D/B Recommended: MADEIRADiG – INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL FOR DIGITAL ARTS

The fifth edition of MADEIRA DIG- INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL FOR DIGITAL ARTS comes this December, from 4th to 31st, with its epicenter from 5th to 7th at Casa das Mudas Art Centre in the pitoresque village of Calheta and also at Estalagem Ponta do Sol, the design hotel in the cliffs of Ponta do Sol, in Madeira Island.

Madeira Dig will feature this year the first retrospective exhibition and multimedia installations on Madeira Video artist Carlos Caires, live performances by Cluster, Oval, Scanner, Ryoichi Kurokawa, Philip Jeck and Portuguese artists Nuno Rebelo, Vitor Joaquim & Hugo Olim, and also music workshops for young artists, besides other activities.

Madeira Dig was created in 2004, filling a gap in Madeira’s cultural events in the field of multimedia and digital arts. The Festival aimed to bring to Madeira international top level artists from music, film, video, computer art and photography and also to motivate Madeiran artists to create new works in these fields.

Since 2004, artists like Fennesz, Gustav Deutsch, Marius Watz, Alog, Rafael Toral, Mocky, Jamie Lidell, Burnt Friedman, Vladislav Delay, AGF, Lia, Radian, Kevin Blechdom, Frank Bretschneider, were invited to present their works at the festival.

Tickets can be reserved using a simple email to mmarques@almasud.com indicating name, email, number of tickets and dates. All reservations must be cleared 1 hour before the venue. Each ticket costs 10 euros but there is available a global 3-day ticket for all venues only for 15 euros. Tickets for youngsters, students and adults over 65 will be 5 euros per day, 10 euros for a 3-day ticket.

http://www.madeiradig.net

This year the Design Hotel Estalagem da Ponta do Sol is a main sponsor of the Madeira DIG, and, as such, is hosting the afterhours sessions during the event which mixes public and artists in a relaxed and party atmosphere. Check www.designhotels.com/madeiradig for special rates for arrivals from 4 through 7 December.


ESTALAGEM DA PONTA DO SOL | Quinta da Rochinha | 9360 Ponta do Sol

The Artists in Madeira Dig 2008

SCANNER [UK]
British artist Robin Rimbaud traverses the experimental terrain between sound, space, image and form, creating absorbing, multi-layered sound pieces that twist technology in unconventional ways. From his early controversial work using found mobile phone conversations, through to his focus on trawling the hidden noise of the modern metropolis as the symbol of the place where hidden meanings and missed contacts emerge, his restless explorations of the experimental terrain have won him international admiration from amongst others, Bjork, Aphex Twin and Stockhausen. www.myspace.com/scanner

CLUSTER [DE]
The most important and consistently underrated space-rock unit of the ’70s Cluster (originally Kluster) was formed by Dieter Moebius, Hans-loachim Roedelius and Conrad Schnitzler as an improv group that used everything from synthesizers to alarm clocks and kitchen utensils in their performance. Continuing on as a duo, Moebius and Roedelius eventually recorded many landmark albums – separately, as a duo, and with all manner of guest artists from Brian Eno to Conny Plank to Neu’s Michael Rother – in the field of German space music often termed kosmische. www.myspace.com/theonlyclusterthatmatters

OVAL [DE]
Oval is Markus Popp, one of the most prolific and influential producers in contemporary electronic music, a laptop legend, a pioneer, visionary, trailblazer of the radical & beautiful – ready to reaffirm his relevance for the digital music of today. His groundbreaking, now legendary ‘Oval’ releases sent shockwaves through the electronic music landscape and laid the foundations for an entire new class of digital sound aesthetics. By boldly thinking outside the box and with an undeniable instinct for the drastic and dreamy, Popp single-handedly explored “glitch”, “clicks & cuts” and “microsound” years before the fad, spawning legions of soundalikes worldwide, who rarely reached the level of intensity and sophistication of Popp’s original compositions. www.myspace.com/markuspopp

RYOICHI KUROKAWA [JP]
Japanese audiovisual artist. His works take on multiple forms such as screening works, recordings, installation and live performance. Kurokawa composes time based sculpture with digital generated materials and field recorded sources, and the minimal and the complexities coexist there. Kurokawa accepts sound and imagery as a unit not as separately, and constructs very exquisite and precise computer based works with the audiovisual language.

PHILIP JECK [UK]
Philip Jeck works with old records and record players salvaged from junk shops turning them to his own purposes. He really does play them as musical instruments, creating an intensely personal language that evolves with each added part of a record. Philip Jeck makes geniunely moving and transfixing music, where we hear the art not the gimmick.

NUNO REBELO & VITOR JOAQUIM [PT]
Nuno Rebelo is a Portuguese guitar player, sound explorer, improviser and composer. Coming from a background of playing in pop-rock bands in the 80’s (he was the leader of Mler ife Dada, one of the most innovative portuguese bands of that time), he has composed a lot of music for contemporary dance, theatre, cinema, etc, since the 90’s.

Vitor Joaquim, laptop experimentalist, sound and visual artist, studied sound and direction for film. He started performing improvised music in 1982 and got involved in composing for dance in 1989 with Mark Haim at the CDLisbon and Coogan Dancers in Munich. Since then, he composed for dance, theatre, cinema, video, installations and multimedia, having worked with a  large number of collectives and individual creators.