ever produce a “final” design?
- Can these methods and technologies inspire new forms of creation or tools, beyond self-referential productions?
- Is it wishful thinking to approach collaborative graphical design in the same way as an open source software project?
- Is Free and Open Source licensing a catalyst for creation or does it add an extra level of complexity?
- Can the limitation of one license trigger new forms of constrained creativity?

We’re currently seeking new, innovative media art and design works and projects focusing on the above theme and questions:
- graphical artworks and installations
- lectures
- project presentations
- software and hardware demos

We’re also seeking audiovisual performances that will take place during the festival evenings.

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