In five exhibition chapters, the works of twenty international digital artists contextualize the relationship between society and new media. The online show brings together art that illuminates the virtual as a medium and pushes the boundaries of technology. The aim of the show is to promote critical reflection on the power that digital tools seem to have over us today: In times of omnipresent social media, online tools and the corporations behind them are gaining unprecedented influence. At the same time, the »metaverse« also offers space for our voices and our actions – in occupying this seemingly limitless space, they can complement, overlap, and connect to form a network.
Accordingly, the exhibition offers a place where virtual art can be experienced in its natural environment. At the same time, it is a vehicle to better understand the analog world and the global society away from keyboard (AFK).
The virtual exhibition »Expanded Realities and Networked Voices. Envisioning the Ambiguity of Both Utopian and Dystopian Future« was curated by Eva Fischer and Martina Menegon, designed and realized by Maximilian Prag, graphics by Marlene Kager.
Eva Fischer is an independent curator, cultural manager and lecturer in the field of audiovisual, immersive art and experimental media. She studied art history and cultural management in Graz, Utrecht (NL) and Vienna. Since 2006 she has been working as a freelance curator. Since 2021, she has been directing the new Viennese media art festival CIVA – Contemporary Immersive Virtual Art, which is 100% online and virtual in its first year of existence. In 2020, together with a team of artists, designers and cultural managers, she founded the virtual exhibition platform »Area for Virtual Art« (a cooperation between sound:frame and Pausanio).
In 2007 she initiated the »sound:frame – Festival for Audiovisual Art«, which once a year interlaced exhibitions, performance formats and discourse programs in the field of audiovisual art and culture and celebrated its 10th anniversary and at the same time its last edition in 2016. From 2006 – 2016 she worked as a VJ artist herself.
As a lecturer she gives guest lectures at international universities, colleges and festivals. Since 2020 she teaches in the »Immersion Strategies« at the FH Joanneum in Graz. From 2014 to 2020 she taught in the subject “Experimental Media” at the University of Applied Sciences in St. Pölten, from 2011 – 2018 in the subject “Audiovisual Media” at the IKM/ Institute for Cultural Management at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. In 2016, she taught in the »Audio« department of the master’s »MultiMediaArt« at the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences.
Eva Fischer. (c) Mathias-K. Heschl, Studio 1f
